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The Chess.com Study Plan Test Driven
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The Chess.com Study Plan Test Driven

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Excheqquer
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Week # 3 Day # 2 Rating 1244 +78

I, Excheqquer, an inveterate nonimprover finally decided to put the Chess.com Study plan to the test. These are the Chronicles of my trials.

So I am following the Chess.com Study plan, which you can find by learn/articles/study plan. As I am less than 1400 I am in the beginner study plan. And let me tell you it has been invaluable. Actually, so far it is has been valued +78, and 10 straight wins, so I guess invaluable is an inaccurate use of words. 

Up for today:

  • King and Pawn Endings: Stage 3 by IM Daniel Rensch --  finished. Danny continues to bring excellent material.
  • I am also reading Secrets of Pawn Endings, which was recommended yesterday by IM Rensch. I realize that while I have been aware of opposition for sometime. The mastery of the use of pawns is something I will need to continue to work on. 
  • And then there are 5 more videos I need to watch to finish up Beginner's Section #5 the Endgame
  • Also I need to work on my daily puzzles. And I want to thank walla2hawk for suggesting that rather than tanking my puzzle rating I do the Puzzle Rush Survival mode. I will check that out. I have done the puzzle rush a number of times, but I never did the survival mode.
  • But first I need to get a game in. Yesterday I had noted that because I am sitting on a 10 game winning streak I was gun shy about hitting the PLAY button. Again I want to thank a couple of my friends for their comments in yesterday's blog. I, apparently, am not alone. In any case today I am going to start with a game.  Note to self: Excheqquer you learn more in a loss anyway, so just play. 

Now to find my music. When I woke up I had the musical phrase The sun ain't gonna shine anymore playing in my head and I had to find who had sang it.  If you are curious it was most popular by the Walker Brothers in the 60's. 

All right here we go. 

My game was with Fayb. He was rated 1240, and I was 1244, so basically an even match. Fayb has beeon chess.com since 2010.  He has over 2800 rapid games on chess.com. That's impressive. He's an e4 player.  Overall when we weren't making mistakes or blunders we were making best plays. 47% of his moves were best plays. Anything over 40 % is quite good. I was at 54%. That may be a personal best. But as I said we also had more than  our share of stinkers on both sides of the board. 

In the endgame he had an extra piece. I had two extra pawns. And I thought about resigning, but I decided I would just play another move. And I also remembered IM Rensch's comments, The endgame is considered hard, because the endgame is hard. 

Tartakower once said, the winner is the person who makes the next-to-last mistake. That is a fair evaluation of this game. 

Sloppy, but still... 

Rating 1252 + 86 overall 11 wins in a row. 

Puzzles :  I did the Puzzle rush survival for the first time. I scored 30, which almost got me in the top 50 for the hours, so that's gotta be good? 

Secrets of Pawn Endings. Almost finished chapter one.