Reaching for 2200: No Time to Study

The title says it all. Since school started at the very end of August, getting time to study has been hard. Let me restate that. Getting time to study has not been very hard but I haven't made use of the time well. I used the time I had to play live games instead of studying. I have not done a single assignment in the chess.com study plan for more than a week. The only training that I have done are tactics, Puzzle Rush.

But for some unknown reason, my rating has gone up even when I have not been studying. Right now I am 2030, just seven points below my peak or 2037, and I expect to surpass it soon. Maybe it is because studying has had a placebo effect and made me think that I have gotten better, which I probably have slightly, but not significantly. Hopefully it won't wear off .

All I will do today is analyze a couple of my games and insert them here, just like last time. This may turn out to be a blog series of me just analyzing my recent games instead of detailing my progress.

I have to warn you that the following two games are of very low quality, lower than you would expect from 2000s, even at a fast pace of 10|0. It seems that as I play higher rated players, we consume more and more time, leading to time pressure and mistakes. This was a big factor in the two games here. I won both, but in both of them my opponent had chances to win too. 

In this first game I was in the mood to play a French, and lo and behold, we got one of my favorite lines, the Poisoned Pawn Winawer. But it seemed as if my opponent didn't know how to play it after move ten, and that confused me, leading the game into uncharted territories and wild inaccuracies.

This next game is just as blunderful.

Somehow I came out of both of those games victorious. I feel like I don't deserve to be 2030 yet as these two games were not up to par, so I will need to play better in the future to prove myself.

This Saturday I will have my first OTB tournament in almost two years! It will be in Central Park in NYC, my second time playing in the Chess in the Park Rapid Open. The time control perfectly suits me, 10|0, which you know is what I usually play. So, we'll see how it goes. My guess is that there will be a lot of strong unrated players, who like me have been cramming over the quarantine and have improved rapidly preparing for the return of OTB. Two years ago when I played in the same tournament I got a score of 5/6 in the unrated category, not bad at all considering my chess.com rapid rating was barely above 1000 if I remember correctly.

I will try to get back to studying more and find time to do everything that I want with chess. Hopefully it all works out!

Until next time.