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Chess

Chess Challenge – Day 61-127 – ELO: 919

After the vacation, my daily routine was basically keeping up to date with a couple of Chessable courses and grinding daily Chess.com puzzles. Here’s the graph since then.

Categories
Chess

Chess Challenge – Day 24-60 – ELO: 860

Tracking every day was too much of a chore so I’ll keep tracking the games on a higher aggregation level and maybe post selected games going forward. This covers the gap from day 23 to day 60. Afterwards, I went on a one month vacation to Asia and didn’t play any games during that time. I did however keep up the 30 minutes/day tactics puzzles.

Categories
Chess

Chess Challenge – Day 23 – ELO: 822

Training

  • Tactics, Chess King Elementary 1 (30m)
  • Chessable reviews (43m)
  • Puzzle Rush: 22 (5m)
  • Game (33m) & Analysis (10m)

Game 27 – 19.03.2024 – W – win

  • 3. Considered “abandoning” my opening and playing e4 or Bg5 → would have been good (c4 and Nc3 are also good options). Cost me about 0.4 EV
  • 4. Briefly considered d5 which is the best move (taking is also fine as are c4, Nc4, a3), cost me about 0.2 EV
  • 9. f4 is better, didn’t play it because I was afraid of Qxe3+ but we are +0.53 after Kh1
  • 11. Nd2 best move, thought about it (after opponents takes it’s actually best to go Nb5 because we can go to d6 with check!)
  • 13. Nb5 again a great option
  • 15. Massive blunder (N en prise), better Nd2 or Na1 and we are fine. Thought about those moves and then “forgot” I had moved the defending Q and moved the N…immediately saw it after I played the move
  • Time pressure mounting now as well, down to 2:45 here
  • 18. Blunders the Ra1 (opponent didn’t see it, neither did I during the game)
  • 20. Back in an ok position after opponent didn’t see the free rook again. Best move f5 but I blunder the Q with my move…and opponent blunders the Q right back to me
  • Under 20 seconds at this point
  • 22. Qa5 or Rg3 or Rd1 good options, as is g5
  • 23. Rd1, f5 or Qb4+ all good options; too focused on defense
  • 24. f5 remains the best move until move 28
  • 28. Trading down here via Bd1 seems fine
  • 33. Qxd5 would be M5, alternatively get a rook to the open c file
  • Missed better mating opportunities (Rd2) at the end because I was looking too much at defending
  • Lots of blunders, but played on to win (because opponent blundered Q)
  • Time was also an issue