5. Qc1 Nxe5 (as discussed, we can take on e5 whenever it suits us... here it does, because it removes the defender of d3 bishop) 6. fxe5 Qxd4, or 6. dxe5 probably 6...h5, though 6... hxg5 7. Rxg5 Rd8 looks equally good.

The point is, while taking on e5 is on the table, the attack cannot roll because the center is not stable. When we take on e5, we give a crucial tempo, where white can ignore our push on the b-file (as you mentioned), but his push is still happening. Why allow that?

You're right, it's high time to take on e5 on move 5.

Thanks for adding us to the study, MarkD. I guess, we were suggested to you by lichess as we were observing the study at the time.

The only reference book I have is Caro-Kann Move by Move by Lakdawala and he recommends Nd7, which is entirely why I play it. If I'm going to buy a book on an opening I better at least get used to playing it.

Makes a lot of sense to me. I saw a lot of Nb6 moves in Karpov games I was reviewing recently and I think I made this move assuming it was "thematic" and didn't put enough thought into it. In the post mortem my opponent also said he didn't like Nb6.

The second variation with 28. Qxg6 must be wrong as doesn't that just blunder his queen?

Wow, I appreciate this explanation.

Wow, I made this trade very fast and it was part of my calculations of Re3. It was entirely based on the adage you quote. I love you positional discussion of this move as I think I have a lot to learn from it.

I've now been playing through your variations and I really like them after keeping that knight on e5.

No, thank you, and thank YouKnowWho for the constructive discussion of my games. It's making me feel a bit better for having posted such embarrassments.

I'm yet a viewer, not a contributor, and so is YKW, but I yet don't know how to add comments etc. so perhaps it's best for you and YKW to remain the only users with the contributor rights for the time being so that nothing bad happen to the study.

Well, this fiasco is another opportunity to learn and get better until the next tourney!

Judging by your comments to game 3, time management is a big issue for you like I suspected.

E.g. you say you used 20 minutes on the first 8 moves (what was the time control?). You couldn't have gone too wrong during these 8 moves anyway. The differences between 3... Bg4 (the most played move, btw) and 3... Nf6 4. e5 Ne4, between 4... Bh5 and 4... Bxf3 are smaller than the disadvantage that you gave yourself by getting into time trouble.

I mean, it's better to be booked, but if you're out of book, it's usually not a huge issue, just develop pieces naturally and save the clock time for the middle- and endgame. That's why it's better to learn opening plans rather than exact lines - the move order seldom matters in club play, and you'll navigate unknown situations well if you have a general idea of piece setup in the particular opening system plus blunder-check your candidate moves.

10... f6 is the right move. The h-pawn has to be on h7 to recapture on g6 towards the centre and avoid leaving e6 without protection.

12... Ne7 is the best from the practical point of view. 12... Kf7 is not much better objectively and requires precise play.

A cute way to unleash the f8 bishop is 15... Na5 16. O-O-O Nxb3 17. axb3 Nc6.

Alas the tactical blunder 18... Nf5?? decided the game, but you were doing well before that, except that you allocated too much time to relatively unimportant decisions and didn't have enough of it to calculate possible consequences of Nf5.

In game 4, you said it all in your comments in the study - you had the fancy play syndrome and failed to calculate properly (starting from move 20 when you sacrificed the c4 pawn for an unclear attack opportunity).

To sum up, you fell victim of your mental game in this tourney. It seems that the roller-coaster of game 1 and the tough KID in game 2 took away too many of your nerves. Well, the poker mental game theory applies to chess too so you know how to solve the problem

Oops, sorry, I meant 28. hxg6 fxg6 29. Qxg6 c4 30. Bxc4 and so on. It's more convenient to submit moves to lichess than to write them out. I should have cloned the study, put moves there and shared it.

That said, there's no need for 29... c4 there - 29... Rf1+ 30. Kc2 Rg8 is a good human line.

I did it wrong - you are both contributors now.

Time control was 90 for first 40 moves and then 30 minutes for the rest with 30 second increment from move 1, so I had a lot of time. I'm not sure I ever got into true time trouble as I always had more than 10 minutes left on my clock. I think I just was foggy and unclear and played bad.

