Diary of a 10 Week Chess Improvement Student

Day 15: Step up in tactics and intermediate tactics

Finished the Step up in tactics lessons.

If you are under, say ~1600, then I do recommend doing these lessons https://www.chess.com/lessons/step-up-in-tactics they will give you some new tactical ideas.

For players around 1000 it should take about 3 hours to do all 63 mini lessons. Players around 1500 should take around two hours and 1800+ should probably be able to do them all in an hour or less.

I did another puzzle rush survival and won a 5|5 blitz game this morning. At one point I had less then one second left on the clock, I was under quite a bit of pressure but managed to win in the end. Hoping to get time for another 30 min game later today.

In the meantime I have started the intermediate tactics lessons.

Here are some other lessons that I hope to do soon:

Chess.com lessons:

https://www.chess.com/lessons/pogchamps-tactics

https://www.chess.com/lessons/every-chess-tactic-explained/

https://www.chess.com/lessons/use-your-pieces-tactically

https://www.chess.com/lessons/advanced-tactics

https://www.chess.com/lessons/advanced-tactics-1 with GM Ben Finegold

https://www.chess.com/lessons/the-most-amazing-chess-moves

https://www.chess.com/lessons/tactics-from-the-old-masters

https://www.chess.com/lessons/how-to-sacrifice-your-queen

GM Wolff series

https://www.chess.com/lessons/champion-tactics-with-gm-wolff-forks

https://www.chess.com/lessons/champion-tactics-with-gm-wolff-double-attacks

https://www.chess.com/lessons/champion-tactics-with-gm-wolff-pins-and-skewers

https://www.chess.com/lessons/champion-tactics-with-gm-wolff-discovered-check-double-check

https://www.chess.com/lessons/champion-tactics-with-gm-wolff-deflecting-the-defender

https://www.chess.com/lessons/champion-tactics-with-gm-wolff-clearance-sacrifice

Endgame tactics

https://www.chess.com/lessons/tactical-ideas-in-the-endgame 

https://www.chess.com/lessons/master-endgame-checkmates

What other resources have you found useful for learning tactics?

Day 16: more puzzles and tactics, and how to blunder less

Did another puzzle rush survival and scored 25.

On the chess tactics pro app I want to be able to see all of the easy puzzles instantly. My approach has been to do one attempt and move onto the next puzzle. I have got 83% correct but most of the final ones are more difficult and I have not seen them.

I will be moving onto the intermediate puzzles after completing the intermediate tactics lessons.

I also received the next lesson from Mr Bobula today. It is on how to blunder less. He has a video here:

I have never been 100% consistent with my blunder checks. I have been trying to do them and am gradually making fewer blunders, but I still have some way to go. For example there was a game yesterday where I was considering. Castling long would be the more aggressive option but would leave a pawn hanging. I decided to attack a bishop instead. My opponent responded by checking my King, and I lost my chance to castle. This blunder would have been avoided by just asking whether the opponent could check me on the next move.

In the video Mat analyzes the Ruy Lopez "Marshall Attack" game between José Capablanca and Frank Marshall

https://www.chess.com/games/view/13640

You can also find this game in the book World's Greatest Chess Games (Game 15: José Capablanca - Frank Marshall, New York 1918, Ruy Lopez (Spanish), Marshall Attack) https://www.chess.com/forum/view/game-analysis/worlds-greatest-chess-games

Mat also plays a 10 minute Slav game against a 2078 rated opponent.

There is an exercise to try in the email. I will do that exercise tomorrow.

Day 17: More Groovyness

I did a couple of puzzle rush survivals early this morning and both finished in the mid 20s so that is a sign of a bit more consistency in my tactics which is good.

Just when I thought my number of daily games was edging towards a sane number I received a message from the Groovy Gang saying I progressed to the next round and have another 10 games to play!

This makes it even more difficult to play live games during the week, so I plan to resume live chess this weekend.

I did a few more lessons in the intermediate tactics today. They are more advanced than the "Step up in tactics" ones and I am happy to just do a few each day over the next week or so.

Day 18: Refuting irrational thoughts

A strange thing happened to me. I woke up in the middle of the night and I felt really down about a blunder I made in a daily game this week. I was playing well but then decided to make a "clever" pawn move that allowed the opponent's knight into my territory so that I could pin the knight to his Queen. I didn't see how easily he could just unpin the Queen and went from a winning position to a losing one. Thinking more, I realized that since I started playing chess both my mood and my confidence level has been in a state of oscillation. It has been going from over-confident to under-confident and back again over and over.

Moreover, it dawned on me that all of these feelings have been rooted in irrational thought. I have either felt a good player or a terrible player based on how my recent results have gone. But neither of those things are true. I am just an average adult who has not been playing chess for very long. When I win, I am usually playing against weaker opponents and when I lose, I am usually playing against stronger opponents. I have made blunders since day one, and will make them for as long as I play chess, but I am gradually making less of them as my thinking processes evolve.

