The winners of August, 2021

Hello champions and future champions! Hello ChessMood family!

Thank you all for sharing your games. It’s great to see you play some really strong chess! Keeping crushing the same way!

Moving on to the prizes,

The first prize goes to Jaylen Lenear for his Tal-like approach to finish the game.

https://chessmicrobase.com/microbases/15045/games/1155806?token=6jginaj

The second prize goes to Vladimir Bugayev for the way he conducted a crushing attack in the Anti-Sicilian!

https://www.chess.com/analysis/game/live/23342986021?tab=report

The third prize goes to Yuma Okabe for brilliantly handling the initiative after 11...Nxe4! and converting it into a win.

https://lichess.org/nGPV5sfm/black#25

The 4th prize goes to Karl Strohmaier for this brilliant attack in the Accelerated Dragon.

https://www.chess.com/analysis/game/live/23746652995?tab=report

The 5th prize goes to Paul Alejandro Cardones for the picturesque 16.Nce4#!

Congratulations to all of you, and thank you once again everybody for sharing your games! 

Keep crushing, and keep the #COGRO

See you soon for next month’s contest.

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Thank you chessmood :D

Theme tournament - Scotch Steinitz System (4... Qh4) on lichess

I finally found a theme tournament of interest on lichess today (https://lichess.org/5BwojSsYYGcb) and played in the 3 0 (there was also 1 0, 3 2 and 10 0 but that was overkill). I was essaying the 5. Nb5 Chessmood suggestion as White. I finished 17th of 503, and at one point I was leading the tournament. Sadly the 0 inc got to me a few games.

Nb5 is a very good line, but I have a little bit of a gripe of the course, that the few moves that give Black a game (despite inferior play) are not covered with perhaps some model games to best get into the middlegame. Too much is placed on it being a dodgy YouTube move and looking at solely at serious refutations rather than giving it some respect. It's bad, but it's not refuted by Nb5 and some players will accept a slightly worse position against someone who knows what they are doing if they also win against many opponents on tricks. Luckily many opponents just fell into the bad lines, especially as they would be more familiar with Nc3 if they played it at all.

Some more 'respectable' lines that need correct handling to keep advantage and should have been mentioned:
5... Bb4+ instead of Bc5
7... a6 before Bf4 can be played where 8. N1c3 is correct and maybe 9. Nd4 depending on what Black plays (e.g. after Qe8) which gives White a huge if not winning initiative
5... Qd8 - yes a wasteful retreat, but the king hasn't had to move, so White must play correctly e.g. 6. Bf4 e.g. Bb4+ 7. c3 Ba5 8. N1a3 (or 7. N1c3, a3, b4) to keep the advantage

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The cycle is repeating in 4 hours time on lichess (7pm UTC) if you want to practice this variation.

French line, 3. .. c5 4.exd5 exd5 5.Nf3 Bg4

Hi everyone,

In the French Bd3 line (chessmood course) 3. .. c5 4.exd5 exd5 5.Nf3 Bg4; what do we play? this move (Bg4) isn't in the theory and I don't understand why it's not played. Opponent pin our N and slow down our plans to attack!

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I would do the "normal" moves: 0-0 and if Nf6 Re1+ followed by exc5 and Nbd2. It looks like black lost a tempo this way (Be7 and then Bxc5). 

Hi Alessio,

I was going to reply the same way as Nils did. Castle and a check from e1 seems to be an attractive option.

WTF is Barnes Defense???

A guy online played 1...f6 after I played 1.e4. How do you play against that? It was a blitz game and that fellow beat me .

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I don't think you need theory against this kind of rubbish :D. Just play 2.Nf3, get the center and crush the guy. Of course in blitz anything can happen.

