Road to the Grandmaster title - Counter-play on the e-file

In the middle of the day I went to run. It was the 114th day when I was running every day.

In the early afternoon I started my daily chess activity by playing 3 blitz games and analyzing them. It was the 12th day when I used around 1 hour to play training games and analyze the games.

In the 1st game my opponent played the exchange variation of the Caro-Kann defense with the h3 line, which I didi not know. I equalized then got a better position and won a pawn in the endgame. I missed winning conversations and blundered my extra pawn and I made more mistakes under his pressure and lost it.

In the 2nd game He played 2.Ne2 against the Caro-kann defense. We went to a similar structure of the advance variation. I made the mistake allowing him Nxf5 and he got an advantage. In the middlegame I missed a nice checkmate-attack.

In the final game I played the Slav defense. My opponent played too passively. After his c5, we exchanged the queens on b3 and I counter-attacked with e6-e5 on the e-file. Opened the e-file and all of my pieces became active and worked together to win material and the game.

Last day I managed to sleep 6 hours. Too little.

I will give my best to reorganize my life to get more sleep to have energy for the games.

My blitz rating went from 2498 to 2490. 

In the last 12 days I played 45 games, lost 26 games and won 15 games and drew 4 games.

You can watch the video about how I played and analyzed the games on my twitch channel at https://www.twitch.tv/attilaturzo 

After teaching 8 hours I finished my chess activity with my daily Calculation Training. 

Today is the 55th day when I did these exercises to improve my calculation and visualization skills to reach the grandmaster level in those areas too. I invite you to solve the exercises I worked on today in my LIVE stream on my twitch channel at https://www.twitch.tv/attilaturzo 

Every day you can join me when I work on tactics.

You can watch in this video how I solved the puzzles: