Went to the first three rounds of the Utah Junior HIgh State Chess Championship. In my first round I played Joanna Nhan, a Vietnamese girl, and won fairly easily. Next I played some chinese guy, I can't remember his name. He wasn't too hard to beat. This is expected. In chess tournaments, your opponents get progressively harder as you keep winning games. Since I am the number two seed, I get easy people for the first few rounds. That said, I had to keep my guard, as the third game showed. In the third round I played Terry Wang (you guessed it, Chinese. I did not play a single caucasian in this tournament. It is interesting how certain ethnicities, in particular Asians, are overrepresented at scholastic chess tournaments). I grabbed a pawn early on, but played half-asleep and missed the chance to win the Exchange. Then I made some positional blunders and Terry equalized. I could have gained the advantage again but played more careless moves and got into serious trouble. I had to sac a pawn, equalizing the material count to keep my king and rook from becoming totally inactive. Then Terry found a shocking pawn break and threatened to promote his passed b-pawn. It took several accurate moves before I equalized and ended up winning my pawn back. Then Terry traded from a probably drawn rook ending into a losing king and pawn endgame and I won. This game rattled me and hopefully woke me up. The reason Terry gave me so much trouble was because I underestimated him and played too timidly in a couple places. I expected an easy win and it almost cost me the game. I am glad to have escaped with the full point, but fear that I may repeat my mistakes tomorrow, when my opponents will not be so forgiving.
| 