Chess Improvement Journey | Week 7
The training was horrible, the game felt like a brilliancy
Training
The training itself was mostly horrible. I sat down to train almost every day. Generally, if I realize that I can't focus and the training session is going horribly (e.g. can't get any puzzle right) I stop myself right there and call it a day. If I'm doing horribly after 30 minutes, I propably will be doing horribly for the remainder. I might aswell just safe the puzzles and do the work with a clear head. Before this week this has happend about thrice. This week I only managed to get through the whole routine once. I guess this generally happens if there is something very distracting going on in life or if one doesn't feel too good. Sleep this week and the weeks since I have been done with school was a disaster and oversleeping badly or waking up with 6 hours of sleep to still feel like a part of society may have not helped, but I find it though to believe that this is the only reason. Of course this is something I should be getting in check about now, but I feel like there is more to it: It's kind of like I'm losing the skill to be disciplined. Before the 10th of June, my last exam for my A-Levels, I was managing studying, chess and physical exercise (at least to some degree) at once, now I am barely managing to invest these 3 hours a day.
The plan to fix this
- Fix my sleep. May not be the root cause but surely isn't helping
- Get used to following a To-do List again. I graduated some weeks ago, it's fine to have a slip in discipline, but I have to get back to working mode at some point. I'll start lightly, just doing chess and some smaller scale tasks, but I'll work myself up to the level I was at.
- Having a hard point of time for when I'll do the chess. With 1,5 hours I was able to freestyle it, but with 3 hours it's harder to do on the fly. So from now on I'll reserve a time block, so there won't be any excuses and distractions
Getting back to exercising and other good habits would be great aswell, but for now this is the plan. Now to the good stuff ...
The Game
This game actually reminded me of why I love chess to begin with and why I wanted to improve. Especially long term piece sacrifices were something I was astonished by as a beginner, so I was very happy to pull it of myself:
Now, maybe the engine will destroy my evaluation of that game (or a human reader), but as of right now this feels like a great win which I really needed after my string of bad performances. I genuinly can't find a move I truly regret. It feels like my training is paying off. And with that, see you next week :)
