Day 78

Current Tactics Progress: 94/1500

Day 79


Worked on my Caro Khan Classical lines most of the day, went with some of Schandorff's and Bologan's recommendations.

Generally the lines I play is pretty sharp, so I need to refresh on them over the coming days.

When to play blitz with my friend to find cracks, he move order tricked me with 1. e4 c6 2. Nc3 d5 3. Nf3 dxe4 4. Nxe4 Bf5? 5. Bg6 h4 6. h6 Nd5 and white gets a very good position while blacks gets an inferior version of the main lines.


Studied one of the videos from First Step in Chess Technique by Andrew Martin in which he examined one of the famous Nimzo Spassky-Fischer games and how he approached his own game following the similar opening line.


I still haven't gone through much of the puzzles that I need to complete, doesn't help that I have a family dinner on Xmas Eve tmmr...

Day 80


Current Tactics Progress: 100/1500

Doing really badly atm in timed tactics, dropped 100 points. The answer was always so obvious afterwards. Will do my best to fix some thought process leaks.

Day 81


Merry Christmas!

Day 82


Spent most of the day Boxing Day shopping so only had time to look through chapter 9 of the Caro Khan book which offered 4th move alternatives to the advance variation 1. e4 c6 2. d4 d5 3. e5 Bf5, none of the lines were critical...



4. g4 is pretty harmless, just respond to e6 with Qd6 at some point...

4. f4 e6 5. Nf3 h5!? looks for Nh6 at some point

4. Bd3 Bxd3 gives quite a comfortable game

4. Ne2 lines was longer but most of the moves in the line were natural


The key is to always look for queen swap in most of these lines (Qa5+-->Qa6!) and play against their bishop with plans down the queenside (c- file pressure and b5-b4 plans) in a queenless endgame where black is very solid and white might struggle to find counterplay!



Finishing the Semi Slav and Caro Khan book, as well as getting most of the English lines done is a MUST before 2016 ends.

Day 83


Finishing my Caro Repetoire, will update tmmr

Does the final Caro test involve spelling the name of the opening properly? If so, our hero here could be in trouble.

RIP English

Day 84


Spent most day out, but got to play a few games alot with a match against a fellow friend who was playing the tournament. I was doing much better against him then I did before. I equalised quite easily in my Caro and Semi Slav lines despite forgetting alot of the move order. Although I'm struggling to exert an edge in my English white games which call for some revision in the coming days. I don't have any particularly memorable games to show you guys but I booked a practice session with him later in the coming weeks and we will be playing classical games.

It's pretty late now, but I only got 2 more days to finish my Caro and Semi Slav lines given I'm spending NYE outside. But I will have around 30 hours of uninterrupted time, so I will make them count.

Day 85


Done the last 6 chapters of the Caro Kann Repertoire. Leaving just the Short + Shirov Variation of the Advanced Caro and the Panov Attack. I decded I will do the Panov Attack in 2017 instead because it ties in with my 1. c4 Repertoire against 1. ...c6 slav transpositions for when I play 1. c4 c6 2. e4!? with an aim to transpose unsuspecting Slav players into an unfamiliar Caro Line d5 3. exd5 d4

This ties both my White Repertoire and my Black's so thats good. Especially since I have a whole IQP video series on chessbase which ties in with the IQP positions I'm going to get from both sides.

Now I just have to finish The Semi Slav lines which involves some minor lines like the exchange and the g3 lines, the Anti-Meran Lines.

Furthermore, I need to print the critical position in my Meran and Botvinnik lines by tmmr as I'm going out on NYE.

Finally, I have to figure some systems against early attempts to completely bypass the semi slav set ups, I suspect I can use Kransenkow's series on the c6-d5-e6 triangle to figure out how to equalise (he has ideas such as the stonewall set ups with f5 which has a pretty simple plan.

Would you guys be interested to analyse this line?

I was studying the exchange slav and ran into a gambit sort of line for black.
It's a practical weapon I want to use up to trip up people, especially in the field I'm playing, alot of players might not be that booked up, even the FMs and IMs! And who actually books up hard for exchange slav lol.

1. d4 d5 2. c4 c6 3. cxd5 cxd5 4. Nc3 Nf6 5. Bf4 Nc6 6. Nf3 Bg4!? 7. Ne5 Qb6 8. Nxg4 Nxg4 9. e4 ( Was hoping to trick white into this line: 9. Nxd5 Qa5+ 10. Nc3 e5! ) 9... e5





10. Bd2 f5!

10. Bb5 h5!


The engine gives this line near +1, but it's so irrational and messy, I find alot of practical chances to play for a win.

