Day 1 is Done!

My family and I traveled to Disney World (via Philadelphia) on a red-eye flight from San Francisco.  We arrived at our hotel on Thursday morning a little tired, but happy to be here and with a whole day to play before the tournament began.  We stopped off at Downtown Disney to have a quick lunch at the cool Rainforest Cafe and then we went to Disney Hollywood Studios.  It was a lot of fun, but the whole family was exhausted from the overnight flight and we had to get back to the hotel early to make sure we got enough rest.

Day 1 started off pretty well.  Tommy O He from Dallas, TX registered at the last minute, so I was bumped down to the #5 seed, but they didn't accelerate the pairings so my first round game was against a pretty low-rated opponent.  His name was Andrew Mayorga and he lives right here in Florida.  I won the game pretty quickly, but the best part is that my teammates, Udit and Pranav, also won their games and our team was tied for first place right from the start.

Between rounds 1 and 2, Udit came back to my room and we relaxed by watching Over The Hedge.  Check out our cool team t-shirts!

In round 2, I gave everyone a bit of a scare.  My opponent was Akhil Goel from Virgina.  He was only rated 1267, and perhaps I took him a little too lightly.  I got off to a poor start, lost a pawn in the middle game, and then got into a bit of time pressure.  Fortunately, I was able to pull off the win with only 1 minute 50 seconds left on my clock.  I was very relieved to have escaped the tight spot, and my teammates also won their games so Team Regnart is now a perfect 6.0/6.0 and tied with one other team for first place.  Tomorrow is going to be a tough day with 3 rounds each of increasing difficulty.  Go Roadrunners!!!