Play

I’ve been playing more and more fast games lately, both blitz and faster rapid. It seems like this is hurting, so I’m going to do “No Blitz November,” which is a thing I just made up. No blitz games all month. In fact, I’m going to try to only play a minimum of 30-minute games. Ideally I’ll play 7 30-minute games each week.

There is an OTB tournament in a couple of weeks, but I do not think I’ll do that one.

Learn

I paused taking lessons for the time being. Here are the things I want to work on:

  1. Chess: The Art of Logical Thinking - McDonald - working through annotated games
  2. Keep It Simple for Black - I learned the 1.e4 and 1.d4 quick starter chapters, but I need to keep reviewing those. There is also a quick starter chapter on other first moves I may look into. I’m not going to do more of that for now.

Solve

Keep working on the Polgar tactics on Chessable. I’m done with the first three, but I will keep reviewing them while I work on book 4.

  1. Learn Chess the Right Way - Book 1: Must Know Checkmates
  2. Learn Chess the Right Way - Book 2: Winning Material
  3. Learn Chess the Right Way - Book 3: Mastering Defensive Technique
  4. Learn Chess the Right Way - Book 4: Sacrifice to Win!

I picked up “Chess Steps” again. I’m solving over 90% of the puzzles in the level 2 book, so they may be too easy. I might just try to work through this level when I’m sitting in front of the TV or can’t give it my full focus.