As soon as I resolved to refute any irrational ideas I had about my chess, my mood normalized in an instant. So this is a mind-hack that can be used not just for chess but for anything in life. Even if you are a very logical person, like a mathematician or a scientist, you will still have irrational thoughts sometimes. The first step is to recognize that they are irrational and the second step is to dismiss those thoughts based on the fact that they are irrational.

As for the chess game, I play on. I will make it as hard as possible of my opponent to convert his position. If I end up losing, then the game will have taught me something. And if I can fight for a draw or even a win, then that will be even better.

I went to the local club this evening and played one slow game. The opponent has played at the club for "about 10 years" so is vastly more experienced than me. Although I made mistakes and lost the game, I felt there was some improvement in my thinking since I first started playing at the club a few weeks ago. I was able to spot more threat and predict a lot more moves that my opponent would play next.

I don't play the Sicilian as Black so it isn't my strongest opening but I was pleased to see I was in book until move 8 and maintained a small advantage.

I am behind on a few tasks due to the influx of new daily games. I hope to do the Bobula exercise this weekend and analyze a few different games that I have played recently.

Day 19: Self analysis followed by engine-analysis

This is my self-analysis. I will now look at the engine to see how much I missed.

Wow! There were many blunders in this game according to Stockfish and both players had a CAPS score below 50. This makes it my worst OTB game by CAPS, although I still think it was a good game at the amateur level.

The Game Review says:

11.g4? This ignores an opportunity to threaten winning material.

(11.Bd3 is an inaccuracy)

(11.h6! is the tactic)

13.Bg5?? This ignores an opportunity to threaten winning material.

(13.h6! is the same missed tactic)

14.Qa4?? This leads to losing material.

(14.h6! is the same missed tactic)

15.c5?? This leads to losing material.

(15.Qa3 is best according to Stockfish, but does not lead to winning any material)

20.g5? This overlooks an opportunity to win material.

(20.gxf5 is best)

23.Rxh8?? This ignores an opportunity to threaten winning material.

(23.Rh7 is best)

26.Ng5? White was worse off, but now they are in a losing position.

(23.Rb3 is best)

27.Qd3?? This ignores an opportunity to threaten winning material.

(27.Bh3 is the missed tactic. Hard to find as it hangs a rook)

29.Qf3?? This gives away free material.

(29.f3 is best)

30.Nxf4?? This allows a fork.

(The missed fork is Nd4+ which attacks the King and the Queen. Opponent missed it because his rook is under threat.)

33.Ke2?? White was worse off, but now they are in a losing position.

(33.Kc3 is best, but I don't know why)

36.Qc3? This misses a better way to move away from an attack.

(I was only considering moves along the 3rd rank because I wanted to protect my King, but it would have been better defense to counter-attack with Qf8)

There was a lot that both players missed in this game. The fact that the other guy has been playing for more than 10 years suggests to me that the best moves were hard to find.

All of the above is from the chess.com analyzer. Tonight I ran the Lucas Chess analysis on it.

I think that Lucas Chess is one of the most underrated tools. The documentation isn't the best, so a lot of people don't realize how much it offers, completely for free. It has the Stockfish 14 engine and you can set the depth as high as you want. There are tons of tactics training options and I could go on and on about it. I won't now, but over the next few weeks I'll be mentioning the features that I am using for my training.

The Lucas Chess analysis is enough more brutal than the chess.com game review.

It says I made 5 mistakes and 12 blunders and my opponent made 7 mistakes and 9 blunders. As much as I love Lucas Chess, I have lost all confidence in its Elo performance evaluations as it says our opening Elo are better than Super GMs while out middlegame Elo are only in the 500s. This is garbage.

One good thing is after the analysis you can double click on the move and it will show the move amongst the top 10 moves. For example, I played the delayed Alapin move c3. At this point the position is evaluated as (+0.00) and there are five slightly better moves shown:

• d4 (+0.51)
• Nc3 (+0.32)
• Bb5 (+0.30)
• h3 (+0.23)
• c4 (+0.07)

I am still quite happy with the Alapin. I think for any under 1500s, it is a good idea to round any engine evaluations to the nearest 1/4. Even for the strongest players one or two centipawns are basically meaningless.

For my first blunder, 13.Bg5?? it says there are ten better moves:

• h6
• Ba3
• Nd2
• Rh4
• Be2
• Qc2
• Qd2
• Bd3
• Rh3
• Qd3

There are typically around 40 legal moves in the late opening/early middlegame stage, so playing a blunder doesn't necessarily mean you played one of the very worst possible moves.

On the top moves, h6 makes sense as it wins a pawn, but Ba3, Nd2 do not strike me as "aha, of course" moves. Whatever advantage they have are likely to only become apparent at least a few moves ahead, So I am not sure how much attention I should pay to these recommendations. I have heard some stories of amateur players actually playing worse after trying to play like the top engines do.