Day 86

Didn't do as much as I wanted. But I did go through the theory of g3 systems against the semi slav as well the exchange semi slav that leads to the carlsbad structure. 5. Qd3/Qb3 lines lead to complex play but at least I made a summary.

I also found a way to deal with a huge section of my English lines. 1. c4 c6 and 1. c4 e6 both take up 25 chapters of the Marin Vol. 2 chapters, but I decide to bypass both these lines with 2. e4 in order to simplify into a Panov and French Exchange respectively, both goes into sharp IQP lines and are something my opponents might not be ready for.

I don't think I will be able finish the Anti Meran lines before NYE and thus 2017 but I will try to do the 7. g4!? (The sharp approach) and possibly another line or so, maybe the 7. b3 solid lines). Also I'm likely to choose 7. Bd3 dxc4 8. Bxc4 0-0 9. 0-0 e5 instead of the main line b5 to get some easy to learn position instead of the more theory. It was offered as an alternative in Schandorff GM Repertoire book.

See you guys in 2017!

Day 87

NYE


Day 88


Happy New Years! 2017 has come and my tournament draw nears (around 2 weeks). I haven't received my passport yet, so I'm not even sure if I can travel overseas yet, but hopefully it comes ASAP.

I decided to self ban from 2p2 as well as other forms of social media so I can focus on the study for the last 2 weeks, before the tournaments.

Basically I will raise my practical strength by going through everything. I will update the log when I get back tho.

So cya on the other side :P

Enjoy this Semi Slav Botvinnik game, I forgot the theory after 16. Rb1 despite studying it just a few weeks ago :P

https://www.chess.com/livechess/game?id=1880108416

Gl

OK, back from the tournament.

I have to do day 89-100 which I kinda forgot what happen then (need to look at my notes) then make a post for that tournament.

I didn't play that well imo, and ironically got out prepared in my caro lines which I've spent time on in a few of the games...

But I learnt alot and had a fun trip in NZ and definitely saw alot of improvement in my practical strength.

Day 89

Not much today. I did spend yday (New Years) on some OTB fast games with friends and chess.com game. Today, was 2-5 against a 2200+ blitz, and I didn't find answer to some of the lines, so means I really gotta spend sometime on the Caro and finishing my lines.

Day 90

Decided my focus would be finishing my lines ASAP before the tournament so I'm typing up summaries for the variations (pics on my tournament post).

Day 91

Finish my Caro Lines, which include the most critical advance variation (including Short and Shirov Varation) as well as the Panov. Pretty sure I would use Bologan's recommendation with a ...g6 plan against both the Pseudo Panov and Panov (this decision would later almost cost me a game).

Day 92

Typed up summary for the Semi Slav Botvinnik Variation that I studied earlier. Then also did the Meran Variations. I had alot of shortcut lines that skip main theory so it wasn't too hard to type some quick summary.

Day 93

Pretty sure I spent the day finishing the majority of the Anti-Meran lines summaries as well as test them out with some training partners.

Day 94

Finished off the symmetrical English lines summary (I spent the earlier days a few months back inputting variations on a chessbase file - not worth). With, I completed my entire repertoire barring the Botvinnik System and Miezis Normund IQP lines (1. c4 e6 2. e4 and 1. c4 c6 2. e4). I've already printed most of these summary up and put them in a plastic folder.

After spending the week crunching openings, I decided it's time to get acquainted with strategies in the lines that I've never used in practice.

Day 95

I did some tactics along with looking at some strategy, most notably from Aargard's books.


Day 96

Studied through games in IM Andrew Martin's First Step In Chess Technique video series, but thought alot of the positions didn't really apply to my games, but the general philosophy on every move matters and prophylactic thinking is still useful.


Day 97

Mainly looked through the IQP series that I had from ages ago, and also downloaded some Normund Miezis IQP games for study.


Day 98

Continuing to summaries IQP strategy as well as typed up summary for my Botvinnik System - my pet line. I relearnt alot of subtleties that I either forget or never seen. (These will come into use for my games in the tournament)


Day 99

Study Mueller's video series and made summary on general endgame guidelines - which IMO is just as important as theoretical endgames. Often guidelines and concrete calculations allow you to navigate the positions anyway.

Seeing as it is one day before flight, I went out, ate and watch a movie which I think helped me relax.

Day 100

On the last day of the 100 day series I board a plane to Auckland, NZ. Had to pack luggage for the three hour flight and NZ runs 2 hrs a head so basically arrived at 10pm so didn't do much chess study today.