I've seen a guy play 1..a6, 2...Nc6-a7-Nc6-a7 then play normally and still win :)

Nakamura solving puzzle rush

After a couple of weeks of chessmood and audience trying to solve these puzzles (worth catching up on those webinars if you weren't there), it's interesting to watch Nakamura do the same in his recent streams uploaded to Youtube. Although he gets further than the we did it's interesting to note that even around 50 he's saying:

I really don't know here
I can't see what this puzzle is about
I'm sure it's this or this (and then sometimes change one of the 50-50 to another move)
I'm guessing / relying on intuition/instinct here

This tells us a lot, and it makes me feel a lot better about my level of skill. Sure he can calculate better and faster, but it's not that he's seeing really deep and quickly, and is also running into exactly the same problems I'm seeing when trying to solve puzzles. A lot of the getting it right seems to be based on elimination of what it can't be, and on intuition about what looks like a winning position rather than blitzing out a solution that makes you wonder if he's even human. Some of it is just educated guesswork and taking it move by move.

Several hours worth spread across multiple videos but enlightening on how he thinks about puzzles (and perhaps one of the gems in the large number of 'comfort food' videos that he streams).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cn6s4yYi9I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-ilTh1SV1g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R38RWogn16A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5_n9E2dJ-o

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Theme opening tournaments on lichess

Continuing from a previous post.

Can we not just start this up anyway. Lichess' existing one is someone's own repertoire (since it repeats the same things), none of which really interests me, with no indication of a schedule to know when something might cross over into mine, except checking what is input as upcoming on the day.

The format is for example:

12:00-12:27 Caro Kann bullet arena (1 0)
13:00-13:57 Caro Kann superblitz arena (3 0)
14:00-14:57 Caro Kann blitz arena (3 2)

This format takes place twice a day with different openings.

While we can argue about what the best controls would be, keeping it inside an hour is good. Without experience, I would suggest the format above (if it had a gap between the last two tournaments) might work well. Yes bullet isn't really good chess, but by increasing the controls like this, you could analyse your games to work out what you forgot, then be ready to play it better in the next one, the earlier ones test your reactions/defaults (arguably). This could be done by leaving an extra 30 mins between the 2nd and 3rd tournament.

Initially it could be done without Chessmood being mentioned at all. If Chessmood then give their blessing and want to take oversight/control in the management later, then fine. At that point it could also be a used to advertise Chessmood as the place to come and prepare for the tournament since that repertoire is the one it will be based on. By being open to everyone, it is then going to get the numbers needed to make it viable.

A few questions remain:
Can anyone add tournaments into the lichess calendar or does it need sign off from lichess for that - without it being in the calendar it will be difficult to promote it
If it does need sign off from lichess, is it still possible to affiliate it with (or promote) Chessmood later?
How can the schedule for events, at least for the next few weeks, be publicised?
Do we have a few members that would be interested in running it and updating what is upcoming?

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Webinar for theme tournaments?

Are there going to be webinars for the theme tournaments? It adds so much values, more so than a GM playing. Or maybe a record a course on how to play these material situations and use the some of the games as examples?

I think without the webinar you can be playing wrong, score well and learn nothing. The the only one to help you is the engine, and we know what disdain that is given (not that I think the engine is that useful here anyway).

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Why It’s a Must to Study Classical Chess Games?

Hey Champions!
We have an interesting article on our Blog about this topic.
https://chessmood.com/blog/why-It-is-a-must-to-study-classical-chess-games
If you have any questions, comments or you just liked it, feel free to share your thoughts here :) 

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I love playing through games played by GMs. To me it is like watching a TV show, but better! 

After reading your article, I was reflecting on my own chess growth over the years. The times I made the biggest jump in my rating was after a concentrated study over a short period of time of a collection of games annotated by the GM player who played them. (Bobby Fischer's 60 Memorable Games, Bent Larson's Best Games, Alekhine's Best Games Vol. 1 & 2, and many others)

In all of my excitement to learn all of the ChessMood openings inside and out, I have not spent as much time studying games as I used to.  I am going to make a concerted effort to return back to my game studies with as much excitement as I do with our openings.

Thank you for your incredible guidance! And thank you for all the hard work you do to help all of us improve in chess and in life! 

Hello Avetik, hello ChessMood team,

readings the blog posts again, one idea game to my mind:

Would it be possible to add to some games in the classical games course recent games in which the ideas/concepts of the classical  have been implemented and/or further developed?

Thanks again for the sharing so many knowledge with everybody (not only PRO-Members).

