Manhem GM tournament, and other plans....

The period after my last tournament (which was Bosnian Premier League) was the period of inactivity when it is about my chess.
I did some occasional training sessions (for others) and I did some plans, but most of all, I tried to rest.
Now, when my next tournament is just around the corner, I need to write some lines about the tournament, but also about my plans and thoughts for this season.
When talking about my next tournament, it will be one of the tournaments where I am regular player, and one of the peak points of my calendar.
How it will be different from the last year, you can find in the text.


I can start with the list of participants in Gothenburg:

1.   GM Eduardas Rozentalis              2619                         LTU
2.   GM Emanuel Berg                        2539                        SWE
3.   GM Tiger Hillarp Persson              2528                         SWE
4.   IM Erik Blomqvist                          2483                       SWE
5.   IM Axel Smith                              2461                       SWE
6.   IM Victor Nithander                      2455                        SWE
7.   IM Torstein Bae                           2453                        NOR
8.   IM Daniel Semcesen                    2447                        SWE
9.   IM John Paul Wallace                  2394                         AUS
10.   IM Jasmin Bejtovic                       2392                         BIH

I have to say that these ratings are from 1. July and it will definitely be some changes on 1. August list, as Swedish Championship was played, and Visma GM tournament will be also rated for the list on 1. August.
If compared with the previous years, you can see that this time it will be only three GMs (last year, and year before that it was four), but it will be only on the paper.
IM Erik Blomqvist is now Grandmaster, but he will not get his title before Manhem GM tournament.
Also, IM Daniel (The Vulture) Semcesen  took his third GM norm, and he is now only a few Elo points far from the GM title.
If not these days in Czech Republic in Pardubice, I am sure that Daniel will achieve his goal in Gothenburg.

The real novelty for this year is that it will be also parallel IM tournament, where younger players and those who are not ready for GM group will play.
The list of the players is still not published.

One can notice that this year was somehow better conditions for the elite players in Swedish chess.
During this summer, there were (and will be) GM and IM tournaments in Växjö and Gothenburg, and in July there were Swedish individual championship.
The A group (SM) and in a some way B group (ME) were for elite.
During winter months there are Elitserien with quite strong A group in Rilton Open in Stockholm.

As you can see from the list, I am the lowest rated in Gothenburg
What that means?
Well, I will have a good motivation to prove that I am not the weakest.

I have three phases to do, in order to be full prepared for the tournament.
I can reveal some parts of them, without opening my cards too much.

Let´s begin with this quotation:

"Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital."  by Aaron Levenstein

If I try to adopt this on my Elo curve, it stands like this:
I did not show any substantial progress in 2013, compared to 2012 (very slight plus).
I played 63 Elo games in half a year, which in average is 126 in one year and that means a way too much!
My energy is now infinite, and I did mistake by playing all this competitions.
If I was thinking when I should, about this things, I would avoid to play one tournament in Czech republic (either Prague Open or Marienbad GM), and of course Copenhagen Chess Challenge.
That´s why I need so drastic rest from chess as I do now.

If I do further analysis of my performance, I can see that from February and open in Cannes, I performed around (or slight below) 2500 in Elo in every competition with normal rate of play 90 minutes for 40 moves, and 30 minutes for the rest of the game (plus 30 seconds from the first move).
The only two tournaments where I played with other time control were Bosna 2013 and Copenhagen Chess Challenge (I have to add here that in those competitions I had further not chess related problems of all sorts).
In my last tournament (Bosnian League) I again performed around 2500, before the last three rounds, when I could not concentrate on chess anymore (although I did quite solid performance at the end).

The purpose of this text is not to make some self promotion, but to underline importance of sport element in chess.
Not just the physical condition, which is obvious one of the most important factors, but the level of motivation and creativity.
In such a huge number of games in just half a year, nobody can be on the highest point of it´s creativity.

The second phase of my preparation will be a pure chess preparation.
It will be some theoretical preparation, and also some combination to improve my level of chess thinking just before the tournament.
I will do that from 1st August to 8th August.
The third part will be the psychological preparation.

In the second part of 2013 I will play only three more competitions.
It will be Bosnian first division, where I will play for my club Gorazde Chess Club (we will fight for the promotion), and later on in Swedish Elitserien.
It will be one more open tournament in 2013, somewhere where I never played before.
I will not publish the name of the tournament, before it became official.

In 2014, my participation in the tournaments will take the major changes compared with 2013 and 2012.

OBSERVE: My next article on the blog will be in the beginning of August, because I will visit Italy, and stay there one week.