My Chess Journal

Oregon Scholastic Chess Federation Individual State Championships at Seaside

This was the second time that I had the privilege to be able to play in the individual state champs at Seaside, and I think that I did pretty well over the five rounds, placing fourth in High School Silver (1200-1500) and winning an award for placing in the top five in Silver. I’d like to highlight a couple of issues that I faced playing in the tournament and some things that I thought went well for me. I noticed that a lot of the people who played as white against me really liked playing openings like the Spanish or the English, so taking this into account really made my prep more difficult as I wanted to adopt responses to these openings that compliment my playstyle. However, problems with my mental endurance really hindered my ability to play effectively in the middle and endgames, especially in the later rounds where I had lost most of my energy to calculate, and this really affected my effectiveness during the middle and late game. Overall, this tournament really put my skills to the test and I’m really thankful that I was able to prove myself and my skills to others during the course of my tournament.

Oregon High School Chess Team Association Tournament 2025

This was probably the best participation that I’ve had in a chess team, and we were able to bring home the 2nd place award in the JV 5A-6A bracket — the top bracket for JV and varsity teams — while the varsity team was able to take the first place award. There were a lot of things that allowed us to improve the quality of our gameplay, but I’d like to highlight our team planning, mentorship, and team cohesion as key factors to our success. Planning before the round had started by using ratings and prior teams’ info on our opponents playstyles allowed us to identify the key players in our team who needed to win their game in order for the team to win the round, and who could maybe afford to draw or lose their games. Mentorship from experienced players on the varsity team like Ethan Zhang on etiquette and time management as well as assistance with reviewing our prior games in between rounds allowed us to learn from our mistakes and improve on our overall performance during the tournament. I believe that our team cohesion and the willingness of my teammates to help each other really helped our morale, as playing practice games, reviewing other teammates’ games and just general conversation in our skittles room allowed us to not only improve our game, but also improve our team’s response to adverse situations.

Oregon High School Chess Team Association Tournament 2024

I honestly thought that I could have played a bit better during the tournament, even though I played pretty well. We got third, but if I hadn’t thrown my game against Lincoln High, we would have definitely gotten second. I still managed to beat out Jesuit’s board four to a draw and get pretty good results for my games against the other teams. Although this wasn’t the first tourney I’ve played in, it was my first team tournament and I’m grateful for having this opportunity.