Chess.com 2024, 3rd round, E17 - Final thoughts

As always, I'll do a final summary of my round. There were almost no easy wins here, and every game supplied lessons. This already makes this tournament a good time investment.

There's the usual question of why should anyone care about my lessons from my games. The answer is two-fold:

1. Many of the issues that tripped me up would apply to other 1800-2200 players, so if you're in that rating range, you might get the benefit of learning from someone else's mistakes rather than your own.
2. The method of deep analysis and brutal self-honesty is the only way to improve: both in chess and other hobbies. Just following the thought process might work for others, even if your improvement areas are different.

First, I’ll start with positives

• I internalized some of the lessons from the second round, which gave boost to my play. I played all the games (perhaps apart from the loss to chess_lover) at 2000+ level, most of them at 2100+. If I were to honestly assess my performance here, I’d put it at around 2150.
• Calculation has improved. I did not look deep into speculative wrong lines and stopped earlier. I also did not look separately into two similar trees, but rather applied small differences on the same tree.
• Finished 2^nd in the group, behind a 2400+ player and ahead of several 2000+ players. I refer to their actual strength, not their chess.com rating which as always has limited relevance to reality. Yes, I had an element of luck, since jaljr granted me a draw in a lost position, and chess_lover resigned in a drawn position. Draqlek turned out to be a cheater despite not cheating against me – so in total I have two undeserved points. But then, I also scattered a couple of presents, so I have no guilt here: sport is sport.

Now, to the improvement opportunities. As always, that’s where I focus most:

a. I still miss obvious responses for my opponents when calculating. There are many examples:

• VFK black, which is my best game in the tournament. Still, missed 19. Nb1, 26. Nd3, 27. Re1 etc.
• Jaljr black, 26. Qf4 – which almost costed me the game
• Artem black, 15. Qc2 and 25. c4 which cumulatively costed me half a point.
  
  I can go on and on, but the main lesson here is – avoid tunnel vision when exploring my opponent’s options. Pause before making assumptions.
  
  

b. Missing tactical shots from my opponents. That’s less frustrating than missing an obvious move as per the previous point, but more painful.

• The most painful miss by far was 37…Bc4 in the VFK white game which immediately lost a game that I just managed to equalize.
• Furiously-fast black, 19. Rd7 – this is a more tricky situation for sure, but not impossible to see.
• Draqlek white, 13…Nb4 and 16…Bxg5 – required me to find only moves to hold the position together.
  
  As before, I won’t go with the entire list. The lesson here is an extension to the previous point. Spend even more time looking for options for my opponent – especially in tactically charged positions.
  
  

c. Final point on getting into the head of my opponents. In a few cases, I did not think about their plans which in turn pushed me to explore inferior options.

• In the chess_lover black game, move 21, I missed a fairly obvious plan to go after the f7 pawn and the kingside.
• In the chess_lover white game, didn’t think through his plan of plugging the kingside and squeezing out the queenside after a4. In both of my games with him I was destroyed strategically.
• Draqlek white game, missed black’s plan of going after the weak kingside pawns.
  
  So, final expansion on better analysis of opponent’s options. Understand his plans, especially when he starts playing moves I did not expect.
  
  

d. Didn’t play the right opening at the right time. Examples:

• Burn variation in the Andyh black game. This one leads directly to a draw, in a game I had to win. Luckily, he timed out, but not thanks to my play.
• Avoiding symmetry against furiously-fast. In both of my games with him I should’ve aimed for as drawish lines as possible.
• Standard French exchange in the Artem black game – again a draw in a game I had to win.
  
  Main lesson: don’t play the same opening repertoire all the time but adjust to the game.

e. Overestimating the impact of poor pawn structure on the eval.

• Moves 10 and 12 in the Artem black game, where I didn’t even consider Na6, thinking that double a-pawns are going to end my game.
• Furiously-fast white game, where I overestimated black’s Bg4 attack on the 13^th move, which caused me to waste a tempo with h3.
  
  This is exactly the sort of skill that is required to go from 2100 to 2200+ territory – understand the subtleties of the position and how one weakness can be compensated by others.

f. Missing opportunities for a positional pawn sacrifice.

• A perfect example of that was in the Andyh white game, where I had the option of a sacrifice of the e5 pawn on the 13^th move which would have given white a massive initiative.
• Another major example if the Draqlek black game where I hung onto the h7 pawn on move 14. If I let it go, I would have retained my strong set of centre pawns.
  
  Another advanced skillset that’s mandatory to get past the 2100 territory. No simple self-advice here apart from not automatically discarding lines which give up a pawn.

g. If I repeatedly fail to execute well in an opening, it means I should change it. In other words, time to think of retiring the Italian game for white and perhaps trying the Scotch opening. If it worked for Kasparov, it might work for me.

h. If an opponent gets crushed in one game, don’t assume they are going to do the same next time. It already tripped me up with oioki in round 2 and tripped me up again with Artem in round 3. It costed me the entire tournament last year when I underestimated an opponent that I dominated in one game; he just won the other one against me and threw me out of round 2.

i. Specific to daily games: recognize bad days or situations when you’re tired and avoid making difficult decisions then. The 8^th and 28^th of June were days like that for me.

I’ll stop here. This is enough homework for now; if I manage to internalize even half of it, I’ll add another 50-100 points to my rating.

Almost forgot - the final game in my group has run its course on the 15th of August. Here is the final table:

I have my 2^nd place. No prizes apart from personal satisfaction. Let's see if I can do better than that in 2025.