
Finally Class A: 2013 Chicago Open and Update
Hello All! It's been some time since I last made a blog post on my progress towards my goal of becoming an expert in the next two years. I've almost reached the half-way point (starting out as a 13XX rated player in the Fall of my first year at the University of Chicago) and in about a year and half I've progressed to 1846 USCF. While I am happy with this numerical tag, I am not so satisfied with my conditioning and training as of late. Even with a good result (I hit my goal of +3-0=4 for 5.0/7) in the U1900 of the Chicago Open, I still felt my play was far below my ability as a result of poor physical shape and endurance and a certain measure of laziness at the board. I will be working hard at chess this summer to try to maintain a strong level of play and to learn as much as I can in the few months ahead of me. I will now share with you a few of my more memorable games from the recently concluded Chicago Open.
This is my first round game. Though I won this game, I was not satisfied with the opening position and found it uncomfortable to play. This is the motivation for my picking up another weapon in the Ruy or Scotch Game against 1...e5.