Challenge 2500 | Almost halfway there!

Introduction

First things first: I have decided to continue this blog over at Substack, see here.
I won't stop posting on Lichess entirely, but I do intend to publish the actual entries of 'Challenge 2500', that is, regular and detailed articles regarding training and tournament play, on Substack; and every once in a while (e.g. every 2-3 blog entries or once a month), I'll publish a summary of those or something along those lines on Lichess.

One thing I'll probably don't write much about here on Lichess going forward is my training. Mostly because I believe it's not that interesting for the vast majority of people; e.g., I don't want to 'spam' the Lichess blog site with, let's say, weekly updates regarding my training routine.
In general, I like the idea of being able to write about anything without feeling self-conscious about putting things out into the open that probably >95% of Lichess users aren't interested in at all.
If someone is actually interested though and wants to continue to follow along, they can easily subscribe to my Substack (which is free of course); otherwise though, they won't be bothered. Simple as that! :)

That being out of the way, let's briefly summarise the last two tournament participations.

Satu Mare, 14.08. - 20.08.

Just two days after playing the last round of Vlissingen Open (Lichess blog entry on that), my next event started: a GM tournament which took place in Satu Mare, Romania, from 14.-20.08.

In general, the event went well: I scored 6/9 points (4 wins, 4 draws, 1 loss), which amounted to a rating performance of 2506, and a rating change of +9.4. This, added to the result from Vlissingen, took me to right around 2445.

I started strong with 2.5/3, had a tough mid-section scoring only 1/3 where 2.5 poinst should've been possible, but managed to pull myself together to finish the tournament with another 2.5/3.
All in all, a decent performance... but definitely some chances left on the table.

One recurring issue in this tournament was bad time management. In more than one game, I had perfectly decent or even winning positions where I simply didn't have the time to handle them correctly.
Not finding the best continuation with just seconds on the clock is forgivable in many cases — but ending up in a situation where accuracy is needed but time is missing... not so much. And so I'll have to continue to work on this problem and think about how to tackle it.

