My Path to FM - Week 3 (Part 2)
Something I've noticed is that success is rarely that exciting. In early editions of this blog I noted that when I got my title, a lot of it had to do with uninspiring chess where I survived bad positions and capitalized on huge blunders. As much as I would have liked to have clinched my title via some positional crush against a master, I ended up earning it by getting lucky and stumbling into an ultra-long mating sequence against an untitled player who actually outplayed me for the most of the game.
The point is that the fruits of hard work and training don't always taste as good as you might expect.
Anyway that leads me to the reason week 3 has two blogs. I played in a rapid tournament today that I was expected to win, and that I did win.
Here are a few interesting puzzles from my games:
"The ability to work hard for days on end without losing focus is a talent. The ability to keep absorbing new information after many hours of study is a talent." - Garry Kasparov