Memories of my first USCF tournament

All Things Chess
1

I was in 8th grade, junior high, Brooklyn, early 1969. We played at Albee Square Theater, Brooklyn. (my recollection was that of a hotel, but upon looking up on the internet, i see it was a theater). It was a team tournament for JHS players, i guess. I believe i went 4-4 (sorry, didnt start keeping records of my games till 1973). Nothing special about the results. I was a little disappointed in my personal results, and the team similarly ended up in the middle of the pack somewhere, which really wasn’t that bad considering our team wasn’t all that talented.

What was special was the theater itself. It was OLD and DECREPIT. I’m not talking just old. The stairs felt like they were ready to collapse, and i weighed all of 90 pounds in those days. It was a slum by any definition. My poor overweight dad was scared spitless. The chairs and tables were also very unsteady, nobody was going to slam pieces down that tourney… My dad said to me “they’ve got to condemn this dump, Brucie, you’re never playing here again!” I believe they did knock it down in the 1970’s, put up the Mall, which in turn was demolished a couple of years ago.

What a change when i played in my 2nd tournament, the McAlpen Hotel in Manhattan!..

2

My first one was at the old King Edward Hotel in Jackson MS in the summer of 1964 when I was a rising senior. IIRC, I was one of six players put into a separate section from the Miss. Championship. That was the site for several concerts and school dances during my HS years, but it was abandoned shortly thereafter for decades, but has just recently been restored.

My score was 1.5 in five rounds and my first rating was 1317. Didn’t play rated chess again until the state championship in 1965.

3

My first tournament was the Pan Am Intercollegiate Championship held at the University of Chicago in 1968, as an alternate on the Northwestern ‘C’ team. I think I played in two games, losing both.

4

My first USCF tournament was a two day event at the old Golden Triangle YMCA in Pittsburgh in 1971 at the age of 17. A thick pall of cigarette and cigar smoke hung in the air. There were no little kids, no women, and only a few teenagers. Chess was regarded as an enterprise for real men. The time control was 50/2, 25/1. No delay, no digital clocks, adjournment at move 75 (!). And there were several adjournments that had to played off at 7am on Sunday morning.

At that event I won against an A in round 1, drew an A in round two, lost to a B, and then played a D, an older gentleman, to a draw in a game that lasted over 80 moves. It was exhausting and exhilarating at the same time. Even under those horrible conditions, I was hooked.

5

Time to make you all feel old: I wasn’t even born yet when you previous posters were all playing your first tournaments.

I played my first tourney in my 20’s, in 2002. It was one game per week on Friday nights at the Pompano Beach Chess Club in Pompano Beach, Florida. I’ve always had a problem with this format - I’m tired from working all week by the time Friday night rolls around. If it was Monday or Tuesday nights, I’d do much better.

At that tourney, I only won one game, and my starting USCF rating was in the 1300’s, lower than any of my opponents. It wasn’t until my rating dropped into the 1200’s almost a year later, then went up to the 1400’s that I finally realized I’d been overrated to begin with. The 1200 rating would have been more appropriate to my skill when I first started.

6

I can’t remember back to the first tournament I played in, it was so long ago… Maybe I should look up my MSA record to remind myself.

:smiling_imp:

7

One hundred and eleven years ago when I was ten years old, MSA was still far in the future. :wink: Only the tail end of my “career” is recorded.

8

My first tournament was a $10 Open at the Boylston Chess Club in January 2008. I’m a tournament noob.

Memories? My main one is that there was a guy, in late middle age, who was exhibiting atrocious sportsmanship and tournament demeanor against a 9-year-old girl. Poetic justice: She beat him. Two rounds later, so did I. Ha.

9

My first tournament was a somewhat unmentionable scholastic 10 or so years ago when I was in fifth grade. My performance was unmentionable as well – I lost to a 300, beat a 200, beat a 600, beat a 700, and lost to a 900 (this is off of memory, I could be wrong). What was significant:

I noticed all these kids writing down their moves. At the time, I of course had no idea why one would take notation, so I chalked it up to the contest that the tournament was running, which was something along the lines of “submit your game and you might get a prize”. I thought they were all just being greedy!

