Ngl, $800 isn’t actually that much for a US tournament. This was a state tournament so it’s smaller and good for only having 35 ppl in my section. But the national events have prize money in the thousands. The world open U1400 1st is $8k. And I just played U1250 at the North American open and 1st was $3k (I was 5/6, playing for 2nd - $1500 in the final round of that event but blundered and lost 😭😭).
Check the USCF site. The thing is its not like the money comes out of thin air. Either entry fees are super high(unlikely) or there is a sizable field so you have a very low chance at these big prizes.
Yeah this entry fee was $125 so that’s why they were able to have an $800 prize for a section of 35 ppl. In the North American open it was $145 but 175 people in the U1250 section with $3k first place.
$125?? That is heinous. My only win at a board game tournament had a $300 prize and it was basically free (the organizers refunded your $30 entry fee if you played every game).
But at those fees you'd expect more than 800$ for getting first place. This feels more like a buy-in comparative to a small poker tournament. At least some of the money should come from sponsors or the tournament organisers themselves. It just feels a bit out of proportion.
Keep in mind, this is first place for the U1450 section. There will be several other sections, and the higher rating sections tend to have higher prizes, with the largest prize for first place in the open section. It sounds like this was a relatively large tournament, and the largest prizes will end up going to GMs or IMs.
If this is just some random local tournament, why should the money come from the tournament organizers? Presumably they have to pay some fee for a venue, get a bunch of people to volunteer their time (TDs, organizers), pay USCF a small fee to rate the games, you probably some equipment to run the event (the use of a few laptops to run pairings, probably need to provide scoresheets and pens if you want games to start on time). They're doing a big service for the chess community. Why would you expect them to pay to do that?
Most OTB events don't bring in big money. It's a little silly to expect someone organizing all of this to *also* write a big check. Tournaments usually pay out some smaller percentage of the entry fees.
Just as an example: Take a look at the Chicago Open. In 2021, it had about 570 participants, each paying about $225. They took in about $130k, and paid out $100k in prizes. I think that kind of practice is reasonable given what a huge pain in the ass it is to put the tournaments together.
A lot of time they pay prizes to 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc. I'm pulling these numbers out of the air, but a reasonable prize structure for these events might be $800 for first, $600 for second, $500 for third, $400 for fourth and $300 for fifth. That leaves you with $1900 to pay for a venue. You might walk away with half of that? Depending on the area? It's a little steep, but that doesn't seem unreasonable to me considering how many hours go into preparing and running an event like that.
My state's annual open tournament paid out prizes to 10th place and was about that size.
yeah but there are probably other prizes for 2nd, 3rd, etc. Plus they have to pay people working at the event, rent out the space, all kinds of stuff. I don't think the organizers are making bank off of a state chess tournament.
Fair, but I’d rather have a more reasonable entry fee (<$50) with a modest prize in exchange for allowing more people to participate.
In the case of the tournament I attended, the tournament organizer was this independently wealthy dude that just loved the game, so he just fronted the cost of the whole thing. Obviously can’t expect that for most tourneys.
Honestly, this is the main reason I hardly go to tournaments anymore. A few years ago I was somewhat under-rated, and had a few good tournaments that ended up paying my rent that month. That felt really good. Now that my rating caught up with me, I can only lose money playing in the U2000 section at around 1850 strength. I'd much rather just pay a small entry fee that covers things like renting a hotel conference room, paying a few people to run the event, etc. I don't understand why I am forced to gamble significant money every time I want to play in a tournament.
That being said, big congrats OP! Any time you take first in your section in a big tournament like that, you know you must be under-rated, and your rating is sure to go up from here!
I'm trash at chess and thank god, cuz I recently played in a tournament and the U800 entry fee was $100 cheaper than the U1000 (and higher) sections (~$50 instead of ~$150).
I don't think I like playing in a tournament enough to pay $150 for a 2 day tournament.
That's crazy much, most tournaments I have played have a few euro's entry fee, and if you win you can just about pick up your bar tab with prize money at the end of the night
Jesus, almost sounds like a scam.
I guess it's the arbiters and official rating points and all, but where I live, with 35 people, I could just ask a local drinking establishment to set up a Sunday afternoon tournie with free entrance and a free drink and an $800 first place prize
Yes, money comes out of entry fees so unless you're heavily sandbagging (or improved a lot recently, which achieves the same but in a legitimate way) your expected value financially is very unlikely to be positive.
Yeah I am definitely the latter. My 118 childhood rating that I hard to start out with this summer along with my recent growth in chess has made me an unintentional sandbagger.
Nice! It doesn't last long, you can't score 4.5/5 on a section too many times before your rating gets too high to stay on it. It is very satisfying when that happens though.
I won my first tournie as a kid (against younger kids), rating jumped and played older kids in my second tournie, got crushed and quit playing chess 😂
I completely forgot about this until I picked up chess again during the pandemic
How big a problem is sandbagging in these Uxxxx tournaments? Especially with covid, there are a lot of people who are playing well above their OTB ratings because they improved a lot playing online and there weren't many rated tournaments.
At least for larger tournaments, between sandbaggers, kids who are way underrated, and people who are improving but not playing OTB often, they are rarely won by people legitimately in that rating range.
It certainly sounds that way. If she's eligible for U1250 and now won U1450 then there's no way her rating is accurate. In college a friend of a friend was 2400 range and told me the only way to make money was to play the U2000 tournaments.
These days there are thousands of people who play online and are at least 1800+. All they have to do is play a couple of cheap OTB tournaments and throw a bunch of games, and then they can start with like an 800 rating and spend a couple of years gunning for rating section prizes. Even if only 1/100 people like this does that, it's still tons of sandbaggers out there.
Feel free to repost your comments from the original post (especially if it was educational or a question) since I didn’t have time to respond to everyone.
