Daily Chess Diary

Decided to interrupt my time-wasting Puzzle Rushing to actually play a game. We went into classical French, which was a nice change of pace from all the random non-theoretical d4 games I've been playing lately. My opponent played an early a3 which felt unnecessary and made it easy to start building up for an attack on d4. They removed a defender and I was able to strike, winning material. As is typical, I struggled to simplify once I was ahead, but I managed to hold out long enough for my opponent to blunder their queen and resign. I suppose I'll take it!

It's been a little while since I've had time to play a rapid game (well that's not true, I could have found time over the long weekend, but I only committed to playing after work, so I'm not counting saturday-monday as a REAL lapse.) Yesterday was super busy at work and I had rehearsal shortly after returning home, so I decided to not play in my stressed and fatigued state late in the evening. So here we are! Trying to get back on the wagon. Had a nice quick victory against a line that was surprisingly similar to the last rapid game I played. Both players opened up with the almost identical d4, Bf4, Nc3, e3, h3 moves like it's some kind of system. In both cases, h3 seems like an obvious inaccuracy that throws away white's initiative and gives black time to develop pleasantly and castle before playing c5 to attack the center. My opponent today also played a bizarre move, Be5, posting the dark square bishop on a very forward square supported by their center pa

Another game where I squander my early advantage and lose on time. Not a lot to say here, except I really need to avoid coming up with complicated reasons not to play normal moves. I spent like 5 turns not developing my knight and paid for it. I gave a check based off some complicated calculations on a line my opponent didn't even go into and ended up improving their position. I later fell for a simple pin when low on time. Alas. At least I played pretty well in the opening. I just need to work on sticking to sound moves in the middle game and moving a little quicker.

Well I finally got matched upward. My opponent played the Nf6 Scandi, which I know nothing about facing. I guess I have to learn somehow. I made fairly reasonable moves, but much too slowly, and ended up pretty far behind on time early in the game. I spotted a tactical opportunity and had a very good position for a few moves, but failed to find the continuation that prevented my opponent from trapping my piece. I thought I still had a good position, with two advanced connected pawns, but my opponent defended well and eventually I blundered while playing on increment. Frustrating to lose in this way, but not the worst game. I could have easily been winning if I'd manage to hold after the tactic, so I think there's nothing stopping me from facing players at this rating level in the future. Honestly, I thought my opponent played pretty crap moves in the opening, but it cost me so much time trying to respond that it didn't hurt them much. I'm not sure if the immediate a

What are the odds? Yesterday was my first rapid game against Caro-Kann in a long time, and today was my second. Unfortunately I hadn't gotten to studying the opening any more since yesterday, though I did remember that it's better to avoid the early bishop trade and just focus on developing. I ended up making a few inaccurate moves through the opening, which delayed castling longer than I would have liked, but I was able to get in a c4 attack and eventually use it to establish a protected pawn on d6 at the expense of my dark square bishop. It cost black some tempo to do this, though, and so I had a large development advantage to boot. The engine points out some ways that black could have reestablished equality a number of times after I made an ill-advised queen trade, but from a psychological perspective I felt like my position was easier to play than Black's. I, once again, made a mistake in trading light square bishops, but managed to continue adding pressure to bla

On one hand, I'm annoyed that I keep getting paired with lower-rated players. On the other hand, I don't mind winning a few games in a row to boost morale. I felt like I played fairly well today, at least when it comes to identifying some key tactical opportunities. I did fail to correctly calculate the pawn exchanges in the center early in the game, which is annoying, and I got a little low on time, but overall I felt like I had some good stretches of highly-accurate moves. We went into the Caro-Kann, which I almost never face. I know basically nothing about the theory, so resort to my approach against any slow-seeming opening by black: push my pawns into the middle and try to protect them. It went okay, though I perhaps should have opted for an earlier c4 in light of Black's overly cautious early play. I got a little apprehensive after the center opened up and black appeared to have a lot of pressure, but once I was able to disentangle my pieces, the central location