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I'm going to start my journey into rated chess, and plan on joining the Arkansas Open Chess tournament this March.
I feel as though I have definitely improved in the past few months, and have taken a real leap into chess.
I know I can do better.
My play suffers from three connected weaknesses.
1) Opening: I play the french against e4, and benoni or tarrasch against d4. As white, I almost exclusively play d4 - QGD, Slav, IQP (with and against) and I've been practicing Catalan lines. The people that I play don't really know much theory with these, so I wind up in akward middle games, or I get over excited at an opponents mistake and over extend.
2) Middle Game wise, my tactics are pretty sharp. I don't usually miss tactical ideas, and if I do, its because of board blindness (being too focused on my killer move to his my opponents come too soon). I can work on this. However, many ways I lose the middle game, is by a blind idiot error, not complicated calculation errors. This usually leads me lose the exchange, or a pawn.
3) My end game is pretty good for club level. I have a pretty good grip on rook and minor, rook only, minor only, opposite colored bishop endgames. I think this is because I so often come out of the middle game down an exchange. However, one weakness of my endgame that would make me a very solid player is practicing drawing. So often I find myself in a position where I know I'm about to draw, then make an error in calculating opposition, or miss a simple tactic that would draw the game.
http://www.chess.com/livechess/game?id=705093541
I usually play stronger, but this is a good example of me making all the mistakes typical of my play.
Basically, what I need is to practice the ideas I've learned more.
What I am looking for is someone rated about 1650-1700 or higher Live Standard (I'm currently ~1520 live standard) to play me unrated in these openings in several games, preferably 30min 0 sec. I think playing against someone obviously stronger than me would benefit my play greatly.