400 points in 158 days.

398 points to be exact, but who's counting?  My initial return to OTB play has been a successful one.   10 games, 2 tournaments, and two ties for first in U1300 and U1500 sections.   I'm officially a class C player now and my next goal is to hit class B as quickly as possible.  If those 10 games were one big tournament, my performance rating would've been 1541.  Not bad, and right in line with my ICC rating.  I'm very curious how much farther I can go rating wise staying with my current training regimen of lots of tactics, a little endgame/opening study and reading over annotated game collections.  I don't see any reason I can't get another 200 points and hit class B with that, especially if my tactics vision improves a bit in my games.

Before we get to any games, here are a few tactics "puzzles" from my games.  One that I solved OTB (easy) and one that I didn't solve (not too difficult).

After a pretty uneventful middlegame, White has sacrificed a pawn for an attack on the enemy king while the Black queen is sidelined.  White has just played 25. Rd1, threatening to remove the guard of the g7 square.

The interesting part about puzzle #2 that I missed OTB, is that all the elements that make the tactics work are in my head when I'm looking for a move.  I had been thinking about knight or bishop sacrifices on c5 to attack the vulnerable e7 bishop for some time.  And I also see that potential skewer on the h1-a8 diagonal.  But I don't put all 3 of those ideas together in my head at once to find a forcing way to make it all work.  Instead I embark on a maneuvering plan on the queenside with an idea of switching to a kingside attack once Black gets tied up.  I eventually won the exchange + a pawn and later the game.  One thing I've noticed about my play, in general, is that I tend to turn off the tactics antenna once I come up with what I think is a good short term strategy to put the squeeze on my opponent.  I need to find a way to remind myself to look for the tactics when I see potential in a position like this.

Now on to a few of my most instructive games.

After I showed this game to Dan, he asked me what I had learned from the game.  My reply was "sometimes it's better to be lucky than good".  That got a good laugh out of him.

A well-deserved loss for my bad play in the opening and in general.

And finally, my favorite game that I've played during this stretch.  It went a bit like a lot of my games: I get an early material lead, White throws everything he has at my king and I defend mostly accurately.  Except this time I wasn't 100% sure if I was winning or he overlooked a forced win.  I couldn't wait to put the game into Houdini to get the real scoop.  As it turns out, I was winning almost the entire time, although I made 2 moves that could've given him an even game or advantage.  The finish was very amusing to me though.

Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good...

My biggest takeaway from my return to OTB play is to not go to sleep tactically in the middle game when I'm in "strategic maneuvering mode".  If I see lots of potential for tactics, I need to find a way to make it work for a few minutes before going back to my plan.

I also need to get better at being a more active defender.  In many of my games so far, I'll get a winning material advantage, then not find the most active defense which shuts down his attack for good or gives me the attack.

Related to both points above, I need to get better at kingside attacks.  I feel very comfortable most of the time in a queenside attack or maneuvering down the center while setting up some planned tactics, but I never really look to attack the king directly.  It's just something I need to get experience in I guess.

A lot of this is related to experience, but at least it gives me something to look for during the games.  I feel like I made a big improvement from my 1st game back to my 10th game just from the experience of managing my time properly and playing with something real (money/points) on the line.

A have a lot of work to do, but this is an encouraging start.  My 1 year anniversary will be November 18th.  Is 1900-2000 out of the question?  What setbacks will I have along the way? Stay tuned.