Rating 1825
Puzzle Rush Score 43
Daily Study Today I played two blitz games. I lost my first game in time trouble (I had a winning position – up a queen for two minor pieces) and won the second game. Here is the second game along with my annotations.
Rating 1817
Puzzle Rush Score 40
Daily Study Today I played a few blitz games on Lichess. I went there to check out the opening explorer as I had heard that it can identify what openings you are strong / weak at based on your game results. I forgot to check it though, so that is still on the to do list.
I played a nice game in the French where I had the opportunity to go for an Anastasias Mate pattern. I didn’t quite get there with it, but did enough damage to win.
This was a fairly straight forward game, but there were a few ideas in the opening that I found instructive.
Rating 1812
Puzzle Rush Score 37
Daily Study Today I played 1 blitz game and did a little bit of opening training on Chessable. The blitz game below is in the French Defense. I have been playing a line where I give up a pawn for the initiative and it has been a lot of fun to play. It seems that it may be a fairly sound response also (Carissa Yip played the line twice in the U.S. Women’s Chess Championships). I still know very little about the opening and need to work out what to do when black doesn’t accept the pawn. This game taught me a valuable lesson on how to handle 10… d4 with the main idea of maintaining a pin to avoid losing material, while keeping an edge in the position.