The city is beautiful and the venue is one of the most beautiful place by the water. Booked a nice hotel there for just $125/day. The food and stuff are expensive tho.

Hey guys, took me a while, but I finally typed up a tournament post for the zonal. Abit over a week ago, I travelled to NZ for the zonal, an international tournament. It's my second big international tournament ever, the last one being the previous zonal where I got my CM (Candidate Master) title. I was aiming higher this time, for FM (FIDE Master) and the thread goal, I end up falling short but learnt ALOT from my games and tournament preparation in general and genuinely had a great time at the beautiful country.

So the tournament had it's up and downs. It was a swiss tournament. I started off fine, winning my first round game in quick fashion. I drew my second round against a friend (he's now an FM) in a probably better position (see below). It was probably my best game of the tournament, in terms of opening preparation and positional play. I lost my third round game horribly to a pretty well known CM. I basically relied on outdated prep and fell into his lines, managed to claw back to a draw endgame before blundering a pawn.

The fourth round is where it went downhill. I played one of my closest chess friend and was crushed out of the opening where he and his room mate out prepped me. We played like 16 move of prep before I misplayed the move order in a classical Caro Kann and allowed him a massive attack on my kingside where I had no counterplay. The fifth round ended in a quick draw.

The sixth round went pretty badly too, something went wrong with my prep against the Caro Kann Panov where I mixed up the plans in my line and I quickly got into a losing position. I was throughly outplayed but I ended up drawing a rook endgame a couple of pawns down in a spectacular fashion.

With no more chance for 6/9 and the FM, I played some creative games in the last two round. I did a pretty creative but unnecessary positional sac in the eighth round to lose a better position. I played a pretty sharp game against an overseas friend to give him a chance for a win (which he needed for the CM) and won that, much to his disappointment.

I ended up with a pretty disappointing 4.5/9 (which would have been enough for a CM had I not already got it). But I did feel my practical strength improved alot nevertheless.

This was probably the easiest zonal in recent memory, with over 100 entrants, a few of the FM-elects only put up 2200+ rating performance to get that 6/9 (with the help of a lucky swiss draw) for the soft titles. And given the new rating requirement for future direct titles (e.g. from zonal or olympiad) and the next zonal being held in the middle of the pacific ocean, I would think there will only be strong fields.

Ofc I'm not that sad (just a little bit), binking a FM from a soft zonal would be kinda a cop out to this thread anyway. Where the goal should be achieving that 2300 strength and rating the good old fashion way, rather than doing good in a tournament and becoming a 2000 rated FM (lol).

After this tournament, I recognised alot of my weaknesses and have since taken steps to addressed them. Had a session with an IM, but didn't really learn much from his analysis. He only briefly looked at the game and didn't tell me anything I didn't already know, except for "don't play such hard lines without practice in a big international event like this".

I tried to contact Yasser Seriewan for coaching since he played a very similar repertoire to mine, but he doesn't do international skype lesson unfortunately. So if any 2300+ interested in a student lemme know :P

Ok, so I learnt quite a few important lessons from this tournament. Lets start with the practical lessons first, then the chess lessons.


Practical Lessons

1. Fatigue and fitness

Health is a huge thing for these big classical tournaments IMO. Games can go up to hours and you have to play 7 days straight. The two round days are especially brutal and can determine someones tournament performance. I got abit sick during the tournament I'm sure that affected my performance. A few other players got sick and I'm sure one of my friend (who got 5.5) missed out on the 6/9 needed for the FM because of that. Especially going to a new country with a crazy climate like NZ, being prepared is key - taking care of yourself and eating well.


2. Repertoire experience

Alot of my worse games (and lost games) were Caro Kann lines, despite my pre-tournament preparation. I will show some of those games in a later posts. I think not having previous big tournament experience with the Caro and having an incomplete repertoire and superficial understand was also the issue. While the opening is solid, you still need to play accurate to equalise.


3. Database and preparation

Another issue was while my friends had the 2016 chessbase and lived in a big house together where they can prepare as a team, I was living in a hotel by myself with an old chessbase database where I mainly looked for my opponents games on a public site like chessdb.
Having a group of friends to work with certainly helps the morale as well as make things easier.



