The following first-round game occurred after a two-year break in OTB (over-the-board) tournament games. I call it a tale of two players, since in the first half it appears as if I were a different player as White: showing poor judgment, performing weak calculation and ignoring basic strategic principles. Black, who played stronger than his rating (as many juniors do), had a fine game but then failed to find the best move to take advantage of my weaknesses (11...Ng4!). He then made the strategic error of trying to respond directly to my advances on the queenside, rather than strike back in the center or kingside, where he had naturally better play. Once the situation had been clarified on the queenside and the momentum had swung back my way, I played much more strongly, showing much better judgment about things like piece exchanges, and also was able to calculate correctly and find tactics (27. b6!) that leveraged my positional advantages. The game came to a satisfying conclusion as I was able to quickly shift my pieces' attention to the kingside and take advantage of Black's absent defenders.
This is a good example of a typical "shake-off-the-rust" type of game for tournament players, in which it takes a while to warm up mentally and for things to come together across the board in a real game, which is always a different experience than training conditions. Nevertheless, I found analyzing my early mistakes instructive and hope to avoid such issues in future games.
