A Week in the Life of an Adult Chess Improver

Every time I read or type "Adult Chess Improver", I impulsively want to initialize it and say ACI and then I almost immediately hate it. ACI sounds like a part of my leg I don't wanna f*** up or some kind of insurance I'm supposed to get when I buy a house. I'll stick with adult chess improver.

I thought it'd be interesting to track how much time I spend on chess in a week, rounded off to fifteen minute increments. The week started off a bit lighter than usual because I haven't had quite the same motivation as I'd had on average over the last year but overall it's a pretty good spread and representative of what I'd consider a typical week. 

Some Definitions

I think I've been over this before, but I usually put chess work into one of two categories: active or passive. Examples of active chess study for this week included playing chess over-the-board (casual rapid games in a park), working through Yusupov's second book, working on memorizing my opening repertoire, and doing checkmate problems from Polgar's giant book. Passive "study" time included watching the FIDE Candidates Tournament, reading the introduction to a Hellsten book on Amazon's sneak peak page, and browsing /r/chess or twitter. It's still chess technically, but I'm not really stretching any muscles, if you will.

The Numbers

Here are my estimated times per day:

The week started on Sunday April 25th and ended at 11:59pm on the night of Saturday May 1. In this time span, I was able to spend 20.25 hours on chess. About 13.75 of that time was active chess study. Again, this was a relatively light week compared to some of the weeks I was working on the first book in Yusupov's series, for example. I'm able to get in chess study time while at work most weekdays and that's actually where most of my chess time is accumulated. On an average weekday, I'm able to spend 3.3 hours on chess--although some of that time is browsing online chess communities, or passively watching some chess content on youtube. (The 2.89 average hours per day in the chart below is taking into account the entire seven-day week, 3.3 hr/day is my average for Monday through Friday.) When I'm home, I'm doing fiancé stuff like planning a wedding, making dinner, and watching after our senior dog so I do not have quite as much time to get in as many chess games as I'd like.

Conclusion

I ended up with a touch over twenty hours:

For a rather light week, I think this is pretty good! I wish I included some more numbers in the summary chart. For instance, 13.75 hours of active study comes out to an average of almost 2 hours per day of performing active chess work (playing/analyzing games, calculating tactics, solving positions from books). And I multiplied my total weekly hours by 52 to conclude that I might spend around 1053 hours a year on chess. Which I think is great, and in a decade, I'd surpass the Gladwellian 10,000 hour mark (see Malcolm Gladwell, among others), whatever that might mean. However, I should probably only calculate my active chess hours for that metric. So 13.75 * 52 = 715 hours per year of active chess work. At that pace, It'd take me about 14 years to reach the 10,000 hour mark. Or, if you want to reach ~1000 hours of active chess work every year, then that would require about 19.25 hours a week. Well, this past week I spent 20.25 hours on chess so if I simply transform some passive chess "work" like youtube videos into harder chess study, I'd be very close! I hope this was interesting for some of you and it might inspire you to track your own chess habits. 

Best of luck.

Completing Yusupov's Build Up Your Chess 1

This book makes me feel like I'm doing serious chess work. It was largely review so that's nice although there were some very hard chapters that I outright failed. The book is a great mix of familiar tactical motifs, principles, and even exact positions I'd seen before but most everything still requires some level of calculation...and I didn't always nail everything perfectly. Yusupov's grading system helps you quantify your strong areas and your weaknesses. It should be noted that this is nowhere near comprehensive since it's only the first book in a nine-book series. My goal is to eventually finish the three orange books.

About the book
The book is tactics-heavy, which makes sense as it's the first book in the series and newer players are always told to hit tactics hard. I've done my share of beginner tactics and so I was able to perform well in those chapters. Ditto with the endgame.

Number of chapters in each category:

• 11 Tactics
• 4 Endgame
• 3 Positional Play
• 2 Opening
• 2 Strategy
• 2 Calculating Variations

There were a few puzzles, especially endgames and tactics types, that I'd even seen before. No surprise there. I'd have to assume that as the series progresses, there might be a better balance with the Positional and Strategy chapters. As an aside, I couldn't quite figure out how Yusupov differentiates Strategy and Positional Play.

My Results
Here's a summary of how I fared. Red indicates my worst chapters. After you tally scores, Yusupov provides a remark based on your totals for the chapter. Best to worst, these are: Excellent, Good, Passing, or Not Passing. If you didn't reach a Passing Score you are told to re-do the chapter. I only quickly reviewed those before moving on (more on this later).

