So I’ve been on a bit of a chess binge this past week. The problem is that I’ve had this horrendously difficult take-home exam to work on, so I’ve been staying inside most weeknights and taking my breaks by playing on the Internet Chess Club.

Unsurprisingly, my rating has plummeted.

I was hanging tough in the 1400’s for awhile (even teasing 1500 from time to time), but now I’m down in the 1200’s. I can bounce back…when I play someone who is <1500 and I absolutely positively focus 100%, I quite often win. But when I play half-heartedly and am distracted, I lose. (Duh).

Another big problem is that I’ve been playing too many low ranked players. You should try to avoid playing people who are more than 100pts lower than you. I do my best when I consistently play people who are at my level or better. But sometimes, no players in this range answer my game requests, so I loosen up the requirements and end up playing an 1100.

I can’t wait until I pass this exam in tommorow. Then, the work on reparing my ICC rating will begin…

This entry was posted on Monday, July 24th, 2006 at 3:37 am and is filed under Chess Playing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.