Alex "Gus" Gustafson

Category: Games

  • Kentucky Open 2025 Pre-Tournament Thoughts

    This weekend’s Kentucky Open will be my first chess tournament since the Cincinnati Open in April. As of this writing 116 players are registered for both the Open and Scholastic sections, a new record number of participants in the KY Open previously set in 2007.

    Taking a look at the field comes with a pretty big asterisk: the registration form was just confusing enough I bet a number of players signed up for scholastic or open incorrectly. They offered a discounted entry fee for scholastic players and players under 1200 rating. To make this happen, the section select field online had three options:

    • a. “Open”
    • b. “Scholastic Open”
    • c. “Scholastic and Players Less 1200.”

    Option C means you want to play in the Open section, but qualify for the discounted fee. Option B is for Scholastic players only, playing in their own separate section from the Open. If you hovered your mouse over the options there was clarifying text… but how many people besides me do that kind of thing? Anyway, I just bet there’ll be some section switch-ups on the day. But let’s look at the scatter plot for the Open section anyway.

    I’m in the 68th percentile of the field (the green star) with a rating of 1652. Assuming they use a typical swiss system pairing my opponent in the first round would have a rating of 754. With five rounds in the tournament my expected result is about 3.5 points, so to gain rating I’d likely need to keep to only one loss and/or end up with a challenging set of matchups. Some pressure comes with being in the upper half of a field with large variance.

    There are class prizes as well as overall prizes. I’m seeded 8th among the 9 players in the 1600 – 1800 class. Since pairings are across the whole open section, not within the class, who knows which of us will get easier or harder matchups? So winning a class prize isn’t impossible. The overall prizes are certainly out of my reach – there’s a 2600 GM clearly the favorite for 1st and five more players above 2000 vying for 2nd. There is also a $100 prize for “best upset” which is fun to dream of.

    Goals

    My primary goal for the event is to enjoy my new repertoire for the white pieces. I’ve been playing an aggressive 1. e4 repertoire for over a year, and in May I conceded that the opening choices were just too advanced for me. Only a couple of times was I fully losing out of the opening, but many times I was better and then had no grasp of how to proceed in a better middlegame. I need positions I can understand more intuitively. I studied a new course on Chessable that I’ve found much easier to learn and this will be my first time playing with it over the board. I’m committing to playing this white repertoire every game I can.

    My secondary goal is to have at least one good post-mortem. It can be difficult to make one happen when there’s not much time between rounds, but it might be my favorite thing about tournament chess. The act of opponents immediately turning into fellow travelers is a beautiful thing. I’m not as familiar with our venue this year and not sure if there will even be a skittles room (or just a hallway) but I’m hopeful some analysis can happen. My daughter is playing too, so that’s one more hurdle for this goal but I think it can be managed.

    Prep

    For the last few weeks I’ve met up in-person with a training partner on Saturday evenings and we’ve had a blast. We’d start the session with a 25+10 game, then continue on with some tactics, “guess the move,” endgame lessons from a book, or reviewing each others’ games for a total of 4 to 5 hours each session. We’d play at a local brewery so having a couple drinks in the process made it laid back and very fun. Hell, even without the tournament the prep has been a blast.

    Final Thoughts

    It’s worth confronting that I have some superstitious worry about the tournament. The KY Open was my worst performance of 2024 (in my view, maybe not statistically) and I worry this time of year is just not great for me. My online play has also been lacking ever since my April tournament where I felt dialed in.

    So on the sport psychology side, I’m not feeling at my best. But I’ve decided not to combat that with too many hours of cramming or creating expectations for myself. I’m going to face it head on, have a great time, learn from my games, and see what happens. Like the gardener that “plants some seeds, see what grows” we’ll just live with the consequences without much thought about it.

    It’s chess and it’s a privilege to play.

    Good luck, have fun.

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  • New post on chess.com: Move Your Knight Up the Career Ladder

    Chess middlegames are hard to codify. When I was six years old I could’ve rattled off some rules for the opening: control the center, develop your pieces, castle early. But if I had the misfortune to play someone who also could play a reasonable opening, we ended up in a middlegame where there were no more rules, only choices. One strategy has begun to hit me over the head more often when I find myself with choices: find your knight a good square.

    Read the full post at https://www.chess.com/blog/alexjgustafson/move-your-knight-up-the-career-ladder

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  • Next Round of Chess Study

    These will by my main (Chess Dojo approved!) efforts:

    1. Annotating games from Cincinnati Open (and some other non-tournament classical time control games)
    2. How to Reassess Your Chess by Jeremy Silman
    3. Chess Tactics from Scratch by Martin Weteschnik
    4. Polgar mate-in-2s

    Less important studying, but will be around:

    • Chess Life magazines as they come
    • USCF Official Rules of Chess (I recently became a Club TD and want to keep reviewing to get the book in my bones before next fall’s scholastic season where I can assist.)
    • Drinking coffee and staring at the beautiful chess table and pieces I got for Christmas

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  • 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.

    The green star is my data point. Red data points indicate my opponents: diamonds for my wins, triangles for my draws, and square for my loss.

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  • Cincinnati Open 2025 Pre-Tournament Thoughts

    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)

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  • I Accidentally Did 100 Days of Chess

    In online chess communities there’s a common challenge to do “100 days of chess.” Usually it’s some program of tactics, studying a book, and some number of games that the player dreams up. The intent is always to work that program every day of 100 days straight.

    It wasn’t my intention to do the challenge but today I realized… I hit 100 days of chess.

