700th post

Reclimbed to 2200 blitz on chess.com, it's really not that strong tbh but its a start. One thing I really learnt is my openings need work as I'm usually worse out of the book and just struggling to stay in the game. It's telling when I'm getting better positions from my caro as black then my white games where I have to rely on some sac and hacks to muddy the waters and get lucky with a mating attack.

I'm like 1800 in blitz on chess.com. So that seems very strong to me. And I'm not at all sure you would be stronger than me in longer time controls.

Having said that, I suspect I'm weak at blitz. However, I think you can give yourself some credit for being strong at blitz.

Btw, what is the main time control you play for blitz? I play 3+2 fwiw, although I haven't played in quite a while because when I do I just end up wasting a bunch of time and go on tilt no matter how many games I win lol.

Mostly 3 0 cuz I have a short attention span and just want a quick hit of dopamine, 3+2 requires good quality chess thinking which is not in my ball park ;D I have a 2k+ live national quick time control rating, but I don't really play enough and I think I could get it higher.

I'm gonna play alot more classical tournaments this year. I was aiming to play around 20 and push myself abit but recent events have made travelling no the best thing to be doing right now (bushfires and pandemics and what not). It really threw a spanner into my plans.

I had two tournaments planned in march, one in another state and another out of town. Then i realise it wasn't really feasible, especially the one out of town because it is a 8 hour train trip to get there. It a 2 day event and I don't really do hotels (can't sleep in those), so it would be 32 hour train trip (back and forth for 2 days) to play 6 rounds which is abit absurd.

I'm really eager to make this thread mean something so it's about time I really be putting in some classical volume to get to where I want instead of drifting around and not playing. Just bad timing, but I will find a way.

There are no local tournaments or ability to play rated games where you are?

There are but not a lot. There are a lot of club tournaments but those run through a round a week and it’s usually a commitment to play those so I will have to prepare abit.

A round a week should be perfect if it's local. Seems a lot more convenient than a 32 hour train trip. Seems like much less of a commitment and would require a ton less preparation.

Yeah, I'll have a look around.

My plan of travelling to play alot of tournies went out the window, but at least for the rest of the year, I'm highly focus on doing sessions/sparring matches/grinding chess at home.

10/3/2020


Calculation Lesson Summary Key Points:

- If the variation leads to something more complicated and messy, maybe step back and look for another shorter, cleaner line

- Don't stop the variation if opponent still has resources (checks and captures) left to ensure we don't miss anything

- Comparison is a very important technique as slightly different moves/move order might give rise to different resources available or reduce opponent's resources and make an idea work or make the variation cleaner

- Always consider the insertion of intermediate moves as resources to look out for

Been doing the encyclopedia of chess combinations book, alot of tough puzzles there, will need to calculate more thoroughly to get the answers right (calculating them to the end properly)

Attended a lecture by a british GM, who showed us abit of his style of play which is quite interesting and adventurous to say the least. He likes to go for big pawn centres and the challenge of running his open king around the board in quite a few of the game. Some principles/preferences that his style of play entails which he talked abit about:

- play for big pawn centres even if it open up your king sometimes, be prepared to run your king around the board to dodge mating attacks

- trade down to queen or rook endgames and play with the strong pawn centre, leave too many pieces around and you will get mated...

- two bishops or no bishops (B+N is worse combo in his opinion)


This is his white strategy btw, he tends to play more solid with black while being quite adventurous in his white games

Gonna try to stay at home more so that I can become a calculation machine


Books

Encyclopedia of Chess Combinations
Perfect Your Chess
Grandmaster Preparation: Calculation
Chess.com Tactics
Woodpecker Method

Practice Openings

Chess Position Trainer
Rapid game matches

You are using CPT instead of chessable? Welcome to 6 years ago!

Gl with your calculation. I'm at home for a while but will be watching kids. So my chess is likely going to continue to be inactive (has been more or less all this year).

I mean, you can spend the time watching chess videos and other chess content. It will prob be a relaxed way of passively learning chess anyway.

It's due to lack of time/capacity/energy. Turns out having two kids (one an infant) sucks up even more time than having 1 kid!

https://www.modern-chess.com/

^ Found a site that seems to sell updated chess repertoires by experts, has anyone used it and if so, did you find it useful?

I haven't used it but have played matches against someone who uses it and after seeing my opening(s) he found very good antidotes and was definitely getting the upper hand no problem.

Basically, it definitely is legit but I haven't used it so no idea how useful it is compared to anything else.

This is my 1000th post on 2p2! I've posted in other sub-forums but my chess thread is definitely one of my favorite. Just like to say I enjoyed chilling and posting in 2p2 and thanks everyone that has been a part of my journey so far

I have to self ban for a while soon because I have some uni assessment coming up and I have to fix and get my life together. I will prob be working on chess and looking at the games from the candidates as well as studying my openings and improving my tactics. Also, these are crazy times so I hope everyone stay safe and healthy.

