Day 72

Leave a Comment / Climb To 2000 /

Rating 1840

Puzzle Rush Score 46

Daily Study Today I learnt about an incredibly cool site called Opening Tree. You can enter your online chess account and it will go through all of your games to see what openings you play and what score you have against certain openings. I found this incredibly interesting and just enjoyed exploring for a while.

One interesting thing I found out is that there were a few openings I play that I score quite well in, but there may be positions within the main opening I am not so good at handling. For example I have a good record playing the Ruy Lopez. I have won 43 games and lost 21 with the white pieces. However, within the Ruy Lopez there is a line known as the Morphy Defense where I have lost 5 out of 7 games, showing that I clearly don’t have a great grasp of the types of positions that arise in those lines.

The site is great as it highlights areas I can work on improving (at least with my opening theory).

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Day 71

Leave a Comment / Climb To 2000, Kings Indian Defense, Rapid /

Rating 1840

Puzzle Rush Score 28

Daily Study Today I played two rapid games and got my highest win on chess.com beating an opponent rated 2037. My opponent opened with 1.c4 which I don’t see too often, but have played against a number of times. The English positions tend to be quite solid. I know that there is the symmetrical variation and there are times when it can transpose into Queens Gambit territory. I played the King’s Indian Defense as I assumed my opponent wanted something positional and I wanted to create tactical chances. It was the right opening choice against this opponent and I managed to create complications and get a really nice position, winning time on the clock. I had calculated everything out and was feeling confident and then when I got to a moment that was winning I forgot to play the move I had prepared five moves earlier and missed my chance to gain a clear advantage. I then went on to blunder a piece and had a clearly losing position, but ended up winning due to the time advantage I had accrued. Here is the game.

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Day 70

Leave a Comment / Blitz, Climb To 2000 /

Rating 1840

Puzzle Rush Score 36

Daily Study Today I did a whole lot of work on The Chess Newsletter. I connected with a few adult chess improvers to interview for the newsletter. I played one game of blitz and it was an interesting game. I have annotated the game below.

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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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