Preparing for the semi finals club rapid game against the strong russian exchange student. He mainly plays ...e6-d5-c5 tarrasch ideas in serious games against my english imo. Still haven't won against him yet :P Asked an old coach to help me out going through some opening lines to prep...

Found a great blogger from chess.com whose a canadian NM trying to get FM from the zonals too (different zonal region tho)! We talked abit and might trade some study materials to help each other out, as well as having sparring sessions.

He has an amazing an insightful blog on improvement to master level (way better than this one): https://www.chess.com/blog/ih8sens

This one particular post outlines his study plan:
https://www.chess.com/blog/ih8sens/m...art-3-the-plan

He, like me, uses the GM repertoire series and input them into PGN or chessbase form. He also talks about studying middlegame through tactics and practice as well as endgames. Furthermore, he gives great insight into playing games against masters and what the expect, so check it out it's pretty cool.

Yup, his blog gets featured on front page of chess.com a bunch.

Btw, I was meaning to mention this but what did you think of the last candidates game of Fabi vs. Karjakin? Sozul suicide line was played which I believe is one of your pet lines in your repertoire from one side or the other?

Yes, I looked at that game already. Very tense and interesting line. What a game to play it too! The deciding game of the candidates, this game will be an imporant game in history!

Hey guys, haven’t posted in a while. So I’ve been playing abit of chess but much studying. I was very busy with uni, but it’s holiday now so all good. I have a few games I would like to share, and I will also go through some of my plans as things get closer to the zonal.

So I played the uni club semi final match against the favourite (same guy I mentioned in earlier post) in the uni club championship. He was an exchange student from Russian and went to chess school there and played a lot of 2600s. Definitely a tough opponent. He was a 2200 by the time he was a kid and he won the Russian junior championships of some age group (holy fk) and now prob very strong (he crushed the rest of the club with ease). I lost the match 0.5-1.5. The match was rapid time control (15 minutes) In the first game (I was white), I got a superior position and was looking to upset him to make the finals (which I would likely be abit of a favourite in). He managed to survive as I went into time trouble and was forced to take a draw for the peppy. Here’s the game below:

http://www.chessvideos.tv/chess-game....php?id=106965

1. c4 c5 2. Nc3 Nf6 3. g3 g6 4. Bg2 Bg7 5. e4 O-O 6. Nge2 d6 7. O-O Nc6 8. d3 Bg4 9. h3 Be6 10. Be3 Qd7 11. Kh2 Ne8 12. Qd2 f5 13. Nf4



13. ... Kh8?! Perplexing decision for him to give up the bishop 14. Nxe6 Qxe6 15. Rae1 Nf6 16. Bh6 Bxh6 17. Qxh6 Ne5 18. Qd2 fxe4 19. Nxe4 Nxe4 20. Rxe4 Qf6 21. f4 Nc6 22. Rfe1 Rae8 23. Re6 Qg7 White is probably winning here already. Position is so dominant and flows naturally. 24. Bxc6 bxc6 25. Qc3 Qxc3 26. bxc3 g5 27. Rxe7 Rxe7 28. Rxe7 gxf4 29. gxf4 Rxf4 30. Kg3 Rf1 The endgame was winning but I was in time trouble and couldn’t convert



31. Rxa7? (Rd7 was the winning plan) Rd1 32. a4 Rxd3+ 33. Kg4 Rxc3 34. h4 Rxc4+ 35. Kg5 h6+ 36. Kg6 Rg4+ 37. Kh5 Rf4 38. Kg6 Rg4+ 39. Kh5 Rf4 threefold repetition with mate threat for white. Draw ½-½


I would lost the second game as black against the minority attack in the exchange semi slav (?). Wasted too many moves drumming up kingside counterplay and was quickly got in time trouble. Game was messy and I actually had winning chances at the end but timed out.

http://www.chessvideos.tv/chess-game....php?id=106966

1. d4 d5 2. c4 c6 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. Nf3 e6 5. cxd5 exd5 6. Bg5 Be7 7. e3 Bf5 8. Bd3 Bxd3 9. Qxd3 Nbd7 10. O-O O-O 11. a3 Ne4 12. Bf4 Ng5 13. Nd2 Ne6 14. Bg3 Nf6 15. b4 Bd6 16. Nb3 Bxg3 17. hxg3 Qe7 18. Rfc1 Ng5 19. b5



19. ... Rac8 20. bxc6 bxc6 21. Na4 Situation look bleak, I have the weak pawn and my kingside play is non existant Nge4 22. Rc2 Rfe8 23. Nac5 h5 24. Nxe4 Nxe4 25. Nc5 h4 26. gxh4 Qxh4 27. Nxe4 dxe4 28. Qa6 Rcd8 1-0

It was a decent performance, but I have still yet to beat him is blitz/rapid time controls :/ He’s back in Russia now. After the match, we ate chinese food. He told me a lot of the hardships in Russia and how glad he is to get out of it for a while.



