A quick recap of my study priorities for October:
White:
Sicilian Najdorf (keep studying), Rossolimo (in general), Hyperaccelerated Dragon.
Ruy Lopez: Steinitz Deferred, keep studying Martinez main lines.
Black
Steinitz Deferred (possibly reboot study and start over)
1.d4 — basically touch up everything.
I’ll take a look at these lines and my results (if such exist) and reflect on any improvements or lack thereof.
White:
In general, I scored about what I would like to score as White for September. However, looking at the stats against 1…c5 tells a depressing story:
Sicilian:
Against the main line d6 Sicilians, I scored an abysmal 28% win rate:
Yep, somehow I think I got worse vs the Dragon (I lost every game!) and against the Najdorf.
In the Rossolimo vs Nc6, I scored +6-8, or about 43% win rate. This represents another decrease in positive results.
The hyperaccelerated dragon wasn’t as topical this last month, and I scored 1-1. I’ll take those numbers.
Sicilian may just be the bane of my existence in Blitz. I’ll keep working at these. But the positions are complex and sharp and it takes practice.
Spanish
I didn’t see any Delayed Steinitz lines at all, and only one mainline Martinez Variation. This may explain why I went 70% in the Spanish against Black this month
Black
I also scored particularly well with Black in October:
Steinitz Deferred
I scored 2-2 here. That’s about as good as I could ask. I didn’t really study this line very much at all, but I did review it a few times over the course of the month.
1.d4
After 1…Nf6 I scored excellently:
And virtually in every line:
The thing is, I didn’t really study much of this, though I did study lines involving an early b5 (Benko, Spielmann Indian).
Conclusions:
The honest truth: I feel like I didn’t study openings much at all in October, but that’s not strictly true. About 20% of my time studying chess was spent on openings. But note in the daily bar charts that opening study dropped off pretty quickly 11 days into October.
The outsize study at the beginning of the month was actually a beta test for an upcoming opening course on Chessable, and not even in a line that I play habitually. There were a few pockets of time where I studied a few lines before a tournament. But my conclusion was that my results were good and are almost not at all determined by how well I know the opening.
To further reinforce this, I got an aimchess scouting report detailing my last 40 blitz games on chess.com (thanks
):My problem is generally not the openings. If I had to guess, it’s actually tactics. I get good positions and then proceed to lose them. Sometimes that’s due to a lack of positional understanding, but I know my losses and they’re mostly tactical.
So what’s my plan going forward?
I’m going to start studying more full games in lines that I’m getting good positions at and then losing in the middlegame or later.
I’m going to study tactics in the lines where I’m losing.
I will study openings if I think I misunderstand the plans and ideas. But generally, I’ve already paused most of my opening courses on chessable. Some lines, I know the general plans and just mis-execute them. Some lines, I actually need to know the themes. Opening study has laid the groundwork for getting good positions. But I need to win them which goes beyond the scope of the myriad of chessable courses I own and have studied.
I’m not sure I’ll keep posting these checkups, because over the last few months I think my issue has become more and more clear: I get good positions in the opening then proceed to lose good positions in the middlegame or endgame. The intensive opening study has done its work pretty well. Now I need to be responsible about making sure I can convert those positions.
Thanks for the shoutout and I have similar problems. This rings really close to home for me. Tactics is my weakness so I have set out to correct this as well. Great post.