So Close! | April 14th, 2025
I remember (not that vividly) that somebody asked a question in the Improvers Community Lesson: whenever I reach a peak, I seem to tilt (in his own words: lose a ton of games nonstop) right after that, how do I prevent it? And this is a very common phenomenon: we mostly always tilt right after we hit a peak: sometimes we extend it a little bit, but ultimately, we won't be able to keep up with how high-level the gameplay is, and we can't get lucky every single game. So, I replied to him like this:
Hello there!
It is perfectly normal to get to a peak rating and then immediately tilt after. You can't stay in the peak rating forever: the only way to stay is to stop playing. When you reach an all-time high rating, if you keep continuing to win: that's great! But the problem is as you get higher, the quality of the games also get higher, and at some point your quality will no longer match the quality of the matches at your peak elo, which will make you lose momentum and tilt.
A discrepancy of 50-150elo from your peak rating is completely fine: a good way to estimate your strength is taking your peak elo and substract it by 100. So it's completely normal (and even be prepared) to tilt right after reaching your peak, it will happen many more times, trust me, it is completely normal, and when you have improved, you will soon pass your peak, and then go back again to improve your chess even more to pass your peak... the cycle continues.
Hopefully you have some productive chess!
Hah: I guess I am a hypocrite after all, because the honeymoon is not stopping. I clicked on the play button 18 times today (techinically 19 if you also count that rapid game I randomly played), and I won 8 games, drew 2 and lost 8 games. I started at 2108 (new blitz peak), and I finished at 2114, for a gain of +6 elo. If I was an experienced gambler I'd cash out when I hit my real peak of 2135, but what I'm so proud of myself is I proved to myself that I can play at a 2100 blitz level, not just peaking and then immediately tilting like last time.
So, playing at this high of a level, what changes did I felt? Well, I noted three particular things:
My Openings Are Not Diversified
People can probably do five minutes of research on me and they'll know that I play like two main openings: the Bird's Opening and the Modern Scandinavian. For the most part, these openings serve me really well: Bird's Opening is my right-hand man, while the Modern Scandinavian gets into decent positions and occasionally really fun lines. However, at this level, people tend to go d4 more, and I do not have any good options with d4.
Couple things about my relationship with d4:
- Most of the time I wing it: add a c5, try to castle, following opening principles.
- A lot of openings have been tested by me, and some openings, I just blatantly discarded even thinking of playing it (Grunfeld, KID)
- For a while I played Dutch, but Dutch has way too many sound gambits and it might even be transposable to French
- I hate d4 positions, because it is too positional, and I like fiery, aggressive, tactical chess.
Right now I see myself particularly struggling with this one particular d4 line that I did not prepare at all, yet I have seen a surge in popularity at this level. I have a whopping 0% winrate (4 losses, 1 draw) playing against this opening, which is definitely concerning, and luckily a good friend of mine @Clicmatichess provided me with a potential antidote (also the engine's top move) that I will study later:
Right now, I plan to find something else to play other than Bird's Opening. I will continue to play Bird's Opening on this account, but on my training account, I'm already experimenting with other openings, I got an entire gambit repertoire for e4, and I'm experiencing with Jobava London which from my observations is quite sharp and easy to play. As for Black, I still have to refine my d4 repertoire, and perchance find a more solid response than Modern Scandinavian, but that's none of my top priorities compared to this next part:
Endgames Frequency
Endgames are becoming more and more common, a lot of my games go into proper endgames, with imbalances, pawn trades, etc. Before, I could avoid these stupid endgames by playing hyper-aggressive in the middlegame, but now, some games, I enter the endgame with over two minutes left on the clock (mind you I play 3+0, which is three minutes on the clock with zero increment!). This is why I started an Endgame Study Plan, packed with resources, but I still need to improve it somehow. Studying, drills, endgame puzzles, I'm trying my best to improve at endgames while balancing with exams and schoolwork. I have a lot on my plate right now.
Positivity Overload
Probably because I'm having the generational run of my life, hitting new peaks here and there, but my relationship with chess has really improved. I feel a lot more optimistic and happy playing chess. Chess used to be an abusive partner to me, but I've slowly remedied it, and results have immediately came. Who knew that changing a bit of habits (like writing this blog!) and taking a 2-week break would do so much to a chess player. And thanks to my brain being completely relaxed and focused on chess, I play at a much better level, and have completely surpassed what I expected myself.
That's all I can say about today. This is going to be an ambitious goal, but I aim to get 2150 blitz by the end of the week. I feel like with good enough concentration, I can definitely achieve that goal. Remember, my goals for 2025 is to push all my time controls to 2200 elo, and I am dangerously close to completing 1/3 of the task. It is amazing, life is great. I also signed up for a chess tournament this Saturday, so let's see.
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