Road to NM: Week 5 — Waiting

Intro

Welcome back to week 5 on the Road to NM series, where I go through my OTB games each week and analyze them for you guys, give updates to how my training and studying is going, have everyone follow me on my road to (hopefully) the NM title by the end of the 2027-2028 school year (May 2028) This weeks weekly rapid tournament was filled with 3 CRAZY games that were extremely fun and interesting to play and extremely fun to analyze, anyways let's get into it.

OTB Play

This is the last week of no classical OTB play before my fall season kicks off where i'll be playing more classical than I ever have (going from 0-1 classical tournaments a month to hopefully 3 or 4) and that is why the title for this addition to the series is waiting. I am really anxious to get back to classical play since I've played 1 tournament in the past 3 months at this point and since i'm taking a break from online play to focus on practical OTB study I'm really hungering to get to the quads which I will be playing in the weekend of the week this blog is published. I really think another reason why pausing online play for me right now is so good is that I'm really itching to play the game so I'm more focused when I actually get to it. Also my analysis is more targeted on specific games and only OTB games which is a significantly different area than standard online play so I feel like i'm actually finding my weaknesses so much better in the short time I've done this. Well enough of my rambling, let's get into the games from this week's rapid tournament.

Round 1 I was paired against a 1200 who beat me the other time I've played him, i'm not sure why but I always seem to play better against stronger opponents, heading into this week I had a 1-0 record against my round 3 opponent who is literally 1850 classical and I beat a 1906 classical rated player last week, but I've struggled against lower rated players (maybe I struggle against this one because he looks like Anish Giri to me and i'm intimidated) (I'm joking there), though I've recognized the weakness and can work on it, anyways here's the game.

The second game was extremely sloppy from both of us, we both had chances to be completely winning through not too simple but not overly complicated tactics either, I fortunately managed to get the win in a time scramble.

The last game was the most fun one, and the one i'm overall most proud of, even if I lost, I was paired against a fellow 1600 in quick (he's 1850 classical though, lots of people are underrated in quick, the IM that lives in my hometown is only 1900 quick) we got a mainline najdorf where my opponent took advantage of my slight errors, sacrificed the rook and he played slightly too slowly, and I managed to stabilize and have a equal position where I actually had winning chances, but all of the calculation I did burned too much of my time, and I was unable to hold the position.

Overall I lost 7 rating even though I went 2-1 but rapid rating doesn't really matter as it's just to get me reps for the upcoming classical season.

Study

My studying was a lot less frequent this week as I started school back up, but I still squeezed some in when I could and I really am feeling the hunger to play in tournaments now that i'm not playing online (as I said earlier, the reason the title for this blog is waiting) I think I'm doing the best study I can with the time that I do spend, as it is pretty much solely focused on either tactics and calculation training, and game analysis of either my games or grandmaster games. I've spent a lot of my analysis of games from grandmasters from Kasparov and Capablanca, because they're 2 players I really look up to.

Outro and Other News

Last week I said that the most commonly posted or liked comment saying who should be this week's cover photo would get to be the cover and Gukesh was the top liked comment at the time of posting, currently next in line is Ding Liren unless a different comment from this week gets more posts or likes (note, please don't spam a player multiple times that doesn't count and will actually ensure that your player does not get selected) 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) Hope you enjoyed and I'll see you guys next week with the results from my first official classic rated (dual rated) OTB tournament for the fall, I'll see you then, bye!

P.S. comment if you want me to put my rapid games from this upcoming week in next week's blog too, I won't have time to analyze them and the games from my quads, but I could still put them in if you like, whichever option is more popular will be what happens.