Day 20: Find all moves

There is a subtle but important difference between tactical vision and board vision. Tactical vision is about seeing available tactics whereas board vision is the ability to see all the moves available to you. Most puzzles aim to help improve your tactical vision. Many players have good tactical vision but are let down by their board vision.

The following puzzle is featured in Jonathan Levitt's book Genius in Chess and this exercise is designed to improve your board vision:

White to move. There is more than one mate in one. The aim of this exercise is to find:

1. How many legal moves are there?
2. How many checkmates are there?

Lucas chess has a feature called "Find all moves". It starts off simple with only one legal move and then gradually gets more complex as there are more and more moves to find.

I had my first taste of tournament success today, winning this tournament after playing in it for more than 6 months https://www.chess.com/tournament/international-chess-cup-2021 I had 8 wins, 3 losses and 1 draw.

Day 21: Grinding Daily middlegames and endgames

Most of my daily games are around move 20 now. A few are very easy and obvious wins already but most of them are tight games with only one pawn difference between the sides.

I have gotten my first experience of the 150 attack, playing as White. That game is still close and could go either way.

I have done a few more of the intermediate tactics lessons today, but have mostly been grinding the daily games.

I got my first win in round 3 of this "Groovy Gang" tournament. The opponent went wrong very early in the game by accepting the Vienna Gambit

Day 22: Lev Alburt puzzles and Board Awareness

I am playing in the following daily tournaments

https://www.chess.com/tournament/hypermodern-arts-1-the-nimzo-indian-defense-1

https://www.chess.com/tournament/team-united-kingdom-under-1300-club-tournament-2021-22

https://www.chess.com/tournament/caro-kann-advance-botvinnik-carls-defense-tournament

https://www.chess.com/tournament/groovy-dlxxxx-kanth-langot-tournament

I was coping quite comfortably up until a few days ago but this next round of the Groovy Kanth Langot tournament has added a lot of pressure.

I have to manage my time well enough to find 30 minutes to do tactics training each day.

This evening I am planning to do one or two puzzles from Lev Alburt's 300 important positions book.

I have read from Dan Heisman " To get to 1400, I would start with positions 5, 15, 18, 26, 27, 39, 63, 68, 75, 80, 82, 105, 109, 118, 125, 128, 129, 133, 163, 203, 206, 238, 242, 247, 265, 280."

Here is position 5, white to move.

This bishop is pinned along the diagonal with my white bishop on it, but I don't capture or move my bishop out of the way he can capture it on the next move.

The only check I can see is Bxd6 and Black can respond Rxc6.

If White plays Rxc6, and Black responds Rxc6 then White can attack the pinned rook with e5.

That is my tactic.

Yes! That's the right answer. Lev says "5. Absolutely Pinning and Winning 1. Rxd5 Rxd5 2.e5 1-0"

I discovered today this 8 year old video from IM Rensch: https://www.chess.com/video/player/achieving-full-board-awareness

I few useful points from this video:

• There is a blindfold setting on this site. Go to https://www.chess.com/settings/board and change the pieces dropdown to Blindfold.
• You should know the colour of every square on the board. Ask someone to quiz you
• After you know this, learn the corresponding "brother" square for every square
• The 3rd step is knowing the diagonal and the colour of every diagonal

Danny says this training is appropriate for beginner and intermediate players and it provides the strong foundation needed to master the board and play Blindfold Chess. 

He concludes by saying if you have bad habits while you're training then you will also have bad habits while you're playing important games, and recommending only moving the pieces in your head while analyzing games.

The follow up video with more advanced training is here: https://www.chess.com/video/player/achieving-full-board-nirvana

I haven't done the board awareness exercises yet but plan to enlist my wife in the role of giving me the random squares to say whether they are black or white. Based on the knowledge that the black square is in the bottom left hand corner and the white square is in the bottom right hand corner I can at least slowly work it out.

As a first step I recited A1 is black, A2 is white, A3 is black, A4 is white...up to h7 is white, h8 is black.

Hopefully that will be a basis for gradually getting faster and memorising the colours of every square.

I had an idea about analyzing games tonight. Some moves are much more critical than others. Being aware of what those positions are helps time management as you should spend much more time on those positions. So I am going to guesstimate those and then use the difference between the best move and second best move engine evaluations to tell me whether my ideas are correct.

Day 23: More Board Awareness, and Active Pieces

Today Mat posted these exercises to help improve your chess.

https://www.chess.com/blog/MatBobula/exercises-that-improve-your-chess

The vision section is about board awareness. I was thinking last night about how to make it easier to remember the colours of each square on the board, and I came up with a system that I think works really well.

The first step is to practice associating the letters and their numbers in the alphabet

Practice saying a1,b2,c3,d4,e5,f6,g7,h8 really fast. You want your mind to instantly make the connection between e.g. g and 7.

Once you can do this, you convert the notation for a square into a pair of numbers.

