Compliments

A new chess club started up at a local (rather quiet) mall. Every Monday night, and it seems the focus is on a rated, G/25 tournament each week. $3/week, so that's not a bad deal. 

Though, I have to admit not a huge fan of G/30 or less.

I showed up last night, and was just setting up to go through a game from Formation Attacks when a former state champ and Fide Master asks me if I'm up for a game. (The guy doesn't know me from Adam.)

Well, yeah. Like I'm going to turn down a game from a FM.

We don't use a clock, just casual, and I'm actually hearing a grunt of surprise from him every now and then. Of course, he wins both games, but I make him work for it.

We're in the third game, and a friend of his shows up, and he starts pulling out the bag of tricks. He swindles a piece off me, and we call things as the TD is getting things started.

As we're cleaning up, he asks me what my rating is. "In the 1200s" I reply. He says "You play way better than that. 1700s or so." I thanked him for the kind words. 

If I can only get the results when the clocks are running... I know it's in me, but it's just not coming out when I need it. Naturally, I lost both tourney games after that, with a massive blunder in each game.

Still, it's compliments like that, from players like that, that keep me going. If I was basing my desire off results, I'd probably be back playing wargames by now. 

I can do this, but I've just got to fix the way I think during timed games. What I currently do doesn't work. I've been going through the Igor Smirnov course "The Grandmaster's Secrets." It's good. It teaches you how to find moves, how to approach the game, and how and what to calculate. You just have to get used to his voice.

Disaster

Well, that certainly didn't go the way I wanted it to.

I pretty well botched my way through the US Open. I blew both games in the Wednesday Quad with tricky endgames in time trouble against players I felt like I should beat. I've come to really dislike Game/30 as a time control. I just don't think that fast. Yet.

In the Open proper, I played really well the first two rounds, but lost to players 600+ and 400+ points higher than me. Both say I played much higher than my rating. Felt good. Then I blundered my way into a mate-in-two against a player I should beat, pulled off a draw and a win on the 2^nd day out of four games, then didn't win again until the last round. 2.5/9. NOT what I was looking for. Ended up losing nearly 100 ratings points over the week. Twice, I lost "won" positions. (points in a game where Houdini gave me a +2 advantage or better) I couldn't find the winning move.

So, obviously, what I've been doing for training wasn't working. Or, it was working 85% of a game, and the other 15% were losing it for me.

I seem to play really well in correspondence games, when I don't have the time pressure going. So, I'm thinking there are three things I need to work on in OTB play.

Calculation, a more consistent thought pattern, and my method of move selection. I'm pretty happy with my openings, for the most part.

Most of the time I've spent over the weeks since the Open ended have been in re-evaluating my study method. I could charitably describe it as “scatterbrained” or “oooh! Shiny!” I need to pare things way down.

So, my method will now be this:

• Work, slowly and steadily, through Yasser Seirawan's series. I skimmed through Play Winning Chess at the open, but that's mostly stuff I've grasped. We do have a copy of it checked out from the library, though, for my wife (who keeps saying she should learn how to play beyond the basic moves, but hasn't yet made the leap), so I'll try the tests in it to see how I do.
  
  Right now, I'm 1/3 through Winning Chess Tactics. Going pretty well. After I finish that book, I'm going to go back through Silman's Endgame course up to Class D (or maybe C), and learn that cold. Then on to Winning Chess Strategies.

• Igor Smirnov's course “The Grandmaster's Secrets” I've seen a couple of Smirnov's free videos on YouTube, and there's good information there. This is supposed to be sort of the starting point for his program, so we'll see how it goes. Don't let the affiliate-style, “this looks like an expensive load of crap” website design fool you.
  
  One of the primary skills taught in that course is how to analyze games (both yours, and other players'). I picked up a handful of books at the Open, and among those were a couple books by CJS Purdy. He's pretty well known for his annotation style (Fischer raved about one of his books when he was younger), so I'm going to combine that with the methods Smirnov teaches. The methods happen to be nearly identical, thankfully. (Walk through a game from the winner's perspective, and try to guess the moves while using a typical time control. Try to establish why the winner made the moves he made, using the principles Smirnov describes – which happen to be very similar to what Dan Heisman teaches. Synergy. It's useful.)

• Continue working through the Yusupov series. I've only completed five lessons of the 24 in the first book, but my scores are improving.

• Play more games. I'm simply not playing enough timed chess. I've got 20 or so games going on Red Hot Pawn, but that's like twitter compared to a novel. While I need to revisit how I'm using RHP, I need to play more. My goal will be two 45-45 games per week. Either on ICC, FICS, or Playchess. Haven't decided. Most of the games I'll be playing OTB will be Game/60, so that's a level I need to focus on. Then, analyse the heck out of the game.

I think that's it for now. Plenty to keep me busy. I'm sure I'll wander off into another book or three at some point, but I've at least got a plan in place. I'm happy with my openings - it's the thought process and move selection I need to improve.