I have recently competed in what is likely going to be my last tournament of the year, the Münsterland Open.
The tournament went reasonably well and I gained a couple of points that should bring me to a rating of about 2460.
I sadly don’t have the time to thoroughly analyse the games the way I have in the previous two blog entries, and so in this post I want to do something different: summarising this second period of tournament play since starting this project, and after that, fleshing out what I intend to do in the coming weeks and months regarding both training and play.
This post will be quite a bit shorter than previous ones, but I guess that’s not necessarily a bad thing!
Summary/Analysis
I’ll begin with an overview of the tournaments I played starting in August of this year.
Vlissingen Chess Open: 6.5/9 vs. avg. 2288, TRP 2524
Satu Mare GM: 6/9 vs. avg. 2381, TRP 2506
Wiesbaden Open: 5.5/7 vs. avg. 2194, TRP 2463
Trieste Open: 6/9 vs. avg. 2371, TRP 2496
Münsterland Open: 7/9 vs. avg. 2267, TRP 2487
Looking at these performances, I’ve been pretty consistent — all decent results, not a single major slip-up — but, of course, at the same time, no exceptional result either.
Let’s extract some stats:
The average rating of my opponents was 2305 and I scored 31/43 points, with 21 wins, 20 draws, and 2 losses. No false modesty: I am proud of this score against opposition with FM-level strength on average.
Taking the mean over all games, my rating performance amounts to 2496.5. I am very happy about this, since my rating performance from the point I started this project up until late March was at about 2430 — so there does appear to be clear improvement.
Zooming out even more and thinking about how I evaluate my chances of reaching 2500, I must say that I am quite optimistic.
I realise of course that the jump from 2460 to 2500 is likely to be significantly more difficult than going from 2407 to 2460 — but the consistency of my recent tournament performances makes me hopeful. Also, as I’ll continue to work on my chess, I obviously don’t want to just keep playing at my current level, but improve further and aim for higher performance averages of e.g. around 2550.
Training Plan
I’ll have to focus primarily on non-chess-related matters for the next couple of months, and so I want to create a training routine that is minimal enough to be sustainable, but extensive enough for me to make some improvements and become a better chess player over time. I’ll include three basic building blocks: tactics, openings and training games.
1) Solving Puzzles
Not surprisingly. As previously, I’ll utilise two different tools: the ChessTempo Blitz tactics and the good old standard Lichess puzzles.
With the ChessTempo tactics time plays a role, as one has to solve medium-difficulty puzzles as quickly as possible — a skill that I’d describe as a mix of precise calculation, intuition and speed and one that I think is very relevant for chess-playing ability overall.
I’ll utilise the Lichess puzzles to train deep, deliberate calculation in complex positions. I like to set the positions up on a physical board and really delve into the positions at hand.
2) Opening Work
My second focus will be professionalising my openings further. I have made some strides in this regard since last year, but there is still a lot of work to do.
One reason this will be particularly important is that I’ll play in the Bundesliga — with our team HSK Lister Turm — where I’ll hopefully face some very strong grandmasters. I want to make sure to maximise my chances of achieving good/solid positions out of the opening in those games.
3) Practice Games
In one of my earlier Lichess blogs I mentioned that training games are important and that practicing tactics without supplementing that with actual playing practice might lead to losing some of the crucial intuitive decision-making skills. I still believe this and so I’ll have to incorporate some training games.
Previously, I had played a couple of Blitz games a day and once in a while some scheduled rapid games against strong chess players. To save time and lean into high-quality, deliberate decision-making a bit more, I’ll experiment with leaving out the Blitz games and only playing a couple of rapid games a week. Also, rapid games, e.g. 10+5, are definitely not too slow-paced to improve in time-scrambling skills.
Putting it all together taking into account some considerations about duration and scheduling, this is the simple, but hopefully effective routine (I might of course change things up as I see fit):
The Routine
7x/week: 25 min. ChessTempo Blitz tactics
2x/week: 50 min. Lichess puzzles
t.b.d.: Rapid training games, e.g. 10+5
Outlook
As mentioned, the only OTB chess I’ll be playing for quite a while is Bundesliga — which of course still is an excellent opportunity to improve as a player and perhaps make some further progress w.r.t. the goal of reaching 2500.
I hope to return to tournament play in February/March. Until then, I’ll train consistently, play those league games and so hopefully I can perform at around 2550 in the future.
As always, thanks so much for reading and for following along! Please feel free to ask, criticise, suggest anything you’d like.
Until next time — cheers!