Some examples:

e5 = 5,5

g3 = 7,3

b1 = 2,1

Then you apply these simple rules:

If both numbers are EVEN, then the square is BLACK

If both numbers are ODD, then the square is also BLACK

If one number is ODD and the other is EVEN, then the square is WHITE

So for the examples above,  e5 is black, g3 is black, and b1 is white.

Mat's 4th lesson arrived in my inbox this evening. It is about active pieces.

It contains positions from 3 Grandmaster games, including the game against Piotr Bobras.

The following is a spoiler so skip this if you want to solve the position yourself as you are asked to find the move at move 20.

This is Mat Bobula's win over GM Bobras in 2007:

The chess.com analyzer categorizes move 21 as brilliant.

Here is the Capablanca game (the position starts with move 13):

Finally, check out this game. I made no mistakes and got 97% accuracy according to the chess.com engine. If only I could play this well in the rapid games...

Day 24: Piece activity, Rook endgames, and other Caro-Kann endgames

As a Caro-Kann player, a lot of my games turn into rook endgames. A few months ago I bought the book Understanding Rook Endgames by Kasten Muller and Yakov Konoval to try to help me get better.

Unfortunately most of the book is positions with only two or three pawns left on the board.

Usually when it becomes a rook endgame there are many more pawns left on the board. In the daily game I am currently playing we each have five pawns left.

The same applies to the 100 endgames you must know book; there is just nothing for positions with many pawns left on the board. I have been searching for other endgame books but they all seem to cover the same areas for rook endgames: Rook and pawn v Rook and pawn, Rook and Two pawns v Rook and pawn etc.

There are just a few general principles given that I am trying to bear in mind:

• Try to force the enemy rook into passivity
• Queening prematurely is a typical mistake
• The attacking rook usually belongs behind the passed pawn, but not always, and flexibility is called for
• The rook should not defend pawns passively
• The critical checking distance is three squares
• An exchange of pawns can prove a useful defensive idea

It is strange that King activity is not mentioned at all because I have heard elsewhere that the King as an attacking piece is worth 4 points which is almost as good as a rook. In my experience the King can be more effective than the rook at capturing pawns in the endgame due to their ability to move diagonally.

In the book Dvoretsky's endgame manual, there is a section for Four pawns vs three on the same wing. That is the most complex position I have been able to find advice for. It also has some examples of rook and two pawns vs rook and 3 pawns, and one game Zurakhov - Vaisman, USSR 1966 with rook and 5 pawns v rook and 4 pawns.

There is an old book by Shereshevsky and Slutsky called Mastering the Endgame Volume 1, which is good because it categorizes the endgames by the openings.

There are examples of endgames from Sicilian Defence, Ruy Lopez, French Defense, Caro-Kann Defense and Pirc Defense, as well as open games such as the King's Gambit and Evans Gambit.

For the Caro-Kann they show the games:

Atkins - Capablanca, London 1922

This is not completely a rook endgame as minor pieces are still on the board. I found this on chessgames.com and it has GM Maroczy annotations but unfortunately he appears not to have been interested by the endgame.

In the Shereshevsky and Slutsky book it starts at move 13 and says by move 42 Black's advantage is decisive. (Stockfish thinks Black is only better by 0.6 here)

They particularly like 44...Rb8! and 54...Na7! They say "A rook ending with an extra pawn does not satisfy Capablanca. Keeping the minor pieces on wins more quickly."

Stockfish evaluates the final position as -6.9. Whites move 52.Kd2?? moves the evaluation from -0.9 to -4.0. Atkins should have played 52.Kd3 because it doesn't allow Capablanca's Rc4 move.

Boleslavsky - Bronstein, Candidates Match (10), Moscow 1950

A double rook endgame where a draw is agreed.

Larsen - Filip, Palma de Mallorca, 1970

No rook endgame in this one.

Tal - Botvinnik, World Championship (15), Moscow 1960

There is a book by Mikhail Tal on the 1960 Word Championship that is very highly rated. I don't have it but I read the free sample and it is pretty good.

In the Shereshevsky/Slutsky book the authors think 34.g5 was a mistake. Stockfish says the previous move 33.Bc2 is worse and recommends moving it back to the b3 square again on move 34. However, when Tal did move it back there, on move 36, Stockfish says it is a blunder!

Even though Stockfish thinks 36.dxc5 is two and a half pawns better than 36.Bb3, the Shereshevsky did not identify this and made no mention of it in the book.

Spassky - Botvinnik, Moscow 1966

No rook endgame here, but a nice demonstration of winning with the Caro-Kann.

Szabo-Barcza, Leningrad 1967

A Queen endgame in this one.

Fabisovich - Okhotnik, Leningrad 1979

Unable to find this game

Ljubojevic - Portisch, Tilburg 1978

A rook and knight and pawns versus rook and knight and pawns endgame

Karpov - Larsen, Bugojno 1978

Another rook and knight and pawns versus rook and knight and pawns endgame

Dolmatov - Lechtynsky, 1981

Yusopov - Timoshenko, 1982

None of these games have given me new ideas about how to play the rook endgame I am in, but they are still good games and I hope you enjoyed them as much as I did.

