Chess Improvement Journey | Week 3

What was happening in real life?

I had a very busy week. From a chess perspective it was horrible, but it actually was a very meaningful week for me: I graduated, atleast unoffically. I wrote my last test, got my results back and am very happy with them. This means I can now sink in way more time into chess until October :). Buuut ... I sadly only did two training sessions and one game this week, as the final test almosted murderd me. The game was 25+10, so not really even classical. Still, it's something I can talk about.

The game

Our/my analysis:

And this is what the engine has to say to that:

So, my takeaways:
1. TACTICS IUPEWBFIPUWAEHBIUPFHBZHI ... No but seriously, that still seems to the area I have to put the most work in, all of my recent losses are due to a tactical issue
2. I have to watch out for d5 after playing c5/e5 in Slav positions
3. I should have tried giving away the b7 pawn, eventhough the engine deems it dead euqal I like my chances there

Using my newly free time

Now that school is basically completely behind me and Uni still 3+ months away, I can dump way more time into chess. So here is what I came up with:

• Tactics: 90 Minutes (+60 Minutes)

It's obviously my biggest issue at the moment, so I'm going to put more time into that. At first I'll just try to up the quantity, but if the issue doesn't improve over the next month or so I might try mixing up my tactics training

• Focus: 60 Minutes (+20 Minutes)
• Endgames: 30 Minutes (+10 Minutes)

So in total I'm training 3 hours per day. If I realize that it isn't working out I'll revert to 1,5 hours again, but it seems managable considering I have nothing else besides fitness.

So yeah, besides that I really have nothing to report to you guys. But as I'm doubling down starting next week, I should have plenty of interesting positions and games for you guys next week. I've also signed up for the dojo classical, so I even have tournament standings to share. See you next week :)