The Ford Memorial is a Swiss tournament comprising 9 rounds. I expect to face very tough competition there.Last year, 65 players took part with Vladimir Smirnov winning clear first with a round to spare (!). Going by last year's list of participants, there were at least 40 players with a higher rating than I am so there is a high likelihood that I'm going to be smacked right in the lower half of the group, facing a very tough opponent in the first round.
So between 30 Jul and 28 Aug, I have nearly a month to prepare myself for the tournament.
That means more opening repertoire work and tactical and endgame training. Yikes!
Awesome! How do you plan to approach openings and tactics this next month?
ReplyDeleteHello likesforests,
ReplyDeleteI just need to continue to work on my existing Black repertoire vs 1.d4 (I think it's starting to show good results and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel) and am considering switching to another 1.e4 Black repertoire.
As for tactics, I'll continue working through the book, Perfect Your Chess. There's 5 puzzles I need to solve every day and it'll take me more than 2 months to cover all of them. I also intend to review all of the mistakes I made esp. in the calculation of variations and main lines (where I've not analysed the continuation deep enough) at the end of each week as a refresher course.
For endgames, I plan to go through Mueller's DVDs esp. Rook+Pawn endings and cover them well enough that it's drilled into me automatically.
I don't really have high expectations of the competition and I'll play each game as it comes.
In addition to the 5 puzzles I do daily:
Mon: Opening d4
Tue: Opening d4
Wed: Endgame
Thurs: Endgame
Fri: Endgame
Sat: Opening e4
Sun: Opening e4
cheers