lmplay's plan

I've just finished Intermediate Rapid & Classical Plan with good results. My ratings as of the end of that program:

• Rapid: 1321
• Blitz: 1139

My new plan:

1. Play a game,
2. Quickly retry tactics / key moments,
3. Explore the opening,
4. GOTO 1.

Everything else is extra credit (study, puzzles, daily games, deep game analysis, etc.). That doesn't mean that I'll skip them entirely but I want to bias towards:

• playing and quickly analyzing games, and
• keeping most days consistent

I'll probably play 5|5 and 15|10 because currently those are my favorite time controls.

Week 1, Day 2

I started the plan yesterday (15|10 1 win, 5|5 1 win and 2 losses).

Today:

• 5|5 2 wins
• 15|10 1 win
• Daily (I need to wrap this up, but I'm not going to add start new games).
  • 1 win (resignation)
  • I moved in one game
  • 2 games are ongoing

Week 1, Day 3

• Daily
  • I won one game (on time)
    • Funny finish: I thought that I must equalize in this endgame, found combination that equalizes, and started to play it (my last move). It turns out that I equalized from a winning position
  • One game remaining (it's in the endgame as well)
  • It looks like I may have a "problem": those games were a part of a tournament and so far I won every game and I may still win the last one. I'll have to figure out how to withdraw from the tournament without losing points.
• 5|5
  • 3 wins, 3 losses
• 15|10
  • Win
  • Scotch, opposite-side castling. But I went kingside and the opponent went queenside (i.e. opposite of what I play for).

Week 1, Day 4

• Daily: I won the final game and withdrew from the tournament. My final Daily rating is 1637. For now, I don't intend to start any new Daily games.
• 5|5 3 wins, 2 losses
  • The first loss was from a winning position but I forgot about the clock
• I also looked at some lines from the Scotch

Week 1, Day 5

This is a fun plan

5|5: 3 wins, 1 draw, 2 losses

Fun win in Caro exchange where they go h3,g4 and then I O-O-O and their ends up having no protection:

I should learn the Caro-Kann Exchange chapter from the course. I get this frequently but somehow skipped that chapter. I know some ideas though.

Week 1, Day 6

• 5|5
  
  • 5 wins
• 15|10
  • 1 win
  • 1 draw (87 moves, higher-rated opponent, I was worse most of the game but got a lucky stalemate)

I analyzed the draw more deeply than most games.

Week 1, Day 7

5|5

• 2 wins
• I crossed 1200 for the first time
• I pushed through 1200 with the wildest Caro-Kann game I that played, full of blunders on both sides. I unfortunately deviated from the course and attacked the wrong bishop in this line

15|10

• 1 win

The wild 5|5 game:

Week 2, Day 1

15|10

• Win
  • Against +50 opponent 
  • A very bad start as I misclicked and instead of O-O, I played Kf8 Then I tried to recover from that.
  • I outplayed the opponent tactically. I find that most often than not, if it's clear what they want to do and you defend tactically then you win. No-one (probably including me) bothers to check if their attack works. You win even if your move isn't great otherwise (but, obviously, I don't play bad moves on purpose).
  • One big lesson: don't assume that just because you misclicked, you're worse. I was better most of the game but I thought that I had to equalize.
• Win
  • The opponent blundered a rook, a knight, and a pawn right by move 10. I spared the knight  

Week 2, Day 2

15|10

• draw (against a +70 opponent)
• win 
  • I incorrectly evaluated one tactic that I took 4m30s (i.e. a lot) on.
    • I don't fully understand the final eval: I give knight for three pawns, opponent's king is exposed (mine is safe), I get a protected passed pawn. I thought that's better for me. But it's +1.4 somehow.
    • It didn't matter because after I spent this much time, the opponent just ignored it and gave me two pawns for free (one being a protected passer) and went for an endgame giving me a winning advantage
  • I had to play on increment and 20s on the clock for half the game (moves from 41 to 78) which didn't make it easy. The opponent had plenty time. I came close to timing out a couple times where I couldn't decide or discarded the move right before making it because it would've been a blunder.
  • Good time-management lesson for me.
  • I like how on move 68 chess.com says "You overlooked an opportunity to continue the checkmate threat." when I'm clearly going to promote in a couple moves and it was a mate-in-five with 30s on the clock. I'm sure that I was going to find it

Week 2, Day 3 (I had a break last couple days: too many other responsibilities)

15|10

• Easy win against Stafford Gambit
• Win

I'm over 1400 now in Rapid

Week 2, Day 4

5|5

• loss. I was winning most game but was too low on time in the winning endgame and blundered.
• win. chaotic game in Fantasy variation which I'm not well-prepared for.
• loss. I miscalculated in the endgame missing key move for the opponent.
• win opponent blundered in an equal endgame
• win Another win against Stafford, but this time I messed up and had to win in the endgame. In fact, I missed so many tactics and free things because I was in time pressure for a long time. Stafford has its merits in blitz
• draw repetition by mistake on my part: the rule is three times the same position, not repeating moves three times
• quick win vs +100 opponent
• quick win (everyone seems to be hanging minor pieces?) against -100 opponent
• loss
• ...

Week 2, Day 5

I played 5|5 games today. I learned a few things about my openings as well as typical tactics.

Week 2, Day 6

• 5|5
  • loss on time from a winning position
  • loss on time from equal position
  • loss on time from a losing position
  • win in time trouble

I'm just slow today. I'm also not sure what happened: in some of those games, I didn't feel the time pressure even on the move when I lost on time. I sometimes just start looking for a move and then a pop-up tells me that I lost

I didn't do updates recently but I have been playing a lot of 5|5 games (more than I planned). I followed the idea of focusing on playing games and analyzing them briefly. 

Going forward, I'm going to change the plan and:

• continue to play games
• aim to spend the same amount of time analyzing them

That is, I'm increasing time spent on analysis.

The reason is that playing a lot of games at my level means that I reinforce bad habits/ideas. I dropped ~150 points of elo. I don't mind that but, at the same time, it's clear that I should change something.

(I also played the computer a bit in the last few days because that turns out to be very fun).

In the last week, I played 43 5|5 games and analyzed most of them. My rating is going up again.

I'm going to switch focus from games to tactics now. Primarily because I'm curious how that goes.

It's much better now as I win a lot more games and continue to gain rating points. I still haven't fully recovered (both rating and actual playing strength: I can feel that it's not as good as before), but at least I don't do as many frustrating blunders (where I immediately see that I blundered a trivial tactic after my move).  I played 30 5|5 games in the last 7 days and gained 46 points.

Gained another 32 points and crossed 1200 this week with 19 5|5 games. The plan seems to work so I'll keep it for now. I also beat significantly higher-rated opponents.

It was a fun week. I discovered that I can play unrated games and then that I can find games more quickly on lichess so I've been playing a bunch of  various time formats.

It's clear that my tactical vision and calculation needs work: my play is chaotic, one moment I win against +200 player and then I lose against weaker players. This is because when I'm actually calculating lines, I make errors (e.g. in the order of captures). 

This week, I'll probably focus entirely on tactics and maybe some opening work.