Introduction Part 6: A Local to SoCal

After the Blacknight Memorial Day event, I played in two more tournaments in 2004. In July I travelled six hours from the Monterey area to Los Angeles for the 44th Pacific Southwest Open. Here I made the mistake of getting very little sleep (a real killer for most people's chess creativity) and paying the price by losing the first two rounds. I did win the rest of my games after that but the damage was done and I finished outside the prizes. Regardless, I loved every minute of it because I stayed at the LAX Hilton, where the tournament was being held, and met several new chess friends. I may post a later blog on this tournament and the lessons I learned.

In October 2004 I "played" in the Burlingame Open near San Jose. I hesitate to use the word "played" simply because I withdrew after the first round following a total debacle against a 1500. This would be the only time I would withdraw from a tournament after one bad game, although I have since withdrawn after a series of good  games in order to protect my rating. I then played no further rated games for over a year.

Playing black against Bob Head at the
Arcadia Chess Club.

In August 2005 I moved to Southern California to start a new job. I quickly started looking around for a chess club and found that the chess scene in the Los Angeles area is quite vibrant. It's not on the same level as New York but there are many clubs and a lot of strong players. I soon settled on the Arcadia Chess Club, where I have been playing ever since. The club meets on Mondays at 6:00pm and, because there are a number of strong experts and masters who have played there, my chess education grew in leaps in bounds. I was rated 1682 in my first tournament in Arcadia, the Richard Morris Memorial in December 2005, and went as high as 2132 (currently 2124). Admittedly, that 450 point jump came over a period of about eight years but, on the other hand, I was in my late 20's and early 30's and it is not easy to gain so many points when one is older. True, I was not old physically but, in chess years, most people make that kind of progress when they are a teenager and not well into adulthood. Oh to be one of those kids who gains hundreds of points and makes expert in their early teens or sooner!

This marks the end of the introduction to my chess career thus far. My future blog posts will focus mostly on my current chess activities, analyzing recent games and so forth. I will also make some posts about past games but they won't follow any particular chronological order like the introduction has.