A few weeks later, I would play my first classical time control OTB game in a year. It was for the club team matches. I did horribly and was losing 20 something moves in. My opponent was a much lower rated club player (he was U1700??). We didn’t analyse the game afterwards but I was very sure where I gone wrong. I was playing abit too fast throughout the game and he was taking his time every move. Obviously, I’m still in the blitz mindset due to my online blitz/bullet binge and I need to slow down with my play. Also, I haven’t really understood these lines of the sicilian as black, but it’s fine cuz I don’t plan on playing sicilian as black much longer, but switching to the caro

http://www.chessvideos.tv/chess-game....php?id=107098

1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nxc6 bxc6 6. Nc3 d6 7. Bc4 e5 8. O-O Be7 9. Bb3 O-O 10. f3 Qb6+ 11. Kh1 Be6 12. Bg5 Rad8 13. Qe2 Qc7 14. Rad1 Rd7 15. Rd2 Rfd8 16. Rfd1 h6 17. Be3 Qa5 18. Bg1 At this point, I felt I equalised fine, but didn’t know how to facilitate the d5 breakthrough (later I would find out it was probably not the correct plan in this line



18. ... Bf8?? Played this without much thought, got bored and decide to shuffle around, but forgot around tactics on e6 19. Bxe6 fxe6 20. Qc4 d5? I thought once I get d5 in, I must have something but tactically it does not work out 21. Qxc6 Rd6 22. Qb5 Qxb5 23. Nxb5 R6d7 24. Nxa7 Rxa7 25. Bxa7 d4 26. Bb6 Rc8 and I soon lost after, disappointed with my play.



It’s obvious that I got worse in classical time control and need time to get readjusted to the format. My chess.com and lichess.org blitz/bullet binge went average too, as I seem to stay around 2000+ most of the time, but rarely ever getting past 2100 bullet or blitz. I think once I get more overall knowledge, better tactics, opening and endgame understanding. I was pretty inconsistent overall but I did manage to score wins over quite a few NMs, FMs and IMs etc in 1 0 and 3 0. Some of them were instructive too.
Pretty nice win in an opposite side castling game against an FM:

https://www.chess.com/livechess/game?id=1576685525

Lost a pretty close game v an FM, but I think I help the position decently and judged the endgame to be even. Forgot to play h3 when he was threatening Kg4 to penetrate. Would’ve been easy draw:

https://www.chess.com/livechess/game?id=1570195126

Quick hax against an IM in 26 moves

https://www.chess.com/livechess/game?id=1591365544

Not that these games are indicative of much as it is fast time control afterall, but I am technically beating strong players more consistently and should at least reflect an improvement in tactics.

Had a blitz match against a strong blitz player who was one of the “three kings” as I call them in central park. At his peak, he’s fast rating was 2400 OTB. I lost my games, but I was actually winning in them, but often ran out of time. He’s hands are lightning fast and he can somehow fit probably 15 moves in 5 seconds with freakish accuracy.
First game I played one of my prepped lines in the English, I timed out just before I could promote

http://www.chessvideos.tv/chess-game....php?id=107201

Second game, I played the dubious halloween gambit and put him under enormous pressure despite being heavily down in material. I ran out of time in this one too.

http://www.chessvideos.tv/chess-game....php?id=107202

Obviously these games aren’t as relevant as classical time control over the board long games, I will be playing more of these in the remainder of 2016



My old coach told me to take the Elometer test on http://www.elometer.net/ for fun. There’s a total of 76 chess problems on it. It supposedly gives you a chess rating estimate accurately. However from reviews, I have seen many club players having inflated estimates, on the other hand, an IM (and well known youtuber) that did the test got a score in the 2200s (here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiYlvB2Ig9E). The test was mainly tactically orientated and also a lot of endgame puzzles. I got an Elo estimate of 2230 which was likely inflated. Some of the solutions in the test are quite nice tho, and I recommend everyone take a look at it.


So I did do quite a few of some chess-related activities like turn up to analyse my friends games in tournaments. I also did quite a few chess videos/streams for my club members. I didn’t get much viewers or people interested but I did have fun. I might move on to twitch streaming chess soon. I also help organised (and participated) in some inter-club grade matches. I didn’t go a good job tho, not being able to find enough players for the U1500 and U1700 division. It is sad to see many people don’t have the time for chess during their studies.

