Hello champions and welcome to the ChessMood team! 
We all are from different countries, different ages, have different professions... But one thing bounds us - the passion for chess.

Champions, we'll grow together and keep a warm relationship in our team. 
Please tell a bit about yourself in this post. 

#ChessMood_Family 

Which Chessmood opening is your favorite and why?

Who do you think will be the next world chess champion? 

In my opinion, Magnus will stay in his place for a long time, but if he loses as a proud Armenian, I hope he loses to Levon Aronian :)

will all the courses which are only for PRO would be eligible to be bought by Moodcoins in the Near future?

I feel always confused why players of below 2300 plays a lot bullet online? I do not feel that they will maintain their 2300 elo level by playing bullet a lot. What you think guys? I left bullet once coach said never play bullet!

From the past 3 months I was thinking of finding best ways to improve my vision  to the next level. Yes, coaches recommend blindfold training, solving puzzles or studies but what happens if position is unclear in the end. Then the best is to follow what  Ian Anderson wrote in his book Chess Visualization Course . I started it 6 days ago and did only 156 exercise but I felt difference in my speed of calculating lines. I am not saying I am doing super well in complex positions but I am started to doing well in a bit simpler positions. But I am sure my depth of vision will improve once I will finish his book course. You can see his method in the pic I shared.

How I am solving this book?

I try to follow through the moves which author is asking to visualize then I write the whole final position in my notebook and answer the questions which author asked. The reason behind writing whole resulting position in notebook is to see what I missed during I visualized that line. 

Now it's your turn to improve your vision to the next level.  This is what my training partner Devansh told me. So I am glad he shared me this instructive training so now it's your turn to improve!

Good luck.

I find myself lost and cutting squares often when trying to follow notation and record my own games.

does anyone have any suggestions to help speed up my “Notation Location” knowledge?

Chess is hard.

All of us work to improve our game. We work on tactics, openings, endings, classics, planning, visualization, and intuition. We also work on psychology, fitness, nutrition, endurance and yes, keeping the right mood!

Chess is hard.

To help us improve, we buy books, video series on openings, middle games, and endings. We buy software for storing files, have computers check for blunders and novelties, and hire coaches to help us fix our weaknesses and improve our strengths.

Chess is hard.

Anyone who has been around ChessMood for any time, knows that I have chosen to climb the mountain on a path no one has yet traversed. A year and a half ago, at the age of 46 and rated 1700 USCF (about 1600-1650 FIDE), I chose to start the path to Grand Master. I knew when I started, it was not going to be easy. If it was easy, it would of already been done. (Those that have achieved the GM title after 40 were all expert/master in their teens)

Chess is hard.

The first 6 months went very very well. I jumped to over 1800 very quickly, and was winning many games against 2000+ rated players using ChessMood openings. But then I hit a wall. I started losing odd games vs players much lower rated then I was. I would win a nice game against a CM, then the very next game lose to a 1500. 

Chess is hard.

I grew very discouraged. I still woke up every day, ready to hit the books, study my openings, watch the streams and work towards my destiny, but I started to fear playing. I would get on the streams, and get 90% of the answers correct, know all the main lines of our openings, and see the plans clearly while Coach Avetik was playing, but I couldn't do it when I was playing. 

Chess is hard.

I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong. I would play the openings we are taught, and would almost always get an advantage coming out of the opening. I would continue to build on the advantage, but somewhere along the line, I would miss a tactic or blunder away my advantage. It became difficult to keep a good mood, and made me even more fearful of playing. I was also embarrassed that I stopped improving, so stopped being as active in our community, which is the worst of all, because there is no better place for support then right here at ChessMood.  

Chess is hard.

Despite all these feelings of despair and failure, I kept working. I followed the plan laid out for us by Coach Avetik. When I found the courage to play, I would check the games against my opening files, which continued to grow, as well as checked for blunders (Which were numerous). I looked for patterns and worked to correct my mistakes, but kept losing to simple tactics or just hanging a piece. 

Chess is hard.

So to fix my problem I started working on tactics. LOTS of tactics. Anytime I had a few minutes, I would open my phone to the chesstempo app and do a tactic. I would spend 2 hours a day minimum on tactics. I was improving my tactics rating slowly, but I was excited to be working on my weakness and seeing an improvement. I gained almost 300 rating points on tactics in about 3 months (I know I am not setting any records) and thought I had to have improved in my games for sure! But alas, I was still losing to simple tactics and hanging pieces.

Chess is Hard.

But I continued to work. I started to work with a partner, Abhi, as we both are focused on improvement. We worked on blindfold chess, middle game ideas, books we are both reading, as well as analyzing ending together. As we were studying, he kept saying how he couldn't believe how fast and accurate my calculation was, or how he wished he could see as far ahead as me. (For the record, Abhi is much better at this the even he believes, and is easily my equal if not even better then I am) Then in middle of an analysis, I would look at a move and totally miss one of my pieces hanging, or overlook a simple reply by my opponent. 

Chess is hard.

