National Chess Day: One Day Event...Should I Play It?

Current Study Materials

(yes, it's lots of materials, but I have a training protocol in mind):

Lichess Puzzles
Polgar's Learn Chess the Right Way Book 4, pg. 72 in Sacrificing to Win the Queen
Chess Steps Book 2 Extra, pg. 26*, Mate in 2*
5344 Puzzle Book, pg. 116, mates in 2, ugh at times it's really hard
Opening repertoire books (have narrowed these down considerably thankfully)
IM Andrew Martin and GM Simon Williams' videos (I resonate with both of their teaching styles)
Chess for Tigers, Simple Chess, Improve Your Attacking Chess

From Then to Now

The last tourney I played OTB was in February out-of-state, but I managed a 3/5 showing in a tough field. During that tourney I realized that I had a serious hole in my opening with the white pieces...gulp, it didn't work for me! I could not explain why I was making the moves in the opening I had chosen. It was so poor that on day 2 in a must win situation after losing on Saturday two tough games, that I switched to a different opening for Sunday and won handsomely in a critical 5th game against an overconfident kid (the discussion of how to play kids and such as an older adult improver is its own blog post I assure you).

With my mom living with me now, a demanding job that pays the bills, some lessons under me and an awareness for pawn structures...here we are, knowing that I am stronger chess wise. It's the performance anxiety bit that I finally have to overcome, because I had a serious fear of losing. And it showed in my play with being too passive, too scared to lose a pawn, fretting over EVERYTHING.

Is Universal Systems Right for Me?

The idea of playing universal systems is thus lucrative for me, because candidly, if I ever make 1500 USCF, I'd probably run amok in the streets naked screaming at the top of my lungs. And maybe that's one of the hidden beauties of chess - we are given such expression at the board at move 1 as white. And in chess when one sits and ponders a while, there's a lot of mirrored openings that offer similar if not identical plans:

• the Hippo on both sides. If the Chess Giant can get to National Master, why not? At least you know that in the lower/lowest flights, your game will be the one game that people will talk about.
• The Bird/Dutch openings.
• certain Sicilian/English structures.

This ties into style, and what I have learned during the intermission is that I am a counterattacking player. And with the need to reduce the theory work due to a cluttered mind, the French/Dutch/London (Jobava-Rapport interests me a little more than the regular one) combination makes sense as well as an universal system because knowing where my pieces go has to be attractive. I'm thinking about playing in a few weeks' time.

Coming Up Next

In my next blog, my first annotated game in the 90/30 league I play in. It was...surprising.