Nils

Hi, Wondering of what is a proper Classical Game to study regarding rating tiers: 

Being, as I am, a 2200 USCF player with very limited exposure to the classics, Would I still benefit from studying Alekhine's 2 Volumes on himself even when I notice that many of the openings are (obviously) outdated?

And what about going further back in time, let's say, Is there value for me to study Capablanca and Rubinstein? What about Steinitz or Morphy (a la Fischer)? Would Philidor and Greco be a waste of my limited time?

PGN File for Classical games

Hello
I just joined the Chessmood Pro membership. I am going the commented classical game. I downloaded the pgn, 100 must-know classical game. I am not able to load this into lichess study. After some digging found out the it using Z0 to indicate null-move. It looks like Chessbase supports this, but not too many other software. Is it possible to version with Z0. I don't have Chessbase. 

If there any work arounds, let me know.
Attaching the first game from the pgn. Search for Z0.

Thanks!

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The free of the ChessBase Software called 'ChessBase Reader' might help! You cannot annotate and save but you can see pgn files, .cbv files, ChessBase DVDs in it.

https://www.chess.com/blog/SamCopeland/the-best-linux-apps-for-chess

Open the file in a text editor, search replace all Z0 with --

More applications can support --.

+500 points in 1 year!

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I'd add from experience - those who see someone's achievement and think wow, good for them, how can I achieve this / what can I learn, would they help me with something if I asked - they have more chance of succeeding. Those who think bah, luck, bet they relied on (expensive) help / paid for their success in money, I can't achieve this, they wouldn't help me / I don't want to be helped, I'm going to feel jealous/animosity as a defence mechanism - they stay in the same situation.

Looking forward to what he has to say.

Congrats to @Avinash_Ramesh

Congratulations @Avinash_Ramesh! Keep going!

Fantastic interview! Keep on going @Avinash_Ramesh! You are already my favorite GM!!

great interview sir 

And congrats Avinash

How to play against the Vienna Gambit?

How to play against the Vienna Gambit? When I'm playing against the Vienna I always get passive positions.

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Oh, as you are Pro Member you should check our Accelerated Dragon!

It will be more fighting and you won't face issue of gambits.

Hi Sasmi, before joining ChessMood my reply to 1. e4 was 1. ... e5, too. My "repertoire" against the Vienna gambit was (a fragment):

1. e4 e5 2. Nc3 Nf6 3. f4 d5 (this was quite an important move which I also had in my repertoire against the King's Gambit) 4. fxe5 Nxe4 5. Nf3 Be7 (or Bc5).

But you really should try to ChessMood repertoire. Changing to 1. ... c5 will take time. But it is really fun to play lines.

Benko type position

I had this position in a classical game. I just took opponent bishop on c1. It's black to move can you suggest any plans?

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There is some bug in the forum, please shorten the name of the picture and upload it again @Lucio_Lamagna, I normally use a couple of letters or a number. This way we will be able to see the picture, otherwise we cannot see your uploaded picture... Thanks and sorry for the trouble...

Time of ChessMood Events

The current timing of ChessMood events makes it unconvenient for my situation.

They always start of 16:00 Central European Time. I am working and of course 4pm makes it too early. For anyone attending school or university it is also too early in our time zone.

To makes matters worse the most interesting Saturday's thematic tournament (exceptionally I was able to attend French tournament yesterday) I will not be able to attend most of the time (it is a bit better now in the period of COVID), because on Saturdays either I am attending the weekend OTB tournaments, or playing for my club in the national chess ligue or visiting local chess club.

So for me, the best time to start would be 19:00 Central European Time and if this is not possible I would move thematic tournaments to Sundays, as can still watch the recordings of the other events.

Is the current time schedule convenient for you? Let us know.

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There is no good solution. For me the tournaments start at midnight when I am half  asleep. Perhaps two tournaments starting at different times may be an idea.

Hey! 
There is no time, which will fit everyone! 
ChessMood time, is the one that fits for most... 

In future, with growing, we're going to invite more GMs to join our events, and we'll add different times as well. 

HOW TO PLAY AGAINST FAST BUT TACTICAL PLAYERS?

