IgnoratioElenchi33’s Intermediate Adult Improver Plan

Hi all,

I finally buckled down and purchased one of the Premium plans. I played some casual chess with some friends and family when I was growing up but never studies it nor really attempted to get better.

I started playing this again in February 2019 when a co-worker suggested I join so we could play some online games. Since then, I was bitten by the chess bug and have been playing it non-stop ever since.

My goal with this plan is to really push my rating in Blitz and Daily games. For Daily games, I've been stuck between my peak rating of 1441 and 1400 (or even a bit less) for about 7 months now and really want to start pushing that again. For Blitz, I've been stuck around the 1200 mark for about 5 months as well. I easily play 7 hours per week, so I'll likely be doing quite a bit of the extra work provided in the plan.

My current ratings are below:

• Chess.com Bullet: 1207; Peak rating: 1250 (3,384 games)
• Chess.com Blitz: 1197; Peak rating: 1251 (1,996 games)
  • I really beat up my rating with the last 3|2 games I played. I typically do MUCH better on the 5|5 time control.
• Chess.com Rapid: 1359; Peak rating: 1393 (81 games)
• Chess.com Daily: 1426; Peak rating: 1441 (523 games)
• Chess.com Puzzles: 1904; Peak rating: 2051 (1995 rated puzzles)

I also really enjoy a few of the variants offered here and these are the two I play most often:

• Chess.com Daily 960: 1270
• Chess.com Fog of War: 1808

Yeah, I don't know how I got up to an 1800 rating on Fog of War either, but here we are.

Here are the resources I'll be using:

• Woodpecker Method: This may be a purchase I make down the line. For now, I'm going to do a mix of Rated Puzzles and Survival Puzzle Rush. My best survival Puzzle Rush was a 31 and I really want to beat that.
• Strategy Review: I'm going to use three lesson series (two of which I've already started):
  • Name Your Pawns:https://www.chess.com/lessons/name-your-pawns-the-queenside
  • Master Material Imbalances:https://www.chess.com/lessons/master-material-imbalances
  • Pawn Structures That Win: https://www.chess.com/lessons/pawn-structures-that-win
• Opening Review: I've started working on "A Kaleidoscope of Openings" https://www.chess.com/lessons/a-kaleidoscope-of-openings and want to finish this course.
• Endgame Review: The Drawing Zone, Part 1 https://www.chess.com/lessons/the-drawing-zone-part-1. I think this is something I really struggle with. At some point, I'm in a losing position and have drawing chances, but I continue to move as if I'm trying to win.

When I analyze my games, I think this makes the most sense:

• Rapid Games: Level 3 Analysis (Key Moments + Full Game Analysis)
• Blitz Games: Level 2 Analysis (Key Moments)

I'm excited to get this 12-week run started and see where my ratings go. Based on the average rating progression, I'm hoping to push my current Daily rating to 1475 and Blitz rating back up to a stable 1250.

Stable 1250 here we go! This is so detailed, I love it.

Your plans sound great! As someone just a bit below your current rating level, I’m interested to see how everything works for you. Good luck!

Thanks, guys! I'm also planning on improving my Rapid rating, but I just don't know what a good rating goal would be since I haven't played it as often. Playing that many games in a week should see an increase though.

To get myself ready for the slower time controls, I decided to play a 30-minute game today. I didn't need the full time, but this was a great game (I thought). I did make one blunder, but the only winning move wasn't so obvious and my opponent only saw what I did, so I'm pretty happy with it.

Very nice game

Thanks! Went way better than my game today haha

Ugh. My games were really messy today. I think it's because I had played some bullet earlier in the day and was just used to moving quickly so I didn't calculate out a lot of best moves. I won two of four but my accuracy ratings were just crap. In one game I got lucky my opponent didn't play better or it would have been three losses for me today.

• Game 1: Loss; 72.7% accuracy; 84.5% after retries
• Game 2: Win; 55.4% accuracy; 93.5% after retries
• Game 3: Win; 22.8% accuracy; 82.7% after retries
• Game 4: Loss; 60.6% accuracy; 81.1% after retries

The last game really made me mad as well because I had the advantage but ended up blundering a bishop and never recovered.

In that fourth game, I have a way to look at 20.Nxg7 that may help you in future games.

At that point, you were up a piece for two pawns, with better center control. When you're in a superior position like that, I prefer to think of things in terms of what's the % chance of winning. If there is a big sacrifice and my opponent is winning when it doesn't work, I need to make sure that I really calculate that it's good for me. Otherwise, it's best to play solid and use the extra piece to control the game, eventually pick off some pawns or create tactics.

SmarterChess Thanks for the tips! When I was going through the analysis, I was clearly winning until I just made a quick move and totally blundered my bishop. I wasn't even in time trouble, so I could have taken a long time to calculate it out.

You're welcome! Yes, that's true with spending more time. Time management is always easier in hindsight

Yesterday I played the four suggested 5|5 games as well as 8 more. I'm finding that I'm very inconsistent with my accuracy ratings, which goes to my losses and wins. Based on a review of my games, I'd say it's an issue of tactical play in the middle game. More on this later.

Today was all about tactics. I dedicated an hour to this today and focused on Survival Puzzle Rush. I've done really poorly lately with that because I just don't give the calculations a chance. Not so today. I finally beat my previous record and got up to 33 which is two over my previous best! Really happy about that.

