I won the Reserve section at the 2025 Austin Summer Open!
The best tournament I've ever had.
Last weekend[1], I played 5 games of chess at a large Austin chess tournament. I somehow managed to win all 5 games and emerged victorious with a perfect 5.0/5.0 score, 1st place in a section with 58 players, and a prize of $540.
I want to discuss the tournament, but also my general thoughts on chess tournaments. First:
General Thoughts
- My games were very long due to the
G/90 i+30time control:[2] each game lasted—on average—3 hours. Now, you may think "that's a super long time!" and it is. But it never feels that long, because you are so focused on just your game and nothing else. I believe playing long games of chess[3] is one of the best ways to combat the negative effects of brainrot from scrolling on social media, because you must focus on a singular thing for a very long time. - Chess tournaments are typically played in large, enclosed areas with lots of table space. This means the bigger tournaments very frequently occur in hotel ballrooms. Let me tell you: even after playing 50+ tournaments, it still feels bizarre to be in a room with 250+ other people playing 125+ games of chess and for it to be incredibly silent. Sure. There's occasional coughing, shuffling, and ambient noise from normal gameplay. But 95% of the time, no one in the entire room is talking. It's wonderful and crazy.
- Most people at chess tournaments are quite friendly, and will go over a game afterwards regardless of the result. Even my opponent who lost to me in the last round (where the game had $400+ on the line) discussed our game afterward with me for at least 15 minutes. I know us chess players have a rep for being introverted, but when it comes to discussing all things chess, we become quite extroverted.
Tournament Thoughts
This tournament was scuffed. Here's my commentary on each round.
- As White, I played a pretty smooth, convincing game against Alexander Ramey. My opening was nonstandard, but I eventually managed to remanuever my pieces into a surprise kingside attack while his major pieces sat useless on the queenside. Rxe7+ was a nice tactical finishing touch.
- As Black, I played an extremely symmetrical closed game against John Ramey[4]. I thought the game would devolve into a long positional grind, but he dropped a rook + pawn for a knight on move 19, subsequently dropped another piece on move 23, and resigned.
- As White, I played a very poor game against my friend Dang Nyugen. I was in a worse position practically the entire game, but because I got him extremely low on time[5] and generated some questionable counterplay, I swindled him into blundering checkmate in 4.
- As White, I played a very complicated yet ultimately drawish game against Shams Pirani. Despite my efforts, the game looked like it would be a draw: until he played Qe6?? and offered a draw. I said "I'd like to play a little longer" and then obtained his queen for the price of two knights. Then I easily won the endgame because of my semi-passed pawn on b5.
- As Black, I played an initially cramped game against Lawson Brown.[6] I was down significantly in the opening, but managed to turn things around by safely castling queenside and taking control of the c-file. The most surprising thing: in the middlegame, we both missed 25... Qf1# after 24...Rc3 25. Bd2. Yes, the two best-performing players in the tournament both missed an elementary M1 tactic.[7] He later tried to attack my king on the queenside, but ended up losing all of his pieces and eventually resigning due to imminent checkmate.
See what I mean by scuffed? 4/5 of my winning games were decided due to tactical mishaps, and I missed a mate in one with tons of time on my clock!
Ultimately, though, I think my meta strategy was good. In all five games, I played quite quickly, which caused my opponents to run into time pressure and make considerably worse moves. I know I'm supposed to play slow in classical, but I have pretty good move intuition from playing a lot of blitz and bullet.
Conclusion
Overall the tournament was great. I saw some friends from UT chess club as well!
Aug 15-17. ↩︎
Each player has 90 minutes to make all of their moves. Also, every time a player makes a move, 30 seconds is added to their clock. ↩︎
Classical chess. ↩︎
Alexander Ramey's dad. I beat both father and son, so I suppose that means I'm evil. ↩︎
At one point, he had 3 seconds left! ↩︎
At the start of the 5th round, Lawson and I were the only remaining players with 4.0/4.0. Everyone else had 3.0 or below. ↩︎
Thank goodness I ended up winning the game. If I had lost because I had missed M1, I probably would never have forgiven myself. Hopefully I won't make that mistake ever again. ↩︎