[Event "World Open"]
[Site "Philly"]
[Date "2008.07.06"]
[Round "9"]
[White "Greg"]
[Black "Narz"]
[Result "0-1"]
[ECO "B22"]
[WhiteElo "1493"]
[BlackElo "1552"]
1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. c3 d5 4. e5 d4 5. Bc4 Bf5 6. d3 e6 7. O-O Nge7 8. Bb5 Qa5 9. c4 a6 10. Bxc6+ Nxc6 11. Nh4 Bg6 12. f4 Be7 13. Nxg6 hxg6 14. Nd2 b5 15. Qf3 Qc7 16. b3 f5 17. Qg3 Rh6 18. Nf3 O-O-O 19. Bd2 b4 20. a3 a5 21. axb4 cxb4 22. Ng5 Bxg5 23. Qxg5 Kd7 24. Be1 Ke8 25. Rf3 Kf7 26. Bh4 Rdh8 27. Rh3 Re8 28. Qg3 Nb8 29. Qf2 Qb6 30. g4 fxg4 31. f5 gxf5 32. Rg3 Rxh4 33. Rf1 g5 34. h3 Rxh3 35. Rxg4 Reh8 36. Qg2 Rh1+ 37. Qxh1 Rxh1+ 38. Kxh1 Kg6 39. Rg2 Nd7 40. Kg1 Nxe5 41. Re2 Nxd3 42. Rd1 Nf4 43. Re5 Kf6 44. Rb5 Qc6 45. Rd2 Qe4 46. Kf2 Qe3+ 47. Kf1 0-1
Another weird c3 sicilian. I just winged it and tried to end up with a better middlegame. Not sure if I pulled it off.
He traded off his knight for my bad bishop (locked position) which I was happy about & I thought I made a pretty good move with 21 ... cxb4 (instead of the "automatic" axb4), creating a nice square for my knight.
Perhaps I shouldn't have castled queenside (my king ended up back on f7 anyway) but the closed position allowed me to relax a little.
Until he blundered with the awful 30. g4 my plan was to slowly but surely activate my knight on c5 with hopefully enough advantage to be decisive (maybe busting open the a-file at an opportune time).
After g4 it was pretty much all over for white. He tried to create counterplay (saccing his rook) but I declined in favor of a safe king & better pawns + his bishop (even though I didn't see any mating threats or tactical possibilities for him had I taken the rook).
I was happy to beat him also because he was a goddamned pest. His first distraction tactic was whistling under his breath. This was loud enough that the guy next to him (my opponent from game #3) looked at him disdainfully, shook his head & smiled at me with a "man, what a schmuck" expression. I decided if he did it one more time I'd have to ask him what tune he was whistling to hopefully embarrass him into silence. His next approach was taking my knight & bishop (which he'd by then captured) and flipping them around in his hands, just noisely enough (and right in front of the board) to be distracting but not enough to catch any outside attention. After about five minutes of this (always on my move) I decided to ask him after the next move if I could have those pieces in case I needed to underpromote (again with the idea of embarssing him into shutting up). After my next move though I had to use the facilities & when I came back he'd moved again and after this he pretty much shut up. His annoying plan to screw me up seemed to work against him. Made me think of Bobby Fischer's quote when someone asked him something along the lines of "What's the best way to unnerve your opponent" and he replied "Make good (or strong) moves".
For his last move he played Kf1 and when I didn't immediately snap off the rook (just wanted to give it thrity seconds to make sure there wasn't anything faster) he tipped over his king with a grunt saying, "I was trying to be courteous, letting you finish the game!". This gave me a chuckle later, what a dipstick, I thought resigning when you're totally busted was the gentleman's thing to do. Either way I just flashed a "you're an idiot" smile & went to record my score. Pretty much all of my opponents in the previous rounds I really liked (my 1st round opponent, who ended up dropping out, and I chatted for about half-an-hour after the event & my 3rd & 4th were pretty personable and I chit-chatted a bit with them between rounds.
Anyway, that's all she wrote. Basically the tourney paid for my overpriced hotel (even with the "chess rates") so I'm down about $370 for the tourney plus $25 for transportation. Not too bad, all in all. I had fun, another half-a-point would have netted me probably a grand or so more but oh well.
Not sure when I'll do another of these monster tournies. Maybe next year. Next time I'm gonna find a person renting a cheap room in the area on Craigslist or something. $91 a night just to sleep somewhere & have someone pick up after you (and misplace all your stuff) is just ridiculous.
![[party]](/images/smilies/partytime.gif "Party [party]")
