Cincinnati Open 2025 Tournament Review

This weekend’s chess tournament was a success. Travel to and from Cincinnati was smooth and uneventful. The event was well-run and all but the last round started on time. I was fortunate enough to meet up with a fellow Chess Dojo member, Carl, and we reviewed a couple games together and got to talk between rounds. We ended up sitting at adjacent boards in the last round so we caught a little of each other’s final game.

I would enjoy playing in this tournament again!

Games

Game one on Friday night was sufficient for me to happy, really. I was paired with the third-highest rated player in the field and confidently held my own the whole game. In our endgame I felt I had a winning position going into the final time control (shown below.) While I was a little bummed not to find a strategy to convert, I kept enough control to secure the draw once I decided I could not force the win.

White to play. I’ll be studying this one for quite some time to come.

Saturday morning I had a tough loss, but an excellent post-mortem with my opponent immediately after. He was rated over 2100 in the 1980s, but with age now plays at his floor of 1800.

White finds himself in an unpleasant position.

Saturday evening was an un-inspiring draw against a kid who chose not to think for longer than 2 minutes on any one move. Most tournaments I’m going to play one or two of these types, and it’s frustrating when they will still have great results on intuition alone. The game was draw-ish almost the whole way through, but I missed a significant opportunity to trade a rook for two pieces, with a winning position. Ultimately, the draw was my own fault.

White just played **23. Rc1?** leaving the bishop
under-defended. Here I played **23 …a5?** missing the game-changing **23 …Rxd2!**

On Sunday I earned two wins from aggressive play early on that never let up after gaining an advantage.

Already up two pawns, **24…Nxh4!** kicks off an unstoppable kingside attack.

White’s development advantage in the opening transitions to incredible pressure. White has plenty of time to bring in the rooks while black struggles to activate any of his pieces.

Results

My goal of time management was absolutely achieved. I made use of the second time control on four of the five games but was into the endgame each time, not having to rush a complicated middlegame which has historically been my problem. This long time control was absolutely my preferred speed of play. Game one went nearly 5 hours!

The weekend also perfectly facilitated my broad goal of focus. I had a blast the whole time. I’m very appreciative my family let me head off on my own for a few days, and I know they were supporting me from home, watching the SwissSys pairings go up and catching up with between rounds. My daughter had a great tournament herself in Frankfort on Saturday for the KY Women and Girls Open, so everyone was in good spirits.

I outperformed my expectation for this field, being seeded 19th of 32 and ending in a four-way tie for 9th place at 3 points. Final standings are available on the event’s SwissSys page. My unofficial USCF rating adjustment is a 30-point gain, from 1622 to 1652. This is still shy of the 1675 I need to graduate from my Chess Dojo cohort, but a similar performance at my next tournament would get me across that line.