Revising Plans

In late December, I set myself a course of study of 300 Most Important Chess Positions (2018) by Thomas Engqvist. Although the author suggests learning five positions per week, my plan was to work through five per day. I maintained this schedule until last Thursday.

Friday, my wife and I left for a weekend at a lake cabin and some play in the snow with our puppy. I took the book along, but did not spend as much time working on it as planned.

Upon my return, there were further distractions that kept me from resuming my rapid pace through the book. One of the endgames gave me some trouble as I tried to beat Stockfish from a winning position. Parts of three days this week were invested in this one endgame.

Black to move

Black's best move here, according to Engqvist, is Re1+, but the computer also played Rh1 in some games against me. It took several tries and some time studying Engqvist's analysis before I succeeded is winning with White. I ended up using another study by Genrikh Kasparian as the starting position. This one does not appear in Harold van der Heijden's Endgame Study Database, but Engqvist’s position could occur in the study I used.

The past two days, I have resumed my project of working through five positions per day. If there are no further disruptions to my plan, I should finish in early March. I do have a two-day break planned during a weekend Swiss at the end of February.