Hello guys, and Merry Christmas!
Well... it is 10 days until Christmas... but that counts, right? 
Anyways, I had a pretty good chess week! I wasn't able to accomplish all of my goals to perfection, though I did get some work done, which is what matters in the end.
And, I did play my tournament Thursday night, which I am happy to have exceeded my expectations, sweeping the field 3/3. My only slight disappointment was the lack of challenge throughout the event. No disrespect to my opponents at all, as all three of them are accomplished tournament players, I could have had a tougher challenge. But most of all, the games were fun, and I do have some new games to go over and learn from. I'll annotate those in a future blog, though here are some fun puzzles from the event:
That Rook was trapped, never to be seen again.
I hope you enjoyed the sneak-peak, and I am looking forward to posting the entire games to you guys!
As I announced in my previous blog, I tried mixed tactics on Chesstempo for training before the tournament, and that session did not go well at all. I went 11/24 and lost roughly 50 rating points in the process. I think standard tactics is still the thing for me at this point (though somehow, blitz tactics are nice to me, as I am on a 17/17 streak in that area).
I did also get in a training game this week, in which I dominated my opponent following his passive opening play:
I thought that was a nice attacking game. Anyways, that was somewhat of a recap of my week. Here is my plan going forward:
TACTICS:
Work on standard tactics on Chesstempo. My rating is 1983, though can I get to 2000 by Christmas? It will be a tall order, though a reasonable goal!
ENDGAMES:
I didn't get the chance to work on the endgames I am struggling with. I hope to be proficiently working on that this week, then plow forward the drills by the new year.
TRAINING GAMES:
I'll make the goal four games before Christmas. I may get more or less done, though this seems like a reasonable goal.
GAME ANALYSIS:
For now, I will probably slow down or take a break from studying master games/openings and concentrate on analyzing my games. Once I have analyzed my games thoroughly, I will be posting them out.
Hopefully, I can at least make some progress before Christmas, even if I don't score perfectly on my training. My day will probably be something to the effect of 30 minutes tactics, 30 minutes endgames, and 30 minutes tournament analysis.
As always, thanks for reading this post! I hope you enjoyed it, but more importantly, I hope you enjoy a merry Christmas with your families and loved ones!
PS. Just for clarification, I don't really believe in Santa Clause. But I've been good this year, and could use some chess material!