How to play against fast but tactical players?

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Well if you know the guy is tactical then just play strategic openings and he will face issue. About speed I wanna say one thing. If a guy is playing too fast and he is not an expert then he will def. make mistake somewhere. So, just slow down yourself and try to find his or her mistake.

What's their rating?

Please help!!

I have invited 3 people and all of them signed up but still I haven't got any moodcoins please help

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Hello @Fan_of_Football I just checked your account data and the moodcoins were transferred to your account for the last 3 users  from 20.08.2021 and then there was another user registered with your referral on 04.09.2021. 4 users in total. I verified that the moodcoins were transferred correctly, they were before and also now in your account. Please check your notifications, I am sure that you had the message sent. Your moodcoins balance is correct.

Thanks and keep working on your chess! 

New Event Idea - Interest for ChessMood Openings only Themed tournament?

I'm trying to learn and practice the openings from ChessMood but am finding it hard to get training games. Would you consider running a tournament where users have to play only ChessMood Openings?

If there is interest please comment! 

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I would definitely support this - the lack of practice in some games are the biggest issue - I've looked at the openings recommended against d4, but at my level d4 doesn't seem that common so I've struggled to get much practice in the games and really struggle due to a lack of familiarity with the middlegame positions. I lose a lot of games against uncommon openings because I'm just not use to the positions that result from them.

It'd also be good to get some opportunity to playing against the openings.

Hi Vishnu, such kind of tournaments took already place (closed tournament on specific openings at the beginning and then some tournaments with "black starts with ... e7-e5" (starting with e2-e4 with reversed colours). At the moment the closed tournaments (arenas) are meant to train your sills with certain pieces. Although the benefit is much higher if one had participated in the tournament it still makes a lot of sense to watch the webinars of our coaches in which they give feedback on the tournaments. You find these webinar in the event's list. And I have posted as an example the links to the webinars on the Anti-Sicilian here:

https://chessmood.com/forum/pro-members/for-new-pro-members-opening-repertoire-webinars-tournament-coverages

NEW ARTICLE: How to Improve the Quality of Your Chess Training

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Very helpful article. Thanks for writing it!

But it fails to answer the main question. With distractions out of the way, what are the causes of loss of concentration? If it was just as simple as keep at it (this isn't just a chess problem either)...

Can I offer:
Wrong difficulty of material
Poor material (e.g. badly explained, alternative reasonable moves not considered)
Boring and/or repetitive
Too often need to work out what is the next thing to do, or need to think about the process rather than do it
Situation novelty vs knowing what to do and being organised to do it already
Over-training (including marathon sessions vs regular)
Too much of one task (including wrong mix of playing vs study)
Insufficient breaks, or relaxation
Not attending to all the other things in life that are nagging you
Poor fitness and diet
Sleep hygiene or other factors tiring oneself (such as a day of work, family, ...)
Long time before any payoff that can make one excited about more training
Plateaus or even dips
Lack of others to share with, or compete against

In 2019 after many years without playing I lost 218 FIDE rating points so I left the game and now I have a nice time solving studies. :))

Thank you very much for a golden piece of advice.

I really like your article !

This information is really helpful to us keep it up. After reading this article I decided to work with dedication and also concentration with some punishments for my blunders. Like analising the game and if I defete by others in a game i will find  my mistake what is that move where I move wrong and also what is the right move. 

Coming to the article it is very easy for reading and understanding the meaning of words I like the quotation of sun Tsu which is related to battle. Keep going I am with you. 

Thank you brother of my chess mood family

Very helpful coach I will stop all distractions and when i have to calculate i will push. p.s. I will do squats for you!

Yes. Yes. Yes.

And I had to think of a book I read some time ago: "Deep Work" by Cal Newport. 

One thing to add:

Even if you do not focus too much on "improvement" in a sense of having better results in practical chess (or to use Coach Gabuzyan's word: not the highest worrier spirit) - creating circumstances for concentrated/deep work on chess will very likely be rewarded with mental enjoyment (aha effect/momentum). 

