I was just looking at the Rossolimo yesterday while on a plane. I play 3 ... g6 as black which avoids b3 -> bb2 lines I suspect. Also, it seems as a general rule black recaptures bxc6 with the d pawn until black gets in e5, d6.

I do remember looking at a somewhat similar line but black plays Qd4 instead of Qe7 bc he's taken dxc6 and plans to support e5 with bg7.

Anyway, that's neither here nor there, I was just surprised I knew anything about some opening prep lol .

That continuation is insane lol. Black queens on move 18, is only a piece up, and has a hopeless position.

I was just looking at the Rossolimo yesterday while on a plane. I play 3 ... g6 as black which avoids b3 -> bb2 lines I suspect. Also, it seems as a general rule black recaptures bxc6 with the d pawn until black gets in e5, d6.

I do remember looking at a somewhat similar line but black plays Qd4 instead of Qe7 bc he's taken dxc6 and plans to support e5 with bg7.

Anyway, that's neither here nor there, I was just surprised I knew anything about some opening prep lol .

UPDATE: 10/4/2015


Day 55

Woke up at around midday, played blitz for a few hours. Then had lesson with my coach. He urged me to play more standard games so we can better analyse my habits. But this lesson we analysed my blitz games, and picked up a few bad habits:

1. Calculation error and missing tactics
2. In some positions I keep trying to improve my position even more, when I could've grabbed the initiative and blow my opponents away.
3. Not yet fully understand some concept in the English
4. Should take more aggressive lines and exploit early opening errors by the opponent

Maybe I should post some examples later.

We also went through some of the lines he researched against the Slav. And he showed me some pretty dangerous side lines that requires black to play very accurately.

Ended up going to freeroll at 6pm which I really shouldn't have.

Came back home and played a few hours of blitz.

Every though I didn't spend time on my repetiorre, I still spent a decent amount of time on chess. (whole day except for the evening). So today is one point.

Points: 2
Strikes: 0

UPDATE: 11/4/2015


Day 56

It's almost midnight here, I'm done for the day. I woke up today and played blitz from morning till night, didn't do much else... feeling unhealthy and also feeling like a degenerate

Didn't end up working on The Reversed Maroczy like i wanted to, and now I don't feel like doing it cuz it's already so late and I have to wake up early tommorow.

With not many days left to work on my repetiorre (and work on my overall game), I have to be hard on myself and even though I spent the whole day on chess, I'm gonna give myself a strike.

Tomorrow is a break from chess. I need to wake up early to play a live tournament (my friends are driving me, and they don't late rego). If I bust very early, then I'll watch a movie with my friends, then maybe play a freeroll (maybe) then work on my university assignment which is due on the 15th (I haven't even started cuz I spent my time on chess). If I bust really late then I'll just head home and finish my assignment.

Points: 2
Strikes: 1

UPDATE: 12/4/2015


Day 57

Today is a break day from chess and I didn't even do my uni assignment (so might have to spend some time on it tomorrow), didn't even watch a movie. Ended up busting the tournament after spewing then went to play in another place and continued to spew.

I don't think I can even play live poker anymore, cuz I just start spewing from impatience (you get like <20 hands an hour, cuz everyone is ******edly slow, compare this to online where you can multitable and log in thousands of hands). And the ****** degenerates there just tilted the **** out of me.

Now that I got this degeneracy out of my system for now, it's back to chess.

UPDATE: 13/4/2015


Day 58

It's early in the day but ugh, i have to spend time on my assignment - wish I can just drop out of uni.

I'll try to get some opening work done later tonight.

UPDATE: 14/4/2015


Day 59

Played blitz the whole day several hours straight, quality of games got worse later in the day and dropped some rating. Losing games to the point where I'm throwing the mouse against the wall in disgust. I'll stop playing blitz now. Any blitz in the next week is an auto-strike. Got only like <80 days before tournaments. I'm being generous and giving myself a point today. But no more blitz...

My coach sent me some of the lines he researched over the years and they are pretty dangerous, tough to refute. Excited to study that asap.

Points: 3
Strikes: 1

Where do you play blitz and what is your rating?

Was your plan to play blitz for the whole day? I can't imagine it was so I'm not sure how that day wasn't a strike. I mean, I DGAF but if you're already being loose with your points/strike system it doesn't bode well for establishing any sort of habits you seem to actually want to have.

True... true. I gave myself a point today to motivate myself, and I still consider it a moral victory. Cuz I'm 20 years old, have uni and work and still manage to fit a whole day for chess. Although I will be stricter to myself in the future.

Um I play on a couple of sites like lichess, ICC, chess.com and a couple of random ones. My rating of most of those sites are around vary around like 1900-2100+. I'm around 1800-1900 on chess.com but sometimes as low as 1750. But I think chess.com ratings there are abit off/deflated because I notice alot of titled players (like FM and NM) have ratings around 1900 on chess.com, so maybe there are blitz specialists whole are better than a standard time player in blitz. Not sure if it is too reflective of strength in OTB standard games tho.