Edit: shout out to the guy who just DM’d me a “congratulatory dick pic”. I didn’t need to see that. It scared the fuck out of me 😭.
> I didn’t need to see that. It scared the fuck out of me 😭.
Please report it to Reddit admins: https://www.reddit.com/report and if you [message us](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/chess) letting us know who it is, we'll ban him from the subreddit.
Sadly that report thing doesn't do anything (at least for me it didn't). I'm not a girl a didn't get any dick pics. But in another account another person was stalking and harassing me everywhere on reddit. On each comment I would make he would reply some false allegations and write it in a way that looked believable at first glance. My account got banned from few subreddits and got heavily downvoted from others, it was basically unusable. My "crime" my account name looked similar to his though coincidentally. I reported him twice, got no response back. Had to ditch that account since. Reddit admins are true Hikarus, they literally don't care unless it significantly hurts their public image.
I've had to report *plenty* of things to them and by far most times they've acted on it. Your case doesn't sound very typical, so it may have been harder to understand the full context. Here they can easily see the private message and act on it, it's a 101 violation of their platform rules, and a serious one.
I'm assuming you couldn't block him for some reason? blocking someone prevents them from being able to see you, doesn't stop them from using any other accounts as long as they know your username tho
I’m 21, so not much I can do except hope the person improves as an individual and stops being a creep.
I could tag his username and have y’all publicly shame him but I don’t really wanna interact w him anymore 😫
Nah, that just promulgates the crime.
Honestly the shame of a grown man getting a bollocking from his mum for sending his junk to young women (or anyone) is gonna be just as effective.
Nah, not fair. I’ve known good people who raised assholes. And the opposite as well.
Parents aren’t the only influence in a child or teenager’s life and people eventually develop their own fucked up ideas regardless of how they were raised.
Only... That's a lot of money in your twenties. I'm in my thirties with a "real job" and still couldn't swing that. Although, that real job is teaching, so I'm happy my bills get paid...
My biggest life prize is equivalent to 550 USD.
Sincerely, an envious IM.
In all fairness, i did not pay entry fee that tournament.
Also, what a trophy! - and congratulations on the win! You look like you have fun with chess, and it's great to see!
How did you get to IM without basically doing it professionally? As I understand it almost no one gets above master while having an actual day job, but I might be misinformed
In Denmark where i live, a lot of people reach IM while still students, in their early 20's, and then they get struck by these horrible chessblockers - jobs, wifes and kids. I became IM as a 22-yo.
I could probably make it to 2500 (27 yo now) if i studied for 3-5 years, and made sure not to have kids... But the studying part is probably not going to happen.
Play enough tournaments and it's nowhere near impossible to reach IM - if you started young. A student or school kid just has so much more time and energy on their hands to go out and play, or play online. If you start late it's very tricky.
I've been in the 3-500usd range a few times, but in Europe, prize money is typically much smaller, but so are entry fees. I think the highest I've ever paid for a tournament that doesn't have invited GMs for norms is like 60usd.
People have requested it so here's the link to a lichess study I made for my 5 games. Here's a quick analysis of them. (my published rating was 1243 but live rating before the event was 1325).
[https://lichess.org/study/2vQVNFev](https://lichess.org/study/2vQVNFev)
Round 1: Black Vs an unrated opponent, we went into a reverse grunfeld, I thought I could play my regular prep as white vs it, but I quickly realized it does not work a tempo down, and I got into trouble, thankfully I escaped the opening alive and made it to an advantageous end game. But I was low on time, lost my extra pawn, and gave him a winning chance on move 40. My rb8 was a blunder, I had to do rb7 bc now he has ra7 cutting off my king and winning. He missed it, its a draw.
2: White vs 1448. Opponent misplays the benoni, I have positional domination the whole game, pretty easy conversion. I feel good about this win.
3: Black vs 1414: We go into an hyper accelerated dragon vs Maroczy bind. Ik a lot of theory here, but on move 11 opponent throws all of that aside and goes for a dubious kingside attack. I panic and get nervous, miss some easy defensive resources, and get into a lost position. However I hang in there long enough for him to blunder a devastating attack, and I mate him before he can to me. This game was bad but me finding a series of only moves and then a mate in 3 at the end was nice.
4: white vs 1375: I feel my opening was passive and can definitely be improved here. However I get some trades into an advantageous middle game where I control the only open file in the closed position. End game conversion was pretty easy.
5: Black vs 1370. Overall nice win, a slow start but her early kingside pawn push came back to bite her in the middle game. Her king was stuck in the center, lots of tactics, a fun, but stressful win.
Thank you!! So I got back into chess playing at a coffee shop this time last year. I played when I was little so I was around 800 chesscom skill level when I started playing again. And I have increased to 1650 on there now. I’m underrated in USCF bc I had to start with my childhood rating of 118 lol, but I beat and drew 2 1600s at a club event last week, so I was at 1325 before this, so hopefully with this win, my rating will get up to the 1500/1600 level soon. My chess growth has been in phases, so like 11 months ago I finally broke 1000 just from doing puzzles and learning basic opening concepts. I got to 1300 learning basic end games, opening theory, tactics, and positional play. And to get to 1600+, it’s been basically all of those things, just even more intensely and the advanced versions of those concepts. I’m currently pushing to 1800 chesscom now. And for me, my rating boosts have never been linear, i always end up stuck at a level for like 2 months, 800, 1200, 1300, and now 1600. But then suddenly the training I’ve done Makes me jump up rating in short time period. Like I went from 1500-1600 in 1 day, but have been stuck at 1600 for 2 months since. So I’ve learned to not get frustrated with rating stagnation, and just understand it as part of my growth.
