My 2023 Year in Review: Highs and Lows

Some great, some terrible; what now?

Hi everyone! At the start of 2023, I made a post about my year in review. It was incredibly easy to write, because I was just so excited to brag! I had gone up 160 points, from 1920 to 2080, and felt 2023 would be just as easy. When writing, I felt like a scholastic player again, asking my family and friends to review what I felt were flawless victories (despite the many blunders I sped past).

On the other hand, this year was filled with many more suspiciously missing or crumpled notation sheets. I had thought I would continue sprinting through my last <100 points to NM, but I hit a bit of a wall.

I hit my all time high of 2121 at the very beginning of the year, and then had some TERRIBLE results (1/5, 1.5/6) that each took 50 points off my rating and took me down all the way to 2033! I was able to climb back near 2100 by the end of the year, but those 2 results really ruined any upward momentum.

While there were some major successes (taking first in 2 open tournaments, scoring 50% over the year against titled players over 11 games), there were some of the worst failures of my chess career as well. So in this post I’m going to start with a few highlights to show where I played well, then a few low-lights to show what went horribly wrong, and finally a conclusion with mindset goals for 2024.

SUCCESSES

I’ll start with the fun part, the successes!

1. All Time High October

2. Winning the Green Bay Open

3. Winning the Milwaukee Open (Achieved Candidate Master)

First, All Time High October. I’ll leave the details to my previous post that already walked through this, but the gist is that I played nearly 300 rapid games in a single month to break through my all time high of 2410 on lichess rapid. I was able to reach 2430, it was a very fun and rewarding challenge inspired by FM Nate Solon!

All Time High October-I did it!

Next up, Winning the Green Bay Open, an annual tournament I have grown very fond of. This time I was able to go 4.5/5, including my first ever draw against an IM in the final round to share first place. In rounds 1 and 2, I was able to beat two 1900ish players in time pressure scrambles, then in round 3 was facing Joseph Pregon.

Joseph is an incredibly strong online player (upper 2400s chesscom rapid) whose classical rating was also on the rise. Luckily, I was able to reach a very sharp line of the caro that I’m very familiar with, and he collapsed quickly.

After starting the tournament 3-0, I was able to win another double edged caro-kann game with black. In the final round I had a 27 move draw with black against IM Erik Santarius using some nice computer prep I had worked on for a different game. I went up 42 points, for my best tournament of 2023.

Lastly, Winning the Milwaukee Open. I’m particularly proud of this tournament because it was me getting up off the mat after a poor middle of the year. I was only 3 points above my lowest rating of the year, and went into this tournament quite sick. In hindsight I probably shouldn’t have played in the tournament with how bad my cold was, but I didn’t feel terrible until I had already arrived! (sorry, everyone else).

In the first round I won smoothly with white against a poorly played french defense, then won a nice caro game in the 2nd round. In the 3rd round, I was paired against NM Trevor Magness, the Iowa State Champion. I was able to draw a very accurate game. He accepted a draw with low time on both of our clocks in an opposite bishop endgame.

In the final round, I was playing for a tie for first against NM Jeffrey Rojas. I had never seen this player and had no idea what to expect. After being outplayed in the opening, we reached an interesting moment where he was tempted into an unsound sacrifice of a knight for 2 pawns. I was able to outplay him in the endgame despite having nearly no winning chances earlier.

I had gained 31 points, and achieved my final norm to be a USCF Candidate Master! To be honest, I didn’t know this was even still a title. My (self) rule of thumb is that if you can’t play in Titled Tuesday, you’re not titled. Though, I’ll take it after an inconsistent year!

FAILURES

Now the not so fun part to talk about. I made a post about my first terrible performance, where I lost 50 points at the Chicago Class Championships, linked here:

Moving Through Chess Failure

So this post will be more about the ‘type’ of failures that I was having. In general, my problem was losing to 1900s! With a whopping 40% (8/18 total) of my losses being from players in the 1800-2000 range. Since I was around 2100, this is an abnormally low score, but not ridiculous with a small sample size. The games themselves are what showed me WHY I was performing so poorly against this rating set, while also doing fine against players > 2000 elo. I’ve created a lichess study that I’ll post in the comments of this post, showing 4 positions where I missed a chance to win, or didn’t blunder check at all. Please take a look if you’re interested!

As you can see, I’m blowing winning positions against this rating range due to lazy calculation and missing candidate moves from my opponent. Some napkin math shows that if I converted HALF of these close to winning, or winning, advantages to victories, I would be around 2166 right now instead of 2090. Points lost + points potentially gained upon victory = (13 points * 4 games)+(6 points * 4 games) = +76. You could also say I’d be 2140 if I just didn’t go to Chicago, but that’s a bit too much superstition for my taste.

To be clear, this is not a statement like “If I only I wasn’t unlucky and calculated these easy positions better, I’d be X rating!”. These failures in calculation are my own, and I didn’t see these ‘obvious’ tactics due to my own weaknesses as a chess player.

(Below: My brain cells arguing over which part of my chess is the problem)

After I realized this problem, I spoke to my coach, GM Eugene Perelshteyn, and he recommended I work on solving endgame studies daily. I also had a single 2 hour session with a local strong chess player and ‘calculation guru’, NM Nolan Hendrickson. He has an extremely ‘set-in-stone’ way of calculating that he teaches all of his students. My calculation issues were largely coming from completely missing obvious candidate moves or responses, or not blunder checking, so having a set system seemed helpful to have. Since working on these 2 recommendations over the last few months, I have not lost to a non-titled player, and my rating is on the rise up to ~2094 (once the latest club tournament is in). We’re moving!

Goals for 2024

“Not all national masters are talented chess players, but all of them are extremely diligent”-NM Nolan Hendrickson

The main problem in 2023 was lack of diligence in calculation causing losses to lower rated players. In 2024, I aim to be far more diligent with my calculation. To do this, I will blunder check every moment that I consider a ‘critical’ moment (time control permitting). This may seem like a lofty goal, but the point is not to successfully eliminate blunders entirely. The point is that I have to at least LOOK every time before I try to SEE. If I blunder check and still lose, that’s fine. Then I can learn why that was a blind spot.

I lost at least 50 rating points (maybe more!) due to not even checking for threats immediately after my first move in a critical position, so that won’t be happening in 2024. I will lose points to something new this year!

Thank you for reading! Happy New Year, and best of luck on all your life and chess goals!