IgnoratioElenchi33’s Intermediate Adult Improver Plan

I couldn't resist it, especially since the new Mortal Kombat movie is coming out.

ROUND 2 WEEK 1 DAY 3

I had a great 15|10 game today. While my accuracy wasn't through the roof, I didn't have any blunders and a lot of the "mistakes" were simply less effective moves in a winning position.

I didn't quite have the time for another full 15|10 game, so I instead went up against one of the bots here. I played against Antonio (1500) but with some of the helps. I wanted to walk through the suggested moves and figured out why those would be good moves which was kind of an interesting walk-through.

One thing I forgot to mention is I've been doing 15 rated puzzles each day so far this week since the focus this week is on Woodpecker puzzle training. I hit an all-time high rating of 2142 but then had a string of unfortunate misses that sent my rating back down. 

The thing that kills me about the rated puzzles here is that you might get upwards of 10 points if you solve a really difficult puzzle, but then miss any of them, and you immediately lost 10-20 points per puzzle. It's a really one-sided affair when doing these.

ROUND 2 WEEK 1 DAY 4

Played four 5|5 games and went another day of 2-2-0. I'm winning the lower rated games pretty convincingly, but the higher rated players are just finding tactics that beat me. Keeping steady right around 1305 right now on Blitz.

On Rapid though, my rating is FINALLY starting to climb again. I'm not blitzing out moves like I was previously and am getting some decent positions. I had one scary moment in today's 15|10 game, but managed to defeat my opponent. That game is below:

ROUND 2 WEEK 1 DAY 5

Ugly day for chess. I ended up winning my first game but the engine hated every minute of it. I lost my second game which I went for another 30 minute game. That one was just ugly. I missed tactics, hung a bishop for no reason and really struggled to put together a game plan for how to coordinate my pieces.

15|10 Game

30|0 Game

In Rapid so far, I am very much struggling as white with a record of 1-1-1 and my average analysis bar is advantage Black at moves 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50. For white, I've been trying to learn (and so play) the Ruy Lopez and it may just not be a great opening for me. Time will tell as we move deeper into opening work.

As Black, however, I am 3-1-0. My average opponent has a slight advantage at move 10, I take the advantage by move 20, lost it in 30 and 40, but pick it back up by 50. The piece I'm missing most in these games are tactics, usually deeper than a simple 1-2 move tactic, however.

Ruy Lopez is what I call an "investment opening" (I put King's Indian and some Sicilians in the same category). This means that these openings are challenging to learn and to play properly because of the variety of situations and pawns structures you're likely to meet. But on the bright side, they are tremendously instructive and will help you develop your chess by leaps and bounds if you persevere. So I can only recommend you to hang on and try to spend some time to better understand what's going on here. This will certainly pay dividends in the future.

If you can find it, I recommend the old book Mastering the Spanish by Bellin & Ponzetto which helps by identifying a variety of central pawn structure in the Ruy Lopez and how to cope with them.

In the game against ChessBrain, the opening knowledge wasn't a problem : hanging your Bishop on b5 definitely was though :-) (7.Bc4 followed by f4 and you're just fine)

Thanks @hicetnunc! I agree. I hung my bishop for no reason and never worked my way back to equalize. It was just a dumb oversight.

I have a course on Chessable that will be looking at multiple lines in the Ruy Lopez so I'll definitely keep at it. I'll also see if I can find that book on either Chessable, Amazon, or maybe even a local bookstore. Thanks for the recommendation!

• ROUND 2 WEEK 1 DAY 6
  Ugly ugly chess on Day 6. My record went 1-3-0 on the 5|5 games and I lost the 15|10 game. I should have won one of the Blitz games I lost. I was doing fairly well and won the enemy queen but then missed two "Mate in 1s," a "Mate in 4" and some other "Mate in X moves" only to lose track of king safety and get checkmated by a freaking pawn. It was embarrassing. In my last Blitz game I misplayed the middle game of the Traxler counter-gambit; I could have won that game had I taken more time to think about the moves I was making.

