Day 23
Rating 1800
Puzzle Rush Score 38
More Meltwater Chess Champions Tour Finals viewing.
Magnus Carlsen went down in his matches against Vladislav Artemiev today. Artemiev played a nice game to secure the win.
More endgame study!
Climb To 2000
Day 22
Rating 1808
Puzzle Rush Score 26
Caught up on the Meltwater Chess Champions Tour Finals (I am a few days behind) and enjoyed watching the best battle it out on the chess board.
I did some endgame study and read about the following ideas.
- Do not hurry.
- Repetition of moves plays an important role (gaining time, frustrates opponent and gives additional chances for your opponent to play poor moves.
- Think about the plan of what you want to accomplish. Get your pieces on good squares and then push the pawns slowly (unless of course pushing quickly leads to promotion).
Day 21
Rating 1800
Puzzle Rush Score 29
I looked at at another Kings Indian game today. I found it hard to find the correct moves and they often felt quite abstract to me. This is an opening that I need to keep working at.
Day 20
Rating 1804
Puzzle Rush Score 38
Today I played one game to get my rating over 1800. I wanted to take a good look at the game seeing it was a small rating milestone, so I spent some time analyzing it.
I started the Climb To 2000 series with a rating of 1668. In 20 days my rating has increased by almost 150 points, which is great. It is however starting to become more of a grind and I am finding my opponents in the 1850-1900 range quite challenging to play against.
My rating may drop a bit before it gets higher again. I keep reminding myself that it is more important to continue learning than to worry about what my rating is. Something of even greater importance is to have fun and enjoy chess and growing my knowledge of the game.