On January 17thth, I was on the grounds of an elite private school for the Gonzaga Charity Chess Classic, my third year competing. Not only is Gonzaga an elite private school, but also has one of the best chess clubs in the country. The games were played in a large sports hall that oddly had a climbing wall right next to where I played.
In the first round, I was paired against a much higher rated opponent, but this didn't worry me because I had played and beaten him over a year ago when we were both s. The game opened with an English but it gradually transposed into a Catalan. It's common in the Catalan for White to leave the c4 pawn undefended because although Black can take, it's often more trouble than it's worth trying to hold onto the extra pawn. But because my opponent hadn't directly played the Catalan perhaps he wasn't as familiar with how to punish Black for taking the pawn.
As the move order was different, maybe I would have time to develop my pieces and defend c6 before White could mobilise their pieces. I decided to go for it and take the pawn and when my opponent took about 10 minutes to respond, I was feeling confident.
In fact, my opponent spent a long time on his next few moves, until they had less than 30 minutes left on their clock, while I had over an hour. White had a strong centre and more space, but no clear target to attack, so I was content to hold my position and just develop. I had a passed pawn so I could just slowly move my Knight into the centre and let the clock tick down.
Unfortunately, I got too complacent and White won back the pawn on move 18 with a tactic I had seen and blocked two moves earlier I had been meaning to play a6 at some point, but never got around to it. But I was going into an even endgame with a huge time advantage so maybe my opponent would get desperate and make a mistake.
