Nova Daily - 1 June 2025: What the hell just happened? (Recap Week 22)

Hi!

Sorry for the clickbait title, but today has been quite the day. First of all it's a new month, and with a new month come new beginnings for some.

But today alone, a few things occurred that made me go:

What the hell just happened?

Let's start with the dumb fact that I've invested a fair few points of bullet rating (22 to be exact). But I maintain that it was worth it. I've scored well against titled players today, especially against IMs. I had 5 games against IMs and it's beyond me how I managed to do it, but I won each of those five games. Like, seriously, how?!

The first of those five games takes the cake in terms of "What the hell just happened?" and bears the greatest weight for me, so I'll show that one at the end. I was paired against the second IM three times in the pool. And I won each of those three games. Don't ask me how.

In the first and the second game I played quite good chess, even for bullet. But the end of the third game will have you wonder whether I spiked his drink.

These games were not played back-to-back, though. I tend to just click on "next game" after I finish one, and I happened to be paired up with this opponent three times.

The fifth game, and my final bullet game of this week, saw my opponent make a mess of the centre. For reasons unclear to me, my opponent let me have a free go at his pieces, and I won a lot of material:

But the first game was the most "What the hell just happened?" game that I've played all day. I was paired up with IM Daniel Rensch himself. I've held Rensch in very high regard for as long as I've known his name and what he's done for the world of chess. I've been recommending this video by him for as long as I recall if anyone ever wants to learn some opening strategy, and I'm eagerly awaiting his autobiography Dark Squares to come out in September this year. I never thought to play against him, let alone scrape a win. Even though the game was decided by an obvious mouse-slip:

After this game happened, I was absolutely in shock.

Later today, something else happened. you might have seen it already: Carlsen lost from a winning position against Gukesh. Both were clearly shaken by what had just happened, and it's very interesting to watch both gentlemen respond.

Carlsen, fuming at the way he had botched the game, did pat Gukesh on the back while storming out of the room. That shows that despite his emotions getting the better of him, he still managed to show respect to his opponent.

Gukesh had just scored his first ever classical victory against Carlsen and needed to take this in. He remained staggering around the tournament hall, barely able to grasp that he had just scored this massive result.

The Leningrad Nimzo

I should be working on improving my opening play. For this I decided to have an overview look at all the games I've played recently, and then to have a closer look at the literature that I have on this specific line. I decided to have a look at my black games, because that's usually where I tend to be more vulnerable.

The opening moves I appear to be having the greatest issues with are 1.Nf3 and 1.d4, at least from a statistic's point of view. I'm not surprised about that: many play 1.e4, which means that I get the most reps in here. Against 1.d4 I intend to put the Nimzo-Indian on my repertoire, but there are many different lines and I haven't had much practice with the Nimzo yet. Bullet may or may not be a good front for this, depending. It might be good for the Chessable-style drilling of the opening, but to become acquainted with the overall ideas it's likely best to stop and spend some actual time pondering these lines.

A line that has been coming up a few times with good results for white against me is this one:

If white had a few free moves, they'd set up the position with e3, Bd3, Ne2 and possibly 0-0:

White will be preparing to push the e-pawn and take over the centre completely.

Back to the position after white's 4th move. The position ought to be fine for black, provided that black knows what to do:

The week in chess

Too much has happened this week to enable me to really concern myself with chess. I've written and submitted my entry for the May editioin of The Blogger Awards, which took up a lot of time. I've had some important family stuff this week as well, which took up a lot of time and energy. Overall I think that the week was quite fine in terms of chess, although I lost rating in almost all time-controls.

I'm maintaining my routine of playing regularly, even if it doesn't always yield the desired results. If anything, it feels like I'm getting somewhere even if I'm not winning all the time.

My current scores:

• Rapid rating: 2245 (-10)
• Blitz rating: 2418 (-22)
• Bullet rating: 2550 (-5)
• Survival: 63 (=)
• Puzzle Battle: 2044 (+20)
• Puzzles: 3514 (-67)
• Repertoire: 4331 moves (+3)

For next week, I'll play my rapid games on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and analyse them the day after. I feel I need to get back into more rapid chess routine. I'll also play blitz games and analyse the way I treat my openings in those games in more depth. If I get to learn and add one extra game to my repertoire for every game that I play, I should be satisfied and confident that I'm actively learning to master my repertoire.