Number 9 sounds good

Maybe you should pay more attention your Black openings. I'm just interpreting what you're saying, but there's a lot of "draws are saved bad/lost positions" in there. That's probably a warning sign!

If you find some good resources and/or lines against the c4/Nf3 setups I'd love to see them, that's where my weakness openingwise is too!

Hitch, that's precisely why I said I'm working on Black against Réti systems Petroff is fine, all the positions I've had from that out the opening have been equal or better: it's errors later on that are bothering me.

I don't know enough about your games to say anything really (how could I), but I thought it was worth mentioning

Well, my Cube rating is still hovering at 1740, so I'm not worse off than before, but I'm in a patch of lesser form certainly. I'm downgrading my status back to Class B until I solidly break and maintain above 1800, partially because I can see the defects in my lesser form at the mo

In other news my holiday to France for the 9 round Chambéry tournament is confirmed and I'm booking it all at the moment Naturally with six weeks left I have a lot of time to work on things, mostly tactical consistency and trying to think of failsafe thinking methods in case I get into bad form or miss things, to avoid horrible blunders as much as I can. I'll post any training schedule I develop soon, and would really appreciate constructive feedback on whether it seems realistic.

One thing I'm wondering about is how feasible it would be to play things like Italian Game/Scotch in place of my Ruy Lopez exchange, since we're at an <1800 tournament, and the higher end of those will certainly know how to bonk us into either a dead drawn game or keep an edge for Black. I want my White games to be worth more than that I'm going to be working daily on simple endgames, and trying to annotate my own games, which I will publish on here, so that I can challenge my own positional subconscious misconceptions.

Theoretical training plan for Chambéry. I'd REALLY appreciate feedback: I get so little in this journal, particularly about how realistic my training plans sound, any advice for peaking at the right time (which I tend to do early), and other stuff.

1. Games in Chambéry could last upwards of six hours. While any more than one going the distance is unlikely, I must get myself into the long-game mindset by playing and fully annotating afterwards, to be presented in the site for constructive commentary and criticism, two games a week at 90 minutes for all moves, or as I get closer to the time, against Fritz with the actual time control (40 moves in 1hr 50, 20 moves in 50, Game in 10+30secs a move)

2. Half an hour or so of tactical study every day. Mark down the success rate and see if it improves or peaks.

3. Tied to this, play a few casual rapid games most days, and note when I feel completely blind about my abilities in tactics or assessment, and see how to fix this, because I've never been able to predict when it will happen or cure it :S

4. Work on Fundamental Chess Endings, page by page in K+Ps and K+R(s)+P(s) endings so that I gain a full understanding, going at a correct pace rather than trying to do too much.

5. Work very gently on Two/Four Knights theory with the books I have, making sure to understand and personally approve every position I would play. Also look at the Lasker/Fischer Exchange Spanish, and games by Rozentalis (its main GM proponent, a 2600+ behemoth at that) so that I have a stronger primary weapon.

6. I hesitate to try to be so alarmingly regular, but try to eat a regular diet (not necessarily superhealthy; I've found that I need a certain amount of sugary/fatty stuff to keep my brain in chess form), and if I deviate, see if it affects my play.

I've posted games for constructive criticism and received barely anything, I've never received much support or anything in this journal, and I've been left hanging in the Analysis Exchange. So I'm leaving, because my efforts to improve through this site aren't getting me anywhere. I hope everyone who knew me enjoyed replaying some of my games, and reading this journal. Please delete this thread after a while; I won't be back to add to it.

Hey Arbiter- don't leave so soon! I don't know if you saw this but I analyzed two of your games in my blind analysis series- you never commented so perhaps you didn't see it. I'm sure you were hoping for a stronger player to help you but I didn't want you leave thinking you were completely ignored! At any rate, if you do move on, I wish you the best of luck.

A few comments were posted on your training plan, but were wiped out during The Big Crash.
I remember b/c i posted one, i think Pobble posted another, and there may have been more.

I saw your thread on the "Inaccurate Attack". The choice of game was really hard to comment IMO. Best wishes.

That's a shame, TheArbiter. I really appreciated the help you gave me studying Rook endgames.