The Finale of the WYCC

Round 11 I was paired white against Slovakia's Lukas Hajek, rated 1762, but he beat two experts with his French defense. Since we start 10:00 AM, I didn't bother to prepare much except look at the main line. Coincidentally he went into the mainline but after Nh6, Nc2, Qb6, o-o, he castled, and let me play g4, forcing him to h6 and letting me double his pawns. I tried to go for an early complication and attack, and pushed my g-pawn threatening to open the file, I completely underestimated the idea of taking my pawn, and then my d4 pawn was hanging! At this time I was very nervous, knowing that it was at least -+ and that I would have to pull a miracle to win. I temporarily sacrificed a piece, and he blundered by taking my knight which actually leads to a forced mate in 13! I obviously didn't see the whole mate in one time, but I worked my moves step by step and eventually found a very nice combo that lead to a forced mate. 1-0, and I finished with 6/11 and tied for 43rd. I'm quite happy with my score because I finished with the highest out of all the Canadian U14 players. Thomas Kaminski was playing great but unfortunately had some blunders in his last rounds, he scored 5.5/11 and placed 61st. David Itkin from Toronto scored 4/11 and tied for 112nd.

The tournament went nicely, even though I wasn't happy with our hotel. The walls were very thin, and there were four girls opposite of our room who kept on shouting and laughing until 12 AM everyday. I thought the food was pretty good, and service was as well, but most people couldn't speak English and it was hard to communicate.

As I expected, Richard Wang drew his last round and got 3rd! He was 27th seed but obviously performed much higher than his rating. Good job! Canada did very well, I think all of our players scored 3.5+ and a lot of players scored more than 50%!
This was my first WYCC experience and I look forward to more international events!

I'll be posting all of my games with brief annotations after a week, so stay tuned!

See you all until my next tournament! Thanks for viewing. ;)