I used to suck at chess openings, now I just suck at the other bits (at least my openings are awesome!)

It’s been a long while since I have updated everyone on my own chess improvement. This is mainly due to bootstrapping our startup Chessable and a little secret I seldom mention, having a sleepless baby in the house! Therefore my daily life can be summarised by:

1. Wake up very early (3–4am) to help with baby (work/study/read if she sleeps further)
2. Study on Chessable about 15 min/day
3. Work on Chessable about 10 hours/day

Anything else fits around that schedule, including playing chess. This is a shame because to get better you need to be playing at the longer time controls. Hence, last month I started making more of an effort, sleepless or not, I want to keep improving.

I started playing a few 15 | 10 games on the chess server, and I am happy to say that my rating holds at a very pleasant 1,850ish, with a new highest at 1880 (Sep 23, 2016). I am very happy with this as you can see just around 3 years ago I just started making my way from 1,250 and it took some work to get to 1,400! It has always been a challenge to consistently perform above 1,800 but I think I am finally part of the club! :) My own self-analysis of these online games shows that my chess openings have stabilised and I almost always get a playable and/or great position out of the opening. I have also begun exploiting my opponents weak opening moves as I can now recognise they have played a sub-optimal line and I then opt for more active/aggressive continuations.

Of course, a few 15|10 games (must be 10–12 in a month) is not enough to improve. One of the best correlations obtained by scientists interested in chess is that the more OTB games you play, the higher your ELO gets. Really you should be playing at least 50 quality OTB chess games yearly if you hope to get to master level. While 2015 (and the first part of 2016) lent itself well for that and I even went above 1,900 FIDE, lately I haven’t had the energy and time to play OTB!

Nonetheless, for diary logging purposes I will relate that I gave two OTB games a try recently (90 minutes no increment)! Again using my chess opening knowledge, I sailed through the openings and build a 30 minute time advantage. This should be enough to win, just keep the position solid and your opponent will blunder under time pressure or time out. I am sad to report I gave both winning positions away. But hey, at least the problem is no longer the opening?

Yesterday I spent 3 hours driving (total) to make this ECF league chess game, and I was up way past my bedtime. I put the loss to a lack of concentration at a crucial moment where I thought I had the game won (I was at +2), all I had to do is trade Queens. My opponent correctly avoided a Queen trade and made life difficult. Wanting to get on with the drive home, I got frustrated, I did not check for opponent counterplay after I compromised my King Safety a bit and boom, enormous blunder, game lost.

Now being a trained psychologist who has read plenty around expertise, learning and also chess performance, I am happy to say I have some awesome ideas on how to stop these kinds of errors from occurring in the future. Obviously, not being exhausted is one of them, maybe drinking a coffee would have been another one, but I am of the belief that once you get a process from conscious to subconscious routine then those things don’t matter. This is why a GM would never make such a blunder, they’ve trained so well that even when they are exhausted they would automatically check for counterplay and convert the win. My conscious overlooked that for a second and my subconscious has no clue about that stuff yet, hence, the blunder!

Fortunately I am also a computer scientist so I look forward to implementing some novel ideas that will help us all (or at least myself ;-) ) to improve and cut these kind of errors out of our games. I can happily say that I am always happy with how I play the opening, and I know that a few months back I still suffered during openings and got sub-par positions. Since that doesn’t happen anymore, it’s time to focus on the other bits! Stay tuned.

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Here are the pictures of my performance over these last 2 OTB games. I played White on both. Both games against stiff opposition ECF 160ish (1900 FIDE). Game 1 I blundered after squandering a 30 minute time advantage. Game 2 I blundered after having a won position and a 40 minute time advantage. Oh the shame. Good material to improve on ;-) Again, at least the opening went well huh? After all, that is the sole thing I have been having a chance to study. Time to build some more kick ass chess tools :D

Game 1:

Game 2: