Chess Reflections

 I moved to Edinburgh in 2022 from the United States after having spent 12 years of my life there. I had naively assumed that Edinburgh would be very similar and I would get adjusted to my new surroundings fairly quickly. I was quite wrong. Our tenement apartment was cold, we had a mice problem, and it took some time to get adjusted to my new working hours (where I would start at 11 AM and finish at 7 PM to allow for overlap with US teams).  During this time, I wished for a magical undo button that I could press and get my old life back. I would spend time wondering how things would be different if I were only back in Colorado. Perhaps I wouldn't be struggling at work. Maybe I wouldn't worry about things like taxes, and electricity bills so much.  It took me a good two years to get adjusted to life in Edinburgh. Reflecting on my initial time I realized what I was doing. It was  living in the counterfactual .  Everyone does this. You imagine a hypothetical scenar...

I participated in the Livingston Allegro (rapid 20+10) tournament recently. Overall my performance was nothing to write home about scoring a 1.5/5. Securing a draw in the first round. A loss. A win. And two further losses. My last two classical games were losses, where the takeaway was that I didn't come up with my own attacking ideas when my opponent was pressing for theirs. So I thought I would try to play more aggressively in this tournament. My first loss came as a result of a straight up piece blunder in a somewhat equal position. I just hung a knight for no reason. There was a Bishop on e4, and I played my Knight on c6 (which was undefended). I had originally seen that move wasn't possible and then forgot about it. My opponent was playing reasonably quickly and he was around 5 minutes ahead on clock. So there was some sense of playing moves which actually make my opponent think, but this was premature. My second loss was again a blunder, but this time it was "only...