How I Reached 2300 FIDE Using the Catalan Opening

To preface this post I’d like to mention that I've made a free comprehensive lichess study on the Catalan for advanced players. Make sure to check it out and leave a like!

After the tournament I, for some unclear reason, received a gift card with 100 USD for the chess course website chessable that I’m sure many of you are familiar with. I ultimately decided to buy a course on the Grünfeld, some random strategy course and one on the catalan. I had played 1. e4 all my life but it was time for a change!

I started studying and playing games with it online, but unfortunately there was no tournament for quite a while and I had to wait 3 months until I could use it in an actual game.

My First Game

It wasn’t until August when I played a weekend round robin tournament that I got to use it. It was the second round and I played the lowest rated in the field by a couple rating points, but he came off some good form in a previous tournament.

The next month I played another tournament in Uppsala. In the first game I managed to beat a 2058 very convincingly in the main line of the Catalan. I was then paired up to play as white against a Ukrainian GM by the name of Petro Golubka. He was the first truly strong strong player I had faced since my tournament in Menorca. It started off great for me and I got a very good position from the catalan.

Then suddenly, in this position after playing 21... Re8 he offered a draw:

I had a very good position and I knew that if I won I would have good chances of winning the entire tournament. Therefore I said no... but unfortunately... I blundered right afterwards.

The Breakthrough

I was still only just above 2100 but it was in november I had my huge breakthrough. Once again it was in Uppsala where I this time played the Uppsala Young Champions. My first game was against the icelandic GM Vignir Vatnar Stefansson and I managed to pull off a pretty comfortable draw.

I then beat the strong swedish youngster Harald Ljung in the closed catalan.

In my third white game I managed to draw 2392 rated Aleksandr Domalchuk-Jonasson from iceland.

Then in the same month I played even more tournaments. In the Stockholm GP I beat two 1900s as white. Then, I managed to share a tournament victory with my close friend and CCL co-organizer Axel Falkevall after beating a 1957, as well as the 2298 rated GM Thomas Ernst with the white colors.

Reaching 2300

The last tournament was the Rilton Cup which was divided between December and January. It didn’t go great for my catalan this time as I got crushed my first game against GM Raja Rithvik R, which I suppose was understandable considering how strong he was.

Luckily I bounced back in my game against IM Cameron McGowan and I then beat a 2428 as black.

Finally I played against Nikhil Dixit who is a fellow lichess blogger. The game ultimately ended in a draw.

This result gave me an interim rating of exactly 2300, which helped me receive the FM title.

As I mentioned, If you’re interested in learning more about the Catalan I’ve created a lichess study on it. However, I wasn’t able to cover all of it in one study so I’ll make the second part exclusive to people that join our discord server.

And also! Don’t forget to leave a like if you found this interesting or helpful :)