All Time High October-I did it!

What worked for me to hit this goal, and what I'm going to do in November

Hello readers. In my last blog post, I announced I would be going for my all time high rating in lichess rapid (2410) in October. If I failed, I’ll be learning how to checkmate with a bishop and knight in under 1 minute against the computer. I was inspired to attempt this by FM Nate Solon(Zwichenzug on Substack), as well as Alexandra Botez. Both of these players both hit their goal, saving their eyebrows and endgame study time!

So, how did it go for me…?

In this blog post, I’m going to break down what struggles I faced in this challenge in my training, and in my play. Then, I’m going to give myself another goal for November. I think this month’s goal will be based largely on training, and less on results.

This ‘results based goal’ was rather stressful and exhausting with the number of games I played to make it happen. The sections i’ll break down in this post are as follows, feel free to scroll past if you only care about the game results:

1. Training

   1. System 1 training results

   2. System 2 training results

2. Games and hitting the all time high

3. Reflections and All Time TRAINING November Challenge

TRAINING

In my initial blog post, I broke down a rather strenuous training plan I was going to follow. Switching off days between System 1 training, and System 2, I came up with the following plan:

SYSTEM 1

In terms of my System 1 training, I’ve been following it nearly perfectly. Undistracted games, full review, chessable adds, puzzles etc. The only ‘tweak’ I made, was suggested by FM Nate Solon. He messaged me in a group on discord: ‘Everything you are doing makes sense, but it’s a bit complicated. You don’t need a complex plan to improve at chess, just have focused work every day’.

When I asked for what specifically was ‘complex’ he said ‘well for example you’re doing puzzles from so many different sources, just one is fine’. I took his advice and started only doing all my puzzles on lichess. Both the puzzle streak warm up, and the ‘hard puzzles’ for System 2 days are now on lichess only.

Between puzzle streak, and lichess puzzles, I’m averaging around 120 puzzles a day in System 1 days. Though, only around 25 (24.7 avg) of those are lichess ‘normal’ difficulty puzzles.

SYSTEM 2

As far as my System 2 training, I’ve been less successful. I think this is largely due to not having a good place to set up a board (I am currently in the process of moving). Still, I was able to change this to ‘hardest’ lichess puzzles, and get some of that ‘deep’ work done.

So on system 2 days, I only averaged around 11 ‘hard’ puzzles a day. This is passable, but definitely something I look to switch around in the month of November’s ‘training challenge’ I’ll go into at the end of this post.

Games and Hitting the All Time High

I hit the goal, so overall it went great! With nearly twice as many wins as losses, I perhaps could continue to rise if I wanted to keep pressing immediately (I don’t).

Analysis from aimchess.com on my lichess rapid games this month

That being said, after taking a look at my losses, I am still making some terrible tactical mistakes that I think are beneath a 2400 rapid player in a rapid time control (or maybe they aren’t, chess is just hard!). To show a few of my most recent losses:

1. I am so clever to undouble my pawns! (Drop piece due to c4 next move).

2. Yes, my fork worked! Now to capture on f1 (Drop my queen on e5). Not to mention missing Rxh6 keeps the game going due to the threat on h2.

   

3. Let’s trade into an endgame. (Complete drop of a piece).

   

So, while a few of my recent losses have been just getting completely outplayed, a great deal of them are one or two move blunders. Even with trying to give my games my full focus I still am making these types of mistakes, so I’ll have to give that one more thought. Perhaps these type of silly mistakes are inevitable, what percentage is too high for a strong master level player? 10% of my games, 1% of my games? Something I look to solve with hard data going forward, perhaps in my next blog post.

Re-upping: The plan for October

While it was a bit exhausting, I found this challenge really fun! I’m going to go at it another month, this time setting a results based goal, with the same ‘consequence’ of having to learn how to checkmate with B+N in under 1 minute against the computer if I lose. I also am trying to force myself to produce a bit more content, writing-wise and YouTube-wise, so I’m incorporating that into this goal.

Every week in November I will:

1. Average >= 1 hour of system 2 tactical work a day

2. Complete a single blog post

3. Post a single YouTube video to ‘TheChessLobster’ on Youtube.

A single week ‘failure’ of this goal, is enough to fail the challenge. While I think this is a difficult goal, I also think it’s quite do-able with good time management, as well as ‘doubling dipping’. I.e., Record my tactical work in the AM before work, and post on YouTube.

Thank you to all my readers, without you all keeping me accountable I wouldn’t have reached last month’s goal! With an Ocean of Chess content, thanks for choosing to read my blog.