Waiting for round 4

60 games are still going on in round 3 of  2021 Chess.com Daily Chess Championship:

I am not sure if all these games have to be finished to start the next, final round.  But for sure there is some time to practice. 

The hardest thing for me to get used to is opening book. If I met a new line there are some moves candidates. Which one is the best?

Generally I used to base on 2 factors:

• How often such line is chosen
• Percentage of white/black wins

My algorithm is simple.

1. If there are e.g. 3 candidates. First was played over hundreds times and second just only few times, I nearly always stop calculating and chose this first one.
2. Otherwise, if the number of games for candidates is similar, I check the percentages. And once again. For example If play with white and first move has 20% of white's wins but second has over 50%, decision is quick and simple.
3. Only when number of games and percentages are similar I analyse these lines deeper in opening book.  

I think that is how most of players use opening book. Of course thanks to that you can learn new variants. But you have to spend more time analyzing these lines.

Otherwise after an opening you won't be able even to repeat this opening. I know this from my own experience. Moreover... book is over... it says no games ... you have new kind of position and no idea about its character, plans etc.

So before round 4 I want to play some games without checking lines in opening books.

Here I will show you some puzzles from these training daily games:

Puzzle 1:

Link to the game above.

Puzzle 2:

Link to the game above.

Puzzle 3:

Here I could loss but my opponent missed opportunity:

Link to the game above.

Puzzle 4:

Link to the game above.