Day 40 / 325 to go

Today my coach provided me with a nice idea for my new opening with black based on a post mortem we did on one of my games from the recent tournament. In addition he made clear that my PAT shall not only be used on existing positions at the board, but ideally also on ex ante positions (i.e. when calculating variations)! Sounds like a true challange - which I am more than willing to accept.

After that 90 minute session and a little break (some food, some TV), I went for a 55 minute session  on endgame-puzzles.(My coach reinforced his claim that the most important to improve my chess is to work on these puzzles on a daily basis!) I solved one and did a recap on 3 I solved about two weeks ago. Let me share the one I solved by starting with the elementary rule of the key squares in order to identify if a pawn-ending is won (or not):

So, as you may recall/know - the key squares in this position are e6/d6/f6. If White manages to occupy one of these with his king (prior to moving his pawn), he wins (otherwise it´s a draw). Knowing this it is easy to predict the outcome (a) if White is to move or (b) Black it to move...
In the puzzle I went after this evening, the above rule needs to be applied in one of the main variations:

It is White to move - and to draw!

Day 39 / 326 to go

Believe it or not, but the whole day I was somewhat excited to have a training session in the evening! Indeed, I was looking forward to it and I caught myself a few times wondering what I should do (opening? or endgame? or practise my PAT?)...  8-)

I consider this to be a very good sign. Actually, for two reasons:

• my bad performance during the Wunsiedel Open did not surpress my motivation
• the absence of training or at least the considerable reduction in training during the last two weeks (based on my participation in two tournaments) makes me miss something I (obviously) like doing!

Ok ok, after some travel early this morning and a hard day´s work, my motivation simply has to fight a bit with some sort of fatique. Nevertheless, I spent the obligatory hour on practising my PAT. (BTW: Although I performed pretty bad in my latest tournament, I finally managed to include my PAT more often and somewhat more "regular". So the "PAT-thinking process" is finally kicking in...)
The following position (my fore-last for today; together with the last I did today) was an eye-opener; white to move:

The piece to move is rather obvious and there are - at least for me - two possible squares to head for. (The bishop could move to d2 and head for c3 or go via e3 and land on c5 - with the support of the b4-pawn.) But which one is the better one? Well, to be very honest, I simply answered this question prosaically, i.e. without any sort of concrete calculation/variation in mind, but by means of some "smart sounding buzzwords" convincingly whispered to myself!      A big mistake!
So from now on, even when the puzzle to solve may only ask for the very next move, my considerations have to include a concrete - and most important a decent - variation!

In addition, I did a one lesson (of slightly less than one hour) on basic endgame principles in de la Villa´s book; with a decent amount of time spent on simply doing a recap on stuff I did some weeks ago...

Day 38 / last day of the tournament

Game 6 - guess what, I fucked it up again: Around move 5 I took the wrong turn and went deeper and deeper into the ....; only an incorrect exchange sacrifice brought me back into the game; and I scored the point.
Game 7 - YES, back on track!!!  Although this was the ONLY match where I showed normal/good performance from start to finish, it makes me hope for better!

Soooo - 3 out of 7 and a loss of some 27 rating points.  SHAME on me!
But, nevertheless, I will continue my training programme!  Next to the achievements already stated in my last post, I am already looking forward to analyse two of my games with my coach on Tuesday...

Day 36 + 37 / 2nd+3rd day of the tournament

Wow - what a louzy performance. I assume I am already down some 35 rating points:
Game 3: I totally screw things up early in the opening, but somehow managed to cash the full point later on.
Game 4: I misjudged a won middle game, the resulting position was a dead draw but I didn´t want to accept my opponents offer (I knew it was a dead draw, but  I took a risk which I shouldn´t have). It ended in a rook+pawn versus rook+2 pawns ending, totally lost. However, I had absolutely no clue whether it was really lost or simply how to best fight for draw. It´s pretty embarrasing that my endgame expertise is yet so weak!
Game 5: Yet another instance of practising my new opening; I came out of it already with a decent minus (which I actually didn´t really recognise as such). On top I went for an "all in"-move with my king - on purpose to show my will to fight for the full point - and lost just a few moves later.

Conclusion:

• I need to sharpen up my endgame knowledge. (I already started with it, but due to the tournaments and the necessity to get the necessary depth on my new opening with black, I didn´t make much progress. There was simply no time yet.)
• I need to work on my calculation abilities - too many problems/losses occur simply because I lack to focus my calculation and get a decent picture of the future position! 
• (I did contintue to apply my new opening with black and the changed move-order with white. I start to get a better sense on when to push pawns in the center with black That´s a very important outcome for the future.  In addition, unlike recent years/tournaments where I would have "chickened out" and accepted a draw, I am happy to take risks and go for the full point.
  That is about it on the "asset" side of the balance sheet...)

Luckily, my coach already gave me a long-term task which actually address both! ("Unfortunately" there is yet another tournament next weekend. I would prefer to do some training, but my son is currently in good shape - he probably ends up with a rating plus of some 75 points after this tournament and wants to "ride the wave"... Who could advise not to?!  So I will accompany him and join in.  Let´s see...)

