Progress Update Q1

Quarterly Quack

In the last quarter I haven't played that many games. My results were pretty okay. In Rapid I won about half my games, though I dropped some rating due to rating differences. In Daily I won about 70% of my games without gaining too much rating (again due to rating differences). I did better in Blitz, but some luck was involved.

My focus has been mostly on analyzing my own games and learning from my mistakes. Besides that I have been working on new content for my blog, but most of it is still work in progress.

Rapid

Only 12 games this quarter. Of these games 11 were 10-min games, 5 of them won, 5 lost and 1 draw. My rating dropped due to a 45+45 game against a lower rated player.

Duckfest vs Sholom

That other game was a 45+45 game against my friend Sholom. Due to our rating difference I dropped 22 points of rating, but the difference in our rating is because I’m way better than he is in 10-minute games. He is much better at longer games (45+45 still counts as Rapid), which is his main focus. And it showed, as I got outplayed from start to finish.

Key moment

The most interesting move was in this position on move 3, where he played Nd5!  I had never seen the move before, but I knew it was a strong move further down the line. When I analyzed the move later, I was impressed by what a good move it was. I commented to him about how amazing this move was and asked where he found it. His response was:

...Nd5 -- great question.  Some guy posted about it -- and I can't even remember who!  He created a lichess study for it.  When I went to openingtree and saw that you almost always play London, I figured I'd try to learn some of it.  It was the first time I tried it.
I'd like to respond to the guy -- I don't even remember what platform (was it a tweet of his?  I can't remember!)
Here ya' go!
https://lichess.org/study/rxrdqKAi
Anti-London | Crazy Knight Attack
A chess study by FM CheckRaiseMate
Holy moley -- is that Nate Solon?
I'll email Nate about this . . .

That's how our game ended up on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/natesolon/status/1623863006542143490

Duckfest vs saskuo4a

My game against saskuo4a is one I’m proud of. Not a perfect game, I played some dubious moves in the second half of the opening, but lucky for me, so did my opponent. My attack starts on move 9 and in just a handful of moves I start tearing down black’s position, completely.

Daily

Played 28 games. Of these games, 8 were won on time, likely due to the long waiting time since the previous round. Most (6) of these games were over before move 5, some even on move 1. I’ll disregard these. In one of these games (vs Malcontentiuz) I would have won regardless given that I had won their Queen on move 8. The other game was a different story. My opponent (BleakErebus) had been kicking my ass the entire game and I fully expected to lose. In the end, when I won on time, the position had stabilized to a -2 to -3 position. But given the struggles I had, a free win was welcome.

My rating remained more or less the same, even though my winrate was over 70%. Many of my opponents were lower rated so my wins didn’t give much rating points and losses hit harder than usual. When I lost against cla103 my rating dropped by 11 points and I only got 4 points back when I won the next game. Against Japanska_Buba I only got +1 when I won.

Duckfest vs RuslanTM 

The game I’m sharing is my game vs RuslanTM. The opening is pretty standard until the game explodes on move 11. Admittedly, this was not my doing. It was my opponent’s massive blunder that decided the game, not my play alone. But it’s so goddamn satisfying. Kingside attacks like this were one of the reasons I decided to play the London System in the first place. 

Blitz

Results were good, but I didn't play much. Of the 11 games I played, I won 7 and only lost 4. 
However, luck was on my side. My game against shunter69 (won by resignation), was definitely due to reasons outside of chess.com, likely a phone call or another interruption as we both had 5 minutes left and the position was still equal.  My game vs damaster2012 is even worse.

damaster2012 vs Duckfest 

This game was the most unearned victory I have ever gotten. Earlier I have written about unearned lucky wins that fell into my lap: Luckfest 1, Luckfest 2 and Luckfest 3. This game is one is on another level.

In this game I was playing black and I wasn't doing well. Lucky for me, my opponent resigned in this position, with 2:49 on the clock.

White to move.

Study and Development

A large portion of my time has gone in continuing my effort of using my own games to see what I can learn from them (link to Duckable Course).

Puzzles

I’ve only played a dozen or so puzzles. I managed to get back above 2300 rating level but that’s about it.

Puzzle Rush

On average I did okay. On one of my survival runs I was convinced I would break the 40 again but ended up failing 3 puzzles in a row ending up with 39. I did get a new PR on 3-min runs, but that's not a priority for me.

Study

I've dedicated some more time to watching videos. One that was interesting and short was by ChessCoach Andras.

The Amateur’s Mindset is a great series and I recommend following some episodes.

Content

In the past quarter I have only published three articles. Behind the scenes I have been working on a lot more. In the near future I will share new articles in my ‘Organizing my Openings’-series, my first articles in the ‘Duckable Chess Course’-series, a few articles sharing my best ever games and a couple of other articles.

Articles published

• DD 29: Duckable Chess Course
• DD 30: Englund Gambit Part 2
• DD 28: Progress Update '22 Q4

Next Quarter

After another quarter of analysis and self-reflection, it's time to be a bit more pragmatic. My focus for the next quarter will be

• Play more games
• Simplify my opening repertoire and make sure I know it
• Play more puzzles. I have 752 puzzles solved, let’s try to reach 1,000.

Anyway, thanks for reading and I'll see you on the next update!