Just skimmed through the first two games. So, it seems you are outplaying your opponent but then blundering? I mean, that shows signs of rust or not playing much recently (or loss of focus). Eradicating those mistakes is of course part of becoming better but I would recommend you don't let them get you down too much. Just redouble your efforts to either have enough time left to not make such mistakes (if due to time pressure) or double-check moves before you make them.

YKW discovered that I seem to have weird random moments where I randomly make a move that was not the way I was calculating and intending to make. It generally is one of my candidate moves but one I either already rejected or didn't properly look at. Instead I just kind of spazz out and reject the move I'm calculating for some weird reason. So something sort of like that could be happening as well.

For any of your true blunders in these games do you remember how they happened? Was it due to poor calculation, low time, knee-jerk spazzing out, or anything like that?

Yugo,

Yes, all four games involved a large blunder.

Game 1 (so many blunders)

I think I got a bit outplayed after getting up material. 20. ... Nxe5 was part of my calculations and it's just a positional misunderstanding that YKW has pointed out. My thinking was 1st level - I'm ahead so trade down.

25. gxh6 I failed to look at Qd2 and was just looking at variations involved him attacking down the g-file and I felt my position holds easily vs those. So, I guess this is a bit of chess blindness as I failed to look at his best response. Had I have seen Qd2 then I may have played g6 here because I was definitely looking at it.

Lots of tactical miscalculations (looking at the computer now) in between, but after 30. ... Be4+ I'm clearly winning. Lots of bad moves follow but I'm still obviously winning when we get to the position after 50. a4. Now, I had already looked at Rxc4 d6 variations a few moves earlier and then he played a4 and a4 had not been in my earlier calculations and now Rxc4 seemed so tempting. I guess I didn't even recalculate his response after Rxc4 as d6 is not hard to see and I had already seen it. It might be the case that when I get to a position that I had previously calculated I fail to re-evaluate. I think this happens to me a lot actually.

Game 2
Mate! Mate! Mate!!!

Again, I had seen that Re3 was a blunder in previous calculations but forgot. I didn't make this move instantly. I was calculating here for a bit and simply missed it. Also, as stated earlier, I had not evaluated Kg2 as the winning move. I can't explain that. If it was a tactical problem I surely would have seen it.

Game 3

Again, when I had gotten to the position where I played 18. ... Nf5 I had arrived at the result of my previous calculations. At some point I had evaluated Nf5 and saw that Nxd5 was possible, but I arrived at my goal position and failed to re-evaluate the position. I thought I had "solved" the problem and now I could "just move".

Game 4

/shrug? - fps as co-on stated. Probably my psychology was bad after the previous 3 games as well and I wanted to go down fighting rather than just get beat. I know that was in my head. Might just need more experience in those slow KID spatial advantage positions.

I wanted to give a short update on this thread as I didn't quit after my poor comeback performance, but have been reinvigorated. Having said that, I have been extremely busy with work and that has cut into my study time.

I'm continuing with Yusupov and have finished three chapters since I previously updated this thread:

1. Discovered Attack (15/15) - Excellent
2. Centralizing the Pieces (13/27) - Pass (This was hard)
3. Mate in Two Moves (10/12) - Good (Some hard problems here - the two I got wrong I just gave up on)

Currently about half way finished the next quiz on opposition.

In addition to Yusupov I have been going through Alekhine's - My Greatest Games and I'm taking this slowly and savoring each game. I think I've played through 4-5 of these games so far and it's already a tremendous book. I like his annotations a lot.

Topping this off I am working on tactics at Chesstempo. I do standard tactics on hard and also a custom problem set of all quality puzzles rated 1500 and less. This is based on advice I had seen given by Daniel Rensch where he makes his students study simple tactical problems with a max time of 1 minute per problem. If you don't solve it in one minute quit, look at the solution, internalize the pattern with a few repetitions and then move on. Continue this until you fail three puzzles and then that's enough of that type of study as he says you can only learn two to three new patterns a day. So, I try to do this for 10-15 minutes each day and then try to find time to solve one or two standard rated problems, but they can take me 7+ minutes to solve sometimes, and as I said, I haven't had much time due to work.

So, that's my study plan. I also waste too much time on bullet / blitz as I think most people do. I like to have 6 games of correspondence going and I have also joined the Lichess Lonewolf league and have played three game in it so far - winning two and drawing one.

