Rasberry's NM Grind - Ep. 1

Time to rise and GRIND! It's 2025, peeps, and we're not getting any younger! I've set a goal to reach NM (USCF national master) by 2027, and I'm going to share my GRIND with you! I'm currently rated 2073, and I need 2200!

After each in-person tournament I play, I plan to release my games along with my annotations of those games (A.K.A., scathing criticisms of the author). I'll conclude with a few tournament takeaways and how I plan to adjust the GRIND.

Hopefully, you'll find entertain...value...VALUE from these...nvm, let's get started with Ep. 1...

The GRIND Begins:

Last Saturday, I played in my first purely classically rated in-person chess tournament in FOREVER (well, 27 months, but that's basically forever). I thought to myself, "Will I suck? Maybe, but surely starting at plastic for 12 hours on top of three hours of driving will be fun! Let's do it..." So I played!

I didn't actually suck that badly. Wow! Okay, how did I do? Let's cut to the chase and go to game one. Or go to game two, or the end, I don't care...wait, no please go to game one and read the whole entire thing, please this took me like eight hours to write and edit. Here's what to expect today:

4 Tournament Games | Tournament Takeaways | Adjusting the Grind

Game 1:

After driving for 96 minutes to reach the tournament hall, in round one, I was paired with someone who lives LITERALLY 96 seconds from my house (okay, if I speed a little bit [I would never]). I woke up at 5 am for this whyyy. Doug, "Drawmaster" Strout is a tough 1600 nut to crack because he always tries to trade into drawish endgames, and then he plays the endgames really well...let's be careful to avoid that!

Not a bad game! This opening is just extremely difficult for lower-rated players to try against higher-rated opponents. While Drawmaster definitely knew the strategies associated with the opening, that's not enough, you have to know many more specifics - because no two cramped but counter-attacking opening lines are the same.

Okay, nice start! Now who's up next?? Oh snowwwwww...I'm playing Snow!

Game 2:

Isaac Snow (A.K.A. Lightning) has often had the better of me in recent encounters. He melted in our last match-up over the summer (what do you expect snow to do in the summer), getting down to one minute less than 20 moves in the game (it was a 45-minute game...). He made it mushy (as snow does when it melts), but I made it through for the dub. Besides that, he's gotten me on most recent encounters. Snow was harder this time because it was cold...or he just came prepared IDK.

Welp, I got hit in the face with a snowball on that one. Nice calculation on the 14...Bg4-Nh5-Qb8 from Isaac, and then well played to give me snow chances. Snow more snow puns. STOP it, move on...

Game 3:

Next up was Sam "I Am" Baskarraj, who I played in a quick game over the summer (though with opposite colors). I knew Sam's game was sharp (he jumped 50 points this tournament), so this would be a test. I didn't want a test. I hate tests.

That was actually a decent game from me! True, a GM would laugh at how bad I was in that game (like nearly allowing Sam I Am to claw back in the late middle game), but I think I made some good decisions (like 15...bxc4, which split the pawns but gave me a passer) and put him under a good bit of pressure before he eventually blundered. I missed some tactics to keep my advantage large during the middle game, but other than that, I'm pleased! That wouldn't last long, though...

Game 4:

Aaron "Two A's" DeCord (sorry, that's the best nickname I could come up with...I'm going to drop that one) is one of Alabama's hottest players (at chess...don't be weird peeps...) who's jumped up over 2150 of late and finished 3rd in our state championship in September. I just wanted to get a solid game against him...

And the game was eventually drawn. Bishops of opposite color are sometimes impossible to win once your opponent has a blockade. 

Geez! I was hurting there, and thanks to a mistake I'd made in the tournament coming from my opponent in this game (of rushing things), I was able to escape with a draw. It's a good one against such a strong player!

With that, I scored 2.5/4.0, finished T-4th while seeded 5th, and my rating skyrocketed from 2073 → 2073 while winning $0. 

Tournament Takeaways:

 Well, I didn't suck! That's a good takeaway, I guess... On to the real takeaways:

1. I'm too impatient and forcing:

There were so many times during this tournament I thought (rightly or not) that I was better. Whenever that thought came into my mind, I wanted to get some tangible proof of it (e.g., it's my money, and I need it now!!). When I was wrong about my evaluation, I was trying to force a win from a bad position (not very smart, eh?), and when I was better, I would try to push the position along before it was ready, causing problems (like me trying to get out of bed before 9 am). The strongest example of this is when I prematurely played e6 against Aaron, which released the pressure on him and turned e6 into a target. I didn't want to wait for my money and got SLAPPED with heavy fees...  

2. I wasn't specific enough in my calcs: 

There were plenty of examples of when I wasn't specific enough in my calculations to find simple solutions. In my game with Sam I Am, I thought he'd attack my queen after I took his c4 knight in the early middle game because I failed to realize in just two moves, I could stop his attack and hold my a4-knight. Sam saw this and correctly avoided this. Had I played White, would I have made the wrong decision? Part of this was my feeling in many positions that specific calculations weren't required, and sometimes it was because I lacked the discipline to stick with calcs to the end. Hmm, there's another word for lacking discipline...um..ah!

3. I'm too LAZY:

The starkest lesson I took from the tournament was how important consistent hard work is for success over the chess board. Part of this laziness was that mentioned above: not having the discipline to calculate long lines. But I want to take this paragraph a different direction (yeah, stop looking at my discipline habits plz).

My game against Snow was a French game (duh...so?) and the French opening has been next on my docket to study....and it has been since um...OCTOBER...ugg. I've had legitimate life obstacles that have come up, but I know too many times I just said no to the immediate work of studying and said yes to whatever immediate pleasure I could find (ice cream is yummy...wait nvm). 

Adjusting the Grind (Goals for 2025):

And the above is one of the motivating factors behind my desire to join Chess.com's global community in their Improver's Challenge. I have decided to prioritize the NM title (mostly because I think it'll make me look better at work, yeah, no kidding...), meaning I must prioritize consistent chess study. Clearly, inconsistent study is a weakness of mine, and I must QUASH it (love the word quash)!

Since I haven't laid out the grind for this year yet, I can't adjust it today (obviously), so let me share my goals publicly (public shaming if I fail these accepted). I don't plan to make NM by the end of this year, but I do have goals specific to 2025, which are:

1. Achieve 2150+ USCF.

2. Play in 12+ in-person tournaments (excluding blitz events).

3. Study 500+ lines on Chessable (studied 229 from May-Dec last year).

4. Solve 2000+ rated chess puzzles on Chess.com (current account at 927).*

5. Complete 5+ strategy lesson studies on chess.com.

6. Thoroughly analyze and annotate each of my tournament games.

More tangentially helping my chess will be my chess writings. I can't share everything I'm involved with here, but I want to at least make a blog post about each tournament this year. You'll learn about other projects later this year!

* I'm setting no puzzle rush goals or even a very high # of puzzles solved because I want to train calculation discipline over speed this year. 2000+ tactics will take 50+ hours.

Hold my feet to the fire, Chess.com peeps!! With your help, I'll make NM in no time! My next tournament is scheduled for mid-January, so let's hope to have my next post out by the end of the month!

If you liked this blog leave a comment saying how awesome this is (maybe plzzz???)