Study log. 08 Sep 2016

Sep 9, 2016, 2:17 AM |

Tactics

During last couple of days I solved 30 tactical problems (22 correct, 8 wrong) improving my tactics rating according to chess.com tactics trainer to 2147. Wondering how accurate this estimate is and if (when) it would convert into OTB rating improvements. Still suffering from my old issues: not calculating to the end and not seeing all the defensive opportunities.

Strategy

I am going through strategy lessons on chess.com and I see certain improvements, when I started doing strategy lessons in the first couple of problems I was mostly guessing rarely seeing the correct moves from the very beginning. And even though I still rarely get all the moves correctly, for example yesterday I got almost moves right from this one:

I did the line without any mistake 1. f4 Bc4 2. Bxc4 Qxc4 3. Bg5 Re8 4. Bxf6 Bxf6 5. Nd5 Bd8 6. c3 b5 7. b3 (honestly I first played a3, but b3 was my second choice). Qc5+ 8. Kh1 Rc8 and only then started to have problems with finding correct plan. Actually I figured out that it should be a king side attack, but I wasn't able to find correct moves, literally every move took me 2-3 attempts.

In fact I got the first part right thanks to the another strategy lesson from the same course. To get the first part right. This one:

In this example Fischer playing white also fought for d5 square in the similar manner as Smyslov did in the previous example. 1. Bg5 Qb6+ 2. Kh1 0-0 3. Bxf6 Bxf6 4. Bd5 Rc8 5. Bxc6 Rxc6 6. Rad1 Rfc8 7. Nd5 Qd8 8. c3 Be7. Indeed the position is very similar and knowing the latter helped me to crack the first one (Yay! I played like Smyslov

)

What I am doing actually is trying to memorize these strategy lessons so knowing how Fischer, Smyslov, Nimzovitch or Botvinnik played in a similar position should help me to make my own decisions in similar situations OTB.

Games

I also played a few games and what displeases me a lot is the fact that I keep blundering almost in every game. I only hope that my tactics exercises as well as full concentration would help to get rid of these blunders. For example I have no possible explanation how I didn't see that he can just take my piece.

Here the blunder wasn't as direct, but nonetheless I should have seen and calculated it.

Next game is one of the few in which my opponent blundered, not myself

. Yeah, that still happens too

. However there is anything peculiar about this game. Just a classic bishop h7 sacrifice.

I did win the next game, but should my opponent had more time, I would likely have lost this one as well.

Study log. 08 Sep 2016

Krakow Chess