I hear you are looking for a coach

I've realized recently that some people actually do read my log even if there are rarely any posts. And I'd like to get back to updating it since it is also somewhat helpful to be able to go back and see what I was studying in the past.

September, October, November Summary

Finished Build Up Your Chess 3. Honestly, it's not *that* much harder or more advanced than series 2. However, I think I am taking even more time on solving problems and I was in quite a bit of danger of failing a chapter on rook vs. knight. It was not at all obvious to me what the first move or two were and if you miss that, you can miss a whole 4 point problem. However, I did give myself partial credit a few times since I felt it was warranted. I think I would have barely, barely passed without the partial credit, though.

Total results for Build Up Your Chess 3: 80.106% (495/618)

% of chapter grades
Excellent: 28% (7/25)
Good: 60% (15/25)
Pass: 12% (3/25)

Also, here are my results for the book before that and series 2:

Total results for Chess Evolution 2: 81.97% (500/610)

% of chapter grades
Excellent: 60% (15/25)
Good: 32% (8/25)
Pass: 8% (2/25)

Beyond The Basics Series (2nd level): 82.45% (1433/1738)

Coach Update
I spent a lot of time looking for a coach. The first one I found (I contacted 7 and only 1 got back to me saying he could take a new student) scammed me. Thankfully paypal reimbursed me without any issues.

Then I contacted 10 coaches and 7 got back to me before I told the other 3 not to bother. I had 4 or 5 trial lessons and selected the coach who I felt had the most ambitious training plan. The others mainly just went over my games. The best individual lesson was probably with a GM from Ukraine. He prepared some very interesting material based on one of the openings I play. He was also the most entertaining and probably fun. However, it felt a bit like a lecture and I have a feeling each week would essentially be like that. So less a coach or mentor and more of a very affordable and high-level lecturer.

Anyway, I've had a few lessons with the coach I selected and the main thing we're doing is he sends 3 games for me to analyze. I am supposed to play one side of the game and write down the moves and variations I considered for each move. It's a bit like "guess the move" but I really am supposed to come to my own conclusion and not just guess. Also, I'm not supposed to spend more than 3 minutes on a move unless I really feel I need to keep calculating.

I've analyzed 6 games this way and he is tracking what I miss. He hasn't shared the stats with me yet but as I continue I assume he will and hopefully they trend towards improvement. This week instead of sending me 2 games in a random opening and 1 in one of my openings, he sent all 3 games in my opening repertoire. The lines aren't necessarily exactly what I play but it is much more exciting to look at them as the themes and ideas should transfer well.

[Playing]
I haven't played much. Just 3 rated games one day a month or two ago on a day my brain wasn't working very well (I drew all 3 but probably should have gone 1/3 - against lower rated players). I'm on a team and we've played 3 games, those have gone relatively well and I'm 2.5/3 (my only draw was me botching a winning endgame). I've been quite lucky in some ways as I've made quite a few mistakes. These games are also unrated so my rating isn't moving up at all. Which is probably fine, but I do need to find a way to start playing games more frequently again.

I like the really systematic approach to learning you take. As someone who used to play a lot of chess earlier in life i might try to do this as a hobby.

Otherwise, how has life been? Still in the area? We just moved up to West Metro. I ve a couple months back.

Yep! I live in South Minneapolis. Now have a daughter (21 months). Although maybe you haven't been gone that long? Probably have, though. That's by far the biggest change, .

I played when I was in HS, mainly, and some college. Then quit for 10 years. For some reason didn't pick it back up until a few years ago but it's a great hobby. Of course, only if you really like it. Not sure how I like it now but didn't 5 years ago or whatever. Really weird.

I guess I should also make a pitch for you to get back into chess.

- There is a nice chess club here if you want to take it seriously.
- We have our home-grown YouTube sensation, John Bartholomew, if you just want to watch vids online.
-We have a top 10 player in the world, Wesley So, living here (Minnetonka) if you want to follow elite tournaments. And if you're going to church and in the W suburbs, who knows, it may be the one he goes to
-We have an up-and-coming GM-elect (he just became a GM and is the first MN to actually come from here) - Andrew Tang, who may be the best bullet player in the world (or soon) and is a Twitch sensation
- We have Pro Chess League team, The MN Blizzard, that you can root for and follow.
- We are fairly close to St. Louis, MO, which is the chess capital of the world if you want to go somewhere to see the elite and bask in all that is chess.
- The hennepin country libraries carry quite a few chess books (this may be true everywhere) so if you want to study you know there is a pretty good free supply

Globally, it's a great time for chess. Tons of online games, resources, news, etc.

