Days 275 - 279 / Staufer Open

It was a Nightmare - from day 1 right through to day 4!

As we all know, pictures tell more than 1000 words, so, here we go:

Round 1 - Black to move (and win - whereas I didn´t see it and had to settle for the draw - AFTER I was presented with yet another clear winning position some 15 moves later, which even was spotted almost instantly by my son):

 

Round 2 - White to move (and get a clear edge of above 1.0 - but I didn´t even see it):

Round 3 - Black to move (and win - but I managed to fuck it up and again only get half a point):

I saw Bd7 and knew it is winning. But while my right arm was moving towards the board, I took the knight with my rook!!! Don´t ask why...

Round 4 - White to move (with a plus of 1.2 it is actually a win; guess what I achieved? But I have to admit that this is one of the positions I will have to dig into during a post mortem):

 Within this game, I reached the lowest motivational low I EVER - really, ever - experienced. I made some 20 moves in about 10 minutes and I couldn´t be asked to give a sh... about the outcome of the game!

For those being more into statistics: I assume having lost some 30 rating points. I drew 5 times (!!!) against opponents having some 150 Elo-points less than I did. 4 of these are part of the above compilation (ie. I should have won CLEARLY)! I won two games against lower rated dudes and lost two against higher rated dudes.

I "blame" it on the following things (no particular order):

1. The slight cold I had.
2. The 8 rounds played just a few days before.
3. The sluggish training advances I made in November/December.
4. The yet to be improved positional understanding, calculation accuratness and calculation depth
5. The ongoing separation/divorce (with all the emotional and financial stress - which increased my insomnia even more)  

Nevertheless, I am highly motivated! (Is this strange?) Actually, I could start the next tournament RIGHT NOW, really! (Yes, this is definitely strange!)

The good things:

1. I had my new opening for Black on the board 3 times and really learnt a lot.
2. In addition, the above shows that I made it out of the opening and sometimes even into the advanced middle game pretty well and it was me to face the full point instead of my opponent! (On 7 out of the 9 games, I had clear/concrete winning chances.)