Chop Wood, Carry Water: Putting A Plan Together

Time to next (first!) tournament (Chicago Chess Center Rated Beginners’ Open #17): 18 days.

I’m currently waiting for FedEx to deliver a package. The package contains my new tournament standard set and board. The event I’m competing in next month is providing sets and boards and clocks, but I wanted to have my own to bring just in case. It’ll also be good for training, I think.

While I’m waiting on that, I want to try and Think Out Loud about training for competitive chess.

When I was younger I struggled with improving my game. I’d learn a few new things, plateau, and not know out how to move forward. This was true even when I picked up the game again in my mid-20s — I couldn’t figure out how to move past a certain point, and eventually the frustration of not being able to solve a particular problem led me to give up.

The big difference now is that I’ve been to college. I earned a BFA and did a year in an MFA program. Career prospects aside, I learned a lot in school, and one of the things that’s helped a lot (in ways that are often difficult to document or indeed put into words) is learning how to learn. I don’t know everything, but I’ve gotten a lot better at A. figuring out what I don’t know, B. knowing what I’d need to do to fix that, and C. coming up with a plan for learning this new information or skill.

College made me a more disciplined thinker, which has served me in numerous professional and personal situations. And it’s definitely going to help me out here.

So here’s where I’m at:

• I need to figure out what aspects of my game need the most improvements. What weaknesses consistently present themselves in the games I play, regardless of the result?
• Once I identify those weaknesses, I need to come up with a study plan for addressing those weaknesses. For example: simple endgame scenarios are a struggle for me, and too often I end up in King + Pawn vs King situations and have to settle for a draw.
• I also want to try and identify the aspects of my play that are strongest and see if I can improve on them. Because I can always get better, even if I’m already kind of good at it.
• I think it will also be helpful to try and identify what kind of style I like to play.
• I want to have at least a bare bones opening repertoire ahead of the tournament.
• Finally, I need to acquaint myself with chess tournament etiquette, which is apparently a world unto itself.

One other problem is that I’m realizing there are weaknesses in my game that I can’t really resolve through study alone. I tend to do better in correspondence, and really any game where I give myself time to think through moves. When I try to rush through my moves — and it’s not Blitz — I make stupid mistakes and end up losing. This is, I think, a psychological thing. I need to learn to just slow down and not push myself to go with the first candidate move that springs to mind. It’s not just sound strategy — “if you see a good move, look for a better one” — it’s also better for my stress level.

I also have a way of psyching myself out of things. Another thing I can work on.

As for the things I can deal with through study and doing my reps: right now I’m working on simple endgame scenarios and puzzles. I want to really nail down the fundamentals as much as I can before the tournament. I’m also doing some tactics training on a few different sites and apps, including Lichess. (I know some people complain about the tactics puzzles on Lichess but they’ve been fairly solid for me thusfar.)

Another point of anxiety is openings. Each individual opening system requires a lot of study to internalize and use in games. Having a solid repertoire for a tournament seemed very daunting — especially given how little time I have to prepare. But I watched some videos by Simon Williams recently and he said something very encouraging: you only really need to know three openings to start out. One as White, two as Black, with those Black openings covering a response to 1. e4 and the other being a response to 1. d4. That, according to Williams, is good enough for government work. Once I improve more I can branch out into other systems. I might even find that some openings I play now might not work further down the line.

(This is already kind of happening. I used to play Ruy Lopez a lot, but I find myself moving away from it. Main line defenses against it always end up with me moving the same Bishop several times in the opening to avoid capture (or just saying Fuck It and giving it up to take a Knight), and the loss of tempo is something I’m increasingly dissatisfied with. So I’m trying out a new opening for White, which I’ll talk about more once the tournament is over.)

And then the last thing I’m thinking about a lot is tournament etiquette and all the small written and unwritten rules that make these things worth. Sorting through what’s actually in the rules and what’s just accepted practice or taboo has been a challenge at times. More so because even some of the official rules — such as the prohibition on “annoying” your opponent — are purposefully vague.

This has been a source of anxiety for me lately. What if I miss something and break an unwritten rule I didn’t know about? What if my opponent decides something I can’t help — say, my weight or my appearance — is a “distraction?” What if a TD agrees? (This is a common thing for marginalized people. We have to know the rules inside and out because of all the ways they can be used against us, all while knowing that those same rules may not be there to protect us.) So partly because I don’t want to be put in a difficult situation, and partly because I want to practice good sportsmanship, I want to try and get as much of this nailed down as I can.

Maybe it’s best that I’m doing a beginners’ tournament first. I’m hoping that gives me more leeway for not knowing everything out of the gate.

My package finally came this afternoon.

The box was unexpectedly long and heavy!

Mmm unboxing.

It’s Patzer Christmas!

The new set is really, really nice. They’re triple-weighted, so they feel really good in my hand and make a satisfying plunk when I make a move. The board is made of mousepad material — it rolls up nice, it stays fixed to the surface, and it doesn’t crease like vinyl boards tend to do. My only complaint about this set so far is that the points on the crowns of the Queens are a bit sharp. But that’s nothing a nail file and a little elbow grease can’t fix.

One last thing before I get back to work: I learned earlier today that Chess ASMR is totally a thing. This is, if you’ll forgive the oblique pun, game-changing.