I attended the tournament with my mother, a kid from my school rated ~1000, and one of his parents. They warned me – before the pairings were up – that my first game was going to be really, really difficult. And I wasn’t just told it once, I was told it many times (my mother echoed things quite well). So naturally when I played my game, I thought my opponent was some sort of grandmaster-esque player, despite him being rated only 300. This probably influenced my game, and as a joke, even today, my mother tells me to “forfeit the first game” as a way of saying good luck. (this gag was more spawned from later tournaments where I was always paired up, and then a significant game a year later where I did manage to get a first round upset).

On a side note, I was actually an extremely arrogant fifth-grader: my school didn’t have a chess program, and I was basically able to beat anyone I played with ease (including a few adults, though once I did play the 1000 he demolished me), leading me to believe that I was some sort of chess-great myself. Naturally my first tournament was somewhat of an eye opener.

10

I can relate to that, Andy. I learned to play chess in the 5th grade, watching others who knew the moves. By the time I was in high school I was the strongest player in the building, being the only one able to beat our science teacher. (It was a small school, my graduating class had 35 students.)

Then I went off to college, and the first chess player I met was a USCF rated expert, who quickly got tired of spotting me just a queen! I didn’t play in my first USCF rated event until half way through my second year in college, when I played in the Pan Am.

11

On the first day of school as a high school sophomore I had a class that was taught by the chess coach. With the best of intentions he looked at me and announced, “Well, you look like a chess player!” I don’t think that I had a response. I am happy for the invitation as chess has been a great hobby. I eventually played my first rated games in the after-school club and played my first tournament in the cafeteria of another high school. I recall needing to go for family pictures in-between rounds, and getting back late for the after-lunch round due to a younger sister who refused to smile.

12

Wow, what a change since my first tournament. Like some other posters here, I was definitely a bigger fish, swimming in a very small pond. I played in a “beginner” event, which was Unrated, or under 1200 in OKC. I was teaching fifth grade at the time, and took one of my students to play also. A friend and I took my student up the night before, as it was a bit of a drive for us. I am chuckling now remembering my student talking in his sleep, saying, “No, take the bishop, take the bishop”!
I went 3-1 in the tournament, and the friend went 4-0, yelling “TIME”, when his opponents flag fell. During this same time, and in the same room, the REAL tournament was also going on! Little bit of a disturbance there! My student went 2-2.
And my very first tournament game was against an Asian girl of about 7 years. I think I would have been just as happy to lose, to see her smile, but I did win.
Those were the better days in some ways, when ratings really didn’t matter much, as they should be now. Still chess is about finding good moves, winning games, perhaps tournaments, and let the ratings be what they are.

13

Another great thread. Thanks to the OP and all follow-up posts.

I am trying to remember with 100% certainty which was my first, but I am only sure it was one of two events that were approximately in the same timeframe. Like several others here, I had previously only played casual players, and the (seemingly ubiquitous) “teacher that nobody could beat”, who I had somehow managed to beat. I’d learn quickly that I’d really had no measure of my true skill (none of these people had ever been to a USCF event), but with an inflated degree of confidence I started reading about USCF events and looking for a few to enter.

It was 1974 and I was a high school junior in a small/mid-sized parochial school in Southwest CT (Fairfield Cty). As such I lived very much on the NYC commuter line, just a few miles away from the NY state line, and literally a stone’s throw (for a decent outfielder) from both I95 and the commuter train station. So I knew where these places in the tournament ads were (both NYC and Westchester Cty, primarily), and I knew it would be easy to get to them.

The one event that I think was first for me (if not, assuredly second) was in a fairly upscale hotel in Westchester - I think Scarsdale, if not Rye or White Plains. (This is a bit of a blur at this point! But that detail is unimportant.) This was a two-day, five-round SS event - all high school players. I think there were about 50-70 kids in it. I had no idea what “SS” meant, but quickly learned that as my performance went up, so would the degree of difficulty - and also the converse.

My HS teacher took me to this, both days, which was a significant sacrifice of time on his part for an activity that I later realized was only a casual interest for him. He was a semi-retired PhD who had actually been in the national spotlight a few years earlier, and was fairly well-known around the area - something he didn’t seek for himself, but was put upon him by very significant events beyond his control. I will choose not to elaborate here out of deference to his family (he is gone now). But my point is that he was a teacher that I respected greatly, and out of his kindness he spent a very full weekend with me at this tournament, recognizing that it was more than a casual interest for me at the time.

