Bad Chess Habits

Over the years, especially if those years are filled with routine, somehow most of us acquire bad habits. It takes some conscious mindfulness and cleanup to rid oneself of those harmful repetitive behaviors. Bad Chess habits are not as harmful as smoking or speed driving, but they can destroy one's pleasure from the game. If you are reading this, you very likely play chess for enjoyment, so I suggest pausing to give it some thought.

Here are some that come quickly to my mind:

1. Using the engine for analysing your games
2. Book flipping
3. Chess News reading
4. Video watching
5. Excessive blitz playing
6. Hoarding - books, software, etc
7. Caring about rating at the expense of improvement
8. Memorizing opening moves without understanding their meaning
9. Jumping openings when results don't improve quickly enough
10. Finding excuses for losses without looking at root problems

The list is definitely not complete, and there is something that is more true for some chess players than for others.

Checklist for Maintaining Opening Repertoire in Digital Form

To improve your chess preparation, you want to keep track of your openings in a digital opening repertoire. I already blogged with an example for creating an opening repertoire in my post titled "Opening Preparation - How to make a Tree". It can be maintained in various database  packages, with the output being stored as a single game, looking like this (example from SCID):

Now I am reviewing my opening preparation and I came up with a checklist for maintaining such a tree:

1. Add diagrams to have at least one diagram per game
2. Cut down lines that I will never play myself
3. Add verbal evaluations and explanations of plans wherever possible
4. Add symbol evaluations wherever possible
5. Add my slow and rapid games for completeness
6. Re-evaluate sharp lines with computer and give them a more definite evaluation
7. Remove lines from the repertoire that I completely stopped playing and will never play again
8. Keep repertoire games sorted by ECO
9. Search and highlight tactical combinations anywhere in the repertoire database
10. Label each repertoire game appropriately to distinguish my White from my Black repertoire

This may seem tedious, but this sure beats maintaining the same information on paper!

How to Analyze a Chess Game - 10 Point Checklist

I already wrote about analyzing chess games, but would like to return to the subject, as I have recently re-evaluated the thoroughness with which this has to be done. Now I created a 10 point checklist, which repeats some of the previous ideas, but is more appropriate in the context of a single analyzed game:

1. Is the opening well annotated? Will you likely have problems in the same line ever again? Against the same opponent?
2. Do you have an evaluation graph of the game – in SCID or elsewhere? If not – do you have an idea of when advantage shifted from one side to another?
3. Is every blunder marked as “?” in your analysis?
4. Have you updated your opening repertoire (if you have it stored on a computer) based on this game?
5. Did you learn anything about chess in general from this game? Write it down!
6. Did you learn anything about yourself? Did it reveal your weakness in any area of the game – tactics, strategy, psychological issues (lack of confidence, nervousness, etc)?
7. Was your time management in this game appropriate? Would a grandmaster have to spend as much time on those moves as you did?
8. Did you write down your thoughts? Did you put down all the candidate moves you considered?
9. Are there any moves that you did not consider during the game – but now realize should have been on your mind?
10. Does it now feel like you spent way too much time going through this game??

Canadian Chess Open 2012 - Lessons Learned

After a (very) long break, I played in a major swiss chess tournament – Canadian Chess Open 2012 in Victoria. I scored only 50%, which is not too great given that all of my opponents were rated lower than myself. Nonetheless, I truly enjoyed playing after such a long break. Here is what I re-learned about competitive chess yet again:

1. Studying chess at home cannot replace regular tournament practice. Practical chess strength needs constant feeding by playing in tournaments
2. Opening preparation in large Swiss Events plays a major role. Everyone does it these days! Catch opponent unaware is more important than finding a hole in their old repertoire (they will play something new to surprise you anyway, so you should not expect them to walk the same path as in previous games). This was often an issue for me, where in 3-4 games my opponents served me with opening surprises, or simply remembered established theory better than I did
3. Opening repertoire must allow for variety, both to avoid getting surprised, and also to be more flexible and work around opponent’s weak spots
4. Getting enough sleep, food, fresh air before the games is quite essential for maintaining concentration during the games
5. The tension of a big slow time controls event cannot be compared to a blitz game online, and not even to an unrated rapid one-day Sunday tournament
6. Modern time controls don’t allow you to get flagged due to increments, but you only have a chance to think deep a couple of times during the game – choose those moments wisely. Ideally you don’t have to take those deep thinking sessions right out of the opening
7. Many players avoid mainline theory in favour of choosing lines that they are familiar with. Here is what those guys played against me in this tournament:
   As White:
   1.e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. d3
   1.f4
   1.g3
   As Black: 1. e4 b6
8. There are a lot of young chess players in BC who need to be watched out for!
9. One can lose a lot of rating points in a tournament, and still enjoy the experience!
10. Victoria chess organizers take running events very seriously, and want to create the best environment for competitive chess