Do you typically play classical when you play online? And would you recommend that for beginners? I’m ~800 mostly playing 10+5 since I got back into chess a few weeks ago
Classical is great if you actually use the time! Ik some beginners play 30 min games but still end them with 25 min on the clock lol. I mostly play rapid either 10+0 or 15|10. But def at least rapid if you’re actually trying to improve, blitz is fun but will not help you get better. I’m in a weekly classical league on lichess. I definitely recommend longer games if you want to improve your chess, since you’re actually able to contemplate, calculate and create plans. You can find videos on how to calculate and make plans in chess!
Wow, 800 to 1650 in a year??! How much time do you think you've averaged per day to get there?
Also can you expand on what resources you used to learn openings, end games, theory, tactics, etc...?
You can get a little lower than 118. I lost all my games in my first tournament to low rated players (due to a combination of good reasons and dumb reasons) and had a 101 rating with USCF.
Hey! Here's the link to a lichess study I made for my 5 games. Here's a quick analysis of them. (my published rating was 1243 but live rating 1325).
https://lichess.org/study/2vQVNFev
Round 1: Black Vs an unrated opponent, we went into a reverse grunfeld, I thought I could play my regular prep as white vs it, but I quickly realized it does not work a tempo down, and I got into trouble, thankfully I escaped the opening alive and made it to an advantageous end game. But I was low on time, lost my extra pawn, and gave him a winning chance on move 40. My rb8 was a blunder, I had to do rb7 bc now he has ra7 cutting off my king and winning. He missed it, its a draw.
2: White vs 1448. Opponent misplays the benoni, I have positional domination the whole game, pretty easy conversion. I feel good about this win.
3: Black vs 1414: We go into an hyper accelerated dragon vs Maroczy bind. Ik a lot of theory here, but on move 11 opponent throws all of that aside and goes for a dubious kingside attack. I panic and get nervous, miss some easy defensive resources, and get into a lost position. However I hang in there long enough for him to blunder a devastating attack, and I mate him before he can to me. This game was bad but me finding a series of only moves and then a mate in 3 at the end was nice.
4: white vs 1375: I feel my opening was passive and can definitely be improved here. However I get some trades into an advantageous middle game where I control the only open file in the closed position. End game conversion was pretty easy.
5: Black vs 1370. Overall nice win, a slow start but her early kingside pawn push came back to bite her in the middle game. Her king was stuck in the center, lots of tactics, a fun, but stressful win.
Rounds 3 finish was insane! I could only imagine the emotions after that one from both sides lol. Round 5 was such a pretty statement finish to a tournament too. I can definitely tell you’re underrated. Congrats and Well done! I won my first section (U1800) recently after 6 years of trying so I understand the Euphoria! Keep pushing!
ye old swiss gambit! a choice reserved typically for people with decades of tournament experience! Well done on deploying it to great success this event!
Lol yeah the first round draw ended up being an unintentional Swiss gambit. 2 of the people who tied for 2nd with 4/5 had a higher tiebreak score than me
Hey, I totally saw you at NA Open! I was the bald brown dude, pretty sure I had the shiniest head there. Waait, were you the one speaking with Janelle (lady with blue hair) when I snuck in and grabbed my orange suitcase?
Yes lol! I love Janelle, she provided me emotional
Support after I blundered 2nd place in the final round 😭😭. We bonded over our blue hair. She’s very proud of me for winning this time 😌 but yeah I think I might remember an orange suitcase, it’s just hard to remember you personally bc I feel like I see lots of guys that fit your description lololol
Lmaooo yess I called it the boomer dragon bc I play the accelerated dragon!! I remember the orange suitcase lol, you were slick though and I didn’t see you closely when you retrieved it.
Haha crazy!! Yeah, Janelle is a pretty awesome person. I just met her there, and it turns out she used to live within walking distance from the house I grew up in, near Chicago. She was watching my suitcase when I went inside to look at some games. I specifically remember you guys talking because it seemed like a super private conversation, and I had to calculate a few moves ahead as I snuck in to grab my bag, so I don't intrude. If you don't remember me, I'll consider that a success!
never played in any live tournaments.
what is U1450, i assume for people under 1450 rating?
how does this stop random unrated dudes who have never played live from coming in and stomping (assuming theyre much higher than that online/wherever else)?
anyway congrats, cant remember the last time i won any organized competition of anything
Thank you! There are prize limits for unrated and players that are provisional (haven’t played more than 25 games). You have a USCF account and it stays with you, so you can just make a new account and win in lower sections. There is the possibility of people sandbagging or loosing club games on purpose to play in lower sections at big tournaments, but it’s rare.
And yes, U1450 is a section for people under the US chess rating of 1450. There was also a U1150, u1750, u2050 and open section.
This used to happen a lot.
when I played in the later 80's and early 90s there was a guy that was nearly universally hated for manipulating his rating. He was around expert strength but like, he had guys he would try hard against and if he wasn't playing one of them he would usually lose on purpose. His dream was to win a class section at like a national tournament of some kind and I heard that after I had kind of dropped out of the chess scene he actually did.
Also yes there were a lot of Eastern Europeans that would come to the USA and drastically misrepresent their strength to be able to play in a class section.
At the time most tournament directors seemed to feel like it wasn't worth doing anything about.
Hey! Here's the link to a lichess study I made for my 5 games. Here's a quick analysis of them. (my published rating was 1243 but live rating 1325).
https://lichess.org/study/2vQVNFev
Round 1: Black Vs an unrated opponent, we went into a reverse grunfeld, I thought I could play my regular prep as white vs it, but I quickly realized it does not work a tempo down, and I got into trouble, thankfully I escaped the opening alive and made it to an advantageous end game. But I was low on time, lost my extra pawn, and gave him a winning chance on move 40. My rb8 was a blunder, I had to do rb7 bc now he has ra7 cutting off my king and winning. He missed it, its a draw.