For all of the Tactics, Endgame, and Calculating Variations chapters, I scored Excellent or Good. I'm happy with that. These are foundational skills and I think I have a solid grasp on the basics of each of these areas. Of course, it's very helpful, while solving, to know the type of puzzles I'm doing as well as the difficulties. Strategy was a mixed bag as I scored Excellent on one (Open Files and Outposts) and Not Passing on another. This highlights the non-comprehensiveness (I'd be surprised if that's a word) of the book: I couldn't really use this to say my strategy needs work or is up to par. But this is a reason for continuing the series as a whole. Positional Play and Opening were the worst.

Here are my points grouped by category and sorted by percentage:

Strengths
As expected, I excelled at the tactics, endgame, and calculating variation chapters. As far as the tactics and endgame chapters, there wasn't much I hadn't seen before. This series of books intends to fill in gaps, and I think I can safely say that I don't have a gap in understanding of the basic tactics and endgame knowledge. And of course, calculating variations is generally a matter of finding the forcing moves. I assumed I'd do well in these areas and it's nice that I did perform well. However, I'm more interested in the chapters of the book with which I struggled.

Weaknesses
I had a hard time with most of the the positional and strategic chapters (in my opinion, the opening category is vague and the puzzles seemed to be either slightly tactical like the Gambits chapter, or strategical like knowing where your pieces go). Even with the themes categorized, these chapters seriously tested my positional understanding and thus my major weaknesses were made clear, as Yusupov claimed the book would do. The chapter on Weak Points is the one most clearly in my memory and it is a good example. I would take large amounts of time for each exercise and miss half of them. This experience is completely opposite to the simple tactics chapters. 

A large reason is that I've spent countless hours looking at tactics. I've been looking at pin tactics for years and it was one of the first things I learned after hearing the term "chess tactics." So if Yusupov gives me a chapter on pins, I'll spot the pin-motif in every example almost immediately. In contrast, when Yusupov introduces Weak Points/Squares and gives examples, everything took longer and I lacked the clarity to know how to solve. I can find a pin in a second, but seeing positional weaknesses would take me at least a minute or two. I'd even spend 30-45 minutes on some positions when I was determined to figure it out. I'd inevitably see the move at some point in my calculation, but often I'd revert back to the more forcing move that I thought was nearly working aside from one defense I couldn't see past. In spite of this, I still wrote the forcing line down as my solution only to see the answer was a different move I'd considered but hadn't concretely calculated. 

If you look at a position long enough, the "right" move will probably come to your mind as it did to mine, but I kept wanting to go back to the forcing lines even if I didn't see all the way to the end. I just thought it had to be right since it was so forcing and I could at least see the future up to a point. The lack of clarity I found in the other moves (that were often the beginning to the correct solution) led me to eventually give up on them and return to my other candidates. Perhaps because my mental energy had been spent on the move that I'd been trying to force to work, I'd rarely follow that analysis fully and just assume it had to be right. This is a major pitfall and a big source of frustration due to spending 30 minutes on one idea when it had been another move I'd barely looked at.

I think my tactics training has helped me to the point which, if given a basic tactical position, I can spot three or four forcing moves immediately then a few seconds later, I then can sort to the most forcing, and I start to see the key motifs in the position. Then it's a matter of calculation, visualization, move order, and a check for counter-play and safety. When given a similarly basic strategic position, every aspect takes me longer: it might take a few minutes to find a handful of weak points, then a few more to find the best one to attack/exploit, and finally it may take ten to twenty more minutes to come up with some line that appears best. Then I check the solution and half the time my execution was still off, either a little bit or a lotta bit. 

So as a positive, I can see the ideas usually if given enough time, but executing the right plan to exploit it was not always accurate. I think the ideas themselves are simple: I can explain outposts, open files, weak squares, and color complexes to anyone, but learning to apply them in the examples given was a difficult task. To me that means I don't fully understand them. At the least, this minor hardship most surely means I'm learning since I'm not very comfortable in solving these types of exercises. I need to push myself a lot harder in these positions.

Re-doing My Worst Chapters
Yusupov provides a scoring system at the end of every chapter and if you score below a threshold, he suggests the following:

Slightly edited for inspiration :)

I've decided to move forward with the final test but later on, I intend to review my problem chapters and see if I can perform better...