10 Things I learned from Watching the Chess World Cup

A few months ago, I watched probably almost 50 hours of Sergei Shipov analysing live (in Russian) the games of the World Cup in Khanty-Mansiysk. Was this the best use of my chess study time? Probably not, but I was so fascinated by the drama of the tournament, and Shipov’s skill and dedication as a commentator, that I could not stop watching. Guest commentators included Valery Yoshan, Ian Nepomniachtchi, and Alexander Khalifman and this allowed to also compare how different strong players approach the game. A chess amateur like myself would not be able to tell the difference in strength between all these players, but if you watch them analyse together for few hours, it becomes obvious who is in a better shape, and who has more experience in a variety of middlegame positions.

To reap at least some benefit from it, I made a series of blog posts, but also here is my general observations and notes on interesting things that commentators have said:

1. Grandmasters seem to remember an enormous amount of opening theory, but they can surprise each other in every game – in fact they do!
2. Khalifman seems to also know every opening in the world (indeed as a player he had a very wide opening repertoire)
3. Khalifman seems a bit more careful at evaluating positions than Shipov. Shipov would say “the endgame is winning”, Khalifman says “good winning chances”.
4. As you get older, your decisions to take risks on the board are less influenced by the position and more by how you feel today
5. Ivanchuk is really tricky when playing against opponent’s time trouble
6. Judit Polgar is great at attacking, but is not as good at defending and being careful
7. Grandmasters seem to be understanding positions better than IM’s, formulating their assessment of each position much quicker
8. In each position, there are a lot of very interesting moves, and one has to have a really good decision process to identify candidate moves, and pick the best ones
9. Grandmasters sometimes make moves that are hard to understand, but there is nearly always some idea behind that move
10. Ivanchuk’s moves are particularly hard to guess or explain

Taking a Break from Chess

In November/December - I stopped any studying of chess for about a month, and now resumed it. While that wasted a month of chess learning, this kind of temporary hiatus can have positive effects on your chess improvement and even overall well being (!):

1. You free up time for non-chess activities during the break
2. A break gives time to reflect on your studying methods
3. You can assess the improvements made during the previous study period
4. You get to plan on what your next goal in chess is, and what are the steps to achieve it
5. You get to reflect on the importance and role of chess (if any) in your life
6. You regain appetite for studying chess – when you feel like you are ready for it again
7. If you play a lot online, you also regain appetite for playing chess
8. Your new efforts will have some new, better focus
9. Your brush off bad habits, such as looking at games too quickly, or spending too much time surfing chess news websites
10. The openings that you felt were getting too boring, may not appear so when you look at them after a break – that can save you time for changing repertoire!

It is very easy to get into a rut in chess, like in anything in life, so taking a break is likely a good thing for any passion you may have!

Happy Chess Learning in 2012!

Strategy for Gaining Rating on Internet Chess Club

Internet Chess is mostly for entertainment, but most players today play more games online than over the board. So it is something we need to treat rather seriously if we want to improve from online games. Well, I am not a very good blitz player, and I am not in very good chess shape, but I noticed recently that I played quite a few blitz games on ICC without losing or drawing any. In fact my winning streak lasted so many games that there is not a single loss or draw in my ICC history, which spans 20 last games. Bobby Fischer’s winning streak in 1971 was 19 straight wins, but I had a couple of aborted games here, so his streak probably is still more significant. In the process my Blitz rating went up from 2052 to 2192.

