Road to NM: Week 2 — A good OTB Rapid Performance

Intro

Welcome back everyone to week 2 of the Road to NM series, the blog where I tell everyone how my training and improvement is coming along in relation to my goal of hitting NM by the end of 2027, this week was quite the week, and there's a lot going on, so i'm going to get into it.

Note: Sorry this post is late, I just got back from vacation and didn't have my notation book with me while on vacation to add the OTB games to the blog, which is probably the most important part of the blog.

Online Play

As I expected, my online performance was not very good this week, being on vacation for most of it, and I dropped 42 points in rapid, 30 or so points in bullet, and I actually went slightly up in blitz by the end, though I ended lower than where I was around the middle of the week. My online rapid performance while on vacation was abysmal, where I played 9 games, and scored 0.5/9, managing to swindle a draw in time pressure down a knight where I actually even managed to swindle it to a winning position but blew it and losing all of my other games. The hilarious thing about this was that I was either better or completely winning in every single one of these games, but between staying up later than usual on vacation and a lack of focus and general from being on it, I could not convert anything which is unfortunate but it is what it is, and hopefully i'll get the points back soon.

In blitz, the time control that I am by far the worst at in my opinion, I actually did extremely well, where I played mostly in the CSCA Daywalkers prize battle, and played a total of 49 games with a performance of over 1900 and a win rate of 52%, while also getting my highest ever blitz win against a 2250 who didn't even zerk against me. The craziest part is that I finished 1 game away from a placement prize in the tournament. With 3 minutes left in the tournament, I was 4 points back of 119th place, which was going to be the 10th percentile prize, and since I was on a win streak and was going to be the lowest rated player of all of the people who had the points I would have if I zerked and won, I would get the spot. But unfortunately, I couldn't get a winning position fast enough, and with my low time, I actually lost to the 1600 to end the tournament. But overall, I still gained about 50 rating from the tournament though I finished off the week after playing a little more around plus +25 overall. I've started playing blitz more to try to solve my problem of spending too much time and constantly getting in heavy time pressure. I often flag in blitz or blunder everything with low time, but I don't care about my online blitz rating, it's still doing what it's supposed to, which is help me speed up a little bit.
It was an odd tournament for me, but I really enjoyed it because I got to play 2 titled players (an FM and WCM) and got my highest rated win ever in blitz at 2250 along with winning 2 out of 4 against a 2100 that I kept getting paired with.

I rarely play bullet right now, it's pretty much a waste of time for me trying to hit my NM goal, and my bullet form has been really poor also, as i've dropped from where I was at 2000 not too long ago to around 1870 right now, this doesn't really matter, because like blitz, I don't really care that much about bullet.

Overall online I didn't do as good as I would have liked online, but it is what it is.

OTB Play

This is where the important, and successful part of my week is. There is a weekly quick rated USCF event in my hometown that I try to play in when I can, and this week my performance was really good. The first round I got paired against a 1470 who has shot up tremendously in the past few weeks after hovering at a little over 1200 for a while and his performance is continuing to be good, as he went 2/3 this week. Here was my game against him:

Round 2 was extremely odd, and i got an opponent higher rated than me, but I outplayed him, got his king all the way from its starting square of e8 to a3! And while i blundered in time pressure (i didn't get to notate that part, i still managed to pull out the win)

Round 3 started with a sicilian, but it transposed to a position resembling the pirc without c pawns, and i managed to get strong positional control and win the game after my opponent blundered.

Overall, regardless of my poor online performance, i am really happy with this week, as i went from 1514 in rapid straight to 1591 from this tournament, and i have a chance of hitting 1600 in OTB rapid this week in the tournament if i am able to play in it. Thanks for reading my second blog in the Road to NM series, and make sure to leave a like so others can find it, and also follow me if you want to be notified when each new blog comes out in the series. I'll see you all next week, hopefully with a 1600 USCF rapid rating.