Chess Mastery at the 2026 Iowa Open

Going into the Iowa Open, I honestly wasn’t sure what to expect. I’d been taking things pretty lightly with my training for the past few months, mostly because my morning schedule has made it tough to put consistent time into tournament prep. Lately, I feel like I’ve been shifting into more of a chess cultivator role in my local community. That’s not meant as an excuse for underperforming—but if I did struggle, it wouldn’t exactly be a shock.

I came in as the third highest-rated player, behind Florida master Julio Morella and Iowa master Alec Aimdilokwong. My first-round opponent was Aarud, rated somewhere in the 1700s, and I expected the game to be a solid warm-up while I settled into the 90-minute time control with a 30-second increment.

Aarud put up some resistance. He played that annoying Catalan, and this was one of the key positions I reached on the way to eventually overpowering him. I’m still not sure whether my choice was objectively correct, but it seemed like a good practical challenge. Maybe the best decision would have steered the game toward an isolated queen’s pawn position, but in the moment, I felt like pushing the pawn to e5.

I’ll mostly skip over round two because the game was too one-sided to spend much time on. If there’s one thing worth mentioning, it’s that some tunnel vision kept me from finishing the game on move 20 instead of move 22. Afterward, I talked with one of the stronger players at the event, Elijah. His live rating was around the 2250s, although that rating hadn’t been published yet. He needed something to eat before the next round, so we walked to the mall and grabbed a burrito. We talked about training routines, and I was genuinely impressed by the effort he was putting in. I was a little less convinced by how heavily he leaned on his blitz rating as a major milestone. I’m not sure whether my own lack of effort toward the game was discouraging him or boosting his confidence, but either way, we had a really engaging conversation.

Then came the awkward part: we returned to the playing hall and found out we were paired against each other in round three. I expected to get slaughtered, but I figured I’d fall back on one of my old systems, the French, and at least put up some resistance before getting overpowered.

Strangely enough, I managed to hang on for quite a while. At this point, Elijah had a chance to bring the boom, but he gave up the initiative with dxe5. That one decision changed the evaluation from losing for me to only a slight disadvantage. From there, his position gradually got worse, and he eventually resigned about 20 moves later.

I can’t deny it—I felt pretty good after that game. Elijah was surprisingly calm afterward. He may have a habit of moving too quickly in positional games, because his remaining opponents both used the Catalan successfully against him, scoring 1.5 out of 2.

The fourth—and essentially final—round was against my former student Niko, rated in the 2050s. He had done me a favor by beating Julio in round two, which meant I wouldn’t be forced to play him. Of course, I didn’t particularly want to play Niko either. I also didn’t help myself by going outside my preparation. For this tournament, I decided to experiment with queen’s pawn openings, and if you judge only by the results, the experiment went well. Still, I never felt especially confident in the openings. I reached decent positions, but maintaining them took a lot of time. In this game, I tried to move quickly and build a time advantage. I knew Niko tended to burn a lot of time in complex positions, and since he entered the round with a perfect score, I thought my best chance was to push him into time trouble.

That time-trouble gamble nearly backfired. In this position, I chose the losing move Nc3 instead of Rc1. Maybe the deeper mistake was allowing him dynamic chances by castling long in the first place. The game would have been much easier to manage if I’d had clear pawn-structure targets without also needing to worry about my king.

Niko let the game slip soon after this position, and I was able to convert the win. In the final round, I faced another former student, Anjaneya. We agreed to an early draw, which was enough for me to finish with 4.5 out of 5 and win this year’s Iowa Open.