Day 80
Rating 1833
Puzzle Rush Score 39
Daily Study Today I played four blitz games. I had a nice win against the Scandinavian Defense (game below). I also did a bit of opening preparation as I was interested in looking into a few lines.
Day 79
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).
Day 78
Rating 1826
Puzzle Rush Score 38
Daily Study I got a bit inspired by this video by IM Kostya Kavutskiy on the Sicilian Defense, so I spent some time studying opening lines. I play against the Sicilian Defense quite a bit (and in the past I have played the black side too), so I found the material very instructive. I spent some time on Lichess adding lines to a study.
Day 77
Rating 1828
Puzzle Rush Score 34
Daily Study Today I played three blitz games (won two, lost one) and I annotated one of the games. The annotations didn’t save and I lost them, so I am just posting the game here without annotations. This has only happened a few times, but it is always a little frustrating.
Something I found interesting about this game was the fact that I had a winning position most of the game (only +1 or so) and I wasn’t sure how to evaluate it during the game (although I felt I was probably better). Against theses modern lines I don’t know much theory. I just try and get control of the center and I usually do alright.
In this game I was able to make really good trades and my opponent made a few bad trades. The key moment occurred after 22. Qc4. I was delighted to trade queens and move to a winning endgame. I only had a minute on the clock, but it was plenty of time to convert the position into a win.