• Ch. 3 Basic opening principles  (14/31)
• Ch. 6 The value of the pieces  (10/19)
• Ch. 8 Centralizing the pieces  (11/27)
• Ch. 13 Realizing a material advantage  (13/21)
• Ch. 20 Weak points  (9/23)
• Ch. 24 Gambits (13/20)

July 2021 Edit: I've completed my review of this and wrote about it here.

Final Test
On April 16th, I completed the final test. I did score above the Passing Mark which is nice to see, although it wasn't totally smooth sailing. I ended up with 33/47 points. 36 points would have been in the "Good" category but oh well. I surely would have done better if the puzzles were provided with a category but that is not a true test and it's honestly a major hint/crutch when solving the chapters one at a time. The final test does its job at finding your true standing. Yusupov did provide the category of each puzzle in the solution. Here is a breakdown of those along with my cumulative scores in each of the categories:

It looks like the final test is a pretty good representation of the entire book in terms of proportions of each category. Notably, he left out any opening positions but that's about it.

Conclusion
More than any of my other serious chess projects--like Part 1 of The Woodpecker Method, 1001 Chess Tactics..., or analyzing a game a day for a month--completing this book feels like a BIG accomplishment and the start of serious chess work. My problem-areas are becoming obvious and I'm excited to start seeking out methods to work on them. I'm nearly ready to jump in to the second book with the realization that any non-tactical chapters are going to be very difficult. I want to try to focus most of my energy on those sections and I hope that, overall, I start to see an improvement in the harder chapters.

My First OTB Tournament Experience!

In February of 2020, I played my first USCF over-the-board games. As mentioned in other posts, I was able to play six before the COVID-19 shutdown stopped everything. Chess-players in Missouri had to wait a year before any rumblings of a weekend tournament came around but sure enough one sprung up in Columbia, MO! It's something that's been on my chess "TODO" list ever since I started playing over-the-board so I jumped on the registration list as soon as possible. The tournament was ran by Blakeman Chess and it took place during the weekend of March 6th and 7th.

As some background, I'm in my mid-thirties and I've been playing chess seriously for over three years working very hard on improvement with a focus on slower time controls. My classical and rapid ratings on lichess are currently around 1800-1850. I've played less than ten bullet games in my life and rarely play blitz lately. My USCF rating before the tournament was 1096 (provisional/6). The tournament games would be 90m+30s with three rounds Saturday (9:00, 2:00, and 7:00) and two on Sunday. Sounds exhausting.

Expectations and leading up to the Games

As far as my chess life goes, I've never felt quite the level of "nervous excitement' as I did in the day before and the morning leading up to the tournament. It was close to the same feeling when I played my first games at the club over a year ago, but there was more anticipation leading into this weekend. Both then and now, it came down to a matter of  the "unknowns" for me. Last February, I simply didn't know a lot of basic things: 

• What was it like to score an entire game?
• What if I get put in the wrong section? Are there sections?
• What if I hang mate-in-one?
• Do you shake hands like they do in the super-GM tournaments?
• What if you make an illegal move?
• Do you have your opponent sign your scoresheet when you're done like Magnus and Fabi do? (The answer is nope)
• What do you do when it's over?

This post covers those learning curves from 2020. So I'm glad I was able to get some experience and I knew what it was like to play a classical game in the real world. Those questions were answered. However, a full tournament came with its own set of new unknowns:

• What's it like to play three games in a day? Then two more the next day?
• My only other OTB games were a maximum of two hours. These games might be 3 or 4 hours long, oh gawd. How mentally-taxing will this be?
• Do I need my own scoresheets?
• Is there a larger tournament strategy I should know? Should I take strategic byes?
• What do I do in between games?
• How do they announce the first round? Do I just chill in the lobby until something happens?
• With hotel and entry fee, this was a few hundred bucks, What if I lose every f***ing game and I want to quit chess after this? Am I putting too much pressure on some silly little tournament?

That's where I was coming from. Maybe that's helpful, maybe it makes me look crazy. The best thing about new experiences is they are a guaranteed education. You will learn so many new things. These range from the logistical operations of a tournament to the little nuances you notice in the tournament hall to the struggles and choices you make in the face of new things. The more experiences you have, the more you learn to embrace the nervous excitement. The best thing of all is this ultimately results in growth regardless of outcome.

On to the games

I won't use this space to deeply analyze the games. Instead I'll add thoughts and observations about each one, how I spent my time between rounds, and what it's like to be at a weekend tournament in general.