    The last day I haven’t done some amount of chess was December 2nd, 2024. Several of those days were only 10 to 15 minutes doing tactics, but it was something every day. Some of those days were tournaments or single games that lasted hours and hours. Counting all the games, all the studying, all the tactics, all the time at chess club with Grace – I spent 10,005 minutes. That’s an average of 1 hours 40 minutes a day.

    My activity heat map on the ChessDojo Training Program.

    There wasn’t a point where I decided to start going on a streak necessarily, but there’s definitely a tool that made it more obvious I was on one. I use ChessDojo to guide my training and track my progress and at some point they added a “heat map” feature to your profile. The first place I saw a diagram like this was on Github, and it’s a good fit here too. It was pretty motivating to see at a glance when I’m putting the work in and what kind of work I’m doing.

    I don’t intend for the streak to go on forever. I’m playing in a tournament in April and will need a break after that. But since I never was trying for a streak to begin with, that’s not a demotivating thought at all. A better challenge anyway might be like “300 days a year of chess.”

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  • Chess As Therapy

    There’s an insidious habit that forms in a lot of my colleagues and I found it forming in myself the last year or so. I imagine there are those in your office or other communities that fall prey to it as well. It would be easy to confuse with workaholism, but I find it to be different. The most proper word I can find for it would be flow addiction.

    Being a flow state is inherently positive. It’s worth striving for. What troubles me is I find myself putting so much effort into finding flow in the workplace that it becomes hard to be doing anything else.

    Working in support, the primary way my performance at work is measured is in the number of interactions I have with our customers. Our company has lots of smart people in it, so we have a lot of ways of looking at that data, and that interaction count can feel like a scoreboard if you let it. Each live chat inching you higher and higher in worth. Each point giving you a splash of endorphins.

    Much of life isn’t set up with such a quick feedback loop. This is part of the craze to gamify things: my fitbit gives me a badge for hitting so many steps in an effort to make me more excited about walking the dog. But these tricks aren’t nearly as effective as true flow state, and I can get that on a regular basis doing my work.

    The trouble comes that on a day off, or at night after work, the nagging that there is still more work that could be done just never stops. Even a nominally fun activity may seem way less desirable than getting a few more points on that scoreboard.

    What it’s come to is a need to find more intention in my recreation. I’ve been doing a lot of revisiting with younger versions of me, and I think my best shot of making myself happier right now is upping my chess game.

    Chess has always been enjoyable, but there have only been two phases of my life where I really took it seriously: first when I was in primary school (1st-4th grade) and then again in college from 2008 to 2010. My USCF rating peaked in 2009 at 1436, I think that was after playing in the Kings Island Open . Even among amateurs that’s not an impressive standing a strong club player is typically above 1800. If I’d like to reach that level it will stick a lot of effort.

    Getting better at chess doesn’t have the quick feedback loop. Truly becoming better is a result of hours of study, and not as much from the time playing games. But playing the game absolutely does have that feedback loop and is still part of the process. You can set longer term goals, particularly if you’re willing to attend bigger tournaments every so often and treat those as tentpoles of performance. And there is a very literal scoreboard available: your rating.

    My hope is to turn this problem on its head. If I can get these little excitements from more places, I’ll feel more balanced and happier. If this goes well I may try to take a similar approach in some way with parenting, as dorky as that sounds.

    To start I did a read-through of Attacking Chess by Josh Waitzkin, one of the first chess books that was truly my own. Now I’m nailing down the Class D and Class C sections in Silman’s Endgame Course a few times over.

    If you’d like to play, please find me on chess.com: backrow1720 .

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  • Urge to Game Rising

    For the last two years, I’ve been the DM for a Dungeons & Dragons game that nominally meets every other week. We’re currently going through the adventure path Out of the Abyss, but we’re over a year in and only just getting to the halfway point in the story. And the characters will need some grinding time before starting the next chunk at a higher level.

    Using an adventure path has proven to be invaluable. It’s pretty rare that I can’t prepare the session day-of if I’m too irresponsible to give it more time during the week. But even with this amazing material, it’s a lot pull together mentally.

    We’re going to take a little break and I’m super excited about it. Most of my players have expressed interest in DMing a one-shot or module. We’re going to let everyone have a turn behind the screen while I get my creative juices flowing again to do the latter portion of the adventure. I’m looking forward to playing and seeing what ideas our will-be-DMs have in mind.

    So that got me feeling good. Then this week a freaking awesome episode of Tabletop was released: Fate Core.

    I have seen the rulebook for Fate at my friendly local game shop before. But my roleplay experience has always been in fantasy worlds like D&D and Pathfinder. So I didn’t really see the need to learn a new system.

    But this video has me itching. I want to play it so bad. Not sure this is an urge that can be stopped. Who’s in? I’ll have what Dr. Osgood was having!

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  • Instant Subscribe: Atomic Game Theory

    Atomic Game Theory is a YouTube show hosted by Richard Malena.  Malena uses conflict theory and math to explain interesting choices in designer board games. There are only three episodes so far, but they cover some great games: Dominion, Sheriff of Nottingham, and Lords of Waterdeep.

    Richard is a pleasant host and the writing displays clear, educational thinking. Something tells me Richard is the guy that reads the rulebook in its entirety then teaches his gaming group how to play the day-of. I’m that guy in my circle of friends so I grok you, Richard. Also, it’s produced by Angela Webber. Yes, that Angela Webber. She’s great too.

    (Hat tip to Geek & Sundry)

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  • The Homebrewery: Create Your RPG Adventures With Style

    The Homebrewery is an amazing tool for making your homebrew D&D adventures print with just as much style and awesomeness of your favorite adventure path.

    Screen Shot 2016-09-06 at 8.00.04 PM.png

    I’m definitely using this for my next homebrewed module.

    Hat tip to Payton.

     

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