Interlake High School champions. From the left - Shiv Mehrotra (me), Pranav Kurungod Anoop, Adonai Blessington Moses

So, my school team competed in the 2023 Washington Mini-Teams chess tournament, and we won! The path to victory was a precarious five-match battle, and I am here to tell you all about it!

A Hectic Morning

I set an alarm to wake up for the tournament, but my excitedness woke me up at six in the morning. I quickly grabbed my tournament fee money, some snacks, and planned to drive to the chess tournament. However, my parents were not comfortable with me driving so much on the highway, so Pranav managed to pick me up from my house at the last minute. My inactivity in chess tournaments had made my chess skills a bit dull, so I was hoping to use this tournament to determine where I stood.

Game Round 1

Given the random pairings for the first round, the school team that played my school team comprised of beginner chess players. I won my game quickly as white, giving me time to eat some snacks before the next game started.

Game Round 2

I played black, and this game was stressful. The person I played was unrated, meaning he did not have an official chess rating. With my experience of unrated players being that the unrated players were hidden masters of the game, I was quite nervous during the game. I stopped notating due to time trouble, but I still remember the game to be intense. The game was full of personal mistakes that made me feel as if I were going to be quitely suffocated in a cramped position. However, I managed to gain some activty of the queenside, but my opponent's 22. Nd2 made me wish I had moved my rook off of a8. Low on time, I gave up my advanced knight, losing most of my advantage. The game went on with me almost causing a three-fold repetition, creating a passed pawn, and overpowering my opponent's major pieces. Finally, my opponent resigned before my passed pawn became a queen. There was a lunch break after this game, giving me time to relax before my third game.

Game Round 3

My third game was an awkward one. I played white, and the game went okay until my opponent blundered a pawn with 15. Re8, and I left to go to the bathroom after I played my 17th move. I came back to the board only to see that I only had five minutes on my clock. Thanfully, the time control included a time delay; I had five seconds for each move before the time on my clock would begin counting down. I played quickly from then on, and my opponent, for some strange reason, helped me by trading all of his pieces. The resulting game was a king and pawn endgame where I was a pawn up. Such a winning endgame is often taught early on in the life of a chess player, so my opponent resigned soon after.

Game Round 4

The fourth game was wild and lousily played by me. I played black against an opponent who had a rating of about 1200. However, opponent had been practicing for a few years, so my opponent definetly did not play like a 1200. The opening led to a Breyer defense in the Ruy Lopez, and I had unfortunately forgotten how to play the Breyer defense. After many threats by my opponent and a blunder by me that my opponent luckily did not see, I opened up the position and won some material. We went into time trouble, and I won more material from then on while avoiding some very scary mating threats by my opponent's aggressive knight and queen. After a few trades, I emerged a rook up in an easy-to-win endgame. My opponent resigned immediately.

Game Round 5

This was the toughest game for me. I was quite tired by this point, and I had run out of snacks. Dehydrated due to the fact that I had lost my water bottle (I later found it in the lost and found), I wasted away up-the-exchange advantage, eventually giving up the material advantage out of fear from the wrath my opponents' knights would impose upon my king. Both of us got into severe time trouble. I created a very advanced passed pawn, and my opponent found a tactic that made him win a pawn (if I took the pawn, I would be checkmated). I had three seconds left on my clock, and I was dodging very sneaky checkmate threats by overworking my pieces. Thankfully, while I had to give up some of my minor pieces and was down in material, I gained enough passed pawns to overpower his pieces with some very neat sacrifices. With my opponent having no way to stop the promotion of my passed pawn nor a way to utilize his passed pawns from my material sacrifices, he resigned. This was one of the only tournaments that I got a perfect score. Pranav also won all his games, but Blessington lost his Round 5 game. Blessington was up a full queen, but a last-ditch, easy-to-defuse checkmate trap by his opponent, combined with Blessington's half-closed eyes, led to a tragic loss for our team. Such tragic games have happened to me as well. It also explains why Blessington did not smile in the photo where our school team held the first place trophy.

Final Standings

The final standings of the chess tournament.

My school team won first place in the tournament with a score of 14/15. The school team in second place was so far behind us that if there was another round in the tournament, my school team would win no matter the outcome of the final round! Pranav and I were the only ones who scored a perfect 5/5 in the tournament, and we were awarded for our excellent performance with a nice medal. While Blessington unfortunately did not get the medal he deserved, his chess rating saw a healthy increase from his still successful score of 4/5.

Now that I know my chess skills are not rusty, I will seek to play in more chess tournaments and improve my chess ranking. May the best player win!