• ROUND 2 WEEK 1 DAY 7
  I played a few Blitz games to try and up my score again. I dropped pretty low but climbed my way back up to 1295 so I'm only down a game worth of points. My Rapid rating is up even with the loss yesterday and I'm getting some good data on things I need to work on. Daily is also down a few points from some sticky positions I found myself in. I am pretty mad at one of the games as I missed a really nice tactic that would have won me the enemy queen for a rook and I would have been in a winning position. But my Rated Puzzle rating is up and I've been doing A LOT of puzzle work, both Rated Puzzles on chess.com and Woodpecker Method puzzles on Chessable.

• Woodpecker Method and Tactics training
  My plan for the four Woodpecker Method weeks is to work on tactics daily in the Intermediate exercises (64-65 puzzles per week; 255 puzzles during the 12-week plan). On the last day of the week, I'll also complete 60 minutes of the beginner puzzles and see how far I can get since I previously did 5 rounds of the cyclical Woodpecker Method. For this first week, I completed 157 puzzles within the allotted 60 minutes; not too shabby!

Kicked myself over losing this game:

ROUND 2 WEEK 2 DAY 1

This week is all about openings and I'm going to be doing a study of the Ruy Lopez on Chessable. My plan is to go through the entire course between today and Friday (which means reviewing 3-4 variations a day) and then going through the entire course on Saturday.

I actually played three Rapid games today and went 1-2. I easily won the first one and wound up with a whopping 98% accuracy. My opponent missed a mate in 1 that I also missed , but that was pretty much the only real mistake I made in the game.

Those moves just seems logical in the game. However, my next two didn't go so well. My second game I lost to a checkmate I didn't see but should have considering how much time I had and could have reviewed the entire position. My third game was won on a simple miscalculation. My opponent had had his bishop blocked by a pawn for most of the game. That pawn was moved and I didn't think of that with the batter he had on my king (two rooks and a bishop). Had it not been for that bishop, I would have had the possibility of forking the king and two rooks and gone into a winning endgame.

Speaking of endgames, I was actually proud of the endgame I played on this last game. I kept going and was able to put some of the study I did in "100 endgames you must know) to use.

Here's the 98%er:

And this is the one I kept it up in a tricky endgame:

Your learner series interview has been posted. Thanks, Brett!

https://chessgoals.com/learner-series-17/

@SmarterChess Yay! Excited to see that up now  

I went on a family vacation the last few days so I haven't been able to post updates, but I kept up with the study plan!

ROUND 2 WEEK 2 DAY 2
I continued with my plan of playing four 5|5 games along with an additional 15|10 game. All of them went horribly wrong and I lost every single one of them. I can't even be happy with any of them because the accuracy ratings were just abysmal. In the 15|10 game, I rushed my moves too much, my opening and endgames went horribly wrong, and I just didn't put together any logical strategy. Not a great day for chess and it dropped my Blitz rating 31 points. Ugh.

ROUND 2 WEEK 2 DAY 3
Much better day for chess today. Even when playing on my phone (since I didn't have a computer), I took my time and thougth out the moves much more deeply. I ended up winning both of my 15|10 games today and I called it a day. Even better was that I won my first game with a 98.7% accuracy rating.

ROUND 2 WEEK 2 DAY 4
Today's games went ok. I won three 5|5 games, lost two 5|5 games (I played an extra) and then lost my 15|10 game, which was even more heartbreaking because my accuracy was 93.1%; my opponent had a 96.1%. The other thing that killed me is I could have won the 15|10 game had I calculated the endgame even more. I move the pawns on the wrong side of the board which gave my opponent a passed pawn that I couldn't beat on the kingside.