Probably haven’t been around for that long but did see some pictures on FB. Congratulations. How’s it going? Surviving? Working on #2 coming?

I played in elementary middle school. Your guys previous talk about ratings I looked it up. 2 UCSF tournements haha 2001 super nationals at age 10- unranked-> 559. Then 2002 National jr high 559 -> 565 hahah.

After that just played online. Might be good for me. Maybe I’ll check it out.

I think I might have seen Andrew tang on twitch before. Will check links when at home. I’m on phone!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I actually live walking distance from a Hennepin county library. So might be good idea . I need to cut down on that screen time late at night.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yeah, a bit better than surviving finally, although it was survival mode 24/7 at times for sure. We're not sure about #2. I guess undecided still.

The other cool thing about the library is they have books on pretty much everything.

It sounds like it's brutal the first bit after they're born. I'm not sure if I'm looking forward to those days or not!

Haha I used to be big reader, and I eased too much into computer/netflix. Was thinking recently should do that for an hour or so before bed.

I played another league game on Friday and won. That's 3.5/4 in my league games. Too bad they are not rated! I think my performance is 2300+ in the games, lol.

Here is the game: https://lichess.org/study/YeIle7vr/liMqVjFB#0. I thought it went a bit better than it actually did when looking over it again (and then with an engine). It's interesting that my opponents big "mistake" is actually not a mistake at all as long as he can follow it up precisely. However, psychologically this guy was the opposite of the kid Unguarded played recently. As soon as he made the "mistake" and lost a pawn he seemed to take much less time on each move and did not put up a fight at all imo. The game was very easy after that for me.

After the game I did ask him why he didn't spend a lot of time after I won the pawn to try and cause me more problems. He kind of seemed confused. But earlier he spent quite a while on moves and his a5-a4-Qb6 idea did cause me some problems I had to solve. So it was weird that all the fight seemingly went out of him after I won a somewhat unimportant h pawn.

Then I played two training games against Unguarded yesterday. Good games as I was not doing too well in either of them for a while.

https://lichess.org/study/YeIle7vr/liMqVjFB#0
In the first I did not handle the opening vs. his plan very properly. I do think I made a good practical decision sacrificing a pawn later on even though it wasn't the best objective move. However, I don't think I continued the attack as precisely as I would have liked but he missed the main refutation of it and then missed my Nd4 move.

https://lichess.org/study/upw6HNgV/mFI8ZYlW#0
In the second game I actually saw the right continuation after he played ...Ne4 - Nxe4 dxe5 Nxf6+! but then didn't look further, just thinking "I don't win material, meh." However, the resulting position is definitely much better than letting the N stay on e4. Very frustrating. However, my general plan of keeping pieces on the board and probing paid off when Unguarded saw some ghosts and made a big mistake, ...g5, that I was able to take advantage of.

He seemed to think I played very well, although, honestly, I am still missing some simple things - they just happen to be less costly than the simple things he missed.

December Summary

GM Game Analysis
7 games. Coach is sending me more games in my openings and I'm choosing which lines too which is great.

Not sure on the stats although I've analyzed 13 now so it would be interesting to see.

Yusupov
Completed 7 chapters

Games
Played only 1 OTB game - league game so unrated

To start 2018 I've already signed up for January Thursday Knighters. I'm thinking I should perhaps sign up for every single month and just see how many games I end up playing rather than waiting for next month since "this month isn't a good month." We'll see though, I could get discouraged if I have too much trouble sleeping after and it makes other life things much more difficult, which is always my worry but I'm not sure in practice this really happens as often as I think.

Also, I'm asking my coach to help me with 2018 goals, which I'll certainly share here and hopefully it will give me more focus.

Lost my game Thursday night vs. a low 2000s player. I missed crucial counterplay in a winning (although not trivial imo) endgame with B vs. 3P. After that I think my position my be holdable but extremely difficult in practice. I did not hold it.

On the one hand I'm bummed I didn't convert that game and made a key mistake that let the game go from win/draw to draw/lose. On the other hand, I had a winning position and my idea in the endgame may not have been best, but I think it was good, I simply blundered right before I finished enacting my plan (I saw a "ghost" and thought I had time for a different move to be even more prophylactic). I also felt in general that I outplayed my opponent and controlled the game (except for that one move, although other mistakes were for sure made). I know this is a very arrogant thing to say having lost, especially since I certainly did not outplay him after the game went to holdable but very difficult to do so. But I think if the situation were reversed he would have lost there too.

