Friday, July 31, 2020

Who is playing in the (online) World Open this year?


I decided to throw my hat in the ring and signed up for the 9 rounds next weekend ( August 7-9). I wanted to put a short post out there asking who might be attending this and how are you preparing?

 

Since March I was shifting gears from OTB to rapid time controls and improving my blitz rating. I needed to down shift and get back to slow play and practice focusing on thought processes and calculating as the 48th World Open is G60 matches.  So, here’s my short list of preparation:

  1. 20% tactical studies
  2. 10% Opening reviews
  3. 40%  G30 online ( Focus on thought process)
  4. 30% Middlegame studies (Focus on thought process)

 

Focus on thought process:

After studying Silman’s Imbalances,  Kotov’s trees, Heisman’s “Is this move safe” and Andy Soltis’ “inner game of chess”  I distilled this to recognizing when to calculate versus when a plan is needed and evaluating positions as best as possible.

For now, I am trying to recognize when to calculate under the following:

  • Out of opening book preparation
  • Sharp positions with a lot of dynamics ( Initiatives and development imbalances)
  • Combinational opportunities ( Unprotected pieces, overworked pieces, double attacks)
  • Control of weak squares

Sadly, I am so used to playing fast that I tend to recognized when I should  calculate after I made a move and played a “gut reaction” or a “feel good move”. Recognizing these triggers now so I can better realign my thought process come WO48.

 

Hope to see you there.

 

-Blunderprone

3 comments:

James Stripes said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
James Stripes said...

I am playing in the World Open this weekend. I also played in the blitz event on Friday. Lately I've been playing less blitz, and more often with an increment. I am spending more time in postgame analysis, trying to root out common errors and hone my opening repertoire. Three days per week, I am playing in four-round 5+2 blitz tournaments.

Much of my sporadic tactics training is with positions from my own games. Playing a lot on Chess Tempo this spring gave me thousands of such positions.

I'm also trying to play some 30+10 to prepare for the 60+10. I blogged this morning's game.

ChessAdmin said...

Looking forward to your thoughts on the experience. I swore off World Opens some time ago, after consistently getting sub-par results and not enjoying the experience. I ascribed that to a combination of an exhausting marathon schedule, often chaotic conditions at the location, and the relatively large number of sandbaggers that come for the large prizes. Not sure if the online version would be very different in that respect, heh.