What went well?

  • I started reading Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. It is making me rethink my motivation for studying chess, which is good.
  • I found that in April I was winning 52% as white and only 33% as black (tweet). But this is all part of my learning experience for new openings. I’m getting more comfortable with my new white openings, and just started working on black. I am treating this as a good growth opportunity. My rapid rating has dropped quite a bit, but it will come back.
  • Speaking of openings, I got a little further than expected on my study of my black openings this week. I still have a way to go in Chessable to understand these openings, but I have at least documented the ideas for myself.
  • I started analyzing my games on a more regular basis again.

What could have gone better?

  • I added the Chessable personalized tactics from my Chess.com games (link[https://www.chessable.com/#lichess-connect]). This was good because many of the tactics show that I am just missing hanging pieces.

What will I try next?

  • I am going to play some OTB games at the chess club tonight
  • I am thinking of playing some faster time controls just to practice my openings. My thought is that I would slowly build up additions to my openings, adding one new move at a time.

Tweet of the Week

I’m just happy that I was able to figure out how to make a custom theme for Chessbase.