I made a decision to not resume my next term as the vice president of the university chess club. Mainly because I haven’t got much time, nor was it helpful to my chess. I didn’t even managed to get the tournaments I wanted to get running to run.

My current plan for 2016 is to play up to 30 classical OTB games (I haven’t decided on the exact figure yet). I wanted to play Millionaire Chess this year but unfortunately did not have enough rated games to be allowed to enter (they have a minimum number of 60 OTB games required under one rating system to prevent sandbagging). I also don't have enough time to play that many game before the deadline which was august the 31st.


Study Materials

In terms of study material, this time I want to keep it simple.

1. Tactics

Do a few puzzles a day on sites such as chesstempo etc, easy enough. 15 tactics + some endgame studies a day is probably enough till the zonal.

2. GM repertoire books

Now I’m using Schandorff’s book on the Semi Slav and Caro Khan to prepare my entire black repertoire. I should have it done by 2017. Unfortunately the Canadian NM that promised me the PGN of the Caro Khan book couldn’t find it so I would have to enter it all manually. I will based on English Repertoire on the Main GM repertoire book as well as get some help from a coach. Will also learn some KIA lines for variety.

3. Books

I ended up giving a lot of my hardcover books away, leaving just a few of the important ones like Dvoretsky’s Endgame books, the Forcing Chess moves tactics book etc. I want to limit the amount of resources to focus on. Having heaps of books is pointless if you don’t study any of them in detail.

4. Videos

I think chessbase videos are very important for me, as I can watch them in my leisure time and learn passively, especially Muller’s Endgame series.




So It seems things are set for the 2017 Zonals, I better get cracking, especially after this holiday (July) when I probably won’t grind poker for a while.

So since I’ve last posted, I’ve had a session with Lilov and played a classical game. I’ve been also playing blitz at town hall, but I’ve been losing quite a few games. Granted, it was against people with blitz ratings in the region of 2200+, but the way I’ve been losing those games are annoying me. E.g. losing on time in a dominating position, doing badly as black etc. This suggest that I should work on my black opening properly.
I had a short one hour session with Lilov and we went through some of the games I posted here in the previous posts. He said it’s understandable that my caro khan game lead to a draw, but it was really no fault of my own but the passivity of the opening. He also suggested that I adopted the stonewall defense lines instead of trying to work on the Semi Slav as it will offer me easier plans and less memorisation. I’m still unsure about that as Semi Slav is a thematically rich opening and I really much rather use it for my tournament preparations. I also enjoy the memorisation of variations which the semi slav seem to have a lot.

Finally I played a classical match for another club. A friend called me up and ask me to help out with the grade matches. I was on a house party and a long poker session the night before and didn’t have sleep I uber-ed downtown, spending a lot in the process
While I was very sleepless, the game was over quite quickly against my lower rated opponent. I was playing white. I was very tired to calculate properly. I played a bunch of waiting moves in the middlegame in hopes he would castle short and let me end the game in a quick thematic pawn storm, but he was too scared to budge. He ended up wasting quite a lot of tempi in the opening. I end up having to calculate some winning sacrificial lines with a centre to end the game in a rather satisfying way. I could’t wait to get home to get some sleep.

Can white deliver a winning blow (easy)?




Here’s the full game:

http://www.chessvideos.tv/chess-game....php?id=107423

Despite the fact I will be going late night out for saturday. I will be playing a 2pm game for a club match on Sunday. And I heard it might be against the lower rated I lost to last time in the sicilian game and this time I'm white.

Also might travel down state to play a university open in the country capital at the end of the month if I don't make day 2 of my opening event at the casino series. On the flip side, I heard it will be cold down there.

Looking to play a weekender tournament in August and probably will play a club open in October. Also on the look out for other tournaments.

Lost my club match game Was disappointed in the result but feel fine actually due to the circumstances that I had to play in.

I wasn't given clear instruction where to go, had to waste money taxi-ing to the wrong location then taxi back to the right place. It has cost me over $100 and I arrived around an hour late to the game.

