First Time on the Board. First Tournament. First Result.
I thought I had won the queen. The knight had other ideas.
The Story
28 February 2021. Bangalore.
I sat down for my first-ever over-the-board tournament game at the 38th BRDCA Open Rapid Chess Tournament.
I was unrated. My opponent was rated 1132.
I knew how to play chess. But tournament chess? That was something completely different.
There was a clock. A real board. A real opponent sitting across from me. And, of course, the pressure of knowing that every move counted.
The game became tactical very quickly. At one point, I found a sequence that won my opponent’s queen.
I thought I had done the hard part.
I hadn’t.
Five years later, I can see this game very differently. It wasn’t a good game. It wasn’t a win.
But it was my beginning.
The Game
My first recorded OTB tournament game. And, as it turned out, my first tournament lesson.
Amit Shriwas – Santhosh Kumar B S, 38th BRDCA Open Rapid Chess Tournament, Bangalore, Round 1
Technical Analysis
The game began with the Italian Game: Two Knights Defence and quickly turned tactical.
After 4.Ng5, I was already looking towards Black’s king. Black’s 4…d5 immediately challenged my intentions and the position became sharp.
The sequence 7.dxc6 bxc6 8.Qf3 Rb8 9.Bxc6+ Nxc6 10.Qxc6+
shows how I was approaching chess at the time: find a tactical idea, calculate it, and go for it.
And then came my favourite moment of the game: 18.Nf6+! Nxf6 19.Qxg4
The knight goes. The queen falls. I had seen the tactic correctly and won Black’s queen.
Surely I was winning now? Not quite.
The position gradually slipped away. After 23.Nd6 Re6 24.Nxb7 Rxb7, Black’s pieces became more active, and 26…Bxf2 27.Bd2 Nxd3 exposed a bigger problem in my play. I was looking at my ideas. I wasn’t looking enough at his.
Black’s pieces became increasingly active, my position deteriorated, and the advantage eventually disappeared.
The queen had been won. The game had not.
Mistakes, Learnings & Improvement
This is where the game becomes interesting to me today.
In 2021, I loved tactics.
A sacrifice? Calculate it.
An attack? Go for it.
Material available? Take it.
But I had no real process for what came after the tactic.
Winning the queen made me feel that the position was under control. Instead of asking “What can my opponent do now?”, I was already thinking about my next move.
That is probably the biggest mistake in this game.
I was playing my plans, rather than responding to the position.
Today, before calculating an attack, I try to ask three simple questions:
- What are the checks?
- What are the captures?
- What are the threats — for both sides?
That last part is crucial.
A good move isn’t good simply because it achieves what I want. It has to survive what my opponent wants to do next.
Looking back at this game, I didn’t understand that distinction.
I knew how to find a move. I hadn’t yet learned how to evaluate a position.
The Takeaway
My first OTB game ended 0–1.
But that result doesn’t bother me anymore.
Because this wasn’t the end of anything.
It was the beginning.
I walked into that tournament unrated, played my first serious game, found a nice tactic, made plenty of mistakes, lost the game—and came back to play again.
Five years later, that’s what I remember most.
Your first game doesn’t define your chess. What you do after it does.
Every chess journey has a first board, a first tournament, a first mistake and a first loss.
This was mine.
Crafted By Amit Shriwas • Published on 25 August 2026 • Chess Journey • Chess • 03 min read
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Game Drawn Because I Forgot There Is a Clock