Afterwards I decided to prepay (which no one has ever asked to do before, lol) for the rest of Thursday Knighters as a birthday present to myself. I definitely won't play all 52 Thursdays but I think this will help motivate me psychologically (b/c no one is unaffected by sunk costs) to play many more than the 17 rated games I did in 2017 (which is a personal best btw).

I actually should be quite proud of the 17 rated (and 4 unrated league games) I played in 2017. That is way more games than I've ever played in a year (probably double) and while it still likely seems paltry for someone who is studying as much as I am, it is progress for sure.

My coach doesn't seem to want to help me put down any concrete goals for 2018, which is frustrating b/c I think I do better with concrete goals. However, for the first 3 months I've laid out:

8 rated games
3 league games (the last three of the season)
20 homework analysis games
Read through Chess for Zebras

Sidenote: I have many "liberated" copies of chess books in PDF format. While I tell myself it's ok as long as I'm simply skimming the book or checking it out to see if I should buy it, I have gone through at least 2 this way without purchasing. This should be much worse than I seem to treat it since supporting chess is very important given my enjoyment of the game and the least I can do is pay for resources I use.

For example, I have skimmed seven deadly chess sins and some of zebras without paying for either. I will rectify this and buy at least (and most likely) the kindle version of each. I should also retroactively purchase but I'm not sure I will:

Pump Up Your Rating
Starting Out: Accelerated Dragon
Killer Dutch (although I do own the DVD, which maybe comes with the ebook if you buy online - which I didn't?)

I've read parts of Thinking Inside The Box - so I should purchase that too if I want to go through it properly.

I do think I will continue to liberate certain books if there is 1 line I'm interested in skimming over or if I want to see if it's a book I should purchase.

Note that I have no qualms over using a liberated PDF to complement a book I've already purchased. I do this with Yusupov books in case I have time to do a bit at work but don't want to have the physical book out in front of me.

Actually, in 2017 I played 16 rated games and 4 unrated games. Through all of them my performance rating was 2093, which is quite encouraging. This should probably be a bit lower, though, since one of the unrated games was against someone who has not played a rated game in a long time.

If you just count rated games my performance was 2030.

In 4 of the games my brain wasn't working properly (not sure how else to describe it).
In 5 of the games I went in psychologically depressed to varying degrees.

I'm mainly just recording that to see if in 2018 I have similar issues with my brain sometimes not working at all or if I end up going into may games psychologically depressed.

If I cherry-pick and just count the other 11 games where I would say I felt normal my performance was 2140. Also encouraging.

Anyway, we will see. I've started this year with a ~1600 performance but also plan to play significantly more games overall than last year anyway.

The Chess for Zebras book has some interesting chapters on why chess is so difficult for adults to make meaningful improvements.

Completed 8. Would have been 1 or 2 more but I was sick for most of last month.

My performance rating was 1996 over these. I lost 3 games vs. higher rated opponents where I think I outplayed my opponent into an advantage of some sort but didn't convert any of them. I feel my concentration failed me to some degree or another later/late-ish in the game. I'm not sure if there is for sure a pattern here or not but I may need more grit as the time gets further and further past my normal bedtime.

Completed. Won 2 and drew 1. The draw should have for sure been a loss but my opponent seemed hell bent on winning fancy and ended up almost losing.

The league is over and I ended up with 6/7 on board 1 of the Silver division (2283 performance in these unrated games but this includes very outdated ratings of opponents). Which is way above any expectation I had. Sadly our total team score was 12.5/28 and we ended up finishing in the bottom two. We'll see if I play the league again what I may do. I'd prefer to play in the Gold division even though it'd likely be on board 4 as that is where most of the serious and strong players play.

There is some sort of pizza party for the league this Friday where I may get an award (along with 2342343 other people who were the top of their board in the various divisions, and the winning teams from the various divisions). Would be cool to have some sort of plaque or something as top 1st board, . The top 1st board in the gold division was GM Andrew Tang. So, I mean, the only thing separating us is one division of the league, .

I completed 20 homework assignments although not all were analysis of full games. It's very hard for me to tell how helpful these really have been. They are interesting and I enjoy working on them so I'm not sure it matters if I can tell for sure or not. It's either do this or make more progress in the Yusupov books. This is a bit more practical in some sense since I'm making decisions throughout an entire game, where as Yusupov is always exercises of specific positions. Which trains skills I need in a game but does not necessarily train bringing it all together throughout a game.