I mostly outplayed him this game and only lost due to time troubles. I had much less time to start given my late arrival, by the time I had a minute on the clock left, my opponent still had an hour. Unfortunately 20 seconds is not enough to play an endgame in classical chess and I panicked and got mated :P


Heres the game:

1. d4 d5 2. c4 c6 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. Bg5 e6 5. Nf3 dxc4 6. e4 b5 7. e5 h6 8. Bh4 g5 9. Nxg5 hxg5 10. Bxg5 Nbd7

Up to here it's all theory, but he doesn't know that. We find out right on the next move. This is the botvinnik variation of the semi slav. A highly complex variations, black's plan often is to castle queenside and sustain an open attack but survive to the endgame to make the pawn phalanx on the queenside show its power. He later confirmed he didn't know it was theory and thought white was better from the way it looked

11. Qf3? Bb7! Nxb5 doesnt work n view of Qb6! 12. Be2 Rg8 13. h4 Qb6 14. exf6 O-O-O 15. O-O c5 16. dxc5 Nxc5 17. Qf4 Bd6 18. Qe3 b4!!





The suprising move in my position! Weakening the pawn infront of my king looked dangerous, thats why the idea is pretty counter intuitive.

19. Nb1 Nd3?! Ne4 was better. 20. Qxb6 axb6 21. Bxd3 cxd3 22. Nd2 Bf4? Looked pretty fancy and thought that it worked. But it doesn't work because of Rfc1 vacating the king to f1 23. f3 Bxg5 24. hxg5 Rxg5 25. Rac1+ Kb8

So at this point, I had less than a minute and he had an hour. I was panicking and scrambled. I orginally thought that increments were 30 seconds not 10. I desperately try to simplify to ease my time trouble.

26. Rc4 Bd5 27. Rxb4 Rdg8 28. Rf2 Bxa2 29. Rxb6+ Ka7 30. Rb4 Bd5 31. b3 R8g6 32. Ne4 Bxe4 33. Ra2+ 1-0 oops, walked right into mate.


So it's pretty fustrating to lost to a lower player who didn't even understand the ideas of the opening and the middlegame position. But I thought I did fine given my time handicap. I checked alot of the move in the middlegame with stockfish and they were good.

Played another classical game, ended again in quick draw as white against a lower rated opposition.

Disappointed with my lackluster results lately. I think my lines have been unambitious to say the least.

http://www.chessvideos.tv/chess-game....php?id=107498

I went for a better pawn structure with Bxc6 but he gain enough activity with his rook on the 2nd rank to secure a draw.



Right after this, I played a blitz match against a master-level friend with very sharp and daring attacking lines, to which I won 4-1 quite comfortably. He was a roughly 2200 player and he was quite impressed. He told me maybe I should go for sharper lines in my classical games to see better result.

One of our games went like this, it was by no means sound at all (I was technically losing through most of the game, as denoted by engine, but I kept creating complications which were practically tough to deal with in short time controls).

I played the very unsound Halloween Game; 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. Nxe5?!

http://www.chessvideos.tv/chess-game....php?id=107497


15. Qh8! was the only move

Oh right, forgot to mention, I was white in this blitz game and I won!

Yay got my bullet back to 2000+. My peak bullet rating on chess.com was around 2100, but I've been stuck at the 1900s for a while due to bad internet and lag - always dropping hard earned points back to disconnecting, or losing to lag on time. Not gonna try my luck to bring my fast ratings back to 2100+ because don't want lag to rekt me again.

https://www.chess.com/members/view/Squishey

Realised I have so many coaching requests but ignored so many of them. Maybe it's time to starting coaching for money again considering my recent poker runbad.

No more online bullet/blitz for a while (prob a month or two!).

Decided to not play this Wednesday to give myself a break, getting other team members to play the club match instead.

Not sure if I'll play this weekend's tournament tho. I would have to bust my opening event flights at the casino, and wake up early (prob) to take a bus down to the capital (which is very cold) to play the University Open.

I'm also pretty behind in terms of everything such as Uni.

GL at clearing your uni backlog!

This thread is a great source of motivation for me.

Thanks for the input.


Speaking of which, I'm probably not going to play the university open in the capital this weekend now.

It's extremely cold down there, in the middle of my uni semester and poker tournament series. I also haven't prepped my Caro Khan repertoire. at all, so it's not really practical to go so short notice.

Nice Loki you play chess!

Sadly I'm somewhat burnt out of taking it extremely seriously (I got to around 1600ish), it got to the stage where it was just such a big time investment and I was running and playing squash and poker so hard to balance.

I actually played some drunk speed chess in a bar with some friends last night which was fun, I just know on the more competitive side I was getting to a stage when I just had to start learning a lot more theory.

Gl becoming an FM!

Perhaps you should consider the Chaka Khan repertoire

Hey sup man, sounds like you know me from somewhere, another 2p2 forum perhaps?

I assume the reference is about the singer

I think it was a joke about your misspelling of the Caro Kann opening (Caro Khan).