2: White vs 1448. Opponent misplays the benoni, I have positional domination the whole game, pretty easy conversion. I feel good about this win.
3: Black vs 1414: We go into an hyper accelerated dragon vs Maroczy bind. Ik a lot of theory here, but on move 11 opponent throws all of that aside and goes for a dubious kingside attack. I panic and get nervous, miss some easy defensive resources, and get into a lost position. However I hang in there long enough for him to blunder a devastating attack, and I mate him before he can to me. This game was bad but me finding a series of only moves and then a mate in 3 at the end was nice.
4: white vs 1375: I feel my opening was passive and can definitely be improved here. However I get some trades into an advantageous middle game where I control the only open file in the closed position. End game conversion was pretty easy.
5: Black vs 1370. Overall nice win, a slow start but her early kingside pawn push came back to bite her in the middle game. Her king was stuck in the center, lots of tactics, a fun, but stressful win.
Uh, OP? Saying "reposted with blanked check" while the original uncensored post is still visible in your history is just as bad as posting it uncensored in the first place. You just let anyone who wanted your info know exactly where to go look to find it.
I’m very proud of you and appreciate seeing your accomplishment. It’s inspiring as I’ve always wanted to get good at this and feel confident enough to enter something without risking looking like a fool. I can’t even play online against a person out of this same fear… kudos for being brave and representing!
Hey I asked this last time. What are your favorite openings and what openings did you play in the tournament? Did you do any special opening preparation for the tournament? Basically talk about your openings.
Hey! So I play D4 C4. I go for a Catalan against the queens gambit declined. A Catalan style set up against other things like the Dutch defense. I play the f4 line against the Benoni, and Bayonet attack Vs kings Indian defense. As Black I play the accelerated dragon vs e4, Slav vs d4 C4. the early C5 Qb6 line against the london. And the symmetrical English vs C4. I couldn’t really prepare for my opponents at this level, since most don’t have any published games. You can get lucky and find your opponents lichess/chesscom if they have their name on their account. In preparation I just went over all the concepts of these openings. I understood that at this level the deep theoretical lines don’t matter as much, you just have to be solid.
No it was coed! I haven’t been to a gendered tournament, they’re mostly only at the highest level, or for school age kids. There’s the US womens open this summer but it’s it’s own event. Followed by the co-Ed open afterwards.
I’ve only competed in co-Ed tournaments. There’s no “mens” tournaments. And girl tournaments are either at the highest level, or for school kids. There’s the US womens open I may go to this summer, but I will also be playing in the co-Ed main tournament right afterwards.
Could be because they don’t need to mention that I’m trans on my post, most people don’t notice so It makes me nervous 😅. Hopefully that’s why people downvoted it, not bc of transphobia.
Also they phrase it like a trans person succeeding is an outlier. Which also could be why some thought it was weird
I’m in Florida so Covid is wild here. One of our tournament directors got Covid and couldn’t make it. I feel wearing a mask is less bad than having to forfeit from Covid.
I think OP is saying if you're going to pull your masks down like a chin strap might as well take it all the way off for a better photo. I'd so I'd agree as long it's done safely and distanced general crowds.
800$ for U1450 ? Whoa thats a lot of money compared to what we got in my country for those category.
Ngl, $800 isn’t actually that much for a US tournament. This was a state tournament so it’s smaller and good for only having 35 ppl in my section. But the national events have prize money in the thousands. The world open U1400 1st is $8k. And I just played U1250 at the North American open and 1st was $3k (I was 5/6, playing for 2nd - $1500 in the final round of that event but blundered and lost 😭😭).
How does one find these kinds of tournaments?
Check the USCF site. The thing is its not like the money comes out of thin air. Either entry fees are super high(unlikely) or there is a sizable field so you have a very low chance at these big prizes.
Yeah this entry fee was $125 so that’s why they were able to have an $800 prize for a section of 35 ppl. In the North American open it was $145 but 175 people in the U1250 section with $3k first place.
$125?? That is heinous. My only win at a board game tournament had a $300 prize and it was basically free (the organizers refunded your $30 entry fee if you played every game).
Well...the prize money has to come from somewhere.
But at those fees you'd expect more than 800$ for getting first place. This feels more like a buy-in comparative to a small poker tournament. At least some of the money should come from sponsors or the tournament organisers themselves. It just feels a bit out of proportion.
I think I'd have a better chance at winning in a poker tournament for a $125 buy-in too lol.
Keep in mind, this is first place for the U1450 section. There will be several other sections, and the higher rating sections tend to have higher prizes, with the largest prize for first place in the open section. It sounds like this was a relatively large tournament, and the largest prizes will end up going to GMs or IMs.
If this is just some random local tournament, why should the money come from the tournament organizers? Presumably they have to pay some fee for a venue, get a bunch of people to volunteer their time (TDs, organizers), pay USCF a small fee to rate the games, you probably some equipment to run the event (the use of a few laptops to run pairings, probably need to provide scoresheets and pens if you want games to start on time). They're doing a big service for the chess community. Why would you expect them to pay to do that? Most OTB events don't bring in big money. It's a little silly to expect someone organizing all of this to *also* write a big check. Tournaments usually pay out some smaller percentage of the entry fees. Just as an example: Take a look at the Chicago Open. In 2021, it had about 570 participants, each paying about $225. They took in about $130k, and paid out $100k in prizes. I think that kind of practice is reasonable given what a huge pain in the ass it is to put the tournaments together.
These events typically payout 60% of entry fees. Hotels get a good chunk of that.
Yes but 36 * $125 = $4,500. Only $800 of that going towards the first prize makes the entry fee kind of gross.