Done. Completely unsure how practically useful this is/was but it was for sure interesting and changed how I think in certain ways for sure.

I also have gone through at least 1/3 of Improve Your Chess Tactics: 700 Practical Lessons & Exercises on Chessable. No clue how much it's helping but I am definitely memorizing a bunch of them so it should be easier to spot similar things in actual games.

Starting this month I'm back working on Yusupov and hope to finish the second to last book in the next 2-3 months. Then the last one by the end of the year.

I've been reading Thinking Inside The Box. I have to admit I'm skipping most of the analysis games and annotations. It's not that they are necessarily way over my head but I am not using this as a training book. I simply want to learn more about Aagaard's approach to getting better. I do not think I will jump to his books right after Yusupov but at some point it may be what I want to do. So, this is another "casual" read like Zebras rather than specific training. I also have a Chess24 subscription and am going through Yusupov/Dvoretsky videos there (at the least) which is more casual learning - although I should probably try a bit harder when they pause during a lecture to ask what I would do.

I also briefly considered switching my White repertoire to The London System. I may still do that at some point. However, it would require quite a bit of work for me and since I have a pretty established system that I'm only lacking experience in, I may as well just keep that until I really feel it is limiting my results rather than my chess ability. So far even when I am in weird lines or things that are supposed to be completely equal and not ambitious, I'm getting games against stronger opponents and possible advantages. Those mistakes they and I are making are much more significant imo than playing a slightly more ambitious system.

I'm also committed to The National Open in Las Vegas in June. Will plan to play 5 out of 7 rounds. Since I'm playing many more rated games this year I don't care nearly as much about getting in all 7 rated games and would prefer to enjoy the experience a bit more and have more time to see family.

I don't have anything conducive to say except that you have a beast work-ethic and I wish I had one fifth of it. Keep it up my man

Thanks! That's very encouraging to hear. Although I am not sure I really have as much ethic as you think I do. I guess given context it is solid but I'm not sure how much really concentrated time I'm putting in. It feels like a lot less but that's probably because I play a game most weeks and that's 3+ hours and then another hour going over it. Although I'm probably also not 100% concentrated and focused that whole time either. lol

If only I had the work ethic to update this log.

I do have one easy update:

Hell to the yeah!

However, that second zero and that one should switch places this year

Hey Yugo, how many OTB games have you been playing per month roughly?

2015: 12
2016: 9
2017: 20 (includes 4 unrated league games)
2018 (so far): 20 (includes 3 unrated league games)

Are you saying 2100 or simply 2010+? I actually thought I'd be 2010 after the last tournament. The calculator I used must simply be off and/or I have no idea what ratings they use to do the calculations - I assumed it was live ratings but maybe it is start of tournament ratings. The last game I drew a guy who was 2251 (in a game I did not play particular well - got verrrry lucky) but he started the month at 2217 or something so perhaps they use that lower rating.

My rating has gone from 1927 to 2001 so far this year. Although I really shouldn't worry about it at all, especially now that I have hit a milestone and no one can take it away from me!

Oh, I guess one other thing people may have advice/thoughts on. I will be playing the National Open again this year, in the u2100 section. It is weirder this year since there are now 7 rounds (up from 6) and several schedules you can do:

4 day schedule - 1 Thursday evening, 2 Fri, 2 Sat, 2 Sun - 40/90, SD/30 + 30s inc
3 day schedule - 3 Fri (first 2 g/60+10s inc), 2 Sat, 2 Sun
2 day schedule - 5 sat (first 4 g/30+5s inc), 2 Sun

The game on Thursday starts at about my normal bedtime here in MN so playing that seems dumb. I ended up registering for:

3 day schedule with 3rd and 7th round byes. Each year I either skip the last game or wish I didn't have to play it. And 7 games just seems like a lot anyway. Plus, a big part of this trip is not just chess but to see my family, which I would like to have a bit more time for.

So what this means is I'd play:

Fri: 2 G/60 + 10s inc.
Sat: 2 long games
Sun: 1 long game

Another option would be to do 4 day but take a bye Thursday and Sunday evenings. This schedule would match what I ended up playing in 2015 and 2017 (2016 I played all 6 games but only played the last game b/c my opponent didn't accept an early draw offer):

Fri: 2 long games
Sat: 2 long games
Sun: 1 long game (and don't feel guilty for skipping the last round)

Any thoughts on whether I'm making a mistake or if I should organize it differently? I was mentioning this to the guy I played last week and he thought I should play all 7 games since it will help most for improvement.

If this is actually per month, like Loki asked, I will eat a shoe.