Round 1

After breakfast and a quick jaunt back up to my room to make sure I had everything, i.e. a writing utensil, I came down to the lobby a little before nine. As the lowest-rated player in the field, I had a "see the TD" note next to my name on the pairings list. He said there was an odd number of players so I could take a bye and play a rated or unrated game with him if I'd like. I said sure since I'd come here to play chess and didn't want to kill time for five hours. Turns out he's a 2100-rated player and so the game didn't last long. He was very nice afterwards when he told me I was under-rated. We talked for a second then I peaced out to my room with about four hours until the next game. 

Even though I did not have a strenuous game in the least, I tried to practice what others had recommended during my break: don't rush up to your room and cram chess between rounds. I laid down on the bed for a while since I didn't sleep well the night before, watched some tv, and eventually finished reviewing some of my opening notes I had. I grabbed lunch then right before next round, I did a handful of puzzles.

Round 2 (first rated game of the tourney)

Finally, actual chess against somebody on my level! I started to try out a pre-game system even though I was largely unprepared for these things. The tournament website said boards and clocks would be provided but to bring your own if you'd like. Many did. I didn't. It would have involved me carrying around my rolled up vinyl mat under my arm and the pieces in a Sony headphones bag. I didn't even own a clock until yesterday. I fixed all that and I've even got a little case on the way now too. I'll be super-pro next time. I'll also consider getting a scorebook since I had to notate the first game on blank printer paper. Anyway, at this point, the TD started printing generic scoresheets for players that needed them. I grabbed one of those, wrote down my opponent's information and the board number and went in. 

Just like when I first started playing games at the chess club, I realized there were some things that might go overlooked by those that have played hundreds of club and tournament games. There's a trial period where you're trying to learn the motions you like to go through before a game, how you become familiar with the playing hall and general environment, how you like to navigate through the game itself in terms of snacking, getting up, and drinking water. These things are not really mentioned to you when you go to your first tournament. They're simple things but I found that finding a comfort level with what to expect before and during each game was helpful in calming me down. From round two onwards, I started to get a grasp on how I like to do my pre-game setup.

I had the white pieces against a 1600-rated player. I know these people have families and friends and jobs and interests, so it feels a little wrong to relegate them to some four-digit number. Such is chess though. Anyway, the game was a slav with a symmetrical structure that went to an endgame where I eventually won some pawns and converted four pawns and a knight versus two pawns and a knight. It took four hours and it felt great when it was over. Getting this win was a tremendous confidence booster. Totally worth the time. It was 6pm now and I had an hour before the next game.

Round 3

There are some in-between-game choices you'll have to make that you might not think about until the time comes. For this one, I opted to skip dinner until the 7pm game was over. I'd rather snack before the game and play on a partially empty stomach than eat some crappy takeout or fast food then rush back to the hotel. I was black against another 1600 (provisional but I didn't know or care at the time--people may not have known my rating was provisional either) and he played a london opening. He was probably better after the queen trade but then I won a pawn towards the end and he resigned when I had a winning pawn endgame. This one took two and a half hours. I felt good, more confident, and pretty tired. I celebrated with Taco Bell. Naturally.

Round 4

When I went down to the lobby on Sunday morning right before the round. I felt great so far in the tournament. I'd won my two games yesterday so I thought whatever happens on Sunday is icing on the cake. I was assured my worst fears--losing all my games--weren't going to come true. I'd beaten two solid players. I figured I'd gain some ratings points. I had already learned so much about what it's like to play in a multi-day tournament. That's a win.

I hadn't even considered my place in the standings and it hadn't dawned on me that the first round bye was a full-point. I was solely concerned on playing each round and learning from it. By this time, I'd settled on a pre-game routine when I entered the lobby:  Grab scoresheet, write down opponent and rating, who has black and white, the round number, and the board number, go into the playing hall, find my board and set up everything on the table how I like it, then adjust my pieces and make sure the clock is all good to go. After I found this groove, I was so much more relaxed compared with the moments before round one when I entered the playing hall with nothing but a pen. I'd imagine anybody's first round at a new tournament might be similar. It's probably a good idea to scope out the playing hall and chat with some people before the first round ever begins to feel a little more comfortable.

I had white in a slav that featured middlegame fireworks that eventually settled to an ending in which I was up two pieces to one but my knight was stuck in the corner. I found a skewer tactic that my opponent didn't see (not sure if it's winning otherwise) and took the game. We chatted afterwards and that's when he alerted me to my standings and that I was going to be playing for first place in the lower division. After room checkout, I hung out in the lobby for the rest of the time which was a great idea. None of my other games finished at good times where I could shoot the shit with fellow players and the TD but if you have the time to do so, I recommend it. 

