Motivational Self-Shaming, Training Time Distribution

     I've often said the purpose of this blog is mostly about my own training accountability. I'm going to add a new accountability mechanism to help keep me on the "straight and narrow." In addition to posting my weekly training time distribution, I'm now going to also post positions from tournament games where I exhibit weaknesses I'm trying to work on – a sort of "public self-shaming" to motivate myself to fix those weaknesses as quickly as possible.

Self to self: "You wanna stop posting your blunders online? Well, stop making them!"

     (A quick aside and disclaimer. As a professional educator, I would never engage in such a practice with my students. Not only would it destroy the student-teacher relationship, but this kind of thing makes most students perform worse. So it's a major no-no in any classroom. Inflicting it on myself, however, is another matter. I'm a crotchety old man with a thick skin and an even thicker skull. I know from experience that I have to be extra hard on myself to make any progress.)

     I spoke in a previous post about my epiphany that moving without adequately considering my opponents' potential replies, and moving on general principle rather than concrete calculation, are two flaws endemic to my play. My coach has pointed this out to me on a few occasions and, since I've been specifically looking for this problem, my own analysis is revealing just how horrifically widespread it is in my play.

     Here is an example from the last North Market Tournament, in which I went down in flames to an expert-rated player. In particular, there is a string of six moves (moves 17 through 22) where this problem is strikingly evident, as I go from slightly worse to losing outright.

     There may be errors in the concrete analysis, since it is all engine-free. I won't look at the game with an engine until I've gone through it with my coach.

     In the meantime, here is my chess training time for the week.