For now I'm only playing on chess.com so I guess I only care about that rating, .

I played a bunch of blitz yesterday and got throttled. I think I was much more tired than I realized b/c I just wasn't seeing the board properly and missing lots of stuff. My chess.com blitz rating is only around 1600-1700 or something right now, though. Too bad you didn't play me b/c you would have had some easy wins, lol.

Do you have a Fide rating? Or any OTB rating? How does it compare to chess.com

I've never had a FIDE rating and my OTB USCF rating is old at this point. I'm just sharing my chess.com blitz rating for kicks. I'm not sure how meaningful it is quite yet.

I mainly was curious if it makes sense for us to play each other on chess.com, .

UPDATE: 15/4/2015


Day 60

Work up at 12pm, but procrastinated quite abit. Then the worse thing happened. While inputting moves on chess opening wizard express, the computer crash and some of my files got deleted - tried a system restore and still didn't help.

I don't trust that program anymore and I have to put in all my variations from the last two weeks back into a pgn. This is gonna take several hours, but I guess it's some form of revision. Definitely a strike today.

Points: 3
Strikes: 2

Goal for Tomorrow (16/4)

To get a point tomorrow, I have to work on the following:

- Reverse Maroczy
- Reverse Maroczy with g6
- Nxd4 main line in the English Close System

Then get back to doing my other areas of chess study:
Chess Tactics
International Chess School course

Hopefully I can wake up at around 12pm and get a full 12 hours of study done (doubt I'll be able to sustain it), also need to find a way to halt procrastination.

Why are you trying to study for 12 hours?!? That seems well past diminishing returns unless you are specifically trying to train mental stamina of specifically playing 2 drawn out OTB games in the same day. And in that case I'd simply recommend trying to simulate that situation more closely.

Are you planning to take frequent breaks or organize the 12 hours into smaller blocks of focus?

Anyway, maybe your approach really is the best for you but I'm constantly surprised at most of the plans you detail in your log, .

I'm a pretty obsessive person, and I find it hard to not do something continuously. If I do A this certain day, I can't go the rest of the day doing anything else. Once I get started on something, I wouldnt be able to stop thinking about it for the rest of the day, so It's hard for me to e.g. do some work here, then switch to something else like uni work.

Basicly, a whole day is a single block of focus for me. If I grind poker in the morning, its likely that I'll grind 12 hours straight. If I read a book, I'll likely be done with it by night.

That sounds awful, lol, . Possibly a great thing for your eventual goal if you have enough "good" days, though. Good luck tomorrow!

UPDATE: 16/4/2015


Day 61

Procrastinated today, but got some work done on my lines. I'll post my summaries of the positions I study along with diagrams on this log tommorow hopefully. Today I don't get a point or a strike, but if I procrastinate again, it would be a definite strike.

Points: 3
Strikes: 2

UPDATE: 17/4/2015 - 19/4/2015


Day 62 - 64

Friday, I spent my time on the Reverse Maroczy Lines, but definitely didn't get enough work done (maybe only 3 hours worth).

It took till Saturday, but I finally completed my preparations against reverse Maroczy 1.c4 c5 2.g3 Nf6 3.Bg2 Nc6 4.Nf3 d5 5.cxd5 Nxd5 6.Nc3 Nc7 7.O-O e5 8.a3!) and reverse Maroczy with g6 (1.c4 c5 2.g3 Nf6 3.Bg2 Nc6 4.Nf3 d5 5.cxd5 Nxd5 6.Nc3 g6 7.O-O Bg7 8.Nxd5 Qxd5 9.d3 O-O 10.Be3), I still need to brush up on remembering the lines, but the general idea against the maroczy is to challenged the b5 with a3, b4 which works due to a tactical idea. Against the maroczy set ups with g6, the idea is queenside pressure.

I started doing tactics puzzles again, and played some blitz games (which I promised not to...).

I'm quite behind pace, and spent alot of time on opening. I think I have to pick up the pace, especially not spending too much times on small details but to in take as much patterns and themes as possible.

Of course, I had the monthly 1k freeroll and poker which definitely impacted my routine. But after today (I'm playing the 1m GTD Sunday Storm in a few hours), chess should be a priority.

I set the objectives for this week:

- Get my English opening done (maybe except some specific openings and transposition)
- Finish month 2 of ICS in one week!
- DO a crap load of exercise: tactics and Endgames

Last few days, I'll give myself a strike and no points.

Points: 3
Strikes: 3

UPDATE: 20/4/2015


Day 65

Did some blitz and tactics. Had a brief look at main lines in the close system of Symmetrical English. Definitely didn't get too much work done, but most of it due spending 4+ hrs only to bust in the money bubble with KK v AQ (busted the Sunday Storm earlier in the day 17 minutes in with KK v AA).