Day 25: Taking a break from Chess to catch up with my Chess

Normally I would be at the chess club right now, but this week I decided to skip it and play online instead. I have a backlog of daily games and am also needing to resume live games online.

I started off with a practice 30 minute game against the Natasha bot. I resigned with 20 minutes left on the clock. The alternative moves are the ones that I should have played.

76% CAPS so about average for me.

There is a huge amount of theory on the Sicilian Najdorf. I only have a rudimentary knowledge of it. I don't remember playing 6.Be2 before, I just played it because it felt like a good move at the time. Here is the theory behind the Opocensky Variation.

I also lost against the 1500 bot tonight. I missed a lot of tactics and am not playing my best chess. I played well enough to get a winning position and then blew it.

I will try again.

Gotcha!

My main achievement today is getting a new record on 5 minute puzzle rush of 18. My previous best was 17.

Day 26: Blunders revisited

The lesson that I found most useful so far was on blundering less, because all of the games that I lose are due to one or more blunders and all of the games that I win are won by identifying and exploiting opponent blunders.

Mat's definition of a blunder is broader than the chess.com analysis engine classification, a lot of moves that the analysis engine classifies as a mistake or even just an inaccuracy are blunders when you define it as missing a tactic or allowing the opponent to play a tactic.

I have noticed that the bots are about 500 points below human players playing rapid. So the 1500 bots play at about the same level as a 1000 rated rapid player. This explains why they are 50-50 games for me.

Taking a look at the first game I played against the Pierre bot, the bot played a terrible opening but I made two blunders in the first 6 moves, and 4 blunders in the first 13 moves.

In the game I won, I blundered less. So this is going to be my focus for getting my rating up the next 100 or 200 points.

This morning I played a game against the 1700 rated Jonas bot. I was doing okay but then the bot played a clever tactic that I didn't see, it won my bishop and I resigned.

I had another win in the Groovy Gang tournament today

Day 27: 1000 Games of Chess, Tactics review, and new Insights

I have been doing a few lessons each day from the intermediate tactics series for the past 12 days and finished it this morning. The next set of lessons is Tactics from the Old Masters, which I started, but I then decided to go on a different route.

https://www.chess.com/lessons/tactics-from-the-old-masters

There are 88 lessons in the series. The description reads "Level X: Advanced Tactics" contains tactical problems that will challenge a player rated Elo or USCF 1700 or higher if attempted without using any of the hints."

This is well above my level. I have been using the hints to get through.

Another option is the Silman Teaches Tactics (1) series, which has 103 lessons.

This description reads "The classic challenges in this module contain combinations and tactical material for intermediate and expert level players (USCF or Elo ratings between 1400 and 2000+). Some challenges here are difficult even for masters and above. However, players of all levels can enjoy and learn from these examples."

I decided to redo the Introduction to Tactics series, followed by redoing the Step up in Tactics and Intermediate Tactics lessons to see how much I am able to remember from them.

There is one position that is very simple but I still messed up in the same way I did the first time round

Here the King should go to d7 rather than b7 as it guarantees that the knight will be won.

I was pleased to find that I see most of the beginner tactics instantly. They are mostly simple forks that I have practiced so many times already they are second nature.

https://www.chess.com/lessons/double-trouble is slightly more sophisticated and took me a minute to find.

For the one I got it wrong on my first try:

Qb8+ is not a bad move, but the fork Qb6 is much better here.

For some reason Queen forks seem harder to spot than other forks. Perhaps because Queen's have so many more squares that they can move to. Can you find the Queen fork here?

In this next position, playing Qc4 would be a blunder as there is a much stronger move:

I messed up this one, because pushing the pawn is not safe here. Playing Re1 stops the King from moving across

https://www.chess.com/lessons/pawn-fork

One of the lessons, https://www.chess.com/lessons/queen-fork is bad as it teaches you to play a blunder instead of the best move.

After picking up the rook on h8 it advises to play Qd4 however the Stockfish engine says it is a blunder and Qc8 or Qa8 are better moves.

The lesson says "3.Qd4 brings the queen back into play on the active central square. From here it defends the pawn on b4 and is able to set up future forks. Never leave your pieces sitting in the wings far from the field of action! Also good was 3.Qa8 and 3.Qc8, counterattacking on a6. Usually, you want to keep as many pawns as possible on the board when you are playing for a win. This is often a good idea in endings. As we will see later, winning the a-pawn is the better move, as Black could have played better than in the mainline continuation and achieved a fortress when it is very difficult for White to win. Note that 3.Qc3 also defends the b-pawn, but it does not place the queen on such an active central square. "

One of the more difficult introductory tactics is this sacrificial combination to win the opponent's Queen in https://www.chess.com/lessons/introduction-to-tactics/fatal-attraction

Insights

There is a new feature on this site called insights that has a lot of useful information in it.

https://www.chess.com/insights

This is the perfect timing for me because I just reached the milestone of one thousand chess games played on chess.com. It is a natural time for me to want to review where I am, what I am good at and what I am bad at.