Not to over-celebrate, I wanted to make a few observations to explain how this could possibly happen:

1. I had lower rated opponents than myself in all of those games. This is not too helpful for gaining rating, but surely helps to make the streak longer
2. I only played 1-2 game each day. I tend to lose focus/motivation if I play many blitz games at once.
3. I used a convenient mouse, which helped with concentration
4. I played these games not at my home, but rather at a place where I have very few external distractions
5. I was lucky in a couple of those games
6. I played my regular openings with both colours
7. I played most of those games with the same time control
8. I did not surf the web or listen to music while playing, minimizing self-induced distractions
9. I did not play in tournaments during these 3 months, so again, I got used to the time controls
10. I started to particularly care about the outcome once I set the goal for 20 games without a loss

Now that I got this blog entry out of my system, I can go and lose a game with a clear consciousness!

How to Study the Endgame in Chess – 10 steps

I have written a lot about opening preparation, so this may have created create an impression that openings is the only thing I care about as a chess player. However that focus is merely to compensate for the fact that that I have always liked endgames more and my opening preparation was way behind. So here are some tips to improve your endgame:

1. Read a good book on endgame theory. I can recommend Dvoretsky’s Endgame Manual
2. Read a good book on endgame technique. Here I recommend either some of Dvoretsky’s books, or Shereshevsky’s Endgame Strategy
3. Study your own games that included interesting endgames
4. Solve endgame puzzles and studies
5. Play practice games starting with endgame positions. Use time controls with increments.
6. Specialize in some material e.g. rooks + knights, or bishops of opposite colour.
7. Write articles about endgames for magazines or websites. A few years ago, I wrote a series of articles for ‘En Passant’, several of them were about endgames. I probably learned a lot more from that experience than any of the readers.
8. Use a training endgame course with a software like Peshka
9. Do a deep analysis of some selected positions and games. Trying to establish exactly whether a given endgame position is winning or a draw can help you to appreciate the whole complexity of chess
10. Study the games of players, who are particularly famous for their endgame skills – Karpov, Andersson, Rubinstein, Kramnik

Getting Things Done – Studying Chess

Personal chess improvement has always been an ongoing project for me, but often without well-defined goals and somewhat obscure objectives. Just like any a complex project, it needs some structure, planning, motivation, and ability to track progress. I believe this applies to both professional chess players and to amateurs, who only have a few hours a week to dedicate to chess improvement. No one can reach perfection in chess, so everyone’s time is limited, making success dependent on how effectively we study the game.

What happens often is that while going over your game, you realize – “oh yeah, I played badly in this rook endgame, I’d better study some related endgame theory”. Another day, during a blitz game online, your opponent throws a rare variation of Scandinavian defence at you, and you realize that you had never even considered this line in your opening preparation. Again, that creates another “TODO” item that may linger in your mind for a while, but most likely won’t materialize into action on your part. I’ve heard chess players often make regretful remarks during post-mortem sessions about what they “should have, could have, would have” studied. Things we want to do to improve our chess are of broad variety, here are some more examples:

• Studying a particular opening variation
• Reading a specific book that received good reviews
• Watching an interesting chess video with player interviews
• Trying out new training software, such as Peshka
• Studying games of a particular player – such as Botvinnik
• Playing practice games in a particular opening
• Preparing for a particular tournament
• Preparing against a particular opponent, whom you often face in tournaments
• Improving your time management
• Practicing tactics
• etc

What is a good way to keep track of this kind of lingering thoughts, ideas, and make sure your best intentions for self improvement are fulfilled with some meaningful actions? Turns out chess is not a very different from any other areas that “knowledge workers” are involved in – areas where defining “What To Do?” is almost as important then the action act of “Doing”. I believe that the system known as “Getting Things Done”, advocated by David Allen should apply almost ideally to studying chess.

  Here are some of the principles of Getting Things Done approach:

• Have a system to keep track of things you need “To Do”, rather than keeping them in your head and worry about forgetting individual items
• Do regular weekly reviews of tasks, act upon them depending on your available time and energy
• Focus on tasks based on the physical contexts you are in – near computer, in transit, etc
• Manage multiple projects within the same system – chess can be one of your “projects”, and you can have multiple projects dedicated to chess improvement
• Define short term and long term goals and objectives
• Life Time – Becoming a GM
• Long Term – 3-5 years - Becoming an IM
• Short term – 6 months - Improving your openings for Black

While this system is good for anything we do in life, it is not easy to consistently follow, as I discovered myself. However personal chess study strikes me as something where this “Getting Things Done” approach could be particularly effective.

