Training Game #8 with Super Eval

I decided to take part in his mission to provide competition for the computer as it would both be an exciting challenge and in may even allow me to grow as a chess player. But before I can ever hope to compete, I must first practice and train with the felew699's thought process, called Super Eval. Here's his article detailing the process: https://lichess.org/@/felew699/blog/against-stockfish-game-11-i-did-it/pJNga7XW.

My plan for training my ability to use Super Eval is to play an 1800 level bot on chess.com, then a 1900 bot, then a 2000 bot, and so on, until I reach max level, where by then, I should have had enough practice to effectively use Super Eval against the computer. Today, I played my training game against the 2300 chess.com bot and here is how it went:

In the post game analysis, I ended up with an accuracy of 93%. I had a total of 4 inaccuracies, 3 mistakes, and 0 blunders. While I am glad to have won the game, I am not very proud of it. First I will go over the mistakes I made, and then I will explain my dilemma.

On move 3, I made the first mistake, but this was very intentional. I decided to play for a trick. It ended up working perfectly, which I was thankful for. However, if I had simply played normal moves that satisfy the needs of my position, I would have come out of the opening just fine, even without the trap.

On move 9, I played a developing move, which in normal circumstances would be good. However, after I had weakened the enemy king significantly, I should have been trying to find ways to get at it as quick as possible, or at the very least, trying to rip open the position. I should have played d4 or d3 to challenge the center.

On move 11, I played Bh5+, which is simply not very good. My reasoning was to try and force some defense away from the king. However, the reason the engine doesn't like this move is that when you are attacking, unless it is a key sacrifice or trade for the attack, you should try to keep pieces on the board, especially bishops. Thankfully, the engine didn't take the bishop and I was able to continue forward.

On move 25, 26, and 27, I made 3 consecutive inaccuracies, which is just saddening. Kg3 is bad because it allows the rook onto f5, where it can exert some pressure onto the position. Rd8 is a bad move because while the idea was to trade rooks, which would have been very good for me, it basically forces black to play Rf5. And finally Rg8 is a bad move because I missed the follow up h6, which essentially just forces a draw.

On move 28, I made a mistake which I honestly just won't beat myself up for. The best move in the position with all this crazy stuff happening on the kingside is the amazing. . . . . a3? Apparently after a3, white is still better, but this is just not a human move to play, so I don't really know what to learn from this one.

Why am I Disappointed?

As i said earlier, I won, but I am not proud of it. Some of you reading this may wonder why this is. Is it because of all the mistakes and inaccuracies? Partly, but it's not the main reason. To explain why, I need to explain why I am doing these training games anyway.

Story Time!

Early on in 2024, I hit my goal of 2000 Elo on Chess.com for a rapid time control. This was a massive achievement for me as I understood that very few people would ever make it to that rating. However, my excitement and feeling of achievement started to diminish rather quickly as I began to lose many games and hit a plateau. I had identified that my main problem was that I was very much intuition based. I did what looked right in the situation, and indeed, many times it would be, especially after playing nearly 6000 games. But after a recent tournament where I played against an 8 year old prodigy who used nothing but intuition, I realized that I just couldn't compete anymore. My biggest strength was now my limiting factor. While intuition can really elevate your game, to reach a higher potential, you must not rely solely on intuition and instead, use it as a tool before you think through thoroughly. My main problem was that it was so easy to just go back to using intuition and playing good-looking moves, I would constantly default to that.

I was stuck on this plateau for nearly 7 months, before I saw an article from felew699 on how he was competing against computers using a thought process, and I found it fascinating. Was this what I need to push my game to the next level? I wanted, at the very least, give this thought process a try, and to see what it could do for me. Instantly, I saw my accuracy climb nearly 10 points and I was finding my games to be vey instructive.

But recall what I mentioned earlier about defaulting to using simply intuition. When I am tired, which I often am playing these training games near 8-9 pm, it becomes that much easier to just go back to what I am used to and to not train my thought process. This game I just played was a massive slap in the face for me once I realized that I was just playing and not actually thinking.

My main question now is if I should even really count this as a training game then? Should I go on to the 2400 bot and focus on improving, or should I correct what I did with the 2300 bot?
You can find the forum below to help me in this decision. I would greatly appreciate the opinions.

If you are interested in the idea of training to fight against the computer, consider joining The Club of Believers. Not many people have joined, and every member makes our goal more and more reachable.

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Thank you for reading, and enjoy the rest of your day!