A quick little update. I made it through two more chapters of Yusupov Build Up Your Chess Vol 1:

Chapter 10 - The Opposition - 17 / 26 Pass (18 was "Good")
Chapter 11 - The Pin - 18/21 Good (19 was "Excellent")

I was a little disappointed I didn't perform better in the Opposition chapter as I enjoy the endgame and think that I am pretty good at it. I guess my judgement must be off though as that chapter was difficult for me. Although, I did learn a lot going through the examples and problems.

In addition, I played through a couple of more games in Alekhine's greatest games anthology. I still at the beginning so I'm seeing his games from 1910 / 1911 at the moment, but damn, he is an amazing player and I am really appreciating his annotations.

I had previously started Fischer's 60 Game book and made it through a few of his games, but the annotations are advanced with very little in the way of commentary. Very variation heavy, so I put it aside for now as I have many many game collection books that I haven't looked at yet.

In case you are curious, I got 18/26 on Opposition when I did that chapter. And I went into it thinking, "Hey, I know what opposition is and it's pretty simple!"

Getting almost "Good" doesn't really mean your judgement is off, though. One thing I should ask is that after looking at the position for ~5 minutes without moving pieces, do you then look for 10 minutes moving the pieces unless you have an answer?

Yes, I have started to that. I will often spend more than 5 minutes without moving the pieces though. I also don't always set up the positions on the board. I probably should make that a habit to improve my OTB vision, but my study area is not as conducive to this as I would like and it's harder now that I have a puppy.

I was in the same boat when I started the books. Just gotten a new (but technically not a puppy, he was ~1 year old) dog. He's much better now about being patient but my 1 year old daughter isn't!

I do some of it at the computer (with "free" electronic versions of the books) but it's really not ideal. Except for chapters on openings. It may be ideal to enter those into a study on lichess.org so that if you ever actually want to revisit or learn that opening later on you have it all there and can export to pgn.

I do try to do all of it on a normal board or travel board at the very least...but yeah, not 100%. Just fyi, I read in an interview with Yusupov that the specific recommendation about how important doing it on a physical board was partially geared towards the assumption that kids will be using the books. It may be less of a big deal if some of the work is not done OTB for older students who may have more comfort with a physical board.

I’m a bit behind on this log. I am continuing to work through Yusupov and have completed two additional chapters since my last update. I am also about half way through Chapter 14.

Chapter 12 – Double Attack – 15/17 – Excellent. I probably should have done better on this but still solving problems when I’m not being serious enough.
Chapter 13 – Realizing a Material Advantage – 16/21 – Good. I definitely just gave up on the last problem and through away some points. The chapter was very challenging and I spent a lot of time on the problems and that is why I gave up. Ultimately it was taking me a long time to get through it.
Chapter 14 – Open Files and Outposts – Not finished yet, but doing well.

Chesstempo – I’m at an all time high of 1787 for standard. I did a few mixed problems, but my rating hasn’t stabilized yet. I’m also trying to get my lichess tactics up over 2000 and I’m hovering around 1960ish atm. I really prefer chesstempo, but practice is practice.

Alekhine – I think I’m on game 10 atm. This book will take a while. So far I am in love with it and think it is great. There are times where I wish he explained moves a bit more, or continued a variation instead of just saying “Not Qd3 because of exd5 etc.” (not a direct quote, but he writes stuff like that a lot). I guess it’s instructive though as it forces me to look at why exd5 refutes Qd3. I’m not really doing guess the move on this and I should be looking at the positions longer, but there is a lot of material to absorb so I’m not worried.

Purchased two new books yesterday to add to my 15+ books that I haven’t read or touched much yet. Mastering Chess Strategy by Hellsten and The Queen’s Indian Defense by De La Costa to complement my Nimzo Indian defense book of the same series. I don’t really look at my opening books much as I’m not really focused on that aspect of my game, but I seem to collect them. Against e4 I play c6 and against d4 I play Nf6, but I have yet to get into a Nimzo Indian in tournament play. The game below, from this month, my opponent played some type of London system which I am not at all familiar with.

That’s a pretty good transition into the discussion concerning my monthly tournament. I started playing it this month and play a game every Tuesday. The first game was vs a player listed as 2000 (I’ve dropped to 1600), but he said his actual Canadian rating is 1890, but that he was 2200 in Australia where he said ratings are inflated. Game 2 my opponent didn’t show up so I played blitz for a couple of hours. Game 3 was this week vs a kid who was rated 1150ish.