How to learn the most from your online blitz games

1. play with slower time controls. You won’t learn much from 1 minute games, and on ICC it does not take too long to find an opponent for a decent 15 minute game
2. focus, focus, focus, don’t get distracted on other windows open on your computer while opponent is thinking (or even worse – during your move!). I already wrote a whole other post about that.
3. don’t play online chess when you are tired. That kind of makes sense, since it’s hard to focus when you’re tired.
4. make sure all your games are automatically stored into a pgn file
5. review each game soon after it’s played
6. don’t feed it immediately to an engine, analyse by yourself for a bit
7. check the opening against a Reference DB to see where you and your opponent deviated from previously played games
8. if your opponent played something you completely did not expect - update your opening repertoire afterwards
9. don’t play too many games in a row
10. don’t take online chess too seriously, remember that over the board tournaments is a completely different game from online blitz

To the last point, when I played in my first British Columbia Junior championship a few years ago, the highest rated player had been a bit rusty. He had not played tournament chess for about a year, and he did not do so well (finishing outside of the top 3 from what I could recall) in our little competition. After the tournament he told me with a smile that he had played a lot of 1 minute games right before the tournament. He was doing really well in those, and assumed he was in excellent shape for the event. Switching time controls is never easy, I am sure we have all discovered that!

Improving time management in a chess game

You can’t improve what you can’t measure. I recommend keeping track of the time you spent during the game. Once you get into the habit of adding clock information to every move, it won’t be any more of a distraction than recording the move itself. Once you get home – you can enter it later into your personal collection/database of games and later use it while analysing the game. I went over a quick example in my previous post on the same subject. To improve your time management, here are 10 questions to think about:

1. did you spent enough time during the critical moments?
2. were there simple moves on which you spent more time than necessary?
3. was your opening preparation sufficient to quickly play the opening moves?
4. did you take advantage of your opponent’s long thinking sessions by preparing a quick response against his most likely moves?
5. was your overall playing speed appropriate for the time controls in the tournament?
6. were you spending enough time on your moves even if your opponent was in time trouble?
7. is your thinking generally efficient? Are you careful about first identifying all candidate moves, or do you ever spend time calculating crazy complications to later discover that they are not necessary?
8. do you handle time trouble reasonably trouble well – stress wise? There are good blitz players, who collapse at the end of a long slow game due to time trouble…
9. can you play basic and/or simple endgames with little increment only? games are often decided in those long endgames when speed matters.
10. do you play in enough slow tournaments for any of this to even matter?

I suspect by answering these questions you will learn a lot more about your chess strengths and weaknesses in general. I personally suspect that my opening preparation is often falling behind so I sometimes have spend too much time early in the game. I also generally don’t get too stressed out by time trouble (not more than I usually am, that is), but even though I like the endgame, I know there plenty of endgames I misplayed that I might have saved if I had an extra half an hour on the clock! I am also really bad about thinking during my opponent’s time, I am usually so stressed out during my games that I can’t stay in front of the board while my opponent is thinking.

All in all, if your time management is poor, or if there is something you want to improve about it (I know I do) – the popular advice is to play training games or an entire tournament with focus on better time management. Even if it has a detrimental impact on your result just in that tournament – that would make you a better player in the long term.

How to prepare for a Chess Tournament

If you are a professional tournament player, or very active in chess competitions, you are probably jumping from tournament to tournament so frequently that preparing for a given event involves making sure that you register and show up for it in timely fashion, and then just prepare for each game (pure guessing on my part, I actually don’t know for a fact what the pros do). But if you are like me and only play in 2-3 tournaments a year, being rusty and not adjusted to the tournament setting can seriously affect your play. Here are some suggestions for how average adult players (1500-2400 ELO) can get better prepared for those rare but important chess tournaments:

