Good morning we are going to win. Today's rapid training game was a ...Qa5 Scandi. I let a winning position slip into a draw. In the critical position I looked at and should have played 12.Qe2 instead of 12.Bxe6. 12.Qd3 was also strong. Always attack with more than one piece!!

Good morning we are going to win. Today's rapid training game was a Pirc. I have a lot to learn about properly handling kingside attacks, my opponent handed me this one in a silver platter and I failed to execute. 15.gxf5 instead of 15.h4? was crushing. Onwards!

Good morning we are going to win. Today's training game (classical) was an Advanced Caro where I eventually broke through on the light squares. My handling of the queen was clumsy and the sacrifice inaccurate, I have a lot of work to do.

Good morning we are going to win. Today's training game (rapid) was the White side of a Black Lion. Playing the principled 4.f4 paid immediate dividends with an attack. Didn't see quite deep enough for the mate in 3 at the end, going to keep working Polgar Mate in 3s.

Good morning we are going to win. Today's training game (rapid) was an Advance Caro with 4.h4 h5 5.Bg4. It's a fascinating line where White often goes down material in order to keep Black's kingside undeveloped.

Good morning we are going to win. Today's training game (rapid) I blundered a simple fork in the middlegame against a pseudo-Calatan. One interesting idea I missed, 13...Nxe4 14. Bxe4 Bb4 15.Re3 a3 buries White's queen rook. Onwards!

Good morning we are going to win. Today's training game (classical) was a Four Knights. Preparing ...f5 with ...Nb4 is an idea I learned six (!) years ago from Jan Gustafsson Chessable course. Aspects of my attack execution were flawed, so learned something there.

Today's training game (rapid) was my highest rated win on Lichess! My opponent used an old line in the ...Qa5 Scandinavian. They found themselves in an endgame two pawns down and resigned. These days it's critical to delay ...c6, which John Bartholomew upcoming course will cover!!

Beautiful speech! Take a listen.👏

Just got my highest rated blitz victory on Chess.com of the last six months against an 1817. I only knew high level ideas after 10.h3, but worked out pretty well!!

Hard to argue with that!!! Karpov/Kasparov going for 5 months with 48 games in 1984.... but I guess three blitz games is enough in 2024!

Won my first classical training game of 2025. Not a perfect game as I let the advantage slip, but opening prep from Nikos Ntirlis's new Quality Chess book put me in an excellent position... Still need to learn the themes and plans, for example maybe 13.a5 instead of what I did

Today's training game (classical) was a Ruy Lopez where I played a line from Fabiano Caruana's ChessBase course. I broke through on the queenside with a tactic and then Black's position collapsed. Really happy with this one and enjoying learning the Spanish in general.

Today's training game (rapid) was a Bird Defense where I was winning out of the opening after a typical tactic on f7. I was blind to a strong move Qh8 in several positions, need to keep working on looking at a range of candidate moves. Onwards!

A nice miniature against a very offbeat Bird to end tonights training session. Crazy people play this way even at ~1800 rapid chesscom.

The main criticism of tiebreaks being "random" is that different tiebreak systems could lead to different outcomes. In the Grand Swiss, Bluebaum would have qualified under ANY of the tiebreak choices. Every metric suggests he was the strongest of the tied players.

I recently switched to one blitz game a day max and it has been amazing for my chess. I focus a lot more during that game, actually analyze every game, and have much more time for other studying. Completely gone are tilt sessions where I lose 100+ rating in one night.

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I extend this to 60 minutes in order to play 15+10, but this works incredibly well for me. I use an electronic chess board to help this practice translate to OTB.

As I've gotten closer to 2000 rapid on Chesscom, I am starting to face 2000-2100 rapids who are less than 1200 in blitz. This gets really old really fast.