Day 35 / 1st day of the tournament

I lost the first round against a 2350-rated lady. I played my new opening with black and came out of the opening pretty well. I could have equalized easily and actually saw and considered the move, but aimed higher - and f... up! (At least the opening as such is "playable" and would have allowed to equalise; and I like the thought that I did aim for more and did not rush for the equalising move just because of my opponent´s rating...)

Second game of the day: Oh gosh, what a doubtful finish! Doubtful because it makes me doubt whether I will ever increase my game! I reached the follow position with great ease (not straight forward as such, but nevertheless without heavy thinking or time-consuming calculations):

White to move

Komodo evaluates this as +2.2; even the worst move (which I played) leaves White with +1. So how – ON EARTH – could I lose this position only 3 moves from now????

Even one move prior to my blunder I am still +1.4:

Now f6 is the route to victory (which I didn´t take)…   8-(

Shall I add that my opponent only had 40 seconds left for some 15 moves (and I still had some 20 minutes)? No, better not…

It is very hard to draw any sort of constructive conclusion from this game. I new my bishop and the half open g-file were my biggest assets. Nevertheless, I continuously did my very best NOT to exploit this easily winning strengths… A very tough loss!

Day 34 / Evening before the tournament

After over 6 hours of travel (some 2,5 back home, then packing my stuff and some additional 4 hours of driving) we arrived at the hotel, some 5km away from the tournament location. I didn´t do any chess lessons, but me and my son went for some blitz games (first time ever that my son asked me to blitz with him!)...

500 hits from 10 countries

After roughly 1/12th of my journey and some 34 days of blogging my (almost) daily chess activities, I would like to share some statistics about this blog:

By now, this blog received almost 500 hits from 10 different countries! Yes, yes, that is close to nothing, but yet it shows that there seems to be some sort of interest...
4 out of 5 hits come from Germany, about 10% from the US. Just last week Portugal took 3rd rank followed by UK, Russia, France, Lithuania, Latvia, China and Holland...
Most visitors come from kdfb-schach.blogspot.de - so, KaDe, thanks for adding me!
The most visited page - next to the daily posts - is the one about my training achievements.

(On top, four books have been ordered using the provided link - all received a discount of almost 15% for their order; and one chessbase product might be ordered soon. Just to get this clear: The discounts are for YOU - I am 100% non-profit, of course!)

Although the main purpose was and is to keep a diary - something advised by my coach - I am glad that my journey is not left unnoticed and seems to have some sort of value for others, too!

Thanks!

(Feel free to send any comments - any sort of communication/interaction can only be beneficial!)

Day 33 / 332 to go

Today I had a session with my coach regarding some of the openings I played during the last tournament. Although I did go throught them beforehand on my own (+ support from all these clever machines), it is still worth the time to have a good coach talking about it! One nice rule of thumb I just learned (since I actually never heardt about it before):
Put your pieces where your most advanced pawns are pointing to (especially in closed positions)!
(Something worth to be added to my overall training achievements.)

In addition to today´s session with my coach I did work with my PAT on Aargaard´s book - I scored miserable 2 out of 6...  8-/  However, in three positions even the world elite players misjudged! But this shall not mislead my perception on the reasons for such bad performance: I assume, my calculation accuracy and depth is simply yet not good enough...
Can you spot the correct move for White in the following position? Topalov didn´t back then (neither did I tonight)!

What has been left behind (my training schedule) is any advance on my endgame knowledge. But due to the next tournament lining up already in two days, I purposely go for middle-game positions as well as some opening studies tomorrow, instead of hard endgame facts...(Maybe, there is actually no true rationale for that sort of preference. But at least that´s what I did (not) a day before the last and the next tournament.)

Day 32 / 333 to go

First day after the tournament. I used CB13+Komodo+Hiarcs+MegaDB2016 to analyse some of my games. I spent approx. two hours on digging into 3 games and spent much time on a new variation I might use in the future, not sure yet...I will discuss things tomorrow in the weekly training session with my coach and get his insights!

Day 28 - 31 / Tournament: Ried Open 2016

All in all, I did quite well in this 7 round tournament: 5 points (4 victories / 2 draws) with a performance of slightly above 2150.

I fucked up (please excuse my French) one clearly won position by overlooking a pretty straight forward perpetual check, whereas I turned a clearly lost position into a win - better: my opponent did so. (I am not proud of that game or the outcome. Luckily, this happens approximately every 5 years and not more often - I am not interested in that kind of victories at all.). Apart from these two "exotics" I was able to apply new set-ups in three games - and actually scored 2,5 points (1,5 with black)!

However, I didn´t yet apply my PAT properly: I am not yet really sure when to apply it and/or how often within one game... But at least I did apply "parts" of it much more often than in any previous match/tournament. So there is a clear trend...

Next week - next tournament! Since it takes more than one swallow to make a summer I am pretty excited to see whether I can show an equal performance in the next tournament. My main goal for this coming event is to gain at least yet another slight rating plus; a performance around 2100 should be achievable... (It would be pretty disappointing to lose any rating points...)