1. Play some practice games online, with slower time controls. With patience, one can nearly always find an opponent for a 15 minute game on ICC. Even better – a couple of training games in an environment similar to the tournament setting (I would guess though that if you don’t play much in tournaments, training games over the board would be hard to arrange too). In any case – focus on the quality of your play, not the online rating.
2. Practice tactics
3. Find out who your opponents are going to be, if that’s possible. Even in a Swiss tournament, it is possible to have a cursory idea of who your 10 most dangerous competitors are and whether there is any opening in your repertoire you need to review.
4. Decide on your opening repertoire for this tournament. Focus on preparing just those openings. Your long term opening repertoire plan may involve adding a new defence against e4, or switching to 1.d4 from 1.e4, and that’s fine, but make a decision well in advance whether they are going to be ready for any given tournament.
5. Do a bit of study for pure pleasure – look at your favourite games/books, etc, to reignite your interest in the game
6. Rest from chess for several days before the tournament. Most tournaments now are played with two games per day, and with some possible “before the round” opening preparation, during the competition you will have more than chess to satisfy your daily dose. So don’t overdose it!
7. Plan the non-chess part of the event well, try to clear up your schedule to reduce possible distractions. As a side note, I used to take a day or two off work right before the tournament to “rest”, but that just made me hope to get review my openings, and do all the tactics and opening and other training in those two days, which was obviously contradicting point 6!
8. Set up a goal for the tournament. I am not talking about a pure result, expected performance rating, but rather a specific training objective that you can aim for during the games. Examples would be “not getting into time trouble”, “spend more time at the board during opponent’s turn instead of walking” and so on.
9. Get enough sleep!
10. Preparing for each tournament should start at the … end of the previous tournament, so when the event is over – make sure to go over your games sooner rather than later. What was the problem in your play, and how are you going to address it?

I now realized that I already had made a similar list a couple of years ago, the list has now grown from 3 to 10 items. Does that mean that I now prepare for tournaments more thoroughly? Or just that I got to better appreciate the side effects of sleep deprivation?

10 reasons to analyse your old chess games

I already made a few posts about the benefits of analysing your own games; one of the suggestions is that you’d analyse the game pretty soon after you played it. That way you can reflect on the thoughts you had during the game, and incorporate them into analysis. But there is also plenty of reasons to analyse your old games too! Here are a few:

1. Even if you looked at that game in great detail 10 years ago, computer engines would have made significant progress, so you’ll spot a few new tactical details that you never realized you missed. Expect a few surprises!
2. Similarly, you may have not had a proper database at the time at all, so you may have not analysed the opening part of it properly.
3. Even if you did check the game against a database back then, that was a long time ago! You will see if any new games have been played in the opening since you played that game in 2002.
4. Old games may be still very relevant to your opening repertoire. Moreover, you may have given up on a certain opening because of a tough loss. Was that loss really the result of an opening problem? Or is it worth resurrecting those old variations that you had spent weeks studying?
5. You may notice some strategic plans that never occurred to you at the time when you played a game. You may have learned about them already after playing that game. Seeing how they could apply to familiar positions should re-enforce that learning experience.
6. Looking at several of your older games at once – gives you a better perspective of the trends in your games. Are endgames really your strength? Or does every endgame you play contain 2-3 big mistakes?
7. If you want to study bishop endgames, you may have not played any of them recently. Old games are then a great study/analysis material! You’ll notice that Mark Dvoretsky often uses his old games even in newer books, and likes to add details to his old findings.
8. Some games you may have not analysed at all (e.g. you did not have time immediately after the tournament, and only looked at 2-3 games that seemed most interesting). But even simple games can have a lot of instructive details in them!
9. Several years later, you’d be more objective in analysis, and look for improvements in parts of the game that you would have avoided looking at otherwise (e.g. it is not fun to look at an emotional loss)
10. In addition to reviewing your moves in the actual game, you’ll have a chance to review your old analysis, which reveals your understanding of the chess!

Given how few tournament games I play right now, I used positions from my old games for a lot of my blog entries, here are a few examples:
Game from Canadian Chess Junior Championship 2002 – video
Three rook endgames, three choices, three blunders, three videos
Analytical mistakes – bishop against knight
Most Complicated Pawn Endgame I Ever Played
Bishop endgame (Wright-Jiganchine, 1999)

10 Reasons to Build an Opening Repertoire

I’ve been alluding to the importance of building an opening repertoire by talking about various methods of doing it, but I have not actually explicitly discussed why it is important to build up an opening repertoire, and put it into a database. Of course, you’d expect to get better positions out of the opening! But as a bonus, here are 10 other direct reasons why having a well defined repertoire is going to benefit your play and study:

