Too Much At A Time

Call it bad luck. Call it bad concentration. Say it is due to too much on my mind. What ever excuse I want to come up with is fine. But I have been losing a lot of games to people who have ratings way lower than I do.

So, I sat down and looked at them to try and find out what I was doing wrong. What can cause someone to lose to a player that is almost 400 rating points lower, consistently. And what did I find beyond uninspired moves, lack of a battle plan or leveraging good positions and tactics was that my endgame was terrible. In the past few that I have played I believe that my endgame position was at least event to better but I wasn't able to take advantage of them.

Lately I have been trying to study the Queen's Gambit and the Queen's Gambit Declined. The QGD was suggested as a good defense that I should learn as Black against d4. So, I have been investing time here but overall I think I need to really get down the basics and look at where I need to spend my limited time. Like I told someone yesterday, very few times do people win a game in the opening or even in the middle game. One might come out with a small advantage but not typically the win. The win is sealed in the end game.

So, I'm going to spend the next few weeks just studying the end game. This will hopefully give me the tools I need to play these end games strongly and add a few wins (hopefully) to my record.