My Road to 2000; Part IX

"you better lose yourself in the music, the moment you own it, you better never let it go..."*
*le goat mathers

Over the past week and a half, I have been training, if not relentlessly, then at least intermittently. I've had to balance chess with writing my college application essays(bleah), and finally finishing Elden Ring. As my first ever video game. I'm going to use this as bragging rights for the rest of my life.
After my losing streak, I went back over my games and tried to find patterns that I could improve on, like one of my viewers advised. I actually play pretty much above my rating usually; I can find combinations and tactics on a 2000-rated level. However, I also make a lot more blunders than a regular player. I've developed several routines, which have helped me improve my routine significantly; firstly, I always do puzzles at the hardest difficulty level until I win one in the morning in order to warm up. Secondly, if I do especially badly on the puzzles, I know I'm not up for playing that day, and I can retreat with my rating intact.

Also, I got a new computer! One with a mouse that actually works! My number of misclicks has decreased to something like 20% of what it was. The difference in lag is so much better. I can actually play without raging at my screen every other game.

So, interesting story. A couple weeks ago(I forgot to include it in my last post), I started a game with a random guy. I'm not going to bother to pull it up, because it would take too much work and the game wasn't worth the effort; I was distracted because this unnamed player(who we will use the pseudonym "Troll" for) continuously accused me of cheating in the chat. I would play a perfectly good move and he would just say "cheater heheheheh" in the chat. Over and over again. He didn't even give a reason, he just kept spamming it in the chat. So I lost the game, because I'm both distracted and very confused. I go eat lunch. I come back to a notification that says "You played a game with someone who violated Lichess's terms of service. Rating has been refunded."
Ahhhhh, karma is delicious. I'm so glad I'm not using Chess.com.

Here are some of the bangers I participated in. Honestly, there were a lot more that I could show you, but it takes so much time to commentate a study that the work itself is the real bottleneck, not finding games to analyze.
This one is one I'm not proud of. I should have won this and I'm really frustrated I didn't. Props to my opponent for seeing a opportunity and taking it.

This one...just watch it. It was stupid on both sides.

This final one has an interesting backstory behind it. I had to write up the blog post, but due to an unfortunate series of events(which I shall not mention for personal sanity's sake) I had dropped to a rating...
Of 1696.
I can't be having that. What am I supposed to do? Make a blog post that says "I reached 1696 in rapid chess"?
No. No nonononono. This is an issue that must be remedied with exceptionally loud music and much triharding. If I lose this game, I'm a failure.
Enjoy.

I probably did not deserve to win that game. But you know what? I won it anyway, and in the end, that's what really matters. Weirdly, I have a bad conversion rate, but an exceptionally large resourcefulness rate compared to other rapid players. That means I'm not good at winning games where I have an advantage, and I win a lot of games I should have rightfully lost.
...Do I have plot armor?
On that note, thanks for reading! Have a good(or at least marginally unbad) day, and leave a like or GothamChess will...do something to you while you sleep. I don't know. Something.