Both of the games can be found in this study.

Game 1. I did a cursory review of this game. I want to sit down with it a bit more, but I was a little depressed about it and put it aside for a few days and haven’t gotten back to it. I felt like I was winning for the entire endgame, but Lichess tells me otherwise. My opponent pointed out where I threw away the win and Lichess agreed with him. I was a bit distraught by missing 43. ... Kf4! as I felt I had played quite well to that point.

Game 3. I guess my tactics weren’t as good as I thought as Lichess shows me throwing away an earlier win and allowing my opponent to equalize, although he missed his chance. I played a nice little sac though and felt I did a good job finishing him off.

I will try to remember to look at those games and add comments. Feel free to bug me in my log if I don't in the next few days.

So, it's been a long time since I've updated this blog and for good reason. Shortly after my last post work became insanely busy and I was unable to play or study at all. I was out of town a lot, and, for my work, that means insanely long hours. The only chess I really played was blitz / bullet, and if anything, these harm my game, but they also help me stop thinking about the days events.

Regardless, I started getting serious again in January. I stopped looking at the Yusupov books, because they weren't bringing me pleasure. I plan to return, but I think that as long I am actively studying "something", and that something brings me joy, I will make progress. I will return, but for now I am studying Mastering Chess Strategy by Johan Hellsten, which is supremely enjoyable. I love games and game fragments. I also enjoy working through these problems.

The first chapter is about improving the pieces and it starts with the Bishop, followed by the Knight, Rook, and Queen. I am not very far into this book as after each of the sections for each piece I move on to the exercises and there are 20 puzzles for each of the aforementioned piece improvement sections. I did not do very well on the bishop problems but did excellent on the knight problems. I think I see where the knight belongs easier as holes and blockades are much more obvious ideas. I will have to revisit the bishop section.

I have also decided to work on endgames. This is due to some recent weekly tournament games I have played where I have reached very winnable positions and have failed to convert. Not only did I fail to convert, but often manage to turn these possible wins into losses.

Finally, my study program involves tactics. I have created a custom set on chesstempo for problems rated 0-1400 and I try to solve 30 of these a day. I don't always reach this due to life, but I try.

January - 436 problems
February - 614
March - 341

The idea is from things I have read that state a plethora of easy problems helps improve pattern recognition. I am supplementing this by solving occasional standard rated problems to work on my calculation. My current rating is 1804 and my peak is 1820.

I will end this post with some lichess studies, that I will try to make public and I would love comments. There will be a number of games though as I have been putting off making this post.

I have identified a number of weaknesses that I can work on. Some are easy:

• Tactics - I am weak.
• Calculation - I am weak.
• Board vision - I don't really have this - I will elaborate later.
• Complacency - when I perceive that I am winning my calculations get foggy and I get lazy. This should be easy to correct. I just need to be diligent
• Practical Endgames - my games tend to head into these positions, and I enjoy them, but I think that I am better than I really am. This is going to be hard to correct and I'm not sure how to go about this.
• Openings - meh. I am going to continue doing what I do now. Reviewing them periodically, using correspondence games to assist in the learning, and every so often I make an attempt to learn some theory. I don't feel that I am losing due to openings though.

With respect to board vision, I don't think I have this. I have tried playing some Lichess blindfold and I can't beat anyone. Even 1100 rated players will beat me. At a certain point I totally lose track of everything. Even during calculations, I can't get very far and have to revisit the same lines often. I have an older book, Improve Your Chess Now by Jonathan Tisdall that talks about this point. So I am also looking at this right now (I think I jump around in my studies too much) as he introduced the idea of stepping stones and blindfold practice to improve calculation. I am going to take this more seriously.

Finally, here are my recent games from 2018. I have missed a lot due to being out of town for work.
2018 Chess Games

In game 4 I'm very curious about some decision advice to help determine that 43. Ra7 wins and Rb7 draws (or loses). What is my mental block that prevents me from seeing this?

So, I get this position last night (I am White) and I am feeling fairly good about my position. I am currently rated 1600 and my opponent is a nine year old 1920 with three coaches and who studies like 4 hours a day and just finished a tournament with a performance of 2250.



After a seven minute think I clamp down on the position with Rc7 intending Rfc1.