Additional Study:
Since this week is all about openings, I've been reviewing 3-4 variations of the Ruy Lopez on the Chessable course I have. The plan is to have completed the course by Friday and then review the entire course again on Saturday. While it's taken some time, I think I'm finally getting the ideas behind the Ruy Lopez down and can actually play it now. I've also been dabbling in Puzzle Rush and Rated Puzzles since I had some extra time on vacation.

ROUND 2 WEEK 2 DAY 5

Great games today! I played two 15|10 games and easily won both of them. Instead of doing a full analysis in the comments of the game, I've been keeping a spreadsheet open that looks at the ratings difference, what I would score myself, what my accuracy was, and areas of improvement. I did pretty well in both of my games. I took somewhat of a gamble on one of them, but it ended paying off. I calculated it just far enough to ensure that my opponent would be stretched too thin covering both sides of the board.

As Black, when playing against d4, I've been experimenting with e5, the Englund Gambit. While this might be considered a dubious opening at the highest levels of the game, I think it's a great response to d4 if you don't like to play the Queen's Gambit openings. My opponent was not prepared for that either and quickly lost the game not paying attention to a M1 threat.

In my second game, I got the white pieces and played the Ruy Lopez. I've been doing better with this opening as of late, which means my opening training is starting to pay off. This is the game in which we went to a full-on endgame and I ended up with a Q+K vs K ending where my opponent resigned.

ROUND 2 WEEK 2 DAY 6

I played the recommended four 5|5 games today and went 2-2-0 today. In three of those games, I actually played pretty well with accuracy ratings of 78.2, 99.7, and 90.5. My last game (shown below) I could have won had I not gone too fast and actually taken my time with the moves. My opponent hung his last knight and I would have easily won afterward. Lessons learned.

ROUND 2 WEEK 2 DAY 7

Today was a pretty easy day. No live games but I kept up with my Daily games and, as planned, reviewed the entire Short and Sweet Ruy Lopez course. Since I had gone through all of the variations during the course of this week, I reviewed the full course again today which actually only took 15 minutes. I think I have a pretty good understanding of the basic ideas in each position and that has been playing out (pun not intended) in the games I've been playing.

END OF WEEK RATINGS

Not exactly where I'd hoped I would be, but Rapid rating is basically maintaining, I gained some points back in Blitz from bad losses earlier in the week, and I'm keeping Rated Puzzles up. I also set a new PR on Survival Puzzle Rush of 34. 

Darn, fell behind on providing updates on progress here.

ROUND 2 WEEK 3 DAY 1
Daily Games:
15|10 Games + Spreadsheet Analysis:

Takeaways: My first game was pretty good. I had one "blunder" but it was just because the evaluation went back to close to even. My second game did not go as well. I made two blunders, three mistakes, and five inaccuracies out of 44 total moves. Of the two blunders, both were related to king safety. The first is I hung a bishop due to an open king and the second was missing a mate in 1 threat *le sigh*.

Strategy: Reviewed five problems on "Mastering Chess Middle games"

ROUND 2 WEEK 3 DAY 2
Daily Games:
5|5 Games + Key Moment Analysis:
15|10 Games + Spreadsheet Analysis:

Takeaways: I went overboard on the 5|5 games and played nine instead of four in addition to four 15|10 games. On the 5|5 games, I went 5-4-0 so my rating climbed a little and I went 2-2-0 on the 15|10 games. In the 5|5 games, the issues I saw on my blunders and mistakes were king safety (mating net) in two games, hanging pieces in two games, a K+N fork, and a R+R fork. In the 15|10 games, the issues were hanging pieces in two games, a Q+K fork from a pawn race, missed tactics on winning a hanging piece from my opponent, and issues with king safety in a heavy endgame in two games.