It is probably only available for Beta users at the moment, you can become a Beta user anytime if you want to give it a try.

Some things I learned:

• In the daily games, based on all time. 34% of my moves are Best, 20% are Excellent, 11% Good, 8% Mistakes 5% of my moves are blunders, and 1% missed wins
• In the rapid games over the last 90 days I have better move quality stats than similar players
• Relative to similar players, I make 3.4% more Excellent Moves, but fewer Book moves and more Blunders and Missed Wins
• In the rapid games, based on all time, I have missed an alarming amount of mate in one moves. I only found 36.7% of them and similar players find 59.9% of them. However in the last 90 days I have done much better
• Strangely, the stats suggest players find a higher % of mate in two than mate in one. I found 85.7% of them (similar players find 87.6%) based on all time. I found all of them in the last 90 days.
• I have low percentages for mate in 3, 4 and 5 based on all time
• On average I play best when I play in the morning and worst when I play in the evening or at night
• I play most accurately in balanced games, and most inaccurately in sharp and wild games
• In my blitz games, none of them were smooth or balanced, they were all either sharp, intense, sudden, wild or giveaway games

I did some more rated puzzles and got up to a personal best score of 1726. My aim is to get this above 1800 before Christmas.

Day 28: Pogchamp Tactics, Daily Puzzles and Live Games and 1000 Rapid

It's been a week or more since I've played a slow live game, so I played again today, but first I did the Pogchamp Tactics lessons. I didn't watch the videos, I just did the challenges. There are four lessons; forks, pins, attacks and defending.

I won my 30 minute game and am now up to 998 so just one more win will get me over the 1000 line. The other player was playing too slowly, I had an easy win but then I made a horrendous counting blunder and gave away a free rook. Fortunately for me my opponent returned the favour later on and then ran out of time.

After 3.e5?! 3...Bf5 is the most popular move at the amateur level but it has never been played in a master game. I might try playing 3...c5 next time, but I think 3...Bf5 is okay.

The move that I am most happy about is 10...Nxe5 because I didn't want to lose my bishop and mess up my pawn structure but I was able to see that winning a central pawn outweighed those more other considerations.

My big blunder was 25...Ra7 it was a momentary lapse of discipline that could have cost me the game. Fortunately I didn't panic too much and was able to play solidly enough after that to recover and win.

I watched some of the state of chess.com video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrnP7iI4xMo and I learned that you can choose from all the previous daily puzzles by using a date picker, and puzzles get harder throughout the week. I was previously put off by daily puzzles because some of them are so hard, but now that I know how to find the easier ones I will use this feature more.

The Monday ones are just the right difficulty level for players rated around the 1000 mark. I was able to solve all of them, although one of them was on my 2nd try.

Easy daily puzzles:

This one is from a Magnus Carlsen v Wesley So game: https://www.chess.com/daily-chess-puzzle/2021-07-05

These next ones are explained by WGM Keti Tsatsalashvili:

https://www.chess.com/daily-chess-puzzle/2021-07-12

https://www.chess.com/daily-chess-puzzle/2021-07-19

https://www.chess.com/daily-chess-puzzle/2021-07-26

https://www.chess.com/daily-chess-puzzle/2021-08-02

https://www.chess.com/daily-chess-puzzle/2021-08-09

https://www.chess.com/daily-chess-puzzle/2021-08-16

https://www.chess.com/daily-chess-puzzle/2021-08-23

https://www.chess.com/daily-chess-puzzle/2021-08-30

https://www.chess.com/daily-chess-puzzle/2021-09-06

Easyish puzzles (somewhere between 1000 and 1500 level)

These are explained by WGM Tatev Abrahamyan. They typical involve two tactical motifs

https://www.chess.com/daily-chess-puzzle/2021-07-06

https://www.chess.com/daily-chess-puzzle/2021-07-13

1000 Rapid

After doing these puzzles I played another 30 minute game.

I always like it when White plays the Hillbilly attack, I think it is an awful second move but I see it a lot in my games.

Despite this I managed to get myself into a mess early on in the game. For some reason I just couldn't see any good move on move 9 so played a developing move, when a3 became the obvious move I which I had played, I played it on move 10 but it was too late by then.

Then after I brought my Queen out the opponent left his bishop hanging and I had a slight advantage again. Then he hung his rook and the game became much easier. The thing that won me the game was realizing it was the perfect time to make a Queen pseudo sacrifice and win the remaining rook.

I also did some more rated puzzles and got my score up to 1743.

This is a very proud day for me. Just less than a year ago my score was just 221 and I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. It has been a long hard road but I achieved a major milestone today. I have next to no talent so if I can do it then it is proof that anyone can. I now want to go on to reach 1100 and 1200 and beyond. Onwards and upwards.

