Monthly Archives: September 2015

Coach and Study Regime

As I mentioned recently, I have been looking for a coach.  I am delighted to say that I have now found one, and will be working with IM Tom Rendle.  We have had two sessions together so far, which showed great promise, and I hope it will be a long and fruitful relationship.

So far we have been de-constructing my thought process, trying to find the reasons why I frequently either fail to find or fail to choose the right move, and working on calculation.  This was not part of my earlier ‘2100 Plan’ for the simple reason that I did not have the confidence to do this on my own, but knew that I could successfully work on openings and endings alone.  However, it seems clear that managing to improve my thought process would have a positive impact on all parts of my game; with Tom’s help I believe that I can do this, so for now that is what I will be focusing on.

Study schedule

Tom has told me that when he seriously trying to improve, he played around 100 competitive games of chess a year.  This seems like a reasonable figure to aim for; ambitious, but just about achievable whilst working full-time.  Estimating an average of 3 hours per game, that comes to 300 hours, which I will aim to match 1:1 with study, making a total of 600 serious chess hours over the year, or about 12 hours per week (6 hours of study).

In the past, too many of my hours have been dedicated to activities of questionable benefit, like nodding along to a DVD explanation but not really paying full attention, or playing online blitz games.  Going forward I will try to make my tracked hours of study as efficient as possible, doing something the pschologist K. Anders Ericsson called ‘deliberate practise’.  I intend to discuss that concept more in the future, but for now I will just note that it will probably involve a lot of problem solving.  I will no doubt continue to do ‘softer’ chess activities, but these will be in addition to the 6 hours of hard study per week.

Accountability

I have set up a Google spreadsheet to record my training on, and hope this will be a better way of sharing it than my old weekly progress reports.  If you would like an invitation to view and edit this spreadsheet, pop your email address in the form in the sidebar at the top right of your screen (no need to do so again if you have done so in the past).  Feel free to add your own tab to the spreadsheet if you have your own training goals you would like to be held accountable to.  I will also be doing progress updates on the blog, perhaps every four weeks, and am thinking about other metrics such as online ratings to track for these.

Games

As stated above, I will be aiming to play 100 serious games by September 2016.  Of these, I would like at least half to be FIDE-rated.  I have created another Google spreadsheet to calculate how many FIDE-rated games I would need to play at various rating performances to reach 2100, and this indicates that I would need 49 games at an average performance of 2150 to hit the goal.  (This sheet may be of interest to people as well, since it can easily be modified for your own calculations, so I will also share this with people who sign up above.)

I am intending to play in the ‘Four Nations Chess League’ and the London Chess Classic this season, which together will give me around 20 FIDE-rated games.  That still leaves me 30+ to find, so tournament suggestions or invitations are welcome.

That’s it for now, and please do let me know your thoughts on anything I have written in the comments below.

Kavala Open, part 1

In August I played my first long tournament since last year’s Major Open, in sunny Kavala.  Kavala is a seaside town in eastern Greece, where the attractive beaches compete with the chessboard for players’ attention.  Fortunately, although my morning preparation may have suffered a little, they did not manage to prevent me from turning up at the board.

My preparation for the first round was sub-optimal, to put it mildly.  My Gatwick to Barcelona flight was delayed, which meant that I missed my connection to Thessaloniki.  Instead of putting me on the next direct flight, Vueling elected to send me first to Rome, then to Athens, and finally to Thessaloniki, which resulted in me reaching Kavala at around 2 am on the day of the first game, after a hellish 40-hour journey.  I was paired with an International Master, and after getting slightly the better of the opening, I miscalculated and lost quickly.

Round two saw me paired with an 1806-rated junior; always an unpredictable proposition, as they can easily be a couple of hundred points stronger than their published rating.  Despite still being tired, I played reasonably well and had good winning chances, but didn’t take them and only managed to draw.  The second day featured a double round, so after the long morning game I had to play again in the afternoon.  This did not go well, as can be seen below:

 
In Swiss tournaments, it can be very difficult to to put a bad start like this behind you.  I tried hard to come unaffected to the next game, but made a few questionable decisions at the board and shortly before the time control found myself close to defeat against another 1800 player.  Had I gone on to lose this game the entire tournament could well have been a disaster, but fortune smiled on me, and after hanging on grimly for a few moves my opponent blundered on move 41, handing me my first full point.  This buoyed my spirits considerably, and the following day I returned and played the following nice attacking game:
 
A report on the second half of the tournament will follow.  In the meantime, please comment below to let me know your thoughts on the first half.