The tournament hall in round 2. | Photo: Dominique Dervieux

My 1st GM norm

GM 2bf41-0

Updated: Mar 23, 2023, 5:44 PM | 26

Greetings everyone! I haven't posted a blog in slightly over 2 years now. I always enjoyed writing but had to take a hiatus in order to play more tournaments. Since then I became an international master, and I'm currently on a quest to get the GM title. I made some progress recently and scored my first grandmaster norm at the Rochefort Chess Festival in France. I would like to present the critical moments in the games from that tournament and also highlight some important lessons I learned.

In round 1 my low-rated opponent forfeited on me. It was the first time I won such a game.

My opponent in round 2 was the solid Aniruddha Deshpande from India. I saw he played the 4.Qb3 variation against my Semi-Slav, the opening which has served me well for the past 5 years. I prepared to play e6 and in the game, this actually transposed to a closed Catalan. In an equal position on move 20, he offered me a draw which I rejected after some thought.

In round 3 I beat an FM with smooth positional play. In round 4 I beat a talented French player my age in an interesting Sicilian battle.

In this game, I played a minor tactical shot (Bxg2!) in order to win a pawn and weaken white's kingside. I was able to notice this from afar because it's already ingrained in my intuition to search for such moves when calculating. The reason why I was aggressively scanning for tactics was that there were tactical targets in white's position (the weak g2 pawn and the loose knight on d6). A player becomes strong when such things are automated in his thinking process, but in order to do this you need to practice. One of the main books I solved from a young age is Calculation. It shaped my approach to the game fundamentally, and I use its calculation concepts in my training and in real games. In this game, Bxg2 could be classified by chapter one, candidate moves. Bxg2 is a trivial shot and my opponent did not act surprised when I played it, but it's likely that he didn't see this when he played the erroneous Rxa5. It's incredibly valuable to train seeing such tricks in advance. After that, I won by infiltrating my opponent's weaknesses (it was like chapter 3 in Attack & Defence, which talks about the theme of color and how typically weaknesses are all on the same color of squares. In my game due to opposite colored bishops, white was unable to defend his light squares adequately.) and executing with a combinational blow.

The tournament began smoothly with me being on 4/4 at this point. In rounds 5 and 6 I used the white pieces to make fast draws with GM Sasikiran and GM Ghosh. In round 7, I played a complex game with IM Larkin from Ukraine. There was a crucial strategic mistake I made regarding when to exchange pieces and when to keep them.

An excellent book for training positional chess is Positional Play. I have not finished the book yet, but solving from it definitely helped me. Recently I am getting back into solving such positional exercises because it's an important part of the game I need to improve.

In round 8 I faced GM Maksimenko, and he surprised me with a well-prepared Slav line. I got an edge and tried to squeeze him on the board and clock, but he solved all his problems without giving me a chance and I had to agree to a draw. I learned in the post-mortem that he actually offered me a draw on move 12, but I didn't hear him! Regardless, I would've played on anyway because I came into this game trying to win -I was white and nearly 50 points higher rated.

In round 9 I faced a young French IM. It was an Italian game and I offered an early draw, which was rejected! This was a fascinating strategic game where my opponent made some great decisions, and it was a truly remarkable fight. I am grateful to my opponent for allowing a rare underpromotion at the end, instead of giving me a bunch of spite checks.

Overall, I played a solid tournament to tie for first (although I was the one who was undefeated, GM Ghosh had a slightly better tiebreak score, so I was second on tiebreaks) and was happy to score a norm along the way. I will continue solving positions from books and from the academy I train with because it's evident that hard work eventually pays off.

The academy which has improved my calculation, endgame, and chess understanding is https://killerchesstraining.com/.

I have also used Forward Chess for studying chess books to improve my game.

My 1st GM norm

Chess education