Rating 1715
Puzzle Rush Score 39
I watched a deep calculation lesson and attempted some puzzles. The puzzles were aimed at coaching a 1600 rated player and so they were at a good difficulty for me to solve.
Here is one of the puzzles. Black to play and win in 8 moves.
Rating 1713
Puzzle Rush 28
Today I started to learn a bit more about the Caro-Kann. I generally find that I get quite equal positions against the Caro-Kann and fare well against it as white, but I wanted to learn more about the different variations. I have also been interested in learning more about the French as well and these openings sometimes share similarities. Another similar opening is the Queens Gambit Slav which is a line I play and so I thought it could help my play in some of those positions too.
On chess.com Sam Shankland has a video series, so I am making my way through that. The Fantasy Variation was the topic of focus for today. Sam mentioned a game he had played in the Fantasy Variation against Roy Robson in the 2010 USA Junior Championships. This was the playoff game that earned Sam Shankland the title.
Rating 1688
Puzzle Rush 27
I have never loved playing against the French and have usually opted for an exchange variation which leaves black fine out of the opening. Today I watched a video on an opening line that white can adopt against the French and wanted to test out some of the ideas. Click here to see that video.
In this particular game it may have just been better to recapture the pawn in the center as black has taken time to manoeuvre his knight rather than the more immediate Qb6, but I wanted to test out some of the ideas I had learnt about in the video lesson.
Rating 1663
Puzzle Rush Score 30
Today I enjoyed watching the last day of the the 9LX competition where Leinier Domínguez came in first place. As the positions are randomly generated the players have only 15 minutes to prepare their opening lines. I really liked this part of the broadcast as it showed the players thinking of what the key ideas where, how to develop each piece, where the weak pawns were that could be attacked or needed defending. Practical chess by grandmaster players. Also the fact that there was lots of decisive games made it an interesting viewing. It was also great seeing Garry Kasparov do such a great job against the current best players in the world.
I played this Four Knights game reasonably well (aside from one poor opening move). I found a nice deflection tactic that helped me to close the game out quickly.
I watched a video lesson on The Kings Indian by GM Simon Williams. I haven’t played the Kings Indian much so I have been trying to learn a bit more about it. He used the following game as an example. I have added a few annotations looking at some of the main ideas.