Chess Lessons


1. Tactics and Calculation

I think with many other sub 2300 players, a big part of our weakness is calculation and tactical strength. In fact that's probably the biggest part to being a strong player. Alot of juniors in the scene were able to climb the 2300+ ladder in very short time (with some K factor assistance). And while their opening understand and positional chess were ok, their tactical vision and calculation skill were exemplary. The stereotype of highly tactical rising juniors is definitely true. Even if you can play well positionally and gain an edge, without good calculations skills, converting advantageous positions is very hard. The same goes for fighting back or defending in worse positions.
A big part of my training from this point on will be about building my calculational ability and visualisation skills like in Michael de la Maza’s Rapid Chess Improvement. I will mainly be using Aargard's Grandmaster Preparation book.


2. Opening

Opening preparation was something that let me down, which was surprising considering the effort I put into my lines. My English games were fine, and my Semi Slav lines were largely untested. But being unluckily enough to have 5 black games, my Caro Kann were put to the test and unfortunately, I did pretty badly. I will show some of the games on future posts. I think I got my worse positions out of those. I think my understanding of the lines were still somewhat superficial (I tried to play a pawn down line against the Panov with the wrong Qb6 plan, and I basically misunderstood Ng4 idea in one of my Classical Caro games).


3. Spazzing out
Although I think I played some good moves in my games, I also played some really spastic moves. I ruined some good positions with a "stroke of inspiration" out of nowhere only for me to find out later that they aren't that good. I think calculational ability is important to back up these kind of moves.

For example in this position I played Nxf5?!. It was pretty unnecessary and many other moves would've kept the pressure and advantage. This while looks nice with the follow up of e4-e5, Qd4 etc doesn't really offer concrete winning chance and I'm actually just down a piece and it's probably better to keep my options open. Ofc playing too much blitz was one of the things that lead me to play these kind of moves.





Nxf5?! is interesting but ultimately has no concrete follow up except for pressure. Black can defend accurately and just be up a piece.



I got a couple of games from the tournament I want to show, both ones I played well or badly. But given the size of this post, I better save a game analysis for a future post. Especially since I have a Weekender tournament to play tommorow. Hopefully I can spend more time to analyse them after before making a high quality game analysis post.
But I will leave you with my second round game (will do analysis for a future post). Also got some scenery pictures I want to upload later, the country has beautiful scenery.




Second round game (I'm white)


http://www.chessvideos.tv/chess-game....php?id=109424

1/2-1/2

Have you thought about playing the King's Indian attack in response to 1..c6? The theory isn't too hard and you might get your opponents out of the book much faster.

Do you mean OP's White repertoire (the English)?

1. c4 c6 2. e4 d5 3. exd5 cxd5 4. d4 (a transposition to the Panov Attack vs the Caro-Kann) that he plays is a great alternative to 2. d4 and is the most sensible because he regularly plays the Black side of this opening too and knows the ins and outs of the resulting IQP position for both sides; 2. Nf3 and 2. g3 aren't that good. And they don't lead to the KIA because c4 has been played and Black will likely reply with 2... d5 and challenge the c-pawn so White can't stably put the pawns on d3 and e4. E.g. 2. Nf3 d5 3. d3?! dxc4.

So instead, 2. g3 and 2. Nf3 d5 3. d4 Nf6 4. g3 lead to an inferior (for White) version of the Catalan where Black's pawns on b7 and c6 ensure that White has no serious threats along h1-a8; besides, Black often can, instead of taking on c4, play Bf5 and only then e6, overdefending d5.

Conversely, when OP plays 1... c6 with Black, he doesn't worry about White responding with a kingside fianchetto, for the above reasons.

I was confused, I thought he was playing against the Caro with 1.e4, rather than playing it as black.

No, I play Caro as black now.

I did use to play King's Indian Attack as white tho. It's not the most critical line against 1. ... c6 and while it's a nice line to use in club, you aren't gonna get much further or improve.

**** is right, I currently use 1. c4 c6 2. e4 to tranpose into IQP lines to simplify the theory. However, these lines aren't really my style and I would probably work towards some more positional approaches.





UPDATE: Currently 2/4 in the Weekender tournament, yea, not a great result but last game I really should've won. Played a solid 2100 regular, and was positionally crushing him, somehow screwed up the tactics and failed to convert the point, and even dropped a pawn to give him the win.

I left my opening folder at the venue so couldn't study, so I decide to take a half point bye (two allowed per tournament) for the next round, so I can pick it up.


http://www.chessvideos.tv/chess-game....php?id=109436

I'll do a full analysis of the game later (along with a zonal game that I mentioned earlier above). Both games seem to address my inability to win games I should've won, after playing great positional chess. This highlights a huge weakness in my tactical ability.




How the f**k do I lose this, White to play

Don't worry, I couldn't see a convincing win fast here either

Nevermind