Now I had a number of short term goals and most of them are completed:

Short term goals:

• Reach 1200 daily games
  
• Reach 1300 daily games
  
• Reach 1700 in puzzles
  
• Reach 1800 in puzzles
  
• Reach 30 in puzzle rush survival
  
• Reach 1000 in rapid games
  
• Reach 600 in blitz games
  
• Finish Logical Chess Book
• Complete Chess Factor Beginner path
• Beat Pablo Bot
• Beat all of the 1600 Bots without hints/takebacks etc

Of the remaining two I am more motivated to reach 1800 puzzles, so I will try to achieve that by the end of this month if I can, and if not, before Christmas.

* half an hour later *

Wow, I did it! 1800 puzzles. With chess, on some days you try your best and nothing goes to plan, then another day every goes right for you. This is that day for me. It is due to all the work that came before coming to fruition.

I will now push for 1900 puzzles, and 1100 rapid

Mood:

Day 29: Road to 1100 begins

It is approaching the halfway point of the 10 week course. My rapid rating has risen by 44 points since the start. My aim for the rest of the 10 weeks is to get to 1100. To achieve this I will need to increase my rapid rating at almost twice the rate that I have done so far.

This will be much more achievable if I can reduce the number of concurrent daily games I have down to a small number.

As before, I won't be setting myself any weekly rating targets, as the rating will take whatever course that it will and playing games overtired would probably lead to more losses. Instead the basic idea is:

• Trust in the process
• Analyze all the important games
• Keep follow the process, even after setbacks

First thing on the agenda is to clear down some of these daily games, I won one today where I made a lucky "blunder" that was actually the best move!

With 15.Nxe4 I missed that my rook was hanging, and after he replied Bxa1 I thought "oh no! I've blown it" but then after I played Qxa1 I realized my Queen was very strong on the long diagonal. It was only after I won the game and ran the engine analysis when I discovered that my "blunder" was the top engine move.

With it being a daily game and coming back to the game a day or two later I don't precisely remember my thought process when I made 15.Nxe4 but I knew I needed to move it so I must have seen the bishop at least. The loss of material was due to the earlier b3 move; I was not thinking so far ahead as to see that b3 made me rook more vulnerable.

Day 30: The Art of Attack and Defense

The daily games are gradually dwindling down. I won two games today and am at the endgame stage of several other games. My daily rating has reached a personal best of 1355 :-)

Up until my opponent made a very bad Queen sacrifice, I thought he played a very tough game. He put me in some tough spots and I spent a lot of time thinking through (and moving through) different lines in this game. I haven't run through the whole engine analysis but I've seen that it gave me 78% accuracy.

I have been continuing the improver path on Chess Factor. This is a long learning path targeted at the 1200-1400 Elo range (approximately) and I have completed just the first set of lessons so far which were on the art of attack and defense. The next set of lessons are on king and pawn endgames: opposition, shouldering and zugswang.

Day 31: Analyzing

I have playing unrated training games against a 1900 rapid player for a few months now. I lost our first 5 games but then won this game. I started off quite badly but managed to make a comeback. Today I want to analyze this game to understand where I went wrong early on and how my opponent went wrong and enabled me to turn the game around.

Day 32: Puzzles, Endgames and OTB

My puzzle score has crashed back down below 1700 again. Need to get this back up to over 1800 again. I have been playing too many moves based on my gut instinct instead of analyzing the positions fully. I hope to get to the stage where I can quickly solve these puzzles without thinking like I do for most of the puzzles rated under 1000, but in the meantime I need to take my time and do blunder checks before making my moves.

I played some puzzles on "that other chess site" and tried their puzzle streak, which is similar to puzzle rush survival on here, but you only get one life, not three. I scored 17.

I received the next lesson from Mat today. It is on endgames. There is this video on the passed pawn in the Endgame:

I went to the chess club tonight and played three games, lost two of them and drew the other one. In the game I drew, my opponent had an easy mate in two but didn't see it and traded off his attacking Queen. I felt that I was winning after that because I had a rook and pawns and he had a bishop and pawns, but he had three more pawns than me and we got into a position where we were both just moving our pieces back and forth.

I must have spent at least 5 minutes thinking about move 11 and 12. I wanted to get rid of the knight on e5 and I didn't want to lose my bishop on g6. I thought about castling but didn't spot how easy it was for him to move the other knight in and check me if I didn't castle. If I had seen that then I might have castled.

Even worse, on move 14 I did not see that his pawn was hanging and playing Nxe5 defends the other knight with the Queen.

I tried to attack the pawn on e5 but after Qf3 I knew that I had to break the pin and played the wrong way to do that retreating the bishop instead of just moving the King.

I was lucky to get a draw in that game, but I am happy to get a draw against a much more experienced player.

Next week it is my first taste of competitive OTB. Yes chess games are always competitive, but this one is my first competition. So one week to practice for that.

Day 33: Magnus or Nepo?

