Nova Daily - 2 March 2025: Recap Week 9
Hi!
The first round of submissions of the BlogChamps competition has been over, and the results have been given. I've been watching from the sidelines, looked at all of them and read most of them start to finish. That was really enjoyable! Keep going!
For fun I selected 6 people that I felt certain would advance, and 4 of them did. It's a massive task to have to rate and comment on 52 different blog posts, and I must say I'm very impressed with not just how the judges did it, but even that they managed to do it. And they'll have to do it again for another set of blogs! YIKES!!
But I have to get one thing off my chest. At the start of this week I wrote a brief treatise about suspense. I stand by what I said back then, but some people took it so far with their impatience that I got agitated even from the sidelines, to such a degree that I lowkey hoped that there'd be an extra ad break so that the results would come in even later. There's strategic impatience in business, but this is not the place. This work is done by volunteers for the love of it, and for your sake. Cut them some slack and stop pestering them. Thanks.
Mastery
It is a curse to have everything go right on your first attempt.
Robert Greene, Mastery
A lot of what I've been reading and writing lately concerns mastery, and most of all: my search for it. Whether it concerns mental blockades, setbacks, tension, failures, when and whether to admit defeat, the power of the routine, the trust in the process, the social praise and the sacrifices that you have to make along the way (this will be a topic for a future post), I'm determined in what I want to accomplish.
To a significant part this is because of the wake-up calls that I've had when going through Robert Greene's books. I thank him dearly for helping me open my eyes. Ever since I let it dawn on me that there's only one person responsible for what I can accomplish, that that person is me, and that I shouldn't expect anyone to come and rescue me, I became deeply involved with minding my own business, coming up with ways to put myself to the test, and finding ways to get myself to move forward.
In chapter 2 of Mastery, Robert Greene talks about a far advanced state of competence that he calls "the Cycle of Accelerated Returns". To paraphrase: the natural way of learning process is through practice and repetition. Doing something over and over again will at some point make it second nature. The results will follow from there, and the joy of feeling competent has a snowball effect.
I hope that I'll make it there eventually. But the signs are very positive. For a long time I've been feeling the joy that preparing, playing, researching, analysing, writing, publishing and repeating the process has been bringing to me.
Quitting isn't in my lexicon.
The week in chess
The world of chess has lost a titan of history. The 10th world champion has passed away last Thursday. My condolences to all his fans, family and friends.
What will forever make Spassky one of the greatest players in history is his sportsmanship. After losing the 6th game against Fischer, he joined the audience in applauding for his opponent's exceptional performance. A true gentleman, the likes of which haven't been seen often in the highest elites of any sport.
Spassky came up second in the Match of the Century, and no matter what anyone thinks, and no matter what the media write about it, I think that that's a laudable achievement.
This week's recap
This week I've studied a lot of material. Based on a short discussion about my opening repertoire against 1.e4, I decided to take up the book How to Play Equal Positions by Vassilios Kotronias. So far I've studied the first chapter, and I'm planning on finishing this book before the month is out.
Next to writing my own blogs, I've taken the time to catalogue them in white repertoire and black repertoire. This is just for my own convenience so that I can look things up quickly; I don't intend to publish these.
There's a lot that I still need to learn in the Caro-Kann, and I think that playing more blitz games can really help me with this. Next to this, I rarely get any practice in the Nimzo-Indian. So for next week I'm going to intensify my blitz routine, and try to make it so that I'll only be playing with black.
I feel that I'm beginning to get the hang of the English. Researching and finding model games on several of the systems I was faced with throughout the week has been very insightful. However, there are a lot of things that I still feel I'd need to study more in the English. The most urgent are the Symmetrical systems in which white plays a quick Nf3 and d2-d4, and variations in which black plays an early light-square strategy (c6/d5 and e6/d5).
To-do list for next week:
- Play more blitz
- Finish two chapters of Kotronias
- Analyse that marathon game
- Read all new BlogChamps submissions
My current scores:
- Rapid rating: 1991 (+25)
- Blitz rating: 2150 (+28)
- Bullet rating: 2500 (=)
- Survival: 59 (=)
- Puzzle Battle: 1623 (+64)
- Puzzles: 3577 (-34)
- Repertoire: 3987 moves (+242)
Blogs:
https://www.chess.com/blog/nova-stone/nova-daily-23-february-2025-recap-week-8
https://www.chess.com/blog/nova-stone/nova-daily-24-february-2025
https://www.chess.com/blog/nova-stone/nova-daily-25-february-2025
https://www.chess.com/blog/nova-stone/nova-daily-26-february-2025
https://www.chess.com/blog/nova-stone/nova-daily-27-february-2025
https://www.chess.com/blog/nova-stone/nova-daily-28-february-2025
https://www.chess.com/blog/nova-stone/nova-daily-1-march-2025