It is at that time, Abhi helped me realize my true issue. I don't have a tactics problem. When presented with a tactical opportunity, I can usually see the idea very quickly. He helped me see my problem is really what we decided to call "Blind Spots" In the middle of analyzing, I suddenly become blind to a piece or a square. I just completely don't see it. We had a position today, where I said if we move our knight, we will discover an attack on our opponents unprotected piece, so we looked at Nh4 for a couple minutes and decided it wasnt quite working and moved on to other moves. Then we started looking at Ne5 (same knight) and I said that wont work, he will just capute and move his other piece away from our pawn that recaptures. He politely reminded me that the opponent wouldn't be able to save both his bishop attacked by our pawn and the piece we discovered an attack on when we moved our knight. I was suddenly totally blind to what I had just seen and known a couple minutes before.

Chess is hard.

I have heard of players, even top GMs, that have these blind spots on occasion, but never to the extent I seem to have them. As I have gone back through a ton of my games, the pattern has suddenly sprang to light with complete clarity. Blind spots. And just as suddenly I have renewed confidence, as I now know what to be working on.  

Chess is not hard... Chess is hard work.

We all face difficulties as we work to improve. We just need to remember, when we hit a wall, don't continue banging your head into it, waiting for it to fall down, it would instead be more beneficial to have a partner or coach show you the doorway through. Thank you Abhi for helping me see and diagnose this problem of blind spots, it is the doorway for my to cross through the wall I have faced for a long time!

Chess is hard work.

Now I go to work on fixing the problem of blind spots in my game. If anyone out there knows how to overcome this issue, or has had the same issue and has over come it, please share with me the way to cure my ailment. And if anyone else has this issue, and is also looking for a solution, let us work together to overcome it! 

Thanks to all of you who took the time to read all the way though this lengthy post, and I hope it turns out to be helpful to all in some way.

GM Jay 

I am just curious to know something about motivation. People who lose or have issues in anything beg others to send them motivational video or books and they say like oh once I will watch this I will become motivated to work again. Do you guys think it's right approach?

For me when I feel down I watch Pawn Sacrifice Movie and it makes me motivated again. But it does not mean that all time I need that movie to motivate me. My motivation comes from inside. My past loses, never won any event in 7 years, people laughed at me and called me loser, all ignored me, This all motivates me to do something by which I can slap on their face. Don't take my words in negative way. People are good and bad. Bad people only understand the power of success slap. Thats's why I work a lot. 

You may be see that in some chessmood posts I am posting how many books I am doing right now. It's more than 7 I think. and my target is to finish 5 of them in 50 days from now.  I did not post them for anyone's appreciation. I posted them to motivate those who need motivation to work. I am just 1465 but I have goals and I am committed to achieve them and I have nothing if not chess. So I only have to do everything which I can in chess. So be happy and try to focus on what your inner heart says. But as I said once you will have goals and burning desire then you will achieve success.

I am super happy that because of ChessMood I found two amazing training partners Jay and Devansh. 

any tips for black in sicilian najdorf?

During my one on one call with coach he suggested me to work in smart way. I liked his ideas because before that I was only studying hard. But even after he said smart work I am doing super hard work. I do not know but working 3-4 hrs a day on chess makes me feel like I did nothing. I feel more happy when I do combo smart and hard work and I normally works 10 hrs a day and sometimes 12 hrs. So what you think about work? You prefer smart work or combo or smart work and hard work? 

I just like to learn a lot. I can't sit and wait. Some people and strong player told me to  don't try to work on your weaknesses but I do both. I work on my strength and weaknesses so I can become perfect one day. I know no human is perfect but at a level all human feel satisfied with their work or game. Same with me, I am not satisfied yet with my play  but the way I am improving my skills makes me more motivated that I will achieve my goals. I like combo of smart and hard work. 

My list in the bottom of both kind of works!

Example of smart work:

Working with strong chess partners on classics and endgames.

Example of my alone hard work: 

Working on visualization book, working on endgame book, working on htryc by Silman, pattern recog book, blindfold.

Alexei Shirov won Gazprom Brilliancy Prize

Enjoy;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxJqBz7FT5E

As you know guys I am working on KID pawn formations so today my training partner Devansh Shah showed me this game for fun and I was like what? Super complex KID.

https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1800188

Hi,

Just wondering what the recommended line is for black after 1d4 nf6 2 nf3? Maybe this is covered somewhere but haven't seen it - thanks

In terms of offline standard events:

I have hardly seen these issues dealt with in chess literature or anywhere else, but that's why I'm asking, I believe they're very relevant.

1. Going to the bathroom.

This might not seem an issue, but if you're busting in severe time trouble, you got a serious problem :) 

Also it depends on no.1 or no.2, yes? No.2 can easily lead to 10 mins off your clock. I've had this issue, even losing a game cos of the time situation. How do you guys manage it? I'm sure this is important, even for GMs.

2. Relationship between sex and competition.

This I'm curious of. Is abstination best? Spending the night before an important game with a woman doesn't seem like the best thing to do, based on my opinion and experience. 

But this might also depend on whether ur married or not, perhaps?

I'm curious to hear some opinions, preferably based on experience.

Thanks!