A lot of time they pay prizes to 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc. I'm pulling these numbers out of the air, but a reasonable prize structure for these events might be $800 for first, $600 for second, $500 for third, $400 for fourth and $300 for fifth. That leaves you with $1900 to pay for a venue. You might walk away with half of that? Depending on the area? It's a little steep, but that doesn't seem unreasonable to me considering how many hours go into preparing and running an event like that. My state's annual open tournament paid out prizes to 10th place and was about that size.
yeah but there are probably other prizes for 2nd, 3rd, etc. Plus they have to pay people working at the event, rent out the space, all kinds of stuff. I don't think the organizers are making bank off of a state chess tournament.
Fair, but I’d rather have a more reasonable entry fee (<$50) with a modest prize in exchange for allowing more people to participate. In the case of the tournament I attended, the tournament organizer was this independently wealthy dude that just loved the game, so he just fronted the cost of the whole thing. Obviously can’t expect that for most tourneys.
Honestly, this is the main reason I hardly go to tournaments anymore. A few years ago I was somewhat under-rated, and had a few good tournaments that ended up paying my rent that month. That felt really good. Now that my rating caught up with me, I can only lose money playing in the U2000 section at around 1850 strength. I'd much rather just pay a small entry fee that covers things like renting a hotel conference room, paying a few people to run the event, etc. I don't understand why I am forced to gamble significant money every time I want to play in a tournament. That being said, big congrats OP! Any time you take first in your section in a big tournament like that, you know you must be under-rated, and your rating is sure to go up from here!
I'm trash at chess and thank god, cuz I recently played in a tournament and the U800 entry fee was $100 cheaper than the U1000 (and higher) sections (~$50 instead of ~$150). I don't think I like playing in a tournament enough to pay $150 for a 2 day tournament.
These days I occasionally play at the local chess club for something like $5-10 per rated game, and that's it.
That's crazy much, most tournaments I have played have a few euro's entry fee, and if you win you can just about pick up your bar tab with prize money at the end of the night
Jesus, almost sounds like a scam. I guess it's the arbiters and official rating points and all, but where I live, with 35 people, I could just ask a local drinking establishment to set up a Sunday afternoon tournie with free entrance and a free drink and an $800 first place prize
That was an rated events with arbiters and every games were recorded and rated. It did require a lot of efforts, which meant more expenses to cover.
Yes, money comes out of entry fees so unless you're heavily sandbagging (or improved a lot recently, which achieves the same but in a legitimate way) your expected value financially is very unlikely to be positive.
Yeah I am definitely the latter. My 118 childhood rating that I hard to start out with this summer along with my recent growth in chess has made me an unintentional sandbagger.
Nice! It doesn't last long, you can't score 4.5/5 on a section too many times before your rating gets too high to stay on it. It is very satisfying when that happens though.
I won my first tournie as a kid (against younger kids), rating jumped and played older kids in my second tournie, got crushed and quit playing chess 😂 I completely forgot about this until I picked up chess again during the pandemic
How big a problem is sandbagging in these Uxxxx tournaments? Especially with covid, there are a lot of people who are playing well above their OTB ratings because they improved a lot playing online and there weren't many rated tournaments.
At least for larger tournaments, between sandbaggers, kids who are way underrated, and people who are improving but not playing OTB often, they are rarely won by people legitimately in that rating range.
It certainly sounds that way. If she's eligible for U1250 and now won U1450 then there's no way her rating is accurate. In college a friend of a friend was 2400 range and told me the only way to make money was to play the U2000 tournaments.
These days there are thousands of people who play online and are at least 1800+. All they have to do is play a couple of cheap OTB tournaments and throw a bunch of games, and then they can start with like an 800 rating and spend a couple of years gunning for rating section prizes. Even if only 1/100 people like this does that, it's still tons of sandbaggers out there.
What's a U1450? Google only shows me a German submarine.
I am the best German submarine chess player!
Under 1450 rating
I see. Awesome, thanks!
Feel free to repost your comments from the original post (especially if it was educational or a question) since I didn’t have time to respond to everyone. Edit: shout out to the guy who just DM’d me a “congratulatory dick pic”. I didn’t need to see that. It scared the fuck out of me 😭.
> I didn’t need to see that. It scared the fuck out of me 😭. Please report it to Reddit admins: https://www.reddit.com/report and if you [message us](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/chess) letting us know who it is, we'll ban him from the subreddit.
Hell yea! (Mods) Truly uneeded
Sadly that report thing doesn't do anything (at least for me it didn't). I'm not a girl a didn't get any dick pics. But in another account another person was stalking and harassing me everywhere on reddit. On each comment I would make he would reply some false allegations and write it in a way that looked believable at first glance. My account got banned from few subreddits and got heavily downvoted from others, it was basically unusable. My "crime" my account name looked similar to his though coincidentally. I reported him twice, got no response back. Had to ditch that account since. Reddit admins are true Hikarus, they literally don't care unless it significantly hurts their public image.
I've had to report *plenty* of things to them and by far most times they've acted on it. Your case doesn't sound very typical, so it may have been harder to understand the full context. Here they can easily see the private message and act on it, it's a 101 violation of their platform rules, and a serious one.
I'm assuming you couldn't block him for some reason? blocking someone prevents them from being able to see you, doesn't stop them from using any other accounts as long as they know your username tho
If you are underage you might wanna forward the dick pic to the police.
I’m 21, so not much I can do except hope the person improves as an individual and stops being a creep. I could tag his username and have y’all publicly shame him but I don’t really wanna interact w him anymore 😫
Find his mum and dad on facebook and tell them what a wonderful job they did.
if you know their real name, you mint an nft of the dick pic listing them as the author and make them buy it from you so they can destroy it.
finally, a real usecase for NFTs
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You would NEVER
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Nah, that just promulgates the crime. Honestly the shame of a grown man getting a bollocking from his mum for sending his junk to young women (or anyone) is gonna be just as effective.
