July Chess Report

Keeping myself accountable

July was hot… like miserably hot. I live in Phoenix and maybe you’ve read about our summer. We have a few jokes that come around each year during summer.

So what does that have to do with my chess? Not sure, but the office I play chess in gets pretty hot despite our best efforts. It makes it difficult to play slow games. I’ve tried playing at coffee shops… but find that hard to focus. Some of my rapid games really suffered from “chess in public”.

These are not excuses, just reporting.

OK so let’s get to the chess.

• Games Played (Rapid and Classical): 13

• Average Accuracy: 78.5

• STD DEV: 14

That’s a struggle. My best game (see below) was 95% accurate according to Lichess.

My worst game (see below) was 70% accurate. Yikes. Maybe I need to re-think the Grunfeld.

Or maybe not… Lichess stats tell me I’m about equal W/L/D.

I confess however I’m struggling to recall the all the lines with confidence. Watch for a post coming about Building a Repertoire Part 2 coming later this month.

All of this is to say… I’m in a rut. Worse is I’m declining over time. Here’s my rating graph for the last 6 months… knowing that ratings are a lagging indicator. (I’m using Lichess Rapid here since I have the most games played)

And here’s my accuracy stats for the last few months:

So what to do? Only thing I can control is how I’m spending my chess time and what I’m working on. If I’m to be honest, I’ve been working on blitz which is why I’m where I’m at. Things are changing however.

I’m a big fan of simplicity (only partly because I like to make things more complicated than they need to be). Apparently I’m not the only one. GM Noel Studer has made the rounds on the chess podcasts lately (Perpetual Chess, Chess Journeys, and the Chess Experience) as noted by another Nick. He’s big on bringing focus and simplicity to chess improvement. Emphasize tactics, gameplay, and analysis to improve over everything else.

He’s not the only one. GM Johnathan Rowson and GM Jacob Aagaard have both called improving at chess similar to learning to play a musical instrument. You have to play and practice the skill with focus on learning from game analysis.

What does that mean for me? It means getting real about focusing my time on tactics and gameplay. It also means setting boundaries on chess so that what time I do spend on chess comes with as much focus as possible. It also means changing up what and how I’m working. Everything needs to have a purpose or a synergy. I recognize I’m not professional at chess but I do want to see progress.

I’ve learned in my life that the two things we control are how we spend our time and where we put our attention. Where we choose to focus is where we’ll spend our time. I’ll expand on further on this in the next post. For now, wish me luck online until I get back OTB.

Thanks!

P.S. Once a month seems too often I think for updates on chess performance. I’m going to switch to every quarter. Next Chess Report will be October.