I'm going to try to make some changes in my life and try to improve all aspects of my life. This is something I definitely been trying to start doing (with limited success) but this time it's for real

Making a return to chess (hopefully)

Decided to make a return to chess, took a long break during the COVID lockdowns. Now tournaments are opening up so maybe it will be worth to play.

Will mostly target national tournaments for now to get started, will take a shot at some FIDE rated classical tournaments when my chess.com blitz and bullet gets to 2500ish.

I'm currently 2300 on both blitz and bullet on chess.com and I think climbing to 2400 quickly is doable as long as I stick to my tactics and calculation routines. I couldn't do that last time due to poor discipline and work ethic, lets hope this time it will be better.




This is my blitz analytics on aimchess.




This is my bullet analytics on aimchess.


I will go more into detail on my study routines in later posts.

This will be my daily routine:

30 minutes Tactics Training (Chess.com Tactics Trainer)

60 minutes Difficult Calculation (Grandmaster Preparation: Calculation by Jacon Aagard)

1-2 hours on Opening Preparation (Chessable courses), alternate with Endgame Study (100 Endgames You Must Know) unless I'm doing intensive opening training for a tournament

This study schedule will hopefully be more reasonable than my study in the past



So far, I finished the Gelfand's Position Decision Making book and it is probably the best book on strategy that I have ever read. I wouldn't have been able to finish it (as with most books in the past) without Chessable, I think Chessable makes it much easier to go through books and its partly what got me back into chess because I couldn't finish through entire books until Chessable came out.

Hopefully, my study plan is not too ambitious or taxing like it was in the past and I won't burn out again.


One of the big changes I've made, is mainly in my opening choices, and I hope it will reflect in the results in the future:

1) I've found a simple way to play the English Four Knights: 1. c4 e5 2. Nc3 Nf6 3. Nf3 Nc6 4. d4 and it leads to alot of simple position and solved the issue I used to have with alot of the e5 lines. Alternatively, I also have the c4, e4, Nf3 set ups which is going to allow me to get into Maroczy Binds which are my bread and butter positions in the English.

2) I've completely scraped the Semi Slav out of my repertoire, because back then that opening took alot of my time and got me no where, it was alot of preparation work and I was still constantly getting worse position because of how hard it was to cover the entire breadth of lines available to white and I often wondered into lines I'm ill prepared for where it was very very concrete and punishing for black (think Marshall gambit in the Triangle slav, a bunch of the sidelines in the Botvinnik Variation and some of the more tricky Meran lines). I did some Stonewall Dutch lines with some success but decide to just play the Dutch straight up and has found alot of success because of how much it suits my style and how intuitive it is to play those positions.

3) I play the Nf6 Modern Variation instead of the Bf5 Classical Variation in the Caro Kann now and it's doing great. I used to go 0-0 and get relentessly hacked by 0-0-0 and g4 lines and those positions were very easy for white to play. Now in the modern after exf6, I realised alot of players up to like 2100 struggle to play the positions as white because they aren't used to that pawn structure where now I get to play dynamically with my kingside which suited my style more (rather than sitting around trying to find engine defenses). I'm also open to the idea of 1. e4 c6 2. d4 d5 3. e5 c5!? lines in the advanced variation to cut down on the theory work and to catch unprepared players off guard, not that I was having problems in the normal advanced variations which I usually have lot of ideas in anyway, but this gives me more option and ideas to play as black.

Just FYI, the Leningrad Dutch course that's pretty new is *way* better than the Killer Dutch course (I'd bet heavily it's better than any course William's has or ever will make). Not sure if you want to play it, but, thought I'd mention that at least.

I actually have that course, my repertoire is a mixture of Simon William’s Killer Dutch and some of the lines from the Leningrad Dutch.



Simon William’s lines imo are often flawed and non critical but a lot of his opening themes are relatively easy to execute. That Leningrad course will be more useful as you go higher up the rating ladder because the Leningrad Dutch is an actual respectable line whereas the Classical Dutch is more about easy play.

Against the g3 mainlines I also use the Christmas Tree Variation (with the set up d6, e6, g6) to take people out of theory and it has a bunch of weird ideas.

Yes, I'm in complete agreement with your comparison between the two courses.

Had a weird blitz tournament: https://www.chess.com/tournament/liv...nament-2906266

Came 9th, started off badly then had a decent win or two, field had some GMs and IMs. Lost to 2000, 2100 players but beat a 2570 player (online ratings ofc) and a FM.

One thing I noticed was that my opening preparation with black was bad, and I really need to learn the Caro Kann lines deeply off Chessable or I'm going to have trouble holding or playing for win against 1. e4

Came =2nd in a blitz tournament, beat two 2300s and drew another 2300 (my national quick elo is 2000 ish), should've closed out the tournament but blundered in a winning position v some random player.