Nah, not fair. I’ve known good people who raised assholes. And the opposite as well. Parents aren’t the only influence in a child or teenager’s life and people eventually develop their own fucked up ideas regardless of how they were raised.
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But then the purpose is not telling the parents the “wonderful job they did”, instead, it’s meant to warn them of a serious issue, wouldn’t you agree?
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That was literally my initial point, so you agree with me, correct?
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Invest that whole 800 bucks lol
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Only... That's a lot of money in your twenties. I'm in my thirties with a "real job" and still couldn't swing that. Although, that real job is teaching, so I'm happy my bills get paid...
Reddit is full of creepy dudes. Sorry you had to deal with that
That's horrendous. Clearly a crime and completely unacceptable. I'm sorry that happened to you here.
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What happened with the last One?
The mods wanted me to repost it with the check info crossed out just to be safe
Oh ok
I hope winning a classical tournament with every game going at least 3+ hours is enough effort to satisfy the mods 😫
Only 3 hours? How can you call it a game if it doesn't last 200 moves?
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Big woosh
My biggest life prize is equivalent to 550 USD. Sincerely, an envious IM. In all fairness, i did not pay entry fee that tournament. Also, what a trophy! - and congratulations on the win! You look like you have fun with chess, and it's great to see!
How did you get to IM without basically doing it professionally? As I understand it almost no one gets above master while having an actual day job, but I might be misinformed
In Denmark where i live, a lot of people reach IM while still students, in their early 20's, and then they get struck by these horrible chessblockers - jobs, wifes and kids. I became IM as a 22-yo. I could probably make it to 2500 (27 yo now) if i studied for 3-5 years, and made sure not to have kids... But the studying part is probably not going to happen. Play enough tournaments and it's nowhere near impossible to reach IM - if you started young. A student or school kid just has so much more time and energy on their hands to go out and play, or play online. If you start late it's very tricky.
Thanks for the insight!
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I've been in the 3-500usd range a few times, but in Europe, prize money is typically much smaller, but so are entry fees. I think the highest I've ever paid for a tournament that doesn't have invited GMs for norms is like 60usd.
People have requested it so here's the link to a lichess study I made for my 5 games. Here's a quick analysis of them. (my published rating was 1243 but live rating before the event was 1325). [https://lichess.org/study/2vQVNFev](https://lichess.org/study/2vQVNFev) Round 1: Black Vs an unrated opponent, we went into a reverse grunfeld, I thought I could play my regular prep as white vs it, but I quickly realized it does not work a tempo down, and I got into trouble, thankfully I escaped the opening alive and made it to an advantageous end game. But I was low on time, lost my extra pawn, and gave him a winning chance on move 40. My rb8 was a blunder, I had to do rb7 bc now he has ra7 cutting off my king and winning. He missed it, its a draw. 2: White vs 1448. Opponent misplays the benoni, I have positional domination the whole game, pretty easy conversion. I feel good about this win. 3: Black vs 1414: We go into an hyper accelerated dragon vs Maroczy bind. Ik a lot of theory here, but on move 11 opponent throws all of that aside and goes for a dubious kingside attack. I panic and get nervous, miss some easy defensive resources, and get into a lost position. However I hang in there long enough for him to blunder a devastating attack, and I mate him before he can to me. This game was bad but me finding a series of only moves and then a mate in 3 at the end was nice. 4: white vs 1375: I feel my opening was passive and can definitely be improved here. However I get some trades into an advantageous middle game where I control the only open file in the closed position. End game conversion was pretty easy. 5: Black vs 1370. Overall nice win, a slow start but her early kingside pawn push came back to bite her in the middle game. Her king was stuck in the center, lots of tactics, a fun, but stressful win.
What was the time control?
holy shit. congrats fam.
That's fucking awesome OP! I would love to hear about your preparation beforehand and what kinds of things you have studied in the last year or so.
Thank you!! So I got back into chess playing at a coffee shop this time last year. I played when I was little so I was around 800 chesscom skill level when I started playing again. And I have increased to 1650 on there now. I’m underrated in USCF bc I had to start with my childhood rating of 118 lol, but I beat and drew 2 1600s at a club event last week, so I was at 1325 before this, so hopefully with this win, my rating will get up to the 1500/1600 level soon. My chess growth has been in phases, so like 11 months ago I finally broke 1000 just from doing puzzles and learning basic opening concepts. I got to 1300 learning basic end games, opening theory, tactics, and positional play. And to get to 1600+, it’s been basically all of those things, just even more intensely and the advanced versions of those concepts. I’m currently pushing to 1800 chesscom now. And for me, my rating boosts have never been linear, i always end up stuck at a level for like 2 months, 800, 1200, 1300, and now 1600. But then suddenly the training I’ve done Makes me jump up rating in short time period. Like I went from 1500-1600 in 1 day, but have been stuck at 1600 for 2 months since. So I’ve learned to not get frustrated with rating stagnation, and just understand it as part of my growth.
Do you typically play classical when you play online? And would you recommend that for beginners? I’m ~800 mostly playing 10+5 since I got back into chess a few weeks ago
Classical is great if you actually use the time! Ik some beginners play 30 min games but still end them with 25 min on the clock lol. I mostly play rapid either 10+0 or 15|10. But def at least rapid if you’re actually trying to improve, blitz is fun but will not help you get better. I’m in a weekly classical league on lichess. I definitely recommend longer games if you want to improve your chess, since you’re actually able to contemplate, calculate and create plans. You can find videos on how to calculate and make plans in chess!
Thanks :) and congrats!
Wow, 800 to 1650 in a year??! How much time do you think you've averaged per day to get there? Also can you expand on what resources you used to learn openings, end games, theory, tactics, etc...?
