Grinding...

Hi,

just figured out how to embed things into the blog through studys. Easier than i thought.
Puzzling i put in some more volume and it is reeeally fun. Visualisation is still a pain, but it is slowly getting better. Using the arrows helps with that. I recognize patterns more frequently. A lot of time i am too hasty with my decision, thinking like "ahh i don ́t find it, i go with the best i have" knowing it is not right, lol. But it also depends what villain (the opponent) does, but in the puzzles i recognized it is about what the engine thinks is the best move, villain doesn ́t always do the best move, but mostly. Sometimes i find the right pieces to move but don ́t do it in the right order. Overseeing a recapture in the end i do way too often. Not seeing forks, pins, skewers and all of that. And i most of the time i go like "omg, i should have seen that", but tbh emotions got better about that.
I think this is all part of the process and i will stick to it. Though i could work a little bit more about endgame and opening specifically, instead of almost only grinding puzzles and watching videos. I was writing an excel chart with an overview of openings, but damn it is really complex. I guess it is a lot about what you prefer to play, because as far as i understand different openings have a wide spectrum of different characteristics. And according to the own abilitys, preferences, elo range of games (and probably other factors i don ́t know) there is not THE one opening. Ok e4 is "best by test" and e5 is kind of the standart, yes, but as we know there is a ton of other stuff out there, which seems to be reasonable, otherwise they wouldn ́t really exist, or at least not on top level, right?
So which openings to play for me? Well i kind of ended up in the italian quite often so far, but somehow i don ́t feel too good about it. But i guess i still have to study it, because it is just so frequent. In the end i will probably look at all of them soon or later, but i want to focus on these ones which are good for my elo range. Funny, since i don ́t even know without playing, but prolly under 800 :) It is still hard to say which ones are good to look at, but as far as i picked up in videos, Italian, spanish, caro kann, vienna, scotch, queens gambit, sicilian. But tbh, i have no idea what i am talking about :) For sure as soon as i start playing online, there are greater thoughts about the analysis of my openings, so it will kind of "come by its own, but i am writing this to reflect my thought and this is where i am at right now, knowing basically nothing :D
If the opponent plays weird moves, follow the standart principles, that is what i heard a lot. Using common sense, deviate from principles if necessary. Blunderchecks and looking of opponents blunders including. Somehow it all seems to be about standart lines and variations, like everything is solved. I like to think out of the box, but to do that it is probably helpful what the box actually is. So soon or later it makes, at least in my opinion, to just learn the openings. The question is if comes by itself through the process, or if it is necessary to learn actively and isolated. For me personally, it makes sense to look at it in detail. Might not be the line for everyone...

All in all i am more and more confident