The Key to Speed up Your Growth in Chess

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This is a great blog post. I agree we need to challenge ourselves. I think this site is full of things that will help challenge me. Its worth noting that the admins of the site are grandmasters who climbed the mountains of chess before the age of 20. Many of the members here are over 30 and still at the lower levels. Ive often wondered what it takes for older players to succeed. There once was a forum post at chess.com where people looked for someone who had become a master after learning chess after 20. They found almost no one, not a single example. It might be interesting to examine that topic in a future blog post. Again thanks for the post Gab.

Hi! It's a good topic but how can I understand which are my weaknesses in order to know in which part of chess I must do more difficult things to improve? I am a 1600-1700 ELO player from about 5 years and I play chess every day but I don't see improvements from a long time and I'm tired of it.

Thank you for a completely new concept! I am in the trap of solving already familiar puzzles that really are not helpful. Will try the puzzles and see...they do seem way above my capability.

Time for me to restart the puzzle book that was a bit over my head =)

Short and sweet. Just one thing to add:

I (unwillingly) left my comfort zone when I tried to solve the first exercise in “Mastering Chess Middlegames: Lectures from the All-Russian School of Grandmasters” by Alexander Panchenko. Going through the first chapter on the attack was very interesting and I had no problems following the illustrative examples. But then came the first exercise. After 20 minutes I still felt that I did not got it right and checking the solution confirmed that.

But what I want to add is that with dealing with problems out of your comfort zone not only comes growth. 

Typically you will see new ideas or more sides of the beauty of chess. Seeing and understanding the solution of the exercise was really an aesthetic/mental enjoyment and a great reward for leaving the comfort zone.  

NEW ARTICLE: How to Memorize Chess Openings and Variations – Without Forgetting Them a Few Days Later!

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Wonderful idea. I am working almost the same except the point 1 I am not following. My files are already created but no worries next time I will make another file for my memory test. It will be wonderful.

I just read the article and it is just awesome.  Just one clarification in our chess mood opening course there is a pgn file after every opening.  If I download it and complete it that's mean I followed step number two right?

You really know what we need to learn!!! I'm so grateful!

The article !! is very instructive and effective.It is really helpful.

Dear Avetik, I have an experience that I want to share with you:

In some complex openings like Catalan, KID/Grunfeld (g3 systems), Some Reversed Sicilians etc... we can reach the same positions via different move orders! In these slow/complex openings,  it seems to me that understanding the pawn structures and the relative value of pieces are much more important than memorizing variations. Memorizing interrelated variations and addressing all transpositions in a software is not an easy task at all... To my experience,  in such complex openings, trusting the opening choice, understanding and feeling the position is the key to find the right move.

As always - very instructive. Thank you, Avetik. One thing I like to add re Step 4 - Fix your mistakes:

I find it very useful to integrate Opening Tree into fostering my repertoire and fixing mistakes. At the moment I am in my second iteration of watching the videos form each opening course. Before starting a section, I load my lichess games into Opening Tree from the last months (this might take some time). Then I try to remember the line(s) and the challenges I faced and mistakes I made when playing it. After completing the section and checking the correctness of my pdf, I switch to Opening Tree to analyse what actually happened in my games. In my pdf (and my study plan) I note the date of the 2nd iteration so that I have the starting point for the next period.

Maybe ChessBase (or other tools to store one's games) already allow you to create such trees out of your games - but to my knowledge my tool does not, so I was very happy finding Opening Tree.

Anti-Sicilian Part 1. 1. e4 c5 2. Nc3 d6 3. f4 Nc6 4. Nf3 a6!?

Anti-Sicilian Part 1 2...d6 3. f4 Nc6 4. Nf3 a6 

My student encountered this in a tournament game and I didn't know how to answer his question of the best way to play this as White. There are only 4/5 games I found in Mega-Database with this variation. Could someone please advise on the best way to play this variation. Is the suggestion the same as the 2...a6 variation to place 5. g3 followed by 6. Bg2? 

Thank you. 

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Fix the notation.

Hi Vishnu,

I think if white chooses a regular setup with g3 it's a good choice. Black's setup is slow as they are mixing ideas of different moves and white can have a healthy play in a center and kingside.