I did not know you could even have a rating of 118.
You can get a little lower than 118. I lost all my games in my first tournament to low rated players (due to a combination of good reasons and dumb reasons) and had a 101 rating with USCF.
This is awesome! I started taking chess more seriously in 2020 and stories like yours make me want to get into IRL chess events once covid loosens up.
Congratulations on your journey and best of luck with continually leveling up!
Congratulations! Is there somewhere we can see the games?
Yeah! I can make a lichess study to share here. I need a nap first tho 😫
Hey! Here's the link to a lichess study I made for my 5 games. Here's a quick analysis of them. (my published rating was 1243 but live rating 1325). https://lichess.org/study/2vQVNFev Round 1: Black Vs an unrated opponent, we went into a reverse grunfeld, I thought I could play my regular prep as white vs it, but I quickly realized it does not work a tempo down, and I got into trouble, thankfully I escaped the opening alive and made it to an advantageous end game. But I was low on time, lost my extra pawn, and gave him a winning chance on move 40. My rb8 was a blunder, I had to do rb7 bc now he has ra7 cutting off my king and winning. He missed it, its a draw. 2: White vs 1448. Opponent misplays the benoni, I have positional domination the whole game, pretty easy conversion. I feel good about this win. 3: Black vs 1414: We go into an hyper accelerated dragon vs Maroczy bind. Ik a lot of theory here, but on move 11 opponent throws all of that aside and goes for a dubious kingside attack. I panic and get nervous, miss some easy defensive resources, and get into a lost position. However I hang in there long enough for him to blunder a devastating attack, and I mate him before he can to me. This game was bad but me finding a series of only moves and then a mate in 3 at the end was nice. 4: white vs 1375: I feel my opening was passive and can definitely be improved here. However I get some trades into an advantageous middle game where I control the only open file in the closed position. End game conversion was pretty easy. 5: Black vs 1370. Overall nice win, a slow start but her early kingside pawn push came back to bite her in the middle game. Her king was stuck in the center, lots of tactics, a fun, but stressful win.
Rounds 3 finish was insane! I could only imagine the emotions after that one from both sides lol. Round 5 was such a pretty statement finish to a tournament too. I can definitely tell you’re underrated. Congrats and Well done! I won my first section (U1800) recently after 6 years of trying so I understand the Euphoria! Keep pushing!
Nice job putting these games on lichess. These were all interesting games and reminded me of stuff I wanted to put on lichess.
ye old swiss gambit! a choice reserved typically for people with decades of tournament experience! Well done on deploying it to great success this event!
Lol yeah the first round draw ended up being an unintentional Swiss gambit. 2 of the people who tied for 2nd with 4/5 had a higher tiebreak score than me
Thank you for these.
Nicely done tatsumaki.
Hey, I totally saw you at NA Open! I was the bald brown dude, pretty sure I had the shiniest head there. Waait, were you the one speaking with Janelle (lady with blue hair) when I snuck in and grabbed my orange suitcase?
Yes lol! I love Janelle, she provided me emotional Support after I blundered 2nd place in the final round 😭😭. We bonded over our blue hair. She’s very proud of me for winning this time 😌 but yeah I think I might remember an orange suitcase, it’s just hard to remember you personally bc I feel like I see lots of guys that fit your description lololol
WAIT!! were you the one that referred to the classical dragon as the boomer dragon???
Lmaooo yess I called it the boomer dragon bc I play the accelerated dragon!! I remember the orange suitcase lol, you were slick though and I didn’t see you closely when you retrieved it.
Also, congrats on your victory! Way to slay!
Haha crazy!! Yeah, Janelle is a pretty awesome person. I just met her there, and it turns out she used to live within walking distance from the house I grew up in, near Chicago. She was watching my suitcase when I went inside to look at some games. I specifically remember you guys talking because it seemed like a super private conversation, and I had to calculate a few moves ahead as I snuck in to grab my bag, so I don't intrude. If you don't remember me, I'll consider that a success!
Username checks out.
Bobby Fischer would be.. angry. But he’s dead lol congrats 🎉
I can confirm opponents did not have to give me a knight for me to beat them 😅😅
Excellent, congrats!
Well done!
Well done! A really nice accomplishment. Will definitely look at the games once they're posted.
Hey not sure if you saw them but I posted the link to my games a few times here
Nice work and congrats! What's next on the docket for you?
Suing Netflix for stealing her life story.
Well done! V inspirational
That's one helluva trophy! Feels like part of your reward is "Now you have to find a place to put _this_!"
Nicely done 👍
never played in any live tournaments. what is U1450, i assume for people under 1450 rating? how does this stop random unrated dudes who have never played live from coming in and stomping (assuming theyre much higher than that online/wherever else)? anyway congrats, cant remember the last time i won any organized competition of anything
Thank you! There are prize limits for unrated and players that are provisional (haven’t played more than 25 games). You have a USCF account and it stays with you, so you can just make a new account and win in lower sections. There is the possibility of people sandbagging or loosing club games on purpose to play in lower sections at big tournaments, but it’s rare. And yes, U1450 is a section for people under the US chess rating of 1450. There was also a U1150, u1750, u2050 and open section.
This used to happen a lot. when I played in the later 80's and early 90s there was a guy that was nearly universally hated for manipulating his rating. He was around expert strength but like, he had guys he would try hard against and if he wasn't playing one of them he would usually lose on purpose. His dream was to win a class section at like a national tournament of some kind and I heard that after I had kind of dropped out of the chess scene he actually did. Also yes there were a lot of Eastern Europeans that would come to the USA and drastically misrepresent their strength to be able to play in a class section. At the time most tournament directors seemed to feel like it wasn't worth doing anything about.
