Road to NM -- Week 14: 1600!!!

Intro

Welcome back for week 14 on the Road to NM series where I account my progress on the road towards the NM title (hopefully) by the end of the 2027-2028 school year (May 2028). In this blog I analyze my tournament games from the week if I had any and outline my thought process so all can see what I'm thinking in each game and giving all of you guys the chance to walk along side me on my route to the NM title. Feel free to say any comments you have about either my games, study plans, or just general advice or thoughts about the blog in general. Also, if you've been keeping up with the series you probably have seen that there is a different famous chess player as the cover each week either from history or current. If you want to help decide the person on the cover, comment the player you would like to be the cover photo (it must be someone who hasn't been featured yet) and the most commented player/comment of a suggested player that is most liked in the forum (ex. if someone posts Magnus Carlsen and it gets 6 likes but 3 people post Pragg, Magnus would be featured *if he hadn't been the cover yet*) Also, likes do not add up over multiple comments to keep from people stacking on comments with each other to win the featured player each week. So anyways, let's get into all the stuff that happened this week.

This week was an extremely exciting week in multiple regards so let's jump right in

Online Play

This week was really good for me online, so it was just overall great since I had a good OTB performance also. I played 3 games, all rapid, and played really well in all of them and won all 3 which was a great bounce back to get me nearly back to 2000 (because if you remember last week's blog it was a rought week online) but the best part is that it really helped me feel settled and locked in for the tournament I knew I had the next day. I wasn't feeling confident in myself before this (i'll give you the reason why in the OTB play section, but these really helped me feel good and prepared for it. Anyways here are the 3 games:

Game 1:

Game 2:

Game 3:

OTB Play

Now, here's what you guys were waiting for, this month's quads were extremely small, only 2 quads, and I was in the top quad again, as the 2nd seed. Naturally, I wanted to take care of business in the 1st 2 rounds against the lower rated opponents and hope to do well against the 1 seed as the big test.

Round 1:

Round 1 I was faced with the 3 seed naturally, and right from the beginning I quickly got a crushing positional advantage with space. My opponent's pieces were completely getting suffocated, but while I saw the key idea that would have kept out any counterplay, I ultimately dismissed it for whatever reason and allowed him back into the game and eventually allowed a nice tactic that put me in a completely lost spot. Fortunately my opponent had extremely low time and offered a draw to avoid throwing it after making a move that removed most of his advantage and I quickly accepted. Not how I had wanted to start but wasn't terrible.

Round 2:

This round I needed to win, as this was against the 4 seed and with a draw to gain even a small amount of rating I would need to win the last game which would be no easy task. If I managed to lose that would be catastrophic for my tournament as I would lose rating even with beating the top seed in the final round which would not be ideal. Fortunately this opponent was not the strongest, having reached their floor and probably being at a lower strength after some time at that level and not really gaining any rating back. We got a grunfeld but white had a bishop on b2 instead of the usual e3 or d2 so it was unique, eventually my pressure got strong enough to where my opponent had to play dxc5 to avoid material loss (they had c3 well enough defended but it was weak the rest of the game. I would have just been in a superior position immediately if I had captured right away but I overcomplicated it and he found a good move and the position was more balanced. My opponent allowed me soon after that to get a monster rook and fork but somehow he managed to survive it but in the end I got a superior piece placement in an endgame and I won on time soon after.

Round 3:

This was one of the most crazy and sharp games i've ever played in and both of us missed multiple chances to win the game, which makes sense considering how complex it was, but if we had played more accurately this game could've had a very different story. In the end despite being down for the first part of the game, I managed to battle back and win the game and secure the tournament victory.

Overall, it was a great tournament for me, as I went 2.5/3 and won the quad, my first time doing that in this event in my 4th time participating, and I gained a very respectable 32 rating points putting exactly at 1600. It gave me a big confidence about my playing form right now and it helped me see where I need to improve on my journey towards my dream goal of the NM title. Next week I have a massive 5-round tournament (I will be taking a round 4 bye for church because that's more important) and I'm going to let you guys decide, I can either stay in the under 1600 section where I'm currently signed up in by default, or I can move up to the 1600-2000 section where I'll have more difficult competition and less chance for prizes but a much bigger chance to get significant rating gains and if I do have an incredible tournament performance I could get even bigger prizes than in the under 1600. Let me know what you guys think I should do.

Study

This week's study was heavily tactics based, I spent a lot of time doing really difficult puzzles on Lichess, and temporarily got my rating over 2200 (I had been doing what I normally do and just casually doing a quick puzzle every once and a while and my rating had been really bad around 2000) before dropping it again in my own laziness. I did some in depth analysis as these were important games, but otherwise I didn't do much outside of my other online play because I've been a lot more focused on soccer since it started back up

Outro

Thanks so much for tuning into the Road to NM series, if you enjoyed it please give it a like so more people can see it and if you don't want to miss out on new additions to the series be sure to follow me so you get updated when a new one is released (I'm not follow farming, it has no benefit for me and I can't even see my total follower count)

I hope to see you guys next week, as i'm recapping the biggest tournament I've ever played in, wish me luck as i'll probably be one of the bottom seeds in my section if i end up playing up but i'll have great opportunities to gain rating that i don't normally have. See you all there, bye!