Round 5

It's the final game and I'm playing for first place. My mindset ever since the night before was that I had already performed better than expected and yet I still tried very hard in this game. I ended up messing up and playing some aggressive-looking move that seemed clever but didn't really amount to much and so I was eventually down a few central pawns. My opponent had two serious threats and in the end I lost the exchange. After he stopped my last-ditch idea--what I believe the redcoats would call a cheeky lil mate-in-one threat--I resigned.

Conclusion

And so with all the nerves and excitement and unknowns, I ended up tying for first in the U1800 division and winning the prize money for highest U1500 finisher. This was a great way to wrap up the weekend and I couldn't have been happier. It was a strange experience to not know I was in the front until the very last game and that undoubtedly helped me. It's not naivete or a sense of "Gee-golly I keep accidentally winning, is that good?" Honestly part of it was that I didn't even know the ongoing tournament scores were posted as part of the pairings list for each round so it was truly off my radar and there was zero pressure. For better or worse, I'm certain I'll be paying much more attention to these things in my next tournament!

Before last weekend, I felt like a 1500 rated player was scary and that I didn't even know if I was at that level to comfortably compete with such a player. I'll be less intimidated now. There is certainly a recency bias and a rose-tinted perception here since the tournament was only last weekend, nevertheless, the experience of my first OTB tournament was a massively positive one on a personal level as well as a results level. It's given me tremendous confidence in progressing up the ladder. Time will tell how I handle the inevitable bad tournament in the future. 

Moving forward, I'll feel far more comfortable at the outset of weekend tournaments like this. My ultimate goal is still to reach 2000 USCF and this tournament has given me a lot of positive energy towards that goal.

The weekend also made it abundantly clear that I have to agree with IM Andras Toth that this is real chess. To put it more diplomatically, this is the chess I want to play. I'm talking about real chess pieces, clocks, and long time controls. I like taking twenty minutes and doing a mediocre job at exploring a position. It's fun to hit a clock and write down a move. It's nice to meet people and share experiences. Go play some chess in real life when you're lucky enough to take part!

Post-Tournament USCF Rating: 1391 (P10)

Missouri Spring Championship - OTB Tournament Preparation

Whoa! An over-the-board tournament during a pandemic! What is going on? What is this going to be like? How will I play? Holy sh*t these are long games. How do I prepare?

What is going on?

Seriously? An OTB tournament? During COVID? Yep. I got an email from USCF letting everyone know that an organization called Blakeman chess is putting together small OTB tournaments and one of them is in Columbia, Missouri! I can't tell you how excited I was when I saw that. A weekend tournament has been on my TODO list and I wouldn't have dreamed I'd get an opportunity at this time considering the pandemic. They're limiting it to the first forty participants and so I got my name on the entry list pretty quick. I've been very careful over the last year so I felt reassured when reading about the precautions they were going to be taking.

What am I expecting?

In the weeks after registering, I've been viewing their entry list online. There is a GM, a few IMs and NMs in the 1800+ section. I'm in the lower section of course and as of writing, I'm the lowest rated player in the field (there is one unrated player I did not count). It may be surprising but I do not care at all about that! I'm over-the-moon excited to play this tournament and the more I think about it, the more I try to determine where to set my expectations.

The format is three games on Saturday and two games on Sunday. They're 90 minutes per side plus a 30 second increment so these will be long games and exhausting days. It's really quite absurd but I'm doing it. Knowing how I play classical games (I tend to play very slowly and take a lot of time), I will probably be exhausted by Sunday afternoon.

I've played six official USCF games over-the-board in my life and those were in a one-game-a-week setting so this will be my first ever weekend-tournament experience with multiple games in a day. Similar to the first times I went to the chess club to play OTB games, I know there will be a lot of learning experiences for this tournament, a major one being endurance. As far as results go, I'm not expecting to do great. I don't see getting even 3 out of 5. My first OTB games were a learning experience in that regard: don't assume anything will be easy or the games will be simple. People are paying money and travelling to this tournament so they very much care about doing their best in the games.

