My first chess tournament as a 40-year-old was the 2025 Canadian Women’s Closed.

I also played in last year’s event, which was hosted in Toronto by the Hart House Chess Club. I was seeded 6th of 49 players and actually finished at that same rank, with 6 of 9 possible points. This year’s tournament was held in the same city by the Annex Chess Club.  There were 45 players, and once again I was seeded 6th.

Ahead of me were three current members of our national team—Yunshan Li, Svitlana Demchenko, and Oksana Golubeva—as well as newcomer Olena Kucherenko and Canadian chess legend Nava Starr. In her prime, Nava represented Canada in 13 Olympiads, a Canadian women’s record. I was honoured to play in the same field as her and to chat with her at the tournament site, where she was charming and full of encouragement. She told me after the tournament that it would most likely be her final competition. There was no formal fanfare to mark the occasion, but it was truly a remarkable achievement for her to play all 9 rounds of a gruelling, five-day national championship at 75+, particularly with such grace and poise. She even finished with an equal score of four wins, a draw, and four losses, proving that she is still a dangerous player who very much belongs in the field.

My primary goal in tournaments these days is simply to participate, but of course I also always hope to acquit myself credibly at the board. My benchmark of success is usually whether I can manage to hold my ground in terms of ranking. After all, I may still have a ways to go to match Nava, but I am definitely at the stage of my career where time is starting to become more of an opponent than an ally. Chess is a young person’s game—if you don’t believe me, consider that this tournament’s average age was 21!  I also had not played a competitive event since the 2024 championship, but I’d been regularly training with a friend here in the province, and I felt good going into the event. It also always helps to play in Toronto, where I have so many friends and memories, both inside and outside of chess. Also, the time control of the individual games was reduced to 90 minutes per player, plus 30 seconds per move (meaning that a 60-move game in which both players used all their time would take about 4 hours). Because of my playing style, my games are very often among the last in the hall to finish, and playing four- or four-and-a-half-hour games instead of five-hour ones makes a big difference to my energy levels over the course of a six-day event, especially when three of those days have two rounds each.

The tournament only just finished the day before yesterday (Tuesday, April 22), but over the next few days I will make some recap posts in order to share some highlights of a remarkable event and a wonderful experience. Spoiler alert: I performed a lot better than I expected to!