I haven't done any chess since then, which is about 2 months. I had planned on taking a break in preparation for my summer chess schedule. I can't help but feel like I didn't get done nearly as much study as I would've liked. I still haven't done a tactics puzzle since December. I did spend a couple of weeks on ChessGym with their Attackers and Defenders games. 30 minutes a day for 8-10 days got me 6th on both ranking lists. It's a fun little diversion, but I doubt it has much value after that 10 days.
I might play in the Millionaire Chess Open this year, since they actually realized that no one wants to spend $1500 to enter a tournament on top of hotel and airfare to a desert in the middle of nowhere (Las Vegas). This year's tournament is in Atlantic City, NJ. The vast majority of active chess players are in the NYC-PA area and this location will be much more convenient. I expect them to actually break 1,000 entrants this year and have a successful tournament.
With that in mind, I've picked out 5 weekend tournaments I want to play in between now and then, plus a one month rest period before the MCO. I hope to play well enough to break 2000 by my last tournament which actually falls on the weekend of my birthday. That would be a nice present to myself. That would mean ~2.5 years to go from 1000 to 2000 rating.
And now for the last two games I played before my break. Game #45 is typical of the type of success I see in the Queen's Gambit Modern Exchange. I have a completely winning game by move 20. I have enough experience in this line now that I see the ideas very quickly and don't waste a lot of time on the clock. He made me work to get the full point, but there was only one point from there when I thought like I had made a hasty mistake, but it turns out I didn't.
Game #46 is another Carlsbad structure, this time in the Nimzo-Indian. I've never played this line before. I spent a couple of days back in early/mid April looking for a new system in the Rubinstein Nimzo, and decided to go with this setup since it seemed similar to how I play in the QGD. But I hadn't looked at it since. This game didn't really follow any of the model games I looked at past move 10 or so. I was able to figure out some of the theory differences over the board and ended with a promising position. After a couple of moves hesitating, I break open the kingside on move 16. After what he probably thought were some harmless exchanges, he sees he's losing the exchange after my 22nd move. I believe I saw this idea at least by move 17/18. From there its mostly work to get the rest of my forces coordinated and bring home the win. I ended up missing some easier wins on the way to making the 30 move time control, but still found ways to keep his position under pressure.
