David's Dojo Journey - Installment 17

This week I started to sprinkle in a bit of Polgar puzzle time and working through A First Book of Morphy into my rapid play. I've also expanded the time control from 10+5 to 15+5 as I started to run out of time (which is a good sign as I'm taking some more time to think). My thought is that I will continue to lengthen the time control bit by bit until perhaps I'm back in classical? We will see. I would like to get back to 30+30 games if I can enjoy it because those games were more enjoyable to annotate. I won't get credit for the games in my Dojo Cohort, but I'm not worried about that anymore. I'm taking it step by step!

I did have a nice moment this week where I beat a player over 2300 in a correspondence game. I really shouldn't have won because I was worse when the 2300 resigned, but it was my highest win to date, so I'll take it. I'm currently playing a CM in a correspondence game and I'm already worse, but it is fun to play a titled player and not lose in the first couple of moves:)

Given that I'm playing an hour or two (at least) of rapid a day and enjoying it remains a good sign. I'm still blundering a lot, so lots of work to go. But, I keep reminding myself that I'm only in my second year of playing chess and the significant volume of games, followed by working through the "Learn From Your Mistakes" function seems to be a good way to get more experience, build my intuition and practice every part of the game. It might not be for everyone, but it feels like the best way to grow at this point for me. I will continue to sprinkle in a bit of study here and there this week and see where we end up.

A couple of thoughts from this week:

1. I have enjoyed all the talk around Chess960 (or whatever you want to call it) lately. One thing that I don't think non-beginners don't realize is that every chess game is a Chess960 game for a beginner. So, maybe experienced players should be jealous of beginners who don't know any opening theory. Every game is fresh and new:)

2. I'm thinking about working on a course that would be formatted off of A First Book of Morphy. That is, it would be structured according to the 30 Fine principles, but use games (or maybe just key positions from games) from beginners (or at least a level that is more relatable to beginners) that are a bit more closely tied to the principle being taught, annotated in more of the Logical Chess: Move by Move (e.g., geared more to beginners). I think Fine's principles are really good for beginners, but not sure that the games in A First Book of Morphy are the most helpful games to help beginners learn those principles (though they are really fun to work through, of course). Anyway, just an idea!

3. I'm really looking forward to the candidates! I'm team Caruana all the way. Go Fabi!