arghasen's journey in chess

W1D5:

Study: Finished one more chapter of Pandolfini's book. Also did 36 mate in 1 puzzles from Polgar's book.

4 blitz games - 2/2/0

Puzzles- 143/500

Thanks @SmarterChess and @Prestajay for your kind words. 

W1D6:

Study: None, busy day at work

2 blitz games- 2/0/0

Puzzles - 148/500

W1D7:

Study:  Studied Rook and pawn endgames and it helped me in one game already. I managed to draw a passed pawn game. 

Started to play rapid games on Lichess. The chess goals Q&A highlighted the need to take more time before moves and blitz is too fast for that.

4 rapid games 2/0/2

3 blitz games- 1/2/0

Puzzles - 160/500

W2D1:

Study:  Lots of puzzles today. Jesse's article of tactics I found and read. It is a great read.

2 rapid games 2/0/0

1 blitz game 1/0/0

Lost 2 daily games, rating there is slowly coming down to my actual strength.

Puzzles- 230/500 

W2D2:

Study:  A few more pages of Pandolfini. 

2 bullet games 0/2/0 (my first bullet games, didntt enjoy them )

Lost one more daily game.

Puzzles - 320/500

W2D3:

Study: Not much, pretty busy day

2 rapid games- 2/0/0

2 blitz games- 0/1/1

Puzzles - 380/500

W2D4:

Study: Watched a couple of random videos, not much help studying random stuff

5 blitz games- 1/0/3

Puzzles- 385/500

W2D5:

Study:  A solid day of study, finished chapter 12 of Pandolfini. Watched the stream of COB All Stars, an amatuer tourney commentated by IM Sagar Shah so is brilliant to learn from. I think the beginner/intermediate players on this forum would learn if they follow the tourney. 

5 Blitz games 1/1/3

Puzzles - 441/500 (A bad day though, I missed a lot of the puzzles)

With puzzles now I am definitely better as earlier I didnt even see the move, now most of the time the solution is not a surprise, I had seen the move but not considered it as good. This is most of the time in case of a Sacrifice or a move that makes a pin. I am unable to calculate much in those scenarios.

W2D6:

Study:  Not much study, just tried out playing something other than the london. Most of my games as black turn out to be e4 so playing it as white seemed a good idea. 

16 blitz games- 6/9/1(blitz rating down to 889) 

Puzzles- 446/500( once again past 1500)

Picked up the platinum membership on chess.com. Hopefully will be able to use that to push puzzle rating to 1600 and the ability to analyse right after the game seems a good idea.

W3D1:

Study: Guaco Piano I studied a bit as white and the Morra Gambit against the Sicilian

9 blitz games - 7/2/0

Puzzles - 485/500 (Peak rating of 1576 hit)

End of March Update:

Blitz - 871(+17)  127 games 61/4/62

Rapid- 1112(-7)  13 games 6/0/7

Puzzles - 1250 positions (Peak Rating: 1576)

This is the end of the first 3 months of being serious about chess. During this period my primary goal has been to get into the habit of regularly solving puzzles, analyzing games after playing, study about the game. 

Now it is about ramping up the next 3 months. I don't like to make rating based goals as I believe rating is a byproduct of playing well. The focus is on improving. I have been working through Pandolfini's book and there are 2 more chapters to read. So finishing it is my first priority.

April Targets:

Study Logical Chess: Move by Move 

Study Basic Endgames (https://www.chessable.com/course/6371)

Study Opening Priciples(https://www.chessable.com/course/21302)

Tactics Training - 2000 positions

Games: 

Blitz - 150 games (I play mostly 5|5)

Rapid - 30 games (I play mostly 15|10)

Think all these targets are realistic. 

Looking forward to the next 3 months of updates. These targets look great.

Day1:

A solid start to the campaign. Faced the Traxler counter attack for the first time against my Fried Liver attack. After a swift loss watched 2 videos on it and managed to win 1 of the 2 times i faced it after.

Had a lot of time yesterday to play and I did play a lot.

25 blitz games - 13/0/12 

Puzzles- 66/2000

Day2:

Our worst performance so far. I didnt study much and played a lot of games. 

34 blitz games - 14/1/19 

That's an impressive number of games! Are you noticing any consistent takeaways to work on lately?

What a great question @SmarterChess!! Thinking about it and reviewing my games again I found there are indeed quite a few  consistent themes I need to work on.

1. I am playing Guaco Piano mostly these days and as black I am consistently getting into trouble when Nd4 is played and I blunder away something in that situation. I am looking to do some work on that and see what I should do.

2. I am managing to reach R+Minor Piece+ P vs R +P kind of endgames but not able to convert. The opponent seems to whittle away my pawns slowly and I am unable to same. I hope once I do the endgames course I will managed to handle them better.

3.  While my board vision has improved in general, I tend to have tunnel vision  especially when attacking and tend to blunder away my rook/queen.  Also I get too focused trying to save a pawn and lose material elsewhere. Not sure how to work on this?

4.  A lot of my games I am facing Kingside attack as soon as I castle and end up losing a piece or exchange. This one I am hoping to improve once I study Logical Chess. I have only 1 game where I castled queenside. Maybe I need to look at that as well. 

Love these takeaways. keep up the good work!

Day 3/4:

Study: Worked on takeaway 1. Found a short & sweet on the Italian Game on Chessable. While it is from White's perspective looking at black's responses in the course I now have some ideas that I intend to use. Also found some issues in my white move order which were leading to the tactical forks in the opening. 

Blundering my queen has continued to plague me in my games. 

8 blitz games - 6/0/2

Days 5-8:

Not much play/study due to being extremey busy at work. 

14 blitz games - 9/1/4

Puzzles - 711/2000

The weekend I plan to do some more study and hopefully coverup.

Days 9-11:

Study: Openings and Endgames mainly. Focused on Smith-Morra Gambit, Italian Game and French Exchange Variation as i look to settle on my basic responses to the various things black is playing against my 1.e4.

43 blitz games - 21/1/21

I think I have a mental block against players rated 1000+. 2-3 games i reached winning position against them but took too much time and ran into time pressure before blundering.