I'm still optimistic I can put in alot of work in the next two months before the tournaments...

Although definitely haven't put in as much effort as I had hoped, I'm still showing signs of improvement.

My tactics improved and I'm approaching 2000+ quite quickly (and tactics is not my strong point)



Also managed to outplay a NM/CM in two games, blundered the first one in an endgame when i was a piece up, then won the second one which was abit of an interesting game.

This is a fairly bizarre game, and the NM/CM played it poorly, and I got alot of counterplay despite dropping a rook

1.c4 e5 2.Nc3 Nc6 3.Nf3 g6 4.g3 Bg7 5.Bg2 d6 6.O-O h5 interesting plan, I've seen it a couple of times before.

7.Rb1 a5 8.a3 h4 9.b4 axb4 10.axb4 g5 11.b5 Nd4 12.Nxd4 exd4 13.Nd5 Bg4 14.h3 Bf5 15.g4? lol oops, ironically, White still have chances, despite down a whole rook, his position is quite good quality wise

15. ... Bxb1 16.d3 Nh6 17.f4 gxf4 18.Bxf4 Ba2 19.Qd2 surprisingly, in just a few moves, the position was already even, despite White being down a rook! Black's pieces are frozen and can't move. The bishop is stuck in enemy lines doing nothing. Nxg4! saccing the knight to generate counterplay was probably Black's best options. White now continue to build pressure on the long diagonal, and try to take down the trapped bishop. Black's king is unsafe and stuck in the centre, as castling drop the knight and the kingside is in exposed



19. ... c6 (Diagram) 20.bxc6 bxc6 21.Nb4 Qa5 22.Bxc6+ Ke7 23.Ra1 Rab8? blunder, but Black was already losing (+6.90) 24.Nd5+ 1-0

UPDATE: 21/4/2015


Day 66

So the day hasn't ended yet (7:30pm ish), and I'll get a few more hours in. Spent the earlier part of the day playing. Manage to get back to my peak after completely changing my repetiorre, which is a good signed.

I then spent the next three hours + playing bullet and dropping around 150 rating points. Lesson of the day: don't play bullet with a laggy computer. But it's bullet, so who cares :P

My computer is heating up and not cooling properly after spending extended period on it everyday. Maybe I need to get a new one.

So after dinner, I'm hoping to get some stuff done.

1. Definitely want to study the annotated games for king attack in International Chess School
2. Do my daily tactics puzzles
3. Do a few variations of the closed system English at least

If I get these stuff done tonight, I'll give myself a point.

Points: 3
Strikes: 3
*Still haven't figured a self punishment yet, maybe clean the room or something

UPDATE: 22/4/2015 - 1/5/2015

Day 67 - 76

Sorry I haven't updated on my progress for an over a week now.

I've had the most productive week in terms of studying in quite a while. Started taking energy supplements and it's definitely helping. Might add some nootropic to the mix in the future.

For most of the week, I've been working on my opening repetiorre, more specifically on the closed system of the Symmetrical English.

Did some work on King Safety in the international chess school - mainly on different types of pawn structure around the king and how to exploit them.

Did some tactics, but doing badly at them, I'm going to have a look at my flaws in my calculation.

Played a rapid match for my uni and won my game. Wasn't particularly interesting game tho. Opponent seems pretty weak and I didn't even get his rating.

1.c4 c5 2.g3 b6 3.Bg2 Nc6 4.Nc3 Bb7 5.Nf3 Qc7 6.O-O Nd4 7.e3 Nxf3+ 8.Bxf3 Nf6 9.d4 e6 10.d5 exd5 11.Nxd5 Nxd5 12.Bxd5 Be7 13.e4 h5 14.Bf4 d6 15.Qa4+ Kf8 16.Rad1 g5 17.Bc1 g4 18.Qb3 Bf6 19.Bf4 h4 20.Bxd6+ 1-0

Went on a blitz spree yesterday and promptly regretted it. I'll learn more of my openings before playing blitz again.

Took a break today, played some blitz

Have to study for my exam tomorrow

Also pretty tilted that Mayweather won #teampacquiao

I just blew like 6 hours + playing blitz. I don't even know why I play it.It's so addictive like a drug and I cant stop. I can't sleep now. The games are so horrible that it got to the point where I'm just pushing pawns towards a direction (a2-a4-a5-a6-a7, b2-b4-b5-b6-b7) so just pushing my pieces towards their king and not even noticing anything going on on the board. My mind is muddled and I have to get out of this habit, it's completely counterproductive and a huge waste of time.

I have a rapid tournament on the 17th May

My short term goals till then are:

- NOT A SINGLE GAME of blitz
- NO POKER (except for the one live monthly tournament)
- COMPLETE my White repetiorre and have abit for black