Progress Report: 96.7% percentile

I'm very close to my goal of 99th percentile. My biggest problem is managing to move without thinking a move through. This happens every now and again... and again. Basically, if I've thought of a sequence of moves, I will nearly pre-move my pieces when actually I have 5-10 minutes on the clock, with time to check myself again. Obviously, GM's recommend to always double check your moves so I am failing this basic premise and it is costing me a lot of points.

It is especially painful because there seems to be few people rated 1,550+, so every time I lose against someone rated 1,450-1,500 I end up losing 10 to 12 points. Whereas when I win, I am only getting 5 points.

I've had a few games against people rated 1,575-1,600 and I've won them, so I am quite confident of reaching 1,650 to 1,700 in the coming two weeks or so. I hope, that translates to 99% so I can set a new goal.

Studying has been slow this week. I've wanted to spend a lot of time with people I care about so that left less time for studying. Then I got ill. Ugh! I am hoping to pick up the studying after this Wednesday. This will mark nearly a month without studying, aside from reading a couple of chapters of a book and doing a couple of hours of Tactics Trainer.

Moreover, if anyone cares, I attribute my incredible rating climb in the last study-less month to actually getting some games in, getting some real practice done vs real players. I got this premise from the book "Chess for Zebras", where the author argues that all the knowledge in the world is useless if you can't put it into skill. Skill comes from playing games. I haven't finished reading the book yet (as I said, I've hardly studied!), but so far I really like it. It's unconventional and I really makes sense so far.

The other thing I can definitely attribute my rating hike to is Tactics Trainer. While in the last month I hardly did any problems, the month before this I did a lot! I notice in my latest games, that I am unforgiving if my opponent blunders, whereas before, I may have missed a lot of those opportunities. As an example, I had about 10-30 seconds on my clock left, vs 5-7 minutes. My opponent played a not so obvious blunder but in under a second I had spotted it and played the right move to punish him. Game below:

White just played 39. Kf3 ?? - I have 10 seconds or so on the clock. He has over 5 minutes. It looks like the pawn on f4 is in trouble and I have to go on the defensive. However, thanks to TT I spotted the winning combination in a split second. Yay!

A Week of Downtime

Dear diary... :P

For the last week, I have not studied chess at all. I have kept my 18 online correspondence chess games going so as not to lose them all. I have made a few moves too quickly and as consequence I think my position sucks in all of those games. I will probably lose most of them. Bah!

Today I've left all of last week's stress behind (lost checked luggage, late airplane ticket rushed purchases, dealing with Russian culture), and I've found new energy to continue studying tomorrow. Let's get back on with it! Woop woop.

Tilt Over, Rating Back Up (95%)!

So I've managed to get over my massive losing streak and get back on my feet. I've had a few interesting games on my way to my highest ever rating, 1533, but I'm still far from my goal of getting to at least 99% before entering an OTB tournament.

I've been trying to focus on more correspondence chess to build good habits, however, a small glitch that automatically entered me to a tournament with 10 simultaneous games has gotten in the way. I absolutely cannot hold my concentration/patience playing what is now a total of 19 correspondence chess games. However, I am not doing too bad and expect to hit 90th percentile rating on that chess category.

My plan is to play mostly correspondence chess until I've built good habits, but it is really hard to avoid the occasional 15|10 or 10 minute game. However, after I've finished this humongous quantity of simultaneous games, I will really work toward playing only 3-5 games at a time and avoiding all these blitz games! Playing such a low quantity should allow me to find the best move every single move and thus build the correct habits/thinking methods.

A small set back in the form of a prolonged trip to Russia has just hit me, but I hope it does not affect my chess much. It has affected my morale a little bit and I can't see myself studying today as I am a little bit nervous about the trip tomorrow. However, I hope to bounce back as soon as I land and get down to business.

Measuring progress, A long way from GM!

Whether it's the right thing to do or not, I am currently judging my progress by the way I play 15|10 games of chess. At least for the time being, as long as I can see results on it, that is what I will do. So below, is how I have progressed in the last month.

As you can see, I had a steep fall recently, where I could not seem to win a game, I really think this was a result of a little "tilt" phase, just like in Poker. However, I am recovering now and I am quite confident that I will stabilize at just above 1,500 sometime soon. I will make the next post once I can reach that level, so hopefully it won't take me a whole month ;)

I have tried to limit games with faster controls but every now and then I throw a few 2|1 and 10 minute games in there. I do seem to be doing better at those as well and my rating is increasing there too. I believe that playing those faster games is more fun, however, they are probably completely rubbish to improve your skills. I've read posts that argue you need to play OTB to get concrete results, but aside from my awesome brother, I have not found anyone to play regularly with.

I do not yet want to join a proper chess club, mainly because my German is not that great (chess is getting in the way of studying german!). Secondly because I believe club level chess will be just a tad too hard for me now. I like to set goals, achievable goals! Upgrading to club level chess now, could be a blow to my morale. I shall do so when I can reach 97% percentile on chess . com. However, if I am not able to reach 97% within 3 months, then I will join a chess club, because perhaps that will be  exactly the last missing piece of the puzzle!

Meanwhile, I will keep doing the mix of instructional videos, books, tactic puzzles and chess mentor courses that seem to be paying dividends. Hopefully, it will work!

Chess aside, I must admit that all the chess is getting in the way of everything else. I've started studying less and less German. I completely stopped Duolingo (but then again it was boring me!). I still practice on Memrise because it is awesome. I also resent going to the gym because it takes 2 precious hours of chess away but I think the mental health from being fit is probably reflecting well in my ability to bounce back from a fall.