My Best Year of Chess
How 4 changes to my game helped me gain nearly 140 points in one year
Hello chess players and readers. At risk of coming off as a braggart, I’ve decided to make a post breaking down the main changes I made to my game this year.
After being stuck in the 1900s for nearly 6 years, at the beginning of this year I decided enough was enough. In 2022, my USCF rating went from 1946, to 2082. I still have many weaknesses in my game, and a long way to go, but this year I was able to hammer away at a few of those issues.
So, what changed? I’m going to list the 5 main changes to my game in 2022 that allowed me to shatter the 2000 plateau.
1. Acting on Calculation, not Intuition
In previous years, I had a common thread in my losses: over pushing. Often times I would have an advantage, and hear a voice in my head that says “If you don’t find a win right here, you are going to lose”. I’d quickly act on this feeling, and find out it was unsound. Here’s an example from a game of mine in 2021. I was playing with the black pieces, against a local strong USCF Candidate Master.
If White plays Qa3, Nc2+ wins the queen, so the result is a threefold repetition/draw. A much better option, since the starting position was around -4.5 for black, would be to do nothing! Calmly play h6 to prevent white’s attack on h7, and continue to play from a superior position. No need to panic, despite the sex appeal of sacrificing both rooks against a stronger player.
This year, I chose to stay in the game, rather than act on an idea I can’t fully calculate or understand. Example:
In this position, I found out AFTER the game from Mr.Fish , that e6!! was in fact completely winning. If black captures the pawn, Bg5 and Re2 lead to winning one of black’s minor pieces. I saw e6, but couldn’t find Bg5, a very nice quiet tactical move. Instead, I calmly played Be3, and won 15 moves later due to my superior position. Last year I would’ve played e6, not found Bg5, and lost the game down a passed pawn.
2. Switching to ‘serious’ openings
Benko gambit, Alekhine defense, Wing Gambit; these are all legitimate surprise weapons against certain opponents. Though, against most opponents, there is no need to willingly give them a clear path to an advantage. Strong IMs like Mark Esserman, will swear by gambits like the Smith-Morra, but part of improving at chess is understanding your own style.
Due to my tendency to ‘over-push’, I chose openings that were imbalanced, but not quite as ‘crazy’. One change, was switching from the Benko Gambit, to the Nimzo-Indian Defense. I learned this openingfrom the wonderful opening book ‘How to Play the Nimzo-Indian Defense’ by Raymond Keene and Shaun Taulbut.
One of my first times I won with this opening, was against Daniel Yang (2027), at the IL State Class Championship. A few rounds before we played, I watched him absolutely annihilate a Benko Gambit player.
‘Okay, Nimzo it is’.
3. A Few Tactics a Day Keeps Blunders Away
“TACTICS TACTICS TACTICS”-Every Chess Coach. It’s true, and there’s no way around it. If you want to improve in chess, you need to solve tactics, preferably difficult ones. In the past, I did tactics sporadically, but had no ‘routine’. These days my normal daily routine is:
1.Aimchess daily routine (about 20 tactics of different types based on your weaknesses)
2.Chesstempo (10 easy, 10 medium, 20 hard)
3.A couple runs of chess.com puzzle rush
I tried to do this work out at minimum. Time spent on solving tactics is ALWAYS worth it. I would bet there is not a single player who is 2700 tactically, that isn’t at least 2400 ELO. No, your chess.com puzzle rating does not count.
With daily tactics, I would say the strength gain to my ‘floor’ was much more noticeable than the gain to my ‘ceiling’.
4. Review your games
To be frank, this one was a mystery to me until about mid way through this year. I was on ‘Chess Journeys’ podcast with Dr.Skull in April, and he asked me “How do you review your games?” and I told him, “I don’t!”.
This was a major hole in my game. My idea of game review was just to check if there were any major blunders. If there was, stop doing that, do more tactics. If there wasn’t, nice game you played perfectly. This is not good enough for a serious improver.
“On the chess board, it’s always just your fault” -Jesse Kraai
Jesse Kraai from ChessDojo broke down his way of reviewing your own games, and I used this as a guideline. I didn’t quite use pen and paper, instead I used ChessBase. My process is:
(No Engine)Enter the game, and just the thoughts you had while you are playing. Every variation you had thought of during the game, and why it didn’t work, or did work, in your opinion.
(No Engine) Go through the game again, and with the ability to move the pieces. What could you have done differently? Did you play your opening theory correctly? Do you spot any obvious blunders? What could you have done instead? Is there any critical lines you didn’t consider?
(Engine) Walk through the fully analyzed and annotated game with the engine ON, and see if your analysis lines up with the computer’s interpretation of the game. Were there any tactical blows you missed? Were there critical responses from your opponent that they missed? Note: If the computer suggests a line/move that you feel would be impossible for you to find (i.e, a forced win of a pawn in 9 moves), do not fret about this, and consider not adding this move to your analysis.
End the game with a summary statement, and your full interpretation of the analysis. If the game was not perfect (which it most likely isn’t), what are you going to add to your training to correct this type of mistake?
This takes a long time, but how can you expect to improve without understanding why you are bad? Because the truth is, compared to Stockfish or Carlsen, all of us are very VERY bad at chess. What a blessing, as there is always room for improvement!
Thanks for reading, and I hope these notes will help your own game. Feel free to reach out to me on twitter @ChessLobster, either to ask a question, tell me my advice is bad, or play some blitz!
Great post! 🔥