Patzer to Grandmaster: Little steps

When I first started my serious attempt to improve my chess game It was May of last year I was 1089.

At the end of 2021 I was 1257.

My Acceptable goal for 2022 is 1300

Three weeks ago I was 1320.  Two weeks ago 1328.  Last week 1332. This week 1348.

My Good goal for 2022 is 1350

My Best goal for 2022 is 1400

My Premier goal for 2022 is 1450.

Since I am prepping for my second ever over the board tournament in less than a month my good friend pawnchucker88 came over to my house and we sat on the porch and played a couple over the board games. 

Pawnchucker didn't actually sit on his side like this, but since I am not a TopBlogger and I have not been given any of the extra tools on how to rotate this. When I put it in was positioned right, but the blog likes it sideways.

Pawnchucker has been 1900+ over the board before he took a hiatus from chess about twenty years ago. He is trying to get me ready for the game. And in this game I hung in much longer than usual. At the end I had this position, and I thought if I were smart enough I could have held a draw. White to play

I took a picture of it to put on the analysis board later. Paul was not sure I had a draw here. Turns out a 1900 player knows more than a patzer. The analysis board has black at least -3. As was expected he went onto win, but still it was a much better game than usual, and he was kind enough to say that my game had improved significantly. 

Today's game was against HusenAzhaho. He was rated in the 1430's when we started the game. He has only been on Chess.com for 11 days, so it is hard to know where he will settle out. Although by the intensity of the game I think he will end up a little higher ranked than me. 

Here is the game

All in all it was not one of my cleanest games. Accuracy in the mid 70's, 1 inaccuracy, 2 mistakes, and one blunder, but I also got a brilliancy, and I got a win.  The computer had me up for much of the game, but that was not how it felt during the game. During the game it felt very tactical with a lot of options to mess up.