Strategy: Reviewed five problems on "Mastering Chess Middle games"

ROUND 2 WEEK 3 DAY 3
Daily Games:
15|10 Games + Spreadsheet Analysis:  

Takeaways: Ugh. I don't feel like I'm improving but am slipping backwards on my games. I lost both today and just didn't feel great about either. Looking at the accuracy, I did ok on one (81%) but didn't do well on my second (62%). From the blunders and mistakes in the first game, I need to mostly work on endgame ideas; I didn't actually see anything completely wrong with tactics and strategy in the opening and middle game. In the second game, however, I saw a number of tactical problems. The biggest issue is looking for forcing attacks on pieces and refuting any ideas looking at my opponents best moves. I had a couple of moves where I completely forgot that a defender of my bishop moved and so was hanging.

Strategy: Reviewed one problems on "Mastering Chess Middle games"

ROUND 2 WEEK 3 DAY 4
Daily Games:
5|5 Games + Key Moment Analysis:
15|10 Games + Spreadsheet Analysis:

Takeaways: I am officially in a slump.

I just lost my first ever game in Blitz to time. I apparently didn't have sounds on and didn't realize how low I was until it was too late. Frustrating, especially since I was at 91% accuracy and (according to the engine) was in an even endgame with better placed rooks. In my Blitz games, however, I didn't really have anything tactically go wrong other than looking for other forcing moves on stuck pieces.

My Rapid game, however, was just garbage. I hate playing 1.d4 as Black. I decided to go with the Englund Gambit, which probably would have worked fine had I not made a stupid Queen check on move 4. After that, I was getting chased around and could never develop my pieces. Even the ending game analysis was "SUDDEN — One mistake made all the difference.".

Strategy: I reviewed five problems on the Chessable course, "Mastering Chess Middlegames." I'm not going to lie, I don't understand a lot of these and don't specifically like the structure of this book. But since I bought it, I'm going to keep working through it and see if I can get anything out of these problems. And funny enough, tonight's problems were actually much more logical to me and I at least found all of the correct moves in my candidate moves.

ROUND 2 WEEK 3 DAY 5

Daily Games:
15|10 Games + Spreadsheet Analysis:

Takeaways: Two Rapid games today. The first one, I fell for the same thing I've been missing the past two weeks with king safety. I have a hanging piece that is then open to attack with a check on the king. I really need to work on seeing that tactic and getting my king to safety. This has been the downfall of at least three of my games in the past two weeks. The second game went fairly well; my accuracy wasn't stellar, and I missed a really bad pin on a rook and my king, but my opponent also missed it so I got away with it. The second game also had a really nice checkmate in the middle of the board.

Strategy: I again reviewed five problems on "Mastering Chess Middle games." Not all of them made complete sense to me, but working through the move orders I think will help me see some of these 5-8 move tactics down the road.

Updating this thread basically fell off the wayside the last week. Suffice it to say that I was getting frustrated with how my games were going, so I decided I needed a change of pace. The other thing I realized is that the vast majority of my lost games were due to tactical issues.

With that in mind, I remembered reading a blog post from @SmarterChess about a three week plan he did which focused one week on Rapid and slower game controls and one week on faster game controls.

With that in mind, I came up with a four week rotating schedule that incorporates 30min of game play, 30 min of tactics (puzzles), and 30 minutes of lesson time.

The first two weeks looked like this:

This plan seems to be working out fairly well. My Blitz rating is still lower than my peak, but I'm enjoying those games and my Rapid rating has finally started to climb consistently again.

I've started week 3 which is essentially week 1 but the study plans are rotating so it will be a little different.

Even without updating this for the past two weeks, I've stuck to my plan pretty well, although I did get sick these past few days and wasn't up to doing the full plan. So far, here are the results (I've now complete six weeks, four weeks of my new plan).

Nice blitz rating

@SmarterChess: Yeah, I'm pretty happy that I'm improving there again. With my games yesterday, I'm even higher at 1328 now. I'm even more pumped by my Rapid rating. I actually got to 1388 (just 5 points off my best ever) before I lost my last game a lower rated player and dropped 10 points. I can't even be really mad with that game since I hit a 93.3% accuracy, so it's not like I played poorly. Just a couple of mistakes where my opponent took advantage.