Road to NM: Week 3 — An Up and Down Week

Intro

Welcome back to week 3 of the Road to NM series where I talk everyone through my improvement journey along the path to my goal of reaching NM by the end of 2027, talking through my online play, study plan, and most importantly, my OTB games.

Last week, I was on vacation and didn't do so well online, but my OTB performance was fantastic and I went 3-0 giving me a peak quick USCF rating of 1591. This week was a lot more up and down than that and there's a lot to go through so hopefully it doesn't take too long.

Online Play

My play online this week in rapid was the main thing that was so up and down, as I talked about in the last blog, I dropped back below 2000 while on vacation because of lack of focus (I said I expected this so it was fine) and throughout the week, starting out the week was not what I wanted, as I dropped more rating than I had already down to around 1976, the next day (Thursday) I played one game that was a fantastic one that I enjoyed, i've annotated it and put it below:

A fun game, the next day (friday) i locked in and got back to 2000, then the next day I went 1-1 during the day and dropped to 1998, which would have been fine, but i then decided to play another game just to try to get back to 2000 and not for actually the fun of playing chess (A recipe for disaster) and i outplayed my opponent completely, was up a bishop and rook, and kudos to my opponent, they kept checking me all the way up the board, and when i finally stopped the checks, i decided to walk straight into a mate in 2, where i was caged in by my extra bishop and rook. I was furious, and queued up again and lost that to an 1880 in about 15 moves, i stopped there, but i had dropped to 1984 again which was frustrating. But Sunday i locked back in again and went 4.5/6 and got back to 2000.

I'm going to take a break from online play for a while, because I'm starting up the fall OTB season where i'll be playing way more OTB than i've ever played, (2, 3, or even 4 tournaments a month compared to the highest i've ever done of 1 tournament a month) so i'll be using up my energy on that, and i want to study on my other free time. Also school is starting back up for me too, so i'll just not have the time to play good online, so i'll be taking a break from it. I still may come back to play team battles occasionally, and i'll also still be active responding to messages, creating the Road to NM blog, and creating various other content on lichess.

OTB play

This is the last week before my OTB fall season starts, but i did still play in the weekly rapid tournament in my hometown. I said last week that hopefully i would gain the 9 points necessary to reach 1600 quick rating, but unfortunately i went 1.5/3 and since my win was against a 1000, i unfortunately lost 14 rating overall, landing me at 1577. Not bad though, and i can hopefully get over 1600 this week. I've annotated my games and put them below:

It was disappointing to only get to play regulars this week, because we had a lot of people from out of town, (even someone from out of state came to play) and one of them was almost 1800, and we even had the 2024 female state champion (who's over 2000 classical but only 1670 quick) which would have been a great experience to play against, (even if i would have almost assuredly lost). Overall it was a decent week, i fixed a major gap in my repertoire with the scandinavian, i'm moving more into consistent OTB play and study, and I can hopefully start off well.

Thanks so much for reading my Road to NM blog, please drop a like if you liked it, be sure to follow me if you want to be updated when each new blog comes out. I'll have a lot to cover next week, so please be sure to tune in to see how i did in the rapid tournament, and quads tournament i'm playing in this weekend. See you!