Welcome to the first edition of My Chess Week, where I write about my weekly exploits across the chess board! This week’s installment focuses on a pair of correspondence games played on Chess.com.
This week has had a variety of ups and downs in the world of my own chess play. The week started off with a pair of brilliant wins and an exciting moment where my correspondence ELO jumped to 1478 before plummeting back to 1322 by the morning of July 20th. The first noteworthy game came against a Chess.com player rated at 1309. I was coming off of an exciting win and feeling the thrill of victory. However, I quickly noted in this game that I was struggling to find decent moves against White, but a key opportunity presented itself at move 29.
1309/White should have resigned or made another move in the game to allow for checkmate, but instead he chose to let his clock run down. I had to wait 24 hours for the game to show up as a win, but nonetheless there was nothing White could do to prevent mate in one.
Unfortunately, things did not go so well on the next game. A combination of overconfidence and a lack of attention to the consequences of my moves cost me dearly against a 1341 playing White.
Following this loss, I suffered another loss before the end of the week with two games remaining to be concluded. As of right now, each of the games are even, but the middle game is just now starting and it is still anyone’s match. The important thing right now is to not let one or two losses, as damning as they are, create fear or panic when I am faced with the same positions in later games. That is the beauty of chess! Each loss is an opportunity to take away knowledge that can bring victory in the next game.