How I won my 6th National Championship Part 1

Introduction

The 2024/2025 Portuguese Championship was held in Matosinhos, Porto, from the 31st of August to the 7th of September. In this two part series (this first article will deal with the first half of the tournament and I will write a new one concerning the second half), I wanted to give you a bit of an overview into how my games went, some behind the scenes stories, and just tell the story of how this tournament went from my perspective. I hope you find it entertaining and instructive not only from a chess perspective but also for the whole tournament context.

The Portuguese Championship

This year, the Championship started a day after the end of Maia Chess Masters, an open here in Portugal. I did well there, finishing 4th with 7/9 (bad tiebreaks as my opponents just love to quit the tournaments midway, or not show up at all), but the tournament was long and tiring and, after the summer tournaments , I was unsure how much energy I would be able to muster to play the National Championship in good conditions. Some good news were that, this year, there was a time control after move 40, and only one double round. Still, the first round was to be played in the night which, with the prospect of an endgame dragging itself to 5h+ due to the time control, was not a nice thought.

Below is a picture of the line-up.

As you can see, I was the number one seed. However, in chess tournaments, that rarely means much when it comes to the final standings.

This year, the playing field was strong. Even though some of the higher-rated players in Portugal did not play, it was still a strong and competitive opposition (feels weird to be in the older half of the players). Most of the players here had competed in this Championship before, with the exception of NM Matviy Faryma (check out his profile here) and FM Pedro Silva (due to sickness and other problems, he had not managed to finish one National Championship before, even though this was his third time in the initial list. Here is his profile.), so we knew each other well. Other honourable mentions are the national titles recordist, GM António Fernandes (16 times Champion!) and the reining champion, FM (now IM!) José Bárria (check out his blog here) who had won the last edition of this tournament with a whopping 8/9.

Round 1

Round 1 was against FM (also an IM now!) Bruno Martins. He had had a nice tournament in Maia before this one as well (where he got his last norm and IM title), and I thought of him as one of the most serious contenders for the title, so I was not thrilled that this game was taking place in the night (8h30 pm) a time of the day (night...) when I simply am unable to play proper chess. I was Black, and I planned to quickly offer a draw in the opening.

The opening went as expected, but he declined my draw offer. I was feeling really tired and was playing rather quickly and without much motivation (funny how, in these moments where I am tired, not even the prospect of the national title seems to give me motivation to care and try to play well. Same thing happened in the first round of the 2022/2023 championship where I lost to José Bárria horribly in the first round after sleeping very little), and quickly found myself in a terrible position, after missing some simple tactics. Here is the full game with some brief commentaries.

Round 2

Round 2 was played in the afternoon (3pm) of the following day. I was paired against the (theoretically) weakest opponent with White so I was feeling confident. However, every game is a tough game, and did not go there thinking it'd be a piece of cake.

It was rather uneventful, as I won nicely. I was surprised by the opening, as my opponent (supposedly) only plays the French Defence, but I quickly transposed to a line that I know well and like from the Exchanged French (ironic), and I managed to quickly cause him some problems.

It was not a very well played game on my part. I often had better moves which I did not find as I was playing too quickly. I was still feeling tired from the bad night of sleep from the previous game and was in the anything-works mood, which experienced players know to be a nice recipe for disaster. Luckily, I converted the advantage I had and went on to win.

Round 3 & 4

Round 3 and 4 were the only double rounds of the tournament, to be played at 3 pm and 8h30 pm. It was never going to be nice, but I was fairly satisfied with my parings for this day - I was going to play NM Matviy Faryma in the afternoon round and GM António Fernandes in the night round. I thought that, for better or worse, my game against Faryma would not go into a long endgame given his playstyle and, in the night, given that I was playing White, I would be able to just play something simple and wait for my opponent to inevitably be low on time, as it is his trademark. Both assumptions held true, and I managed to have a nice double round day. Here is round 3:

After this win, I stood on 3/3. I was happy enough with my play as well, and feeling confident for the night round. It went smoothly, and you can find the annotated game below.

Closing thoughts

I moved on to 4/4 then. After this round, I led with 1.5 points of advantage but, from my perspective, the tournament was far from won. In this kind of tournaments, where all the players are of similar strength, it is totally possible to win 4 games in a row, and then lose 4 in a row. It is perhaps unlikely, but it is totally possible, and I was just content with my play, and looking forward to my next game. Also, I was super happy I managed to finish the night round early which meant that I would not screw up my sleep routine again!

I will write a similar article covering rounds 5-9. Spoiler alert - it got spicy. Even with such an advantage at round 5, I ended up having to play for a win the last two games in order to win.

I hope you enjoyed this post and see you in part 2.