Chess Improvement Journey | Week 2

The things that didn't pan out

1. The two classical games, or more concretly one of them. So I sadly only played one game. I don't want to attach direct messages and explain why it didn't work out, but let's say I have learned my lesson and will scheduel my matches better.
2. My training on friday. I may or may not have skipped it :/ video games are a hell of a drug. But I learned my lesson (I hope) and will not play before I finished my training for the day

The game

There is definitly a lot to take away from it. This is (roughly) our analysis:

So a perfect game huh? Well this is what the engine had to say about this as I was done with my own analysis:

So 3 takeaways:

1. My Opening (this line specifically) was flawed, I was worse out of the opening
2. I underestimated how quickly black can spring into action and use my lack of development (I was treating it kind of like a French Defense ... but it just isn't as we saw lol)
3. I still have to work a lot on my tactics, especially at recognizing my opponents resources to prevent my tactical plans

What else have you been up to?

Well, I have detailed my training plan here, and I just have been following it :) . I have compiled some interessting problems I have solved/tried to solve this week:

This one is a tactic

This one is about utilising the bishop

And an endgame aswell :)

My takeaways from this week

So my biggest takeaway: I still have to practice accurately calculating tactics, I am still making way to many mistakes eventhough I see the main idea.
Secondly, I'll have to review the line which happend in the game I played.
Thridly, I'll have to keep in mind how dangerous a lead in development can be as the engine showed me in the game (technically nothing new but obviously I underestimated it in the game).
And last but not least, creating passed pawns in the endgame at the (temporary) cost of your other pawns can be worth it (see the positional exercise above).

Have a great monday, see you next week :)