A FIDE 2100 player's rediscovery of OTB tournament chess

Dipping a toe in the water

After an 8 year hiatus, my love of chess gradually resurfaced in my early thirties. At first I played blitz and rapid on lichess, then added classical as well thanks to lichess4545 slack group. For the first six months I played exclusively online.

As a teenager I focused strongly on my results and didn’t try to make friends among chess players. This time around I have been committed to sharing my passion with other people, so I joined a medium-sized Discord server The Chess Lounge (TCL) where I met many smart, kind, and strong players. I was also invited by an old friend to join a chill club consisting of several friends around my age.

Ramping up

I started training seriously in Feb 2021. Online play proved that my old repertoire still worked very well, and otherwise I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to work on. At the time there was a popular TCL trend of studying Yusupov training course. Jumping on the bandwagon was great for both my chess and sense of belonging, and seeing other people’s progress kept me going through tiredness. By the end of 2021 I finished 5 books from the series (3 orange and 2 blue).

Finding training materials was easy, finding the right coach was much harder. I spent a lot of time browsing different profiles and reading testimonials only to be ignored by the first and rejected by the second person that I contacted. Fortunately, I was successful on my third attempt and thus in March 2021 I started working with GM Dusan Popovic (dulemaster on lichess), who completely reshaped my play in the next 10 months. He analysed both my old OTB and new lichess classical games and selected around 30 games (mostly losses) for analysis. As we went through them, he laid out his diagnosis: while he liked my opening repertoire and positional play, he strongly criticized my passive play, over-reliance on prophylaxis and avoidance of dynamic opportunities. Our work consisted mostly of discussing my games and solving difficult puzzles related to dynamic play. Time and again Dusan would point out active possibilities that I either missed or avoided because of overestimating the opponent's counterplay.

During this time my blitz rating rose steadily and I was doing very well in 4545 league too. I was eager to test my skills in an OTB tournament. Due to covid restrictions most tournaments were either postponed or cancelled, but finally at the end of May 2021 I managed to take part in a one week 9-rounder in a mountain resort. I tried hard to temper my expectations and decided that the “official” goal would be to have fun and see how well I do. And boy, am I glad that I made that decision...

First blood

My debut started well enough - I crushed a 1800 opponent in R1 and completely out-prepped and strategically outplayed a 2400 FM in R2! However, soon enough I drifted into defensive play. After exchanging all my good pieces I defended a much worse ending for over 5 hours, ultimately blundering from time trouble and exhaustion. Even worse, this was a double round day, and again I was swindled in a 5-hour struggle, this time by a young, 1900 opponent.

From there on it all went downhill. Battered and exhausted, I finished on 3.5/9, performing several hundred points below my Elo, of which I lost a staggering 62! Part of it was facing many underrated juniors who worked on their chess during the pandemic but had no opportunities to play, but mostly it was just poor play on my part.

I was disappointed, but not disheartened. I tasted the long-forgotten and oh so sweet taste of a real competition. The losses only strengthened my resolve.

*Cue “Gonna Fly Now”*

Over the next 6 months I played 27 classical OTB games across 3 tournaments. The focus was on getting me to be more aggressive. I stopped losing elo and even recovered a modest 12 points. Dynamic play was improving and I also expanded my repertoire. I added a few more aggressive options vs 1.d4 and also started experimenting with white. Being able to play both 1.e4 and 1.d4 as well as having two options against both of these gave me a lot of confidence and made preparation more difficult for my opponents. I kept working on Yusupov series ~10h per week and also did some puzzle solving from Polgar’s Chess: 5334 Problems, Combinations and Games and Volokitin’s Perfect Your Chess. Both me and the coach felt that I was on the brink of a breakthrough, but it was not coming - I mostly beat <2000 players and lost vs >2200 players.

Plateaus and setbacks in chess improvement are inevitable. Anticipating them I decided before the first tournament that I would treat chess improvement as a means of my personal growth first and foremost. I firmly believe that all psychological issues that we experience in chess have roots in our personality flaws. Hence, I was able to trace back my propensity for prophylaxis and avoidance of double-edged positions to a need for control that manifests itself elsewhere in my life as well. This approach allows me to put my chess struggles in the context of a broader effort to improve myself as a person. Every mistake - an opportunity to reflect. Thinking that way helped me keep my spirits high despite initial lack of progress.

Closing in

Towards the end of 2021 I started seeing some signs that my approach and decision making were improving. However, I still missed a lot of tactics. I decided to work on calculation skills almost exclusively. In January 2022 I played in a big international open, where I made 17 Elo points with a 2156 performance rating. Both club mates and server friends followed my games live and supported me, which was a nice feeling as well. Coach Dusan was by now mostly approving - he thought I could have made more aggressive opening choices with black when facing 2400+ players, but praised me for standing my ground and fighting my opponents without fear. My losses were fair ones, and so were my wins. I made many mistakes, but the majority of them were stemming from poor calculation and lack of positional understanding rather than mental obstacles. I realized that what I needed to progress further was raw chess skill to execute my attacks.

The following two months were grueling. I decided to start with The Woodpecker Method, not because I have any faith in the system itself, but because there were several people in the TCL server who also wanted to start it, so we made a small group chat to support each other in the daily grind. I felt I was doing poorly - despite dedicating a ton of time and effort I didn't manage to cut my solving time in half after neither the first, nor the second cycle. I quit my chess lessons because I spent all my free time solving chess puzzles and couldn’t prepare properly for classes. In the end, I gave up on solving two weeks before the next tournament due to exhaustion. Other people in our group were both faster and more accurate solvers. Then again, I kept improving in my 3+2 and 2+1 games (I think I played several hundred of the latter in the last few months), so I wasn't entirely pessimistic.

The Reykjavik Open happened almost exactly a year after the first one after returning to competitive chess, so I was really hoping to do well for symbolic reasons. It was special for another reason too - instead of travelling alone I joined a group of TCL people, and invited one of my club mates. Over 8 days we lived together, shared frozen pizza and extremely expensive beer, spectated and discussed each other's games. Funnily enough, the tournament organisation was atrocious, and I don’t think I am likely to return there, but camaraderie still made the experience special for me.

In terms of results, I can’t really complain - for the first time in life I beat a 2400+ player with black, had a draw with a player rated almost 2500. My style was aggressive but strategically sound. I achieved a performance rating of 2225 and gained 28 elo, almost fully recovering my initial loss from a year ago. Tactical training yielded some results but is still my biggest weakness - in a few games I missed fairly simple tactics for both myself and the opponent.

My biggest psychological issue right now is the propensity for time trouble, which is a reflection of the way too high standards that I hold to myself and others away from the board. Likely in my next tournaments I will impose hard limits for time spending following Dvoretsky’s advice from his memoirs For Friends and Colleagues.

After a year of playing OTB I have to say I’m very pleased that I returned to competitive chess. I get so much joy from training, playing, and theorizing improvement strategies inside my head. In terms of rating I’m a little below what I had before I started, but I still consider this year to be a resounding success :)