Nova Daily - 16 February 2025: Recap Week 7
Hi!
At the beginning of the week I had a test that I practiced and rehearsed hard for but failed. This hurts: I really had hoped that I would pass.
Failing
Don't think of it as failing. Think of it as "Not succeeding."
- Meowth, Pokémon S01E58, The Ultimate Test
Pokémon is an anime for children, and it's easy to dismiss it as childish because of that. However, between the supernatural events of the highly unrealistic plot and setting of the series, there is a wealth of lessons that you can draw as you follow the coming-of-age story of Ash Ketchum. His quest to become the very best spans 1269 episodes, each episode with its own plot and conclusion. Ash's road to mastery is long and littered with setbacks. In order to become Pokémon Master he will have to overcome his setbacks. One of these is drawing the appropriate lesson from his misfortunes. The following quote from the first season's finale sums it up beautifully:
We can learn a lot from losing. (...) I was so sure I could win. Too sure, I guess. If I knew how tough the Pokémon League was going to be, I would've trained twice as hard as I did. Hey, losing isn't really so bad. Now I know what mistakes not to make next time. And I'm a better trainer because of that. (...)
Hey Ash, let's make a promise: to become Pokémon Masters no matter what!
- Ritchie, Pokémon S01E82, Friends to the End
Witnessing that his new friend Ritchie is not feeling sorry for himself following his defeat in the Pokémon League, Ash (who himself lost to Ritchie in the prior round because his Charizard refused to obey) takes an honest look inside and concludes that he has been acting like a baby.
Ritchie is, as Iain Abernethy would say it, of the martial persuasion. Setbacks happen. Losses are inevitable. He learns what he can from the experience and moves on to the next challenge along the way, in pursuit of his own destiny.
No matter how woo-woo you think it sounds, there is something to be gained from every negative experience. It's a matter of perspective how you deal with it.
The Opening
The main challenge that I've set for myself when I started chronicling my journey is to suit myself a complete opening repertoire that's sound and solid. My reason for this is that I've lost so often because of lousy opening play that I wanted to get this part of my chessing handled once and for all. No excuses. No alibis. Invest the time, use the resources at my disposal, and get going. It's a long road. It's hard work. And I wouldn't have it any other way.
Flexibility
In yesterday's post I made a comment about flexibility in the opening. I don't have to be completely self-referring here, but I think that there's something sensible in what I said there:
Flexibility matters from a practical as well as a theoretical point of view.
If you're one-dimensional in your opening treatment, you make it much easier for your opponents to prepare for you. If word spreads that you're playing only one thing, you'll consistently get the variations that you have the most trouble with.
With regards to the theoretical side: if you put your cards on the table too quickly, you allow for the opponent to adapt to the circumstances, choose the setup that highlights the drawbacks of your chosen moves, and move-order you into an unfavourable version of your pet lines.
Keeping flexibility and wanting the opponent to reveal their plans first is what martial artists refer to as "playing chess". Entire martial disciplines such as aikido work from the philosophy that the opponent's momentum can be used to bring them down.
- Nova Stone, 15 February 2025
I too should keep this to heart. With my own openings it pays to maintain some level of flexibility. This might mean that at some point in the future I will stop relying on 2.g3 in the English and revert to other second moves, depending on black's first move.
But we're not there yet. As I learned from Robert Greene's books Mastery and The Daily Laws is that mastery takes consistent effort doing the same thing over and over again. And if ever in doubt, start with what you know. So there we are: for the time being I'm going to keep playing my 1.c4 and 2.g3 variations until I've mastered them to such an extent that I won't lose my white games in the opening anymore. I'll be doing the same with my black repertoire, although it will likely take longer. And for this purpose it would be good to use blitz more often.
No Botvinnik in the Symmetrical
For my English repertoire, I'm mainly relying on the repertoire as presented by Marin and Ntirlis, with The Iron English from Williams/Palliser as a backup for Botvinnik systems. My first adventures in the English were with this system against essentially everything.
In the Symmetrical English, neither Marin nor Ntirlis recommends a Botvinnik system. It's playable, it's easy enough to follow, and it's useful to know as a surprise weapon. But against the Symmetrical I don't think that it should be my go-to. I won the game, but not as a result of brilliant opening play.
Advanced obscurity
This week I had a weird game with the Caro-Kann Advance. My opponent threw in the towel at move 11 with white, which allowed me to look more into some of the more obscure lines. It's worth being aware of the trash that people like to throw in your face, so that you can cut it to size to see what it's really all about. I've made some progress learning the first bits of these sidelines.
The Middlegame
Most often, the middlegame is where the fun starts. Knowing the middlegame plans is essential for us humans and mortals, and you can see the opening as the preparing for the middlegame. So you have to know where your forces are heading and what they will be doing there.
Benko-Sacrifice
There is an interesting Plan B when black prematurely plays the knight into d4 and has to recapture with the e-pawn. White can sacrifice the b-pawn to disrupt black's coordination.
A weird pawn on f4
In the CK Exchange, the pawn doesn't belong on f4. But black shouldn't be too reluctant to allow a trade on f5:
Don't trade your bishops for knights!
In this position I took on d4 with my good bishop, leaving me with only bad pieces:
So all in all, there's a lot to take away from this week's games.
The week's recap
February still has 12 days to go. There will be plenty of time to enter more moves and lines in the Caro-Kann portion of my repertoire, but they don't enter themselves. I should get going with this. I entered over 100 extra moves to my repertoire, but that's not nearly enough to be complete.
This week I:
- studied some lines in the English, and some uncommon deviations in the Caro-Kann
- won all of my rapid games
- did a lot of visualisation puzzles
My current scores:
- Rapid rating: 1931 (+47)
- Blitz rating: 2122 (=)
- Bullet rating: 2464 (=)
- Survival: 59 (=)
- Puzzle Battle: 1497 (+11)
- Puzzles: 3597 (+23)
- Repertoire: 3727 moves (+120)
Blogs:
https://www.chess.com/blog/nova-stone/nova-daily-10-february
https://www.chess.com/blog/nova-stone/nova-daily-11-february
https://www.chess.com/blog/nova-stone/nova-daily-12-february
https://www.chess.com/blog/nova-stone/nova-daily-13-february
https://www.chess.com/blog/nova-stone/nova-daily-14-february
https://www.chess.com/blog/nova-stone/nova-daily-15-february
