Study log. 04 Sep 2016
Due to my work I wasn't really able to do any training for last couple of days. I did do a few tactic exercises and as well played a few blitz games, but I wouldn't consider this a training, merely a pastime.
Tactics
Today I did 20 exercises on chess.com tactics trainer and 3 on chesstempo. On chess.com I scored 17 out of 20, on chesstempo 1 out of 3. There was only one failed exercise in which I didn't see the motive. It was this. I tend to fail similar exercises very often. Partly because it is somewhat psychologically hard to give up a queen even in exchange for two rocks for example.
All other positions I failed mainly due to being too pushy with calculations. Also because of being overly confident in my calculations and on't verifying calculations after every move of pieces. I need to get a habbit of verifying my calculations every time the pieces have moved on the board. For example:
I correctly saw the correct motive that the white queen has few options where it can retreat should it have been attacked and I calculated the line: 1. ... g4 2. Nxf6+ exf6 3. Qf4 and I thought that I would trap the queen with 3. ... Nd3. So while solving the task I made all these moves without verifying my calculations after each move and of course it turned out that the Queen has option to go to c7, something I didn't see when doing calculations. Had I stopped for a second and verified my line before the third move, I would certainly have seen that and would go 3. ... Nd5! indeed trapping the queen. I'd say that the wast majority of the problems I fail are of the same nature. I see the motive, but fail calculations
Games
Today I played two games and lost both
I first should have lost this game, then I got winning position due to my opponents blunder and finally I lost the game on time having already decisive advantage.
