I’m two days out from my first chess tournament of 2025, the Cincinnati Open. We’ve been saving up all chess-related money since December so that I can play the three-day schedule with two hotel nights. I identified this tournament as a good one where I could have a weekend away without the travel expenses being too extravagant, and would be my first-ever opportunity to earn a FIDE rating.

As of this writing, I’m in the 40th percentile of my section. Players can register or withdraw all the way up until Saturday morning. This is the “FIDE Class” section restricted to 1400-2000 rated players.

Since I’m just under the median of the section, I will likely play someone rated 1900+ in the first round. Naturally, I have no result expectations in that first round. Instead I’ll mentally prepare to give it my best, quickly wind down afterwards to get a good night’s sleep, and start fresh again on Saturday morning. Games against much higher rated players often provide good opportunities for analyzing later.

Goals

My primary goal for the tournament is regarding time management. I’ve basically given up playing in tournaments with time controls less than G60 because I never have enough time in the endgame. That said, even with longer time controls I still have a tendency not to leave enough time for the endgame. I’ve been improving this winter during my online training games and I hope it pays off here.

We’ll be playing a time control of 40/90, SD/30;+30. My goal is that for any equal endgame, I can use the entire second time control. Since the longest games I’ve played in the last year were 90+30 and no second time control, I have a great chance of succeeding at this goal with my typical play.

As for tournment outcomes, I’d love to finish in the top 10. To do so would require one of my best tournament performance scores to date (probably the best.) That performance would likely be enough to improve my USCF rating past 1675, allowing me to graduate to the next cohort in the Chess Dojo Training Program. But really the only outcome I’d find disappointing is a score of 0.0.

On a broader level, my biggest goal is to enjoy a long weekend of intense focus. This is the kind of environment I want my life optimized for, and I rarely get to experience. I’m very appreciative of my family for allowing me to use time and resources for something so selfish, and I want to make the most of it.

Prep

My streak has continued since my accidental 100 days of chess, so I’m now at 128 days straight of studying/playing everyday. For the last month, my focus took a turn mostly to openings. There were many lines in both my white and black repertoires that I simply hadn’t explored so that needed to happen. I still didn’t get as far as I’d have liked, but c’est la vie. In the last week we’ve changed again: opening study is now just Chessable reviews daily and study time is tactics and endgames. That’s where we’ll stay today and tomorrow as well, then only a small tactics session to get warm on Friday.

Follow Along

If you’d like to see my results throughout the weekend, the tournament is using SwissSys for all charts and pairings. Visit that page here (https://swisssys.com/section_selector.php?t_id=4696&tournament=2025%20Cincinnati%20Open)