Climb To 2000

Rating 1754

Puzzle Rush Score 32

A few weeks ago I did a little study on the Classical – Spassky Variation of the Caro-Kann. I was looking at the opening more from white’s perspective, but as I have been looking at the Caro-Kann recently for black I am going to start to play it more in my blitz games to put the theory into practice. I can safely say that have only played the Caro-Kann as black a handful of times so this will be fun. I ended up winning a fairly nice game that you can check out below.

Rating 1745

Puzzle Rush Score 32

More revision on Caro-Kann opening lines today. I have found that if I work through each variation from the beginning each time it helps me to remember the opening more clearly. Annotating key ideas has also been helpful, trying to get a feel for the “plan” of the opening.

Here is a fun line that I learnt about.

Rating 1731

Puzzle Rush 37

Today I watched a video lesson on the Caro-Kann Exchange Variation. It was really instructive. Sam Shankland goes through at a very fast pace though, so I think I will have to revise his lessons and get used to the feel of playing them on the board. I have rarely played anything other than C5 (Sicilian Defense) and E5 against E4 and so adding another option to my repertoire would be nice. It is interesting looking at black’s perspective also as it has been giving me a greater understanding of what to play as white and what plans black is trying to achieve.

Below is an interesting exchange line with the crazy move 11… Ne7 taking advantage of the pin.

Rating 1715

Puzzle Rush 27

Today I had a blast from the past and had a look over some of the games I played in 2006 when I won the U18 NSW Country Chess Championship. You can check out that post here.

I really enjoyed the puzzle calculation I did yesterday and so I watched another calculation video.

White to play and win.