Ahhh ok

OK, so busted the opening event day 1, but still not gonna go down capital, its too cold, and I'm too tired to play in the weekend... plus I'm busy, will prob play next wednesday in the grade matches finale tho.

Will update after my one week self-ban

Just realised I forgot to post the game for this back in 07/12/2016. Quick draw against worse player in stale position:

http://www.chessvideos.tv/chess-game....php?id=107607

Hey guys, new update

So I got my revenge against the guy I lost to back from here, ironically my team end up losing 3-1 (not including my win):


I won an English Botvinnik game as white with a quick kingside attack, full game is here:

http://www.chessvideos.tv/chess-game....php?id=107687


I guess he didn’t think I was gonna risk my kingside safety to win material. But 14. g5 seems obvious here.






Made some interesting observations about OTB chess and the chess community here in general:


Practicality is key

Chess is not just about the position, but winning games has a lot to do with things like nerves, time management.

I found out that I use to over calculate and analyse variations in a game during my opponent's thinking time and the opponent didn’t even end up playing it. Often it is best to conserve our energy for the critical moments of a position instead of positions, especially with a lot of forcing lines that follow. Instead, in position where opponent has a wide variety of options of moves, try to get a feel of how you want to set out your general plan of play rather worrying too much on trying to analyse one path your opponent might go down to.






Ego is bad for improvement


Alot of regular players from club to expert levels, have too much ego when it relates to this intellectual game. Alot of them would not like to analyse a position they just lost. Alot of them would try to blame external factors on their bad performance (like being sick, or noises are distracting them).

Just this week in the finale of teh grade matches, or my other team members (board 2-4) lost. Two of them blamed the noises in the room generated from casual players. But the reality is, the noises weren't at all significant (I was also a player and I didn't find it interfering with my performance, nor did the arbiter think so). The reality is, some players just don't want to feel embarrassed to be "bested" in a thinking game and would come up with any excuse or methods of self-denialism to protect their ego.

I often tell players to come along for a tournament, or play a few quick games, but alot of them would decline and say "I feel rusty", "I don't think I'm playing my A game". I truly think that this is just an excuse. Even after years of not playing, a player can still quickly go back to around his peak strength (unless age causes deteriotion in concentration etc.). But I think most players just don't want to feel embarrassed from losing. I have chess players that cancel their last match because they don't feel comfortable playing and potentially losing.

This mentality shows that the players do not yet have enough passion for the game and is still stuck at the worries of winning or losing.

In order to reach mastery, one must dive head first into complicated battles and learn first hand from defeats.






Politics in chess

Especially in the local chess scene here, there are alot of politics, especially when it comes to matters of money, as currently the chess coaching companies is in a state of monopoly by one major school. But there are often rumours of competing schools trying to steal students to discredit another school. Just recently, a head coach from a major school started criticising the innovative teaching methods of another coach who uses engines with "personalities" (e.g. a tactically unsound and aggressive program like Tal System, or a more positional engine that plays like Karpov) to help students learn themes in dynamic or static positions. He even said "some lower level coaches does xxx". I think alot of these politics are silly but its understandable given how little money there is in chess, so everyone have to fight hard for it.






Chess players are socially awkward

Went to a chess coaches party (someone's birthday) and hung out with alot of strong FM/IM level coaches. And all they talk about are strategies of how they are all "massive" and how to flirt with the opposite gender. Some of their advices are quite entertaining...

Sample conversation

"Hey, you should message her on facebook"
"What should I say?"
"Well she has a profile picture of her in a karate uniform. Maybe you should start of with something like "What belt are you, I bet I can beat the crap out of you""
"Hmmm, seem quite provoking and daring might just work"

I doubt the guy was being sarcastic as sarcasm is often lost on these people.




Plans for the year

Given how I lost my bankroll playing poker and how I forgot to enrol in my uni courses before the deadline. This might just be the perfect time to study alot of chess


I think I will first start by eating through all of the high quality chess base videos annotated by esteemed GMs.

August Tournaments Schedule



Possible tournaments I'm interested in...

16th Rapid Tournament

23rd Purdy Blitz

16th/23rd/30th A 30 minutes tournament at a club

27th/28th August Weekender (looking forward to this alot)



Task List


[ ] Work on the Caro Khan (The Caro-Kann by Viktor Bologan)


[ ] Daily Tactics (will start soon)

mate n 2 Qh5

sweet thread OP

Qh5? Nxh5. But Rxf6 followed by Qh5 works against gxf6 and Bxc5, I'd play it