Sicilian Defense

Day 79

Leave a Comment / Bullet, Climb To 2000, Sicilian Defense /

Rating 1826

Puzzle Rush Score 28

Daily Study Today I played a few games and after a reasonable average score across a few games I decided to play just a few bullet games. Surprisingly I had one of my best games, playing well out of the opening. My bullet rating is much lower than my other ratings, but I was very happy with the opening as I had been studying it a little the day before. The main thing I remembered is that I want to enjoy the space and make subtle improvements in the position, making it difficult for my opponent to respond (possibly inducing a mistake from my opponent which happened in this game).

 

 

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Day 75

Leave a Comment / Blitz, Climb To 2000, Sicilian Defense /

Rating 1824

Puzzle Rush Score 28

Daily Study More work on The Chess Newsletter today. You can now subscribe to the mailing list from this website (just have a look on the main sidebar). I played two blitz games. Its a Friday night and I am always tired by the end of the week. I can usually tell because my Puzzle Rush Score is often low. So I reviewed my games and then watched some Speed Chess Championships to unwind.

 

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Day 69

Leave a Comment / Climb To 2000, Hikaru Nakamura, Peter Svidler, Sicilian Defense /

Rating 1831

Puzzle Rush Score 30

Daily Study I am still taking it fairly easy with the study this weekend. I played one blitz game and got a decent win. I watched more of the Speed Chess Championship. Hikaru Nakamura and Peter Svidler faced off against each another. Nakamura won the match (which was to be expected), but I was really impressed with the way Svidler managed to get solid positions out of the opening. Nakamura is a beast at speed chess though and rarely missed a beat. Svidler couldn’t keep up in the bullet portion of the tournament. Below are two of the games Svidler won that I was particularly impressed by.

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Day 63

Leave a Comment / Climb To 2000, Najdorf Variation, Sicilian Defense /

Rating 1829

Puzzle Rush Score 33

Daily Study I played over one Bobby Fischer game from his book My 60 Memorable Games. I came away with a few takeaways about the game.

  • In these Najdorf lines it is important to consider trading the dark squared bishop for the knight on b6 so that it can’t jump to a4 or c4. Fischer suggests this move in his annotations and it was the top engine choice.
  • If you are going to give your opponent a passed pawn you may want to take another think about the position. 29.Nxe5 gives black a passed pawn and Fischer suggests that his opponent should not have done this. The funny thing is that I thought that was the top move for white and then I read the annotations. I clearly didn’t think deeply enough about the position.

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