Climb To 2000

Rating 1645

Puzzle Rush Score 32

Today I lost a blitz game when I had a winning position. I missed a very basic checkmate because my mind was focused on other things and so after making a few interesting moves I just gave it away. It is quite an instructive game though and I learnt a few valuable lessons.

I went on to read a short study on bringing the queen out too early as this is one of the drawbacks of the Scandinavian (like in the game above) as the queen can be kicked around the board with tempo.

Here is my first digital diary post outlining the chess study I did for the day.

This is part of my Climb To 2000 series.

Rating 1668

Puzzle Rush Score 30

Today I looked over a game played by the legend Garry Kasparov. Here is that game.

One thing that stood out to me when I was going over the game was the similarities with the Ruy Lopez after the sixth move 6.Bb3 a5 While this is clearly different to the Ruy Lopez. There are similar ideas of attacking on the kingside (which Garry Kasparov does an excellent job of). I haven’t played against the Alekhine defense much, but I could see myself liking these types of positions as white.

I also enjoyed watching the first day of the Chess 9XL Tournament on the St Louis Chess Club YouTube. The tournament has many great players in it, including Garry Kasparov.

 

So today marks the day I officially start the climb to 2000. It is always good to have goals as they give us something to work towards and can motivate us to reach certain milestones. It is important therefore to set achievable goals, so my chess goal is to gain a rating of 2000+ in blitz on chess.com.

Now this will definitely be a challenge for me. The highest blitz rating I have ever had on the site is 1849. My current rating is 1660 and has been reasonably stable the past month. It is clear that I have my work cut out for me. I am prepared for this to take quite a bit of time and maybe I will never get there, but it would be really cool if I did!

The main question is… How am I going to achieve this goal?

Here is a list of a few things I am going to try.

 

Daily Tactics On chess.com there is a tactics game called Puzzle Rush. The survival mode lets you take your time and when you fail 3 puzzles it is game over. Each day I am going to do a puzzle rush and record my results to see if the trend over time.

Opening Theory – I enjoy learning opening lines and I want to spend time developing the openings I play. I am eager to learn new openings and replies to positions that make me uncomfortable.

Endgame Theory – This is definitely an area that could use some improvement. I think it will need to be books and endgame studies for this one. I only just learnt about the idea of “in the square” a few days ago.

Chess Principles – Whether it is by reading books or chess.com lessons I want to continue to grow my knowledge of chess principles, so that ideas flow naturally during games.

Chess Analysis – I don’t plan on playing many games each day. Somewhere in the 3-5 games range so that I can focus on analysing my games and the errors I make. I often post analysis of my blitz games on this blog. I try and see the ideas for myself and then get engine evaluations when I get stuck and even then I want to be thinking of why the engine suggests a line.

Practical Application – Playing games, but with the idea of practising the ideas I’ve been learning. This may mean that my rating drops before it increases, but I would rather consolidate the learning. For example I have been revising the Sicilian Najdorf and so I played it a lot and I lost many times, but that highlights areas of weakness that I can improve on.

Famous Games – I love watching current tournaments and you can learn a lot from world class commentary on events. I also want to read books and discover famous games from the past.

YouTube – there are some amazing chess players that stream and post content on YouTube that have valuable insights to learn from.

Digital Diary – I’m going to try and keep a digital diary of the learning progress that occurs each day, noting on the blog the things that I have studied.

I don’t plan on being too structured other than the daily tactics puzzles. I’m happy to let the learning take me in different directions. We will see how it goes.

Well done for reading this far! Maybe you want to join me? You could create a goal that is attainable for you. Leave a comments to let me know what goal you are working towards.