1. You will save time on the clock during games, since you won’t have to think about which line to choose today
2. Every game played with a repertoire (online blitz, over the board, etc) – takes you closer to understanding your type of middlegame. Also, instead of playing random positions, you are now working towards a glorious goal of polishing your openings
3. You can ensure you study games of grandmasters that match your repertoire, rather than random ones
4. If you repertoire is in a database, you can give it to computer engine to blunder check
5. If you want to analyse a fun position – pick one from your repertoire, and you are working on an opening novelty!
6. You can test how well you remember your openings with a tool like Chess Position Trainer
7. If you have a chess study buddy, you can play practice games from certain starting positions, just like Botvinnik did with Ragozin!
8. If you have a coach, he can help to review your repertoire, rather than labour on building it for you from scratch
9. You have a better starting point when preparing for a game against a particular opponent
10. You can now focus on improving other parts of the game, such as middlegame, tactics, endgame, etc. Improving your repertoire will take care of itself, it is an ongoing process, but you have a baseline to work against!

You may have your own reasons, but the last one is a clear winner for me. Ultimately chess is a game for us to enjoy, and sometimes having little bit of discipline up front makes it more pleasant and fun in the long run, going back to my older post on how to enjoy studying openings.

10 tips for Analysing your Chess Games

One of the major ways of studying chess in our Russian “chess school” in the nineties was analyzing your own games. That got me into believing that this is the best way to improve your game. I started doing it without computer, on a piece of paper, but obviously over time tried to use databases as much as possible for maintaining and updating a collection of my games. I also helped several students of mine to learn how to analyze their games in effective ways, so here are a few suggestions that you might find useful:

1. Maintain a database of all your games. I keep several databases: my games with standard time controls, rapid time controls, internet games
2. As soon as possible after the game has finished – put down thoughts you had during the game. That will help you later to remember and understand the reasons for your mistakes.
3. Let the computer engine run through the game in blunder check mode – that way you’ll know immediately about the major blunders you and your opponent made
4. Identify the critical moments of the game. How many times does evaluation of position change, and advantage shifts from one side to the other?
5. Analyse the opening, update your opening repertoire if necessary. Evaluate the position after the opening, to decide whether your openings need “repair”
6. Do not just analyse in terms of variations. Give verbal evaluations of critical positions. If white is better – say why. That helps you to better understand the true meaning of each position. That also makes you stop looking at the computer evaluation and think on your own for a few seconds.
7. When you’re done analyzing – summarize your the game. Why did the game end the way it did? Where was it decided – opening, endgame, tactical blunder?
8. Over time – look at the trends in your games. Do you lose more points in openings or in endgames? Is there anything you can study in particular to improve those trends?
9. Go back to your games, even years after they were played. I do that just to practice my analytical skills, and very often I find surprising how much new little details I can discover (e.g. the endgame I thought was drawn – is actually winning, etc).
10. As already mentioned – don’t fully rely on the computer engine. Try to find moves and ideas on your own, and only then let the engine give you hints. It is ok to guide the engine, but make sure you’re still the driver.

10 steps to a Better Chess Opening Repertoire

1. Write it down, and then print it out. Begin by recording what you know already, and build on that.
2. Don’t be afraid that some parts of it are incomplete - realize that building an opening repertoire is a long term goal
3. As Mark Dvoretsky explained in Opening Preparation – openings you play should:
1. Fit your style (open vs. closed positions)
2. Fit your memory’s abilities. Relatively speaking, some openings require understanding of plans (e.g. Closed Sicilian), while others, such as King’s Indian defence require remembering a lot of theory as well
4. Don’t easily give up on lines that did not work out in a game, instead try to understand what particular mistake caused a defeat. That being said, if you keep having bad results in an opening – it’s worth reviewing whether it matches your style (see above).
5. It’s may sound obvious, but review it against books like MCO or NCO, computer databases, etc.
6. Pay attention to move orders and understand their implications. In “Slav Defence” Matthew Sadler talks about how this is often underestimated.
7. Understand how your openings are connected to typical middlegames and endgames. Shereshevsky’s Mastering the Endgame is a great reference on the Opening->Endgame connection.
8. Understand the opening’s history, and how ideas developed over time - see Kasparov’s “Revolution in the 70s”.
9. Before an important tournament - review the variations you will mainly rely on in this event (assuming your repertoire allows some variety in the first place). If you know in advance your opponent in next round – spend an hour to prepare for that specific game. Both will save you time over the board.
10. Review all games that you played in past, online and in over the board tournaments. Did you remember your own repertoire? Did the games reveal gaps in your coverage of theory?

Good luck! I am still working on step 1 for my own repertoire …