Obviously if it was presented as a tactics problem I solve it immediately, and as soon as I played it I saw it, but during calculating I didn't consider the response. FYI, his last move was Bf8 so I was keenly aware that my queen was in opposition with his bishop. What is this symptomatic of and how do I fix this problem? For me there is no worse feeling than losing due to a true blunder. I don't mind getting outplayed where there is a lesson to learn, but...

My other candidate moves in the above position were Rfc1 immediately, f4, Bb5 and g4.

Here is the complete game. I haven't performed any analysis yet (well, I looked at one line I think he should have played)

First of all, you can start getting it out of your head that this can be fixed for good. You will keep blundering, no matter how strong you get.

Don't believe me?



That is Georg Meier, one of (if not THE, not quite sure) Germany's strongest GMs (2636 FIDE) one-move-blundering his queen away to an ~1100 rated chesstempo tactic in a long time control, classical game.

You can, however, limit the amount of times this happens to you by fixing your thought process, and (to use a humorous analogy) by becoming a huge chicken.

Seeing your queen stare down the board towards the enemy bishop should give you the creeps out of general principle. With only an unprotected pawn in between the two pieces you should go full ****** chicken and do something about it (move it the **** away like the good chicken that you are, or in this specific case, protect your pawn, and plan on moving your queen away ASAP after that). Either this, or you make damn well sure that nothing bad can happen; and you do this by doing your due diligence on what Andras Toth calls The Holy Trinity of CHECKS, CAPTURES, and THREATS!

Every move, look at forcing moves you and your opponent have. Make this a habit! Every move, look for checks, captures, and threats you have, checks captures, threats your opponent might have in response, etc. I've heard chess coaches say that doing this 2.5 moves deep should be enough (or to whenever the forcing line ends).

Quiet position, no checks, captures, threats available to you that make sense? Choose a strategic move to the best of your ability and... you guessed it, look 2.5 moves deep for CC&T your opponent has in response to your "quiet" move.

This is helpful, because it's a crutch for your brain which, left to its own, likes nothing better than to wander around aimlessly. By reminding yourself to do this every move, you tame your thoughts into doing your bidding, not their own.

This is usually symptomatic of thinking of your position as good or bad, and looking for a move that fits that assessment. In this case, you believed your position was good, and thus that you deserved to make an aggressive move to keep the pressure on. When you feel like your position is good, your sense of danger is generally less sharp - you feel like you are attacking and he must submit to your aggression, forgetting that he is also capable of aggression. On the flip side, it can occur that you think your position is bad, and make passive moves, forgetting that you can also attack and make threats.

There's no simple way to resolve this, other than to try to keep your emotions on a more level keel when playing, and think about each move on it's merit, rather than as part of a grand scheme. There's obviously a large part to play in making a plan and trying to execute it; you just can't let that plan blind you to the details.

I am very guilty of this, to the extent that when I feel my position is clearly winning I become complacent and miss a lot of my opponents replies.

If it makes you feel any better I went haywire last night at the end of a game vs a 2200 which ended in blundering a mate when my king had two moves available. It was not a hard motif to spot (rooks on 7th and my king on 8th). I mean, at no point if you showed me the position on it's own would I make that move. Anyway, we move on and try to get a better trigger for avoiding such things.

April was a good month in terms of study. I did exactly 1500 chess tempo tactics. 99% of these were in the under 1400 spaced repetition set that I created. I'm on the fence about this methodology, but I will stick with it for a bit. I am also going to try and find the time to add in more standard rated tactics as my calculation is suspect at best. This is probably going to cause me to sacrifice some of the time I spend on the pattern based tactics. Realistically we are half way through May now and I am averaging 18 problems per day rather than 50, so this is not nearly going as well as I thought it would.

I am still working through the Mastering Chess Strategy book. I am resolved to finish a book instead of starting twenty. Although, this book is going to take me forever as the problems take a lot of time. I am still on the first chapter and problem 55, but I have learned a lot already. This is definitely a book that I could revisit multiple times.

Additionally, I played four games during April as part of the weekly tournaments losing two as White and winning two as Black. I also participated in a tournament in early May where I played 3 games and I drew one and lost two all of them vs opponents 200+ points higher rated than me.

I would be happy to post the games if anyone is interested, but I'm not sure anyone is actually reading this.

I'm reading it, . I'll definitely give the games a go - although if you post them and I don't seem to be saying anything about them, PM me in case I see them, then get busy and forget!