To round out the time, I did some 3-min puzzle rush as well and got a daily best of 19 correct, which is close to my all-time best of 20 in that timeframe.

This leads me to my next idea, and I'm wondering on thoughts for this:
When I am going to play a 15|10 or longer game, I should really do 1-2 rounds of survival rush and really focus on making calculations. When I'm going to do a 5|5 game, I would do a 5-min puzzle rush to focus on quick calculations. I think that might help with my gameplay instead of just going right into playing mode.

Thoughts?

Nice puzzle scores 👍

Your plan of doing the puzzles before playing sounds like a great way to warm-up for the games.

My current ratings are below:

Chess.com Bullet: 1213; up from 1207
Chess.com Blitz: 1211; up from 1197
Chess.com Rapid: 1364; up from 1359
Chess.com Daily: 1420; down from 1426
Chess.com Puzzles: 1952; up from 1904; peaked above 2000 but went back down with a few puzzles
Chess.com Survival Puzzle Rush: hit an all time high of 33!

Chess.com Daily 960: 1282; up from 1270
Chess.com Fog of War: 1857; up from 1808

All in all a good week. Some of the rating loss in daily games were do to already losing positions at the beginning of the week and at least two games I'm 95% positive were won by engines rather than my opponent. Time will tell if they get the banhammer.

Feeling good so far with my rating improvement after having played quite a few games.

Alright, so posting this last week was a little more sporadic. I kept up with the plan other than having to make up some games on Thursday. I also played a ton more 15|10 games than recommended. I played a few higher and a few lower-rated than myself and had really inconsistent results. I find that I'm just not taking the time to calculate out some moves and end up blundering. These longer time controls are hard for me because I like to play a bit faster.

All in all I'm happy though as my blitz rating continues to go up (I actually peaked at 1260 this week but then lost a bunch of points too) and my daily rating is the highest it's ever been, though I'm in a losing position on at least two games.

Also exciting is I'm actually moving into the second round of a tournament, which I've never done before as I took first place in my bracket. I was really happy with how I played those games and ended up beating a higher-rated player twice.

Since the focus is really on better chess fundamentals, I'm only going to include the following status from here on out:

Wow! My results so far have been really well other than for Rapid. I'm really not sure why Rapid is such a weird time control for me. I am thinking that with the amount of time I can think about moves on Daily games, my Rapid rating shouldn't be far behind but it's dropping instead of increasing. I'm going to do a deep-dive analysis on my Rapid games to see if there are any constant takeaways I can use in my following games.

Here are my results so far:

I didn't do as many puzzles this week so I wasn't expecting to beat any scores but my rated puzzle scores did increase a bit. I'm also really happy with my Blitz and Daily game increased. I've actually hit my Daily game rating goal and we're only in week 3! I'm still playing about 17 Daily games with another 8 coming in; most of these games are from tournaments I've entered.

Sometimes rapid can be hard because it's that in-between time control. Can't play purely on intuition, but also can't think too long. It'll turn upwards soon!

I surely hope so. Just lost yet another 15|10 game that I should have won and blundered my way to a loss. Sigh.

Looking at the past few games that I lost with a lower than a 50% accuracy rating, I came up with the following trends: backward pawns, castling, and using the bishop pair. Related to the backward pawn is just pawn pushes in general and when to go ahead with the push versus when to do some preparation moves.

Not going to lie, I'm really frustrated with my results this week. I have absolutely destroyed my rating in Rapid; this happened when trying to gain points back and just digging myself deeper. I also lost 40 points this week with an unfortunate string of Daily game losses, but I'm at least still up 12 points total from the beginning of the plan and expected some ups and downs on that rating. Here are my ratings as they've gone week by week:

Interestingly enough, other than Daily games, my highest rating is now in Bullet (1262), which makes absolutely no sense to me. It's been really disheartening.

However, now that I've been able to calm myself, I watched this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YChgaPoJpjQ&ab_channel=ChessGoals) and I actually did the takeaway spreadsheet for all of my Rapid games so far in the plan (that's 62 games). 

By far, the biggest two takeaway from my losses are these: I am rushing these games way too fast and I really need to work on tactical thinking. For the openings, as white, I am losing most games when I play a variation of the Scotch. I need to go through the Chessable course I used previously to learn this opening and really work on understanding the ideas of the middle game.

As Black, I can't even believe this, but I'm really struggling to win in the Italian game. I thought I knew this opening like the back of my hand, but the data suggests I just suck at it. I have a 2-7 record, which is frankly abysmal. The majority of these come out of the Guioco Piano game, so I really need to find a better response to it.

So, to end this, the takeaways are:

• I need a lot more tactical work. I am going to make it a point to do at least 20 minutes of Survival Puzzle Rush and Rated Puzzles each day.
• No rushing! In Rapid, once out of the opening phase (and maybe even in it!) I am going to spend at least one minute thinking about each move I make to ensure I have a plan, look for tactics, and look for my opponent's plan and weaknesses.
• Opening review
  • For Black: find a better response to the Italian game
  • For White: Review the Scotch game

I know the feeling of digging a deeper hole for yourself! I had a couple of bad weeks recently but the last week was a little better (I'm still well below my starting blitz rating though). Try your best to focus on the things you're learning/improving in, and if worst comes to worst just go and have a rant in the Discord and Matt might give you a pep talk