Goals 

I don't anticipate a lot of OTB games this year so I want to get as much out of this tournament as possible! As far as goals, so many things have crossed my mind. They've ranged from "gain ratings points" to "win more games than I lose." I've wondered if it's better to make wide-ranging goals that apply to every game or rather make a goal that I try to reach in at least one game. I don't know the answer to that but I think that I will set more general goals rather than specific goals. As an example, I'd rather set and meet goals like "get through every opening in a mostly equal and comfortable position" than "beat one +1600 rated player." 

I've settled on "things to focus on" rather than hard-set goals. I'll call them Focus Points:

• Play the opening carefully (i.e. not by memory) and try to get to an equal and comfortable position after the first ten moves in every game.
• Always remember to think about my opponent's best moves.
• Don't get too down on myself. It's a long tournament.
• Take my time to Visualize, Evaluate, and Trust my abilities.
• Drink water and eat fresh fruit (Thanks reddit)
• Take nothing for granted, try hard in every move.

Preparation

As of writing, I have one month before the tournament. Here are all the things I'd like to do leading up to the tournament:

• Finish my current tactics project - I've been doing spaced repetition on 1001 Chess Exercises for Club Players and as of today (Feb 4), I've completed the final set to get to 500 problems. I'll repeat that set a few times and then try to do all 500 over and over a few times. I can do most of this work during the weekdays.
• Work on longer calculation tactics - My tactics over the last year has included a majority of easier problems I solve over and over. I need more work in harder puzzles that I sit with for 10-15 minutes. I'll set up positions on a real board (using either the yusupov book or chess.com puzzles and spend at least 10 minutes on them)
• Complete my 30 games in 30 days in January and analyze my most common mistakes. Focus on those issues moving forward in my training games before the tournament. 
• Play untimed games against computers and use a physical board. Playing bots isn't ideal but it's something I can do in the evening without being tied to my computer for an hour as in a timed game, if I have to get up to make dinner, it's fine. The position and bot will still be there waiting.
• Work on opening flashcards
• Review Bernd Rosen's Chess Endgame Training book - I'm anticipating at least one endgame, so maybe spending a few hours on this book will help a little bit to remind myself how to calculate simple endgames.
• Review Stean's Simple Chess for a refresher on simple strategy. Play through the games on a physical board.

My Chess History

File this in the "No one cares, bro" section. This is primarily for myself and as I'm making a more concerted effort in training and improvement, I thought it'd be helpful to track down as many "major events" in my chess-playing past.

A brief rundown of my chess playing history

SOMETIME 2002 High School, Sophomore Year - Saw Searching for Bobby Fischer, bought a chess set, a few books like Chess for Dummies, Josh Waitzkin's chess book, Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess (don't get this book), a handheld chess game, ChessMaster 4000 for PC (maybe 5000?), etc. I spent more time buying stuff and half-assedly using it than time on practicing and playing. Lost interest after less than a year and zero serious improvement aside from learning terminology and basic knowledge.

SOMETIME 2017 - For whatever reason, Facebook started putting chess videos in my news feed--usually GIFs of old famous games--and it reminded me how much I liked the game. I downloaded a bad app to play chess against a computer and a friend or two before finding r/chess, John Bartholomew, and eventually lichess.

OCT 2017 - Created lichess account. I remember playing that fall and winter but really slowing down in the spring and summer since I had other outdoor hobbies that took up a lot of time.

APR 2018 - I went to the St Louis Chess Club for the US championship. As mentioned, I slowed down quite a bit in the summer but it ramped up again in the fall.

AUG 2018 - Went to sinquefield cup. I think around this time, my chess interest started taking off quite a lot more. I started playing chess seriously this whole time now without taking breaks in the next summer.

APR 2019 - US Open again, by 2019, I'd say I was fully into chess as a major hobby

AUG 2019 - I went to Sinquefield cup yet again.

FEB 2020 - Started "Tuesday Knights" Tourney and joined USCF. I was able to play six rated games before COVID-19 put an end to that.

APR 2020 - Started trying to play a more focused repertoire as black: Caro and Slav. 

JUL 2020 - Completed 1001 Chess Exercises for Beginners in one day. Focused on doing tactics (nearly) every day since then.

SEP 2020 - Started 1001 Chess Exercises for Club Players

NOV 2020 - Switched black repertoire to Sicilian.

MAR 2021 - Played in first weekend OTB tournament; won 3/4 games, best finisher U1500 and tied for first in AMATEUR (U1800) section; rating jump to 1391. Also began focused work on Yusupov's Series of books.

JUL 2021 - 75 hours of deliberate chess study in one month.