The other event (probably around that Christmas break) was possibly one that was mentioned (or at least the same type) by an earlier poster - a huge event at the Hotel McAlpin, about an eight-block walk from Grand Central. This one had a couple hundred high schoolers, and I vividly remember seeing the name “Michael Rohde” at the very top of the board - with a rating at that time somewhere around 2000-2100. It might as well have said “infinity”, for most of us - I was never paired with him, but enjoyed seeing who he was and watching a few minutes of his play (when my own game was over). I knew it was a name that would become well-known around the USCF, which of course was the case.

From these, four of my own misconceptions come to mind - each recalled with a touch of humor for me, now:

  1. I had no idea how to dress for these events, but decided I’d err on the safe side. Influenced perhaps by my parochial school culture, I donned a sportsjacket and tie! I quickly realized that seeing a hs chess player in a tie (which I actually hated myself) was identically as rare as seeing a female player in those days - there was exactly one, of each of us! Remarkably I kept it on - probably not wanting to consciously admit my miscalculation - until one kid (who I’d never met) just came up to me and said, “Excuse me - but can you tell me why you’re dressed up like that?” We both just laughed, and I said, “No, actually, I can’t”… and the tie came off (for good).

  2. My parents had bought me a BEAUTIFUL set for Christmas, which was an inlaid wood board/box, and a hand-carved wooden set - with 6"(!) Kings. I brought that to the tournament, of course… quite proudly! But my first opponent balked, saying I couldn’t use a non-standard set. (My teacher had no clue if that was right.) I asked the TD, and of course with the oversized pieces he told me that my opponent was right. I was heartbroken and didn’t want to tell my mother, but I eventually did. Within a short time I came to not only understand the objection, but actually agree with it - it is just ‘different’ to look at the game on that set (with an otherwise regular-sized board), and so I never brought it to tournaments again. But I otherwise love that set, and I STILL have it (which my mother enjoys, 35+ years later now). It is set up in my living room and used, often, for casual games with friends and my kids.

  3. I had previously had no idea about the typical practices or “conventions” regarding resigning a game. In fact I wasn’t even familiar with the concept - having not lost very many games prior to my first USCF entry. I remember playing in an extremely lost position - probably down two pieces AND a couple pawns - and playing it out to the bitter end, thinking that somehow my opponent would blunder into some ridiculously trivial stalemate, or the like. I remember one opponent getting frustrated with me for that! Of course the maxim that ‘no one has ever won by resigning’ has validity, but on at least that occasion (and maybe twice) I had essentially 0% chance of even a draw, and SHOULD have resigned. However on this point I’ve now had a lot of experience, and am adept at resigning - quite competently! :open_mouth: :laughing:

  4. Finally, and again like quite a few other posters here, my non-quantitative, non-realistic, preconceived opinion of my own playing skill was quickly proved to be quite inflated. I actually went into this tournament hoping I could win a prize, but quickly got pummelled in my very first game. I am grasping for precision in my memory here, but I’m certain I was not better than 2.0 (of 5) in that first event - I think, probably, it was 1.5. Of course, that result buried me in the pack of also-rans. Amazingly to me at the time, I clearly recall my teacher being totally fine, not at all upset (or probably surprised) with this result, which by contrast had me a bit upset. After my second loss he counseled me with a golf analogy (I wasn’t a golfer, but he was - and was also the hs golf coach): “When a good golfer blows a hole, he knows he has to simply put it behind him, and move on to the next hole”…which of course was a VERY good analogy, and sound advice. All in all he was quite encouraging to me. But my first rating was indeed unimpressive: somewhere around 1100. Before I finished HS it had “peaked” (all relative!) around 1600, then later sagged back to the high 1400s. But I was always looking up at elites like the "Michael Rohde"s of the USCF; of course, we were all still looking up, WAY up, at the World Champ, RJF-2810!

14

My first tournament was the UMass Open played 9/30-10/1, 1972. I was a senior in high school, and thought I was pretty hot stuff on the chess board. I was your classic big fish in a small pond. I quickly learned what it meant to be shark bait. I wad 1 win, and 3 losses and a bye.

A brief account of the tournament and my first game can be found at
checkmatestatebystate.blogspot.c … setts.html

Note: I did not keep score in Algebraic. I had to translate when it put it in Chess Base.