Road to 1600 Rapid, trying to improve after every game.

1600 rapid is my ultimate goal.  Good luck to us both.

@TheSultan31003

I started reading George Huczeks` "A to Z chess tactics". He delivers as promised, and has a chapter on all kinds of tactics starting with A for attraction, B for back-rank weakness,  and Z for zugzwang etc. It also has an appendix with 400 chess puzzles, several for for each tactical theme. My plan is to go through the book one chapter at a time, look at the positions reviewed there and tailor my tactics trainer here on chess.com to only give me puzzles covering that theme, to drill pattern recognition, so I can more clearly understand which conditions typically need to be present for a given tactic to work. Some of the positions covered in the book are truly breathtakingly beautiful chess, so I was thinking to maybe share them somewhere. 

I`ve also started some basic endgame studies, doing drills on the Lucena and Philidor endgame positions, as well as learning about opposition, zugzwang and triangulation. 

I plan to mainly focus on tactics though as I still have big holes in my tactical understanding, and tactics are hell of fun. My goal is to one day have the opportunity to play a smothered mate or a crazy sacrifical combination that leads to mate  

In your game 32 the position was easily winning if you just play the obvious 11 Ne4 instead of fxe5. There is no need to sacrifice any material.

Haha that`s definitely true, I like to think I`ve become a slightly better attacking player since that game. I`ve stopped dropping winning positions mostly, but we will see if this habit will make a return

in game 47 9. ... Qh4 is game over. I guess it might even be forced checkmate somehow...

But what would I do if white castles after Qh4? Also if my queen is no longer on the back-rank white would have free reign there. I could move the king after getting checked, but then after Qxa8, my bishop is pinned and under attack.. I didn`t see how I could mate white before my entire position collapses

If he castles 10. ... Bxf2+11. Kh1 Ng3 is indeed mate.

And Qxc6+ Bd7 is lost for white

That is indeed right, I didn`t see that Ng3 would be mate due to the pawn being pinned in that variation

Zeit.  Very perceptive comments.  F2 is just too weak. 

Giasiara playing well for your rating.  Mp. Enjoy reading your comments.

@Roastinator123 Yeah that was my problem in this position. My calculations would have to be absolutely 100% winning in every single continuing line, otherwise my position would collapse in a matter of  1-2 moves. This is of course something I`ll have to get used to if I want to improve, but in this game I just didn`t manage to calculate out the win, so went for the chicken option  

That game was indeed a clustercluck and an absolute mess and I`m definitely not proud of it. In the endgame I had  like 20-30 seconds left on the clock so I didn`t conider looking for mate at all. It seems to be a recurring problem of mine: I don`t look for tactics and mates in the endgame. And if I have a mating attack in a game overall I`m not able to calculate it to its conclusion. According to my tactics trainer, of all the tactics I`ve solved, mating nets and mates in 2+ have the worst solving rates. Definitely need to drill mating patterns  

Thank you, though I still have quite a few games where my inner patzer gets the better of me haha

 Best of luck to you. I start feeling 1600 is definitely within grasp. Maybe I can shoot for 1800 next year, though I`ll have less time for chess at that point as I`m going to move to Austria and start university again. I`ll need to prep for the entrance exams