Decided to withdraw from the final 2 rounds of the HD Bank International Chess Tournament. Round seven this morning was an odd game, I was winging the opening from move 4 and putting a lot of energy into what appeared to be a dangerous position for me due to the moves I had played, however by the end of the opening I was lucky because my opponent miscalculated a simple tactic and I won a bishop without giving away any compensation in return. The next phase of the game my opponent showed her fighting spirit by playing pressure moves and forcing me to play accurately, which I did until I reached 5 minutes on my clock and I began a series of unfortunate moves topped off by a colossal blunder giving away a knight and pawn and before long we were in an end game with me being a pawn down and I soon resigned. Going over the game with computer analysis I saw that I had played many good moves under pressure but the game was lost with one move in time trouble. After the game I decided my age was catching up with me, that nine rounds of chess is like running a marathon, not that old people can't run marathons but after many months of chess training I have learned that I am weakest in the most critical phase of chess, which is deep calculation. Of course I can continue training and working on my weakness but since I have already been doing this and seeing some improvement but not enough to justify the amount of work put in I have decided to scale back on chess work. I love the game but I am sensing a decline in my mental energy so it would be best to play and study casually and to reduce the amount of serious tournaments I participate in.
So on to other things which is available in life. I am interested to see what my mind and will gravitate to now that a major activity has been removed from my time.
Game Notation -
[Event "HD Bank International Chess Tournament"]
[Site "Saigon"]
[Date "March 11, 2019"]
[Round "7"]
[White "Nguyen Thi Mai Lan"]
[Black "JWW"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "E22"]
[Opening "Nimzo-Indian"]
[Variation "Spielmann Variation "]
1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.Qb3 c5 5.Bg5 d5 6.dxc5 Bxc5 7.Nf3 dxc4 8.Qxc4
Nbd7 9.e3 a6 10.Ne4 Qa5+ 11.Ned2 Bb4 12.Be2 Bxd2+ 13.Nxd2 Qxg5 14.O-O O-O 15.
Rac1 b5 16.Qc7 Qe5 17.Qc2 Bb7 18.Nf3 Qd5 19.Rfd1 Qe4 20.Bd3 Qg4 21.h3 Qh5 22.
Be2 Rac8 23.Qd2 Rxc1 24.Rxc1 Qd5 25.Qa5 Qd6 26.Rc7 Bxf3 27.Bxf3 Ne5 28.Be2 Ra8
29.Bxb5 g6 30.Be2 Nc6 31.Qb6 Nd5 32.Rxc6 Qd7 33.Qc5 a5 34.Bf3 Rb8 35.Bxd5 exd5
36.Rd6 Qf5 37.Qxd5 Qb1+ 38.Kh2 Qxb2 39.Rd8+ Rxd8 40.Qxd8+ Kg7 41.Qd4+ Qxd4 42.
exd4 Kf6 43.Kg3 resigns
