

So as I say I was pretty surprised that I got to see these people at this tournament that I expected to just be quite a small time deal.
Anyway, as far as the actual tournament goes, I felt I played reasonably well. Partly I just had to get used to certain things like hitting the clock after every move. There were one or two times when I forgot, but then again so did my opponents. Also, recording my moves was something that took a bit of getting used to. Also, the touch move situation, there was at least one time where I touched a piece and then regretted it. Luckily, my regret wasn't really for a good reason and moving that piece was fine.
As far as opponents go, it was a little confusing. Basically it was mostly kids of varying ages but there were some adults. My friend from the Wednesday club was playing, and a Taiwanese man. There were a couple of other adults playing but I wasn't quite clear on whether they were really playing in the tournament or not. Then there was a tier of teenaged players, and then a tier of younger kids. The younger kids were playing in the same room but seemed to be in a separate division. I played four teenagers and one adult.
The time control was 25 minutes main time with a 10 second delay. This is faster than I am used to as on the internet I usually play 30/30 or 45/45 and recently have played a couple of 90/30. Still, I seemed to have handled it well and was ahead on the clock in all my games except the last one. Even in the last one I wasn't behind much.
As far as results go I broke exactly even 2 wins, 2 losses, and a draw. Really, I was perfectly happy with that result. Being my first tournament I really saw it as a learning experience. I had to be told some basic stuff, like how to resign. This is a bit more significant than you might expect because of the language barrier and my first game was a bit awkward at the end because of this. I was also told that I probably resigned that one a bit early. Basically I was a piece down and he had an attack going, but still it is rapid play so it might have been worth hanging on for awhile.
So I ended up in 8th place out of 18 players. I ended up getting a third place trophy though because even though we played together some of the players were considered to be in a different section and were awarded prizes separately, so even though I was in the middle, I was third in the "open" division.
On the whole I had a lot of fun and definitely feel that I would like to do it again. There are not a lot of opportunities, but who knows, maybe this time next year I will be playing in the Asian Dragons main tournament.
I will post the games later although 2 of them are not complete due to having to give up recording as my time dwindled.
Congratulations on completing your first OTB tournament, and with a 50% score no less! Once you get more used to the organizational aspects of tournaments, it also becomes easier just to concentrate on your chess, although you didn't seem to have too much difficulty in that regard.
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