AUG 2021 - Played 75 blitz/rapid games in one month

SEP 2021 - Reached 2500 puzzle rating on chess.com

SEP 2021 - Played in my second weekend OTB tournament (indy), won 4/5 games and tied for second in Novice (1300-1600) section. Rating up to 1509

NOV 2021 - Played in my third weekend OTB tournament (kansas), won 3/4 games, rating up to 1531 (still provisional, but highest ever)

JAN 2022 - Played in my fourth weekend OTB tournament (STLCC club championship), won 2/4 games, withdrew final round. Rating down to 1482

MAR 2022 - Played in my fifth weekend OTB tournament (Mid-America Open), played up a section, went 1 out of 4 and withdrew final round.

MAY 2022 - Played with the chesterfield group at mcdonalds. Lost and drew a game.

MAY 2022 - Played

Setting Goals

Sometimes I feel like carving in stone all my goals to make them official. Other times I think it's a bit of a wasted exercise or at best, not worth the small effort. Instead, I've usually chosen to "just do it" and focus on playing and studying and let the achievement milestones come when they do. In this post, I'll bite the bullet and lay out what I want out of chess.

Short-Term (next ~6 months)

• Continue spaced repetition work with 1001 Chess Exercises for Club Players (Erwich). Currently about 12% through the book. My goal is to complete the entire book in one day. 
• Continue spaced repetition work with Practical Chess Exercises (Cheng). Currently about 1/6th through the book. My goal is to complete the entire book in one day. 
• Get a record of 100 classical games since June 2020 when I started my rigorous tactics-training.
• For study time, focus on equal parts Openings : Games/Analysis : Tactics. This mainly means focus more on openings because I've lacked in that area. Begin building a repertoire (i.e. experience) with the Sicilian as black. I'm bored of the caro-kann and want more fireworks in my games.

Mid-Term (1-2 years)

• Play more OTB games to get a non-provisional Classical Rating. Pre-requisite: Help my buddies at Pfizer find a vaccine for COVID-19.
• Join a weekend tournament out of town.
• Get over 1600 USCF.

Long-Term (slightly before death)

• Reach over 2000 USCF. 

1001: A Tactics Odyssey

I completed every tactics problem in 1001 Chess Exercises for Beginners in one day. I got 953 problems correct (95.2% accuracy) and it took me 8 hours 1 minute (cry). That's an average of 28.8 sec/problem.

(See this previous post about my methods)


Notes on the final day of solving

I started at 9am and finished around 8:30pm. So that's 11.5 hours on the clock. It's a full day commitment.

Going through a physical book (well, PDF) is slow. If this was an app or on a website, I'd surely be able to go a bit faster. It'd be a luxury to see a single puzzle, play my move, have my accuracy tracked, and have the next problem present itself automatically. The way I did it required looking at the puzzle, getting the solution, then checking the solutions page in another window, finding the problem number and verifying my answer. It was a slog to wade through the material in this manner but I knew what I was getting into so whatever! This method helps me take my time and limit guessing. I'm aware this book is on chessable but....uh.....this is how I did it, haha.

It was pretty helpful to keep a list of problems to come back to so I wouldn't get bogged down staring at one for long periods of time. When I finished, I had a list of about twenty problems that I circled back to and most of them were much easier when I had a "fresh" set of eyes on them.

"Fresh" isn't the best word to use there actually. I was definitely exhausted towards the end, which was a blur to be honest. I had a few beers afterwards to unwind but even then, I remember having a hard time going to sleep. Chess positions were cascading through my brain.

For my own records, here are those problems I got wrong on the final attempt: 99 234 260 291 292 295 316 339 354 357 389 396 398 424 428 451 526 546 548 554 559 569 576 588 615 649 650 707 719 739 740 741 742 746 749 771 796 810 832 849 864 882 900 933 940 952 967 968

I noticed that I missed quite a bit from the second half of the book which was not what I was expecting since I thought those would have been fresher in my memory. Although the first half of the book is the easier half because they're categorized by motif so that must have really helped me. Additionally, my speed increased as I was approaching 1001 (and 9pm!) and I missed a few I normally wouldn't have because of it. Of the first 492, I only missed 16 problems. Of the second half 509, I doubled my incorrect number to 32.

I tried my best to never use the hints under each puzzle. I was much more diligent in the morning but as the day went on, I'd guess maybe a hundred times my eyes wandered to see the hint.

