The Benefits of Consistent Play

I've been playing online everyday now for 34 days straight which is certainly a lifetime record. Usually I play two games and today and managed to win both so that my rapid ranking reached 1351 which is the highest it's been for a while. I only play rapid 15 | 10 and Figure 1 shows a summary of my results on chess.com.

Figure 1: my status as of 6th January 2026

Two things have happened recently. The first is that I began not to take my defeats too personally. I committed to playing everyday and reasoned that the more I played the more proficient I would become or at least my play wouldn't get any worse. The second is that I'm rediscovering the style of play that suits me best: safe and positional. By this I mean not opening up the position too much, maintaining a strong defense and patiently maneuvering my pieces into their optimum positions. 

When doing this successfully, I can almost sense the frustration in my opponent as he probes for weaknesses but doesn't find any and can't develop a coherent game plan. Figure 2 shows a position from one of my two games today where it is White's turn to move.

Figure 2: White to move

The position is relatively equal but none of White's attack on the Kingside failed and my position is pretty much locked down. White has been piling up pressure on the c file and trying to break through. With under three minutes on his clock, he rashly plays 27 Rxd5 to which I replied 27 ... Be6 and he resigned. A lot of players don't like this positional, defensive style of play and eventually lash out inadvisedly.

The second game reveals how I often overreach when I should be defensive. Figure 2 shows the position when it is White's 23rd move. Black has a pressure on the f2 square thanks to his Rook and Queen battery. The King and Queen are defending this square but I played 23. Re7 and this was a mistake. Naturally I wanted to place my Rook on the seventh rank but this was too ambitious. I should have played 23. Re2 and further defend the f2 square and prepare to double up on the e file. However, after Black's 23 ... Rd8, he is threatening to penetrate to d2 with his Rook with drastic consequences. I had to retreat with my Rook to guard the d2 square and was on the backfoot a little after this. Fortunately I won and was lucky that I had the luxury of retreating when I needed to.

Figure 2

Hiatus

Since arriving in Australia on June 19th 2025, I've not played a game on Lichess. My last game was on June 15th so it's now over four weeks. I need to get back into the swing of things. My current rating is 1537 in Rapid (10 + 5) after playing 80 games. Already I feel that I am quite out of practice.

Since writing the above, I received the following email:

Figure 1

I'm confused Maia seems to have been around for some years now. Agadmator makes mention of it four years ago. Anyway, I took advantage of the offer and signed up using my Lichess account. So far I've played three games in a 15 + 10 format and won all of them. My rating is currently 1909. Figure 2 shows a profile screenshot.

Figure 2

So far I've only played the Regular, starting with 1500 and rising meteorically to 1909. This rating is certainly inflated but I'll perservere with it for a while as it's quite relaxing and explore some of the other modules. 

UPDATE: I simply found the user interface incomprehensible and could make little sense of it. I'm abandoning it and returning to Lichess that at least makes sense. Just a waste of time really but at least it got me back into playing active chess on a more regular basis ... hopefully.

Three Blunders Versus Four

My rating continues to slowly climb. It's now 1519. In my latest game, I made three blunders versus my opponent's four. Figure 1 shows my first blunder in response to Black's f6. I intentionally moved my Bishop to e5 when it was attacked by the Knight. I had intended to provoke Black's pawn move and then retreat my Bishop to g3 - which I did. This was regarded by the computer analysis as a blunder. Prior to playing 8. Bg3 my position was assessed as +4.7. Afterwards it was just +0.7. I was still slightly better but I had squandered an opportunity.

Figure 1: link to game

The recommended move was Nh4. Ah! It's easy to see now how much better this move is but I had already made up my mind to retreat the Bishop and didn't assess the new position. Fortunately for me, Black continued to make poor moves and I quickly won. As my opponents get stronger, I can't afford to throw away opportunities like I did in this game.

Unpunished Blunder

I've started a new blog dedicated to chess. My previous chess related posts have been on my Pedagogical Posturing blog and I'll link to these posts at the end of this current post. In the meantime, Diagram 1 shows a screenshot of a position that was reached in my latest game as White on lichess.org in a 10 + 5 time control. I'd just played Re7, attacking Black's Queen, totally forgetting how vulnerable my Queen was. All Black needed to do was to play Qxe7 and it was game over for me. Fortunately, Black didn't spot my error and instead played Qb6, after which I had an easy win.

Diagram 1

Prior to this move, I still had 3:55 on my clock so I wasn't under too much time pressure. The position is instructive because it shows how dangerous it is to have a Queen on the same file as the opponent's Rook. Furthermore, the Queen is unprotected. I've embedded the game below.

So far I've managed to steadily increase my rating to a 1413 for the 10 + 5 time control. Figure 1 shows my progress. Since the start of May, I generally played each day. If I lose a game, I immediately play again in order to try to recover my lost points. So far I've been successful. 

Figure 1

Here are my chess-related posts from Pedagogical Posturing blog:

1. More Rapid Games on 14th May 2025
   
   
2. Google's NotebookLM on 23rd March 2025
   
   
3. First Rapid Chess Game on 16th March 2025
   
   
4. Shocking Chess Defeat on 16th March 2025
   
   
5. Science Fiction Nonsense of 26th May 2024
   
   
6. Chess Puzzle on 8th October 2023
   
   
7. Indonesian Language Skills on 2nd February 2023
   
   
8. Lichess: Another Win on 8th November 2021
   
   
9. Chess Puzzles on 19th October 2021
   
   
10. Stored Games on Lichess on 17th December 2020
    
    
11. LICHESS.ORG on 13th May 2020
    
    
12. An Historic Win on 16th March 2020
    
    
13. A Win Against Fritz on 19th January 2019
    
    
14. Chess: A Personal History on 8th January 2019
    
    
15. Toroidal Chess on 7th January 2019
    
    
16. Chess: An Unlikely Win on 24th February 2018
    
    
17. Chess: The Fried Liver Attack on 4th March 2018
    
    
18. Chess Diagrams on 2nd November 2017
    
    
19. CHESS: Ding Lirin - China's highest ranked player ever on 8th November 2017
    
    
20. CHESS: HOW TO EMBED A FULL CHESS GAME IN A BLOG on 10th December 2017
    
    
21. CHESS: The Budapest Gambit on 10th December 2017
    
    
22. CHESS: FISCHER versus TAL on 10th March 2018
    
    
23. CHESS: THE ELEPHANT GAMBIT on 7th March 2018
    
    
24. CHESS: THE MARSHALL ATTACK on 22nd February 2018
    
    
25. CHESS: Nodirbek Abdusattorov - 2nd Youngest Chess Grandmaster in History on 3rd November 2017
    
    
26. CHESS: A BUMBLED DRAW on 23rd December 2017
    
    
27. CHESS: The Rules for Drawing on 4th December 2017
    
    
28. CHESS: Holding On on 28th December 2018
    
    
29. CHESS: More Master Mauling on 25th November 2017