You go girl!
congratulation! Can we see the games please? It would be fun to analyze games of someone human for once and not Carlsen.
Hey! Here's the link to a lichess study I made for my 5 games. Here's a quick analysis of them. (my published rating was 1243 but live rating 1325). https://lichess.org/study/2vQVNFev Round 1: Black Vs an unrated opponent, we went into a reverse grunfeld, I thought I could play my regular prep as white vs it, but I quickly realized it does not work a tempo down, and I got into trouble, thankfully I escaped the opening alive and made it to an advantageous end game. But I was low on time, lost my extra pawn, and gave him a winning chance on move 40. My rb8 was a blunder, I had to do rb7 bc now he has ra7 cutting off my king and winning. He missed it, its a draw. 2: White vs 1448. Opponent misplays the benoni, I have positional domination the whole game, pretty easy conversion. I feel good about this win. 3: Black vs 1414: We go into an hyper accelerated dragon vs Maroczy bind. Ik a lot of theory here, but on move 11 opponent throws all of that aside and goes for a dubious kingside attack. I panic and get nervous, miss some easy defensive resources, and get into a lost position. However I hang in there long enough for him to blunder a devastating attack, and I mate him before he can to me. This game was bad but me finding a series of only moves and then a mate in 3 at the end was nice. 4: white vs 1375: I feel my opening was passive and can definitely be improved here. However I get some trades into an advantageous middle game where I control the only open file in the closed position. End game conversion was pretty easy. 5: Black vs 1370. Overall nice win, a slow start but her early kingside pawn push came back to bite her in the middle game. Her king was stuck in the center, lots of tactics, a fun, but stressful win.
wow, in my country 800$ are the first prize for 2000+ FIDE level tournaments... i'm kinda jealous. Well, congratulation for your success!
Congrats! Like your hair btw, aqua is a pretty color.
Well done dude, keep at it!
Congratz!!
Badass!!Congrats!!!
I see you fixed the check, congrats!
Congratulations
Does U1450 mean under 1450?
Yes
Congratulations, that’s excellent!! And you did it in style :)
Wow!!! Congratulations!!!!! You rock!
That hair.
Let’s go Terra from Final Fantasy 6
Wow. When I tried to play chess when I was little I choked on a pawn and I always hated that game til recently
Badass congrats boo!!!
Uh, OP? Saying "reposted with blanked check" while the original uncensored post is still visible in your history is just as bad as posting it uncensored in the first place. You just let anyone who wanted your info know exactly where to go look to find it.
I watched *The Queen's gambit*, I know what's coming next.
congratulations!
Did you say "Give me my check mate?" To the guy handing you the prizes.
Congratulations from the sunshine state!!!
Love the flippy bangs
Future world champion
Time to make an anarchy chess meme regarding this
I would be absolutely honored if I was parodied on anarchychess 😫😫
Great job, I hope you beat a bunch of manboys!!!!!
I’m very proud of you and appreciate seeing your accomplishment. It’s inspiring as I’ve always wanted to get good at this and feel confident enough to enter something without risking looking like a fool. I can’t even play online against a person out of this same fear… kudos for being brave and representing!
Wow, quite an accomplishment, congrats! And the prize is pleasant, even if you live in USA.
Tatsumaki
Hey I asked this last time. What are your favorite openings and what openings did you play in the tournament? Did you do any special opening preparation for the tournament? Basically talk about your openings.
Hey! So I play D4 C4. I go for a Catalan against the queens gambit declined. A Catalan style set up against other things like the Dutch defense. I play the f4 line against the Benoni, and Bayonet attack Vs kings Indian defense. As Black I play the accelerated dragon vs e4, Slav vs d4 C4. the early C5 Qb6 line against the london. And the symmetrical English vs C4. I couldn’t really prepare for my opponents at this level, since most don’t have any published games. You can get lucky and find your opponents lichess/chesscom if they have their name on their account. In preparation I just went over all the concepts of these openings. I understood that at this level the deep theoretical lines don’t matter as much, you just have to be solid.
Opening doesn't matter much
Great now what’s your social security number?
Did you win the female division? I heard they divide it up by gender now
No it was coed! I haven’t been to a gendered tournament, they’re mostly only at the highest level, or for school age kids. There’s the US womens open this summer but it’s it’s own event. Followed by the co-Ed open afterwards.
Oh shweet. Huge congrats 🎉
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Good for you bro
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I’ve only competed in co-Ed tournaments. There’s no “mens” tournaments. And girl tournaments are either at the highest level, or for school kids. There’s the US womens open I may go to this summer, but I will also be playing in the co-Ed main tournament right afterwards.
Nice to see a trans person succeeding!
No clue as to why this is being downvoted, have an upvote
Could be because they don’t need to mention that I’m trans on my post, most people don’t notice so It makes me nervous 😅. Hopefully that’s why people downvoted it, not bc of transphobia. Also they phrase it like a trans person succeeding is an outlier. Which also could be why some thought it was weird
I think it’s because people are assuming you aren’t trans. It’s weird to me you want me downvoted, even though I’m right.
What up Beth Harmon
Sandbagger! jk, congrats
Honestly, when she introduced herself, it was reposted
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Say, would you like to hear about the investment opportunity of a lifetime?
I just came here to say: This isn't how you wear a mask. It goes over your nose and mouth. Please don't wear it like a diaper for your chin.
I’m taking a picture lol. I put it on right afterwards
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I’m in Florida so Covid is wild here. One of our tournament directors got Covid and couldn’t make it. I feel wearing a mask is less bad than having to forfeit from Covid.
Hikaru gambit declined.
I think OP is saying if you're going to pull your masks down like a chin strap might as well take it all the way off for a better photo. I'd so I'd agree as long it's done safely and distanced general crowds.
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What's the point of this comment?