Life Hacks for Getting to IM

This August I finally reached 2400 Fide and got to IM, after 7 years of running from tourney to tourney, country to country.
To start off with, here are some basic lessons learned on the way:

1. Calculation is the #1 skill to work on for improvement, while openings and endgame knowledge should be the icing on the cake called calculation.
2. You should be doing more active learning than passive learning, such as solving studies, guessing moves, and finding improvements to your mistakes.
3. You cannot survive without time management, that means usually being ahead on time and being disciplined with how much you're going to spend per move.

With those tips out of the way I'd like to share some fun stories and the life lessons they come with, from my travels.

Develop a high tolerance for losing and failing

In 2021 I played the North American Open in Las Vegas, losing 58 fide points. A tough loss in the first round playing down, followed by one disastrous game after another. When confidence goes, you don't trust your calculation, take too much time on simple moves, and don't follow your attacking instincts which would come out easily in a blitz game.

Fast forwarding to March 2024, a German train strike was announced suddenly, as I was trying to get from Prague International to Bad Wörishofen open in Germany. The Czech train got to a border town with Germany, and dropped us off with instructions to wait for a bus. This was at 9 PM on a cold evening, and nobody was amused when the bus didn't show up, turns out it left earlier that evening. To make things worse, I had to teach group classes remotely at 1 AM that night, which couldn't be cancelled (the time difference with Canada allowed me to play tourneys and work at night, but this had its downsides).
After catching a random bus in the generally right direction followed by an hour long uber, I finally got to the hotel just in time for the 1 AM class...

The following morning I still had to get from the hotel to the small town, which required another 2-hour taxi ride as no trains were running. I got to the town an hour before the first round, which I promptly lost to someone 350 points lower. That night I remember thinking why do we do this to ourselves? Only by reframing this situation in a positive light (don't ask how) was I able to finish this tourney without rage-quitting and running back to Canada.

This wasn't the only experience with failing trains in Europe; a similar 1 day-strike (what luck!) in Italy this September started a race to get from Imperia to a flight in Rome, but the toughest experience was in France at the 2022 Capelle La Grande event. After the tournament, Storm Dudley struck the town, stopping all trains to Paris (where our flight was waiting). Moreover PCR Covid tests were still mandatory for travel at that time, regardless of the weather. I remember running across town from one pharmacy to another during the storm, where the pharmacists would turn me away (I'm not trying to offend you with my English!). After miraculously finding the right clinic, we had to find a way to get to Paris. The only way was of course a $900 taxi ride...

Lastly, there were the two times I got ridiculously close to 2400 and then fell down to Earth. In Montenegro at a round robin tourney I was on a 9-game winning streak which put me at 2397, and it seemed like success was inevitable. Hence you can understand my Hubris in playing only for the win as black against an IM. This loss started another streak which brough me down to 2290. Fast forwarding to January 2024, I was at a tourney in Marienbad, Czechia freezing in an unheated hotel room while dealing with a nasty flu. On the bright side I was playing well and got to 2398 live, only having to beat a 2100 for the title. Of course life can't be that easy so I duly lost this game, falling back down to 2350.

These and similar travel fiascos made the losses on the way more tolerable. One loss ain't so bad compared to missing a Munich-Montreal flight because the German tickets were undecipherable...The overall lesson is not to get jaded along the way, and expect luck to balance out eventually.
Here are some pictures from the trips!

Learn from everyone, especially the people who beat you

The last game of my 2022 summer Euro-trip was in Trieste Italy, and I spent a solid 3 hours preparing a Closed Sicilian sideline which looked very convincing and lethal. I don't think my 2350 opponent was very impressed when I played e4 the following morning, considering that he was the one playing white...I just assumed that a double black in the last two rounds was impossible :) I reluctantly took the black pieces and was again disappointed to see a 1.Nf3 double fianchetto, against which I couldn't remember anything. We play so often against 1.e4 and 1.d4 that the experience in blitz games alone allows you to get a decent game pretty much anywhere. But all the side-lines that happen once in a blue moon are looked at once when you can't fall asleep, and then never again. Needless to say it was a disastrous one-sided game:

On the flights, I made a habit of writing down everything that could be learned from the tourney games, especially the losses. For this game, the invasion of the a-file was instructive, along with the opening treatment and positional pressure in general, not allowing black to ever get into the game. Now compare that debacle with a game 2 months later:

Find any similarities? :) I still liked to attack but after losing the 1.Nf3 game my style gradually became more positional and universal, not trying to finish the game straight from the opening.

Over time, I noticed the hardest players to prepare against were 1.Nf3 players, as there were so many move orders they could use and no way to attack the Reti setups directly. A year later I was once again in Italy playing a Moldovan IM, who beat me despite getting an awful position out of the opening:

In the post-mortem afterwards, he showed me how the endgame should have been held, if I played for 19...c6 instead of the reckless 19...c5.
This showed me I needed to drastically improve my endgame technique and stop trying to force positions in which I felt uncomfortable. We went for dinner afterwards and he was praising the Reti lines for white, which was the last straw. If you can't beat them, join them! Over the next few months I didn't compete at all, preparing a complete 1.Nf3 repertoire for white. When I returned to Europe the following winter, 1.Nf3 was unleashed with a vengeance:

My opponents couldn't prepare for this and never knew whether to expect 1.e4 or 1.Nf3. The Reti also forced me to learn more types of positions, and got more endgames which I had to learn to squeeze.