In retrospect, it's very cool that I had some memory of basically every single position. I didn't get them all right but every one was familiar to me. It's amazing that you can log in 1001 chess positions in your brain. Can I re-create all of them on a board without looking at the book? Of course not. I certainly do have the patterns and ideas in my head though and different things would get triggered each time I saw the next problem. I think these "triggers" are one of the takeaway lessons. For example, I might have seen a problem and immediately thought, "Okay this is a fork that's possible because of the pinned f7-pawn." Or "Yep this is that one that ends in a king-queen skewer but we need to trade minor pieces first so remember move-order carefully!" Any given tactical chess position might have many themes going on but it's up to us to find the relevant ones that actually accomplish something in the position. I successfully trained my brain to automatically trigger certain themes after seeing these positions so many times and through the course of cycling through them, I could automate the filtering process to see the relevant themes pretty quickly. We'll have to see how it carries over to real chess games!

How did this affect my chess?

To be determined. I need to get a larger sample of games. (Edited Feb 2021) Classical games will be the best gauge since I'll play my best chess in that time control. At the end of June 2020, I had played 248 classical games on lichess. I wanted to get a sample size of 100 games to see the changes and as of early February 2021, I made it! I've always said that I don't play that many games! 

Here is where my classical record and rating stood on June 29, 2020 when I was in the middle of working through 1001 Chess Exercises for Beginners:

CLASSICAL +32 win differential
1726 Rating
132 wins (53%)
16 draws
100 losses
248 total games

And NOW, I've finally played 101 (whoops) classical games and I have some ratings changes to show! Here are my numbers as of February 2, 2021.

CLASSICAL +56 win differential
1864 Rating
191 wins (56%)
23 draws
135 losses
349 total games

Across those 101 games: 

CHANGES
+138 Rating
59 wins
7 draws
35 losses

There ya go. That's what everybody came here for. I should note that I will NOT claim my tactics work I describe in this post is the sole reason for the ratings gain. I'll never tell anyone, "Hey, just do this 1001 Chess Exercises book and you'll gain 138 points!" I don't think I was plateau'd at my 1726 rating and so I don't think doing the tactics training got me out of a funk or anything. I believe I was still trending upward anyway so these changes could have been part of the natural trend of things. Additionally, I've done more master game analysis lately and I changed my opening some, so those are factors. However, I'm certain this training I began last summer and continue today (I began working through 1001 Chess Exercises for Club Players in September) has made me more tactically aware so I don't play so many tactical blunders and my sense of criticality has increased.

Goal: 1000 Games Played

I have a touch of ladder anxiety. Which is fine. I have a love for chess and improvement but mixed in is some amount of dread about losing. And I fully understand the illogical nature of it. I can see the truth in -isms like:

• The master has failed more times than the novice has tried.
• You learn so much more from losing.
• If you lose rating points, it's not like you can't get them back in the next game. And if you tilt and lose 200 points, they're only internet-chess-points anyway so who gives an F? 
• Rating points are only a measure of how good you are. You improve through study and effort and that will be reflected eventually by your rating. 

It sucks when I lose and I briefly question why I spend so much time studying and why I couldn't see the obvious error before I played it. But I get up, get some water, pet the dog, and that feeling goes away quickly. Then the constant voice in my head saying "PLAY MORE GAMES" takes over again. That should be the sign that I simply need to play more. I need to hyper-focus on game counts and not rating. I recommend readers who have similar problems do the same. At the end of working on my "Seven Circles..." blog-post, I did a quick inventory on how many games (lichess only) I've actually played. I will put my records here so I can track how they change with my new focus on tactics training.

As of 6/29/2020 (in the middle of the "1001 Chess Exercises..." book):

BLITZ +29 win differential
1426 Rating
184 wins (52%)
17 draws
155 losses
356 total games

RAPID +52 win differential
1584 Rating
128 wins (61%)
7 draws
76 losses
211 total games

CLASSICAL +32 win differential
1726 Rating
132 wins (53%)
16 draws
100 losses
248 total games

Note: I've played a very small amount of unrated games and those are included in these totals. From here on out I will only play rated games.

My middle-term goal is to reach 1000 games played on lichess by getting to 400 blitz games, 300 rapid, and 300 classical games played. Why those numbers? I dunno, why not! When I reach those numbers. I'll post an update...

PROGRESS - Games played:
TimeControl > GameStats > Total

401 Blitz - 0 remaining
266 Rapid - 34 remaining
300 Classical - 0 remaining

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