I’ve been in Japan for roughly 11 months now. How fast time goes by! I remember when I first arrived, I was planning to make as many chess friends as possible. That’s why I did some search on Google and Facebook, looking for chess clubs and chess players around Tokyo. And my first friend I’ve made is Mr. Ogasa, but he stays in Chiba, which is nearly 1.5 hour away by train. Still, I went there and played in a small local club tournament, in which I managed to win all the games and made a sound debut. Then Mr. Enzo asked me if I could play for Chiba team in Japan Club Championship which would be held in September, a month later. Of course I did agree because that’s what I aimed for – playing in official tournaments in Japan.
So the Club Championship was the first official tournament I have joined since I moved to Japan. It was a 6-round, 4-board team combat of around 30 teams as far as I can remember. At first, I felt a bit strange as everybody had to bring their own chess sets and chess clocks. And I did not feel confident about my team because we started as the 9th favorite team of the tournament. I knew there were many strong players playing in board 1, including Shinya Kojima who is an IM, so it would be very tough for me.
Then it went very well in the first 2 round, we won them all. 3rd round was the first challenging one. I got black against Alex Averbukh whose team is also strong with some talent kids. I had been suffering some pressure in the opening of that game then I managed to create attack in the king side which eventually turned out to be decisive. With another win from my teammate, Kenji Hiebert, we drew to Alex’s team.
There was also a very interesting game between Takuma Osaka and Shinya Kojima in that round. The kid had been playing very well till the Rook endgames and somehow had a very good chance to win against his strong opponent. I felt sad for him that he could not convert the advantage but even ruined his position by himself and Shinya had no difficulty punishing his mistake. What a tragedy.
Turned out I had to play Takuma in the next round. Although I had been trying hard, I could not get any advantage and the game almost finished in a draw. But then finally he failed to defend under time pressure. That was the toughest game in this tournament I could say.
In round 5, my team faced the strongest team of the tournament in terms of average rating. They had won all of their games so far and finally they were also the champion. I won the only game for my team as we lost 1-3 in such a suffering way. After the round I was told that Baba Masahiro who had just lost to me, is reigning champion of Japan. In a moment, I had a thought that if I had been told the story before the game, I would have been ending up losing. After that, round 6 was not a difficult one as we finished it in style and won the bronze medal. I won all the games and the individual gold medal as well.
In general, the tournament was a very nice experience to me although the schedule was very tough. Everybody had fun together while analyzing after finishing their games. Young players such as Takuma, Kenji, Gary,… showed very good potential while the veterans also fought very hard. I will share some of my games’ analysis in my next post. Stay tune!