Finally, a story about chess books. In August 2023 I was rooming with FM Samuel Malka who introduced me to the book Calculation! by Sam Shankland. At first, I didn't take it seriously and thought that the puzzles were capricious at best, being unreasonable with what the reader should see. A few months later in Germany, I saw IM Zhao Yuanhe reading it between the rounds and thought; if it's good enough for him, it's good enough for me. For lazy players like me who avoid calculating when possible, why haven't you got it yet?

The other book which came in handy was Rock Solid Chess by Sergey Tiviakov. I heard that Carlsen was impressed with it, and used it as inspiration for his win as black against Arjun Erigaisi in the Double Fianchetto Reti. Despite the book title being a bit misleading (it's really a primer on pawn structures), I came to internalize Tiviakov's voice, which was preaching solid decisions that don't create weaknesses, and slow improvement of the position. The main idea was that it's more important to avoid mistakes and losing then going for glory and trying to win at all costs. This culminated in the final game that got me the title:

The opening was straight from the last chapter on double fianchetto structures.
Notice that despite the conversion phase not being the most precise, black was super solid throughout :)

Collaborate with others in your progress.

When I was coming back from another disappointing tourney in Krakow, Poland, I realized that time-trouble is unavoidable. In two of my losses to lower-rated players, the games were going great and I made sure to reach the time-control comfortably. Yet after getting technically winning positions, my opponents could drag out the game to a point where it was still technically winning, but the second time-control was running out and the position was getting more dynamic. In this case, you can scream all you like about outplaying your opponent (and I did, into the cold Polish night) but the result will stay the same. When I got home, I called my friends Gunnar Andersen and Koosha Jaferian to practice playing 15 seconds +10 second increment, until I wouldn't panic in those cases. Thank you speed-demons!

Another time coming back from 2022 De Sants Open, there were too many forcing lines I didn't count till the end, leaving points on the table:

The simple Bxf4 leads to direct winning lines but for some reason I was scared and couldn't visualize the resulting positions. Chickening out with 34...Rg8 threw away the advantage, and later black had to be precise to survive.

For the sake of practicing visualization, I would play blitz against training partners with the blindfold option on Lichess. We'd also solve studies with my friend Zach Dukic that required seeing ideas far into the variation. With my coach, we would work on complex practical positions from which we'd calculate long lines without touching the board, checking the accuracy of those lines only at the end. By myself, this would have been daunting and tedious. Even opening analysis was more rewarding when others got to "proofread" your lines and spot the weak points or lines your didn't consider.

Funny Stories on the Way

Playing in the 2022 Foxwoods Open, me and my friend Daniel and GM Hungaski were looking for a place to stay, and the hotel chess rates were already sold out by the time we were committed. The cheapest place was an Airbnb a few minutes from the tournament, and it looked cozy enough on the pictures! Only when we got there did I realize it was a trailer park home, with the second floor being literally a meter high. Me and Daniel bravely volunteered to take the second floor beds which was a bigger problem for him, being tall and all. The first night, we kept bumping into the "ceiling" and it took some masterful maneuvering just to make it down to the first floor. The toilet wasn't exactly intuitive and during the second night the floor got flooded which left our shoes in poor condition... Going into the last round I only needed a draw for my last norm while me and Daniel believed that my opponent needed to win for his norm. My opponent agreed and looked determined to win going into the game. After foolishly giving up a pawn in the opening I managed to consolidate and held the endgame. When he reluctantly offered a draw I grabbed that hand as if my life depended on it...just then the arbiter came over and told us that we both got norms, as his opposition rating average was high enough already. All's well that ends well!

Another time me and my friend Faraz decided to play in Crete, as I always wanted to check out their ancient ruins and the Greek culture. Google maps can be deceiving though and the island looked quite small when we were booking places for our stay. When Faraz suggested renting a car to get around, I looked at the Google Map and replied "these small islands probably don't have many cars, we'll just walk". I didn't know at the time that Crete is roughly the same size as the state of Delaware, and though the distance between the playing hall and our place looked small on Google Maps, it was a solid hour bus ride each way. My bad Faraz! On the bus ride there, we were treated with a full picture of Cretan life and the island's beauty. One peculiar detail were the numerous fur coat stores on the way there and back (over 10 I believe) while the temperature never dropped below 30 degrees Celsius. Not suspicious at all! On the way back, airport security was suspicious about both the chess clock and the trophy, believing it to be a dangerous sharp object. Thankfully, he was convinced by the chess pieces. I wasn't as lucky in Bodenmais Germany, where the local jam I won in the tourney was confiscated by airport guards. Should have checked it in!

Lastly, the most fun I've had in all the trips was riding electric scooters across new cities. Prague took an hour to cross despite the cobbled-stones which made for a bumpy ride. Berlin took longer, as there were so many monuments to stop at. But Florence was no picnic at all, mostly because of the small streets. I loved the city but the food didn't agree with my stomach and I had 3 hours before the train was leaving for Trieste. After I got the medicine and ran to the Florentian Dome (which is a must-see in any condition), two venders hard-sold me paintings of the Dome which I figured would make good birthday presents. Problem was that I had to carry everything in my hands while scootering back to the hotel. I had enough fingers to press the throttle but the brake would be a stretch. The small roads forced me to ride with the cars which were going both ways. A garbage truck turned the corner and almost slammed into me, hitting the paintings instead (solving all constipation problems). Still worth it!

I hope you enjoyed the post. If you are interested in a coach that can bring out the best in your chess,
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