Chess in Israel

It was twelve months ago, 5 October 2022, that I celebrated reaching 1300 on Chess.com Rapid. At the time, the achievement felt undeserved and unsustainable, like I was overperforming, winning games not because I was objectively better than my opponents but because they were being careless or playing on tilt. Sure enough, I failed to hold 1300 and dropped as low as 1200 in December 2022 before resuming the upward trend. This time around, it feels different, and the game that elevated me past 1400 illustrates why. My opponent, playing with the black pieces, went for an opening defense with which I was unfamiliar. In the past this would have prompted a minor panic, but thanks to Richard James and his chess openings handbooks I had in my inventory an opening that seemed appropriate for the occasion. Although my intuition proved correct, there was a major flaw in my execution, which gave Black an opportunity to crush me. He missed it, and I ultimately went on to win the game. The poi...

When I went to sleep last night, it was to reports in the world's major news outlets that Israel had bombed a hospital in Gaza and killed 500 people. By morning it was clear the story was a lie: a Palestinian rocket aimed at Israel had fallen in a parking lot adjacent to a hospital, and the number of casualties was anyone's guess. That didn't stop the school where I work from joining a strike and announcing there would be no classes today. A day off is a day off, and I used the free time I suddenly had on my hands to study and play chess. In particular, I examined middlegame themes in the Queen's Gambit and the Nimzo-Indian, deepened my theoretical proficiency in the Guimard Variation as a weapon against the Tarrasch French, and played a lot of anonymous Rapid games on Lichess . Then I played a rated Rapid game on Lichess, and none of the day's study was of any use because my opponent opened with 1.c4 -- the English.