I have had very little time for chess today, but I spent a few minutes watching the start of the World Chess Championship. As soon as I saw it was a Ruy Lopez Berlin game I predicted it would be a draw. (Correction: it was actually a closed Ruy Lopez not the Berlin variation. It was still a draw though)

That's all I've seen of it, was it a good game?

(Update: I have since seen the game on the Gotham chess recap. There are several different chess masters who are covering the World Championship. I like Gotham chess and GM Daniel King)

I won this daily game today:

Tomorrow I hope to catch up with tactics, endgames, analysis and who knows maybe even actually playing some games. See you tomorrow.

Day 34: (Re)establising a training routine

When I first started doing this diary I had a clear training plan and while the game results are inevitably unpredictable, having a predictable training routine helped a lot.

Recently I have felt like I just don't have enough time to spend on all of the things I want to do. I have so many books that are either half read or completely unread, there are a tons of videos I would like to watch etc.

So it is helpful to categorize what is more and less useful and invest the most time in the most useful things. Both from my own experience and what I have read or heard from stronger players, for a post beginner chess player you can put all training activities into these categories:

Very useful

• Practicing tactics
• Playing slow live games
• Always checking for blunders
• Time management
• Analyzing your own games
• Follow the Lasker rule: when you see a good move, look for a better on
• Identifying and working on your biggest weaknesses

Somewhat useful

• Playing correspondence chess (daily games)
• Playing fast chess (10 minutes or less)
• Playing against a computer engine
• Learning chess openings
• Studying endgames
• Visualization training
• Reading chess strategy books
• Watching videos on chess
• Studying games played by other players, such as Grandmaster games

Not useful

• Arguing with people of chess forums
• Reading advanced books that are aimed at Titled Players

So I will make a plan where I spend most of my time on the first category and the rest of my time on the second category. Up until now most of my time has been spent playing correspondence chess. It is generally useful experience but it is significantly different from live chess.

Except for the occasions where you have very limited free time and too many correspondence games to play, there is no time pressure so you can spend as long as you like analyzing the positions. On chess.com you are allowed to use opening databases so you can play openings pretty well and avoid opening blunders without even knowing which opening you are playing. You don't need to mentally keep tracking of the different lines; you can move the pieces around in analysis mode and see what works and what doesn't. You do not need to have good visualization skills in correspondence chess because you can do things that would be cheating in a live game.

Today I aim to play a few slow live games, do some puzzles, and then do some endgame training and book reading.

I started off with a "friendly" game against the Isabel bot:

I used 3 takebacks and 3 hints in this game.

Normally a good game for me is an 80% accuracy rate. In this game I got 90% so the extra 10%+ will likely be due to the hints and takebacks.

Move 10 is an inaccuracy, because there is the missed tactic of capturing the bishop Bxg6 and then following up with c3 attacking the other bishop.

13.Ng5 is not the best move, but it is not clear to me why the engine recommends the slow looking 13.a3 here.

15.N5e4 is a mistake because it leads to doubled pawns. The knight could have been defended with Qd2.

18.exf5 looked like a bad move to me and I originally played 18.e5 but then took it back and played exf5. The best move is 18.f3

19...Rf7?? is a blunder from the bot. The position went from level to winning for White here and from there on it was all about trading down and using the extra pawns to promote.

In my first live game today it was a pretty straightforward win: win material with a tactic, trade down and then promote a pawn to a Queen. This is usually the easiest way to win a game of chess.

Second game I also won, although this took much longer and I won the game on time.

Opponent played the opening quite passively so I played it aggressively and won his knight early on. After that it was all about keeping enough focus to avoid any big blunders. I made a significant mistake with 24.Qe4 and could have lost material but opponent didn't see it.I thought "my Queen is protected by my knight, and I am happy to trade Queens" not realizing I would also lose my bishop with a threat. I had a big time advantage but this stage so would have still been favourite to win if (s)he had found the material winning combination.

Okay now, Endgames is the theme of the week in Mat's course and I've been watching that video on the passed pawns. In the second position the FEN is:

4k3/5ppp/4p3/1p6/8/PP5P/4KPP1/8 w - - 0 1

Try practising this position against the 3200 rated bot. The position evaluation is +0.7 and it is possible for White to win but not easy if you aren't experienced with these sorts of king and pawn endgames.

For players who are fairly new to chess (say have been playing for less than 3 years) I recommend the book Jeremy Silman's Complete Endgame Course. I don't actually think it is entirely complete, or that any single volume book can be a complete treatment of chess endgames, but it is a good overview that starts off very simple and gives you just enough for whatever rating range you are currently at. There are many more advanced endgames books available but I think the Silman's book is the best one to start with and in most cases is all that you need.

The Nimzowitsch - Tarrasch game is from 1912 and is the most famous of the 12 games that they played with each other. The game has been annotated by GM Raymond Keene:

This game is also covered in Nimzowitsch's famous book My System (p173)

The Karpov - Sokolov game was played in 1987 in the World Championship Candidates final