Round 2

General
Things started much more on time today. We started about 10 minutes late which was reasonable.

My round
I played white against Alejandro. We played 14 moves before a piece was taken from either side. He wanted to play defense which forced me to try and develope my strategy with a lot of pieces on the board. That has not normally been my experience, so I was not very good at it. But I did what I could to oblige. A bad move here, a mis-read there and he had a few of my power pieces. Fortunately, I had some of his too.

Through a very benign move on my part Alejandro was able to put me in checkmate. I had moved my King to position myself for a very nice attack on his Rook. I just happened to move my King into a square that would allow his Queen to put the mate on me. I don’t think there is any way he could have really planned that, it just happened and he took advantage of it.

My team lost all four of our games. Daniel, our capitan, was not informed of the time change for round 2. It was supposed to be played at 9:00 this morning, but after play got started last night, they announced a change. No one knew a phone number to inform Daniel, so he showed up at 9:00 this morning and no one was here. When no one showed up he left and came back at noon. Had he walked in the door at 11:59, he would have been able to play his game. Since he came in at 12:05, he was 5 minutes over his aloted time. I feel this was really not his fault since the start time was changed after the tournament was started.

Our two younger players both lost their games, but they held on longer than I did.

My son’s round
He played well as white and beat his opponent in 5 or 6 moves, he could not remember. He has a little trick mate that he does. It only takes a couple of moves to set it up and once you put it in motion, the opponent has to see it right off or it is over. This works at the kids level, but most adults know to look for it.

Two of the opponents did not show up and his capitan won his game. So his team won all 4 points. We are not sure how many points they won last night as we forgot to ask.

Excitement
Not nearly as exciting as last night, but there was a phone that rang during play today. Everyone’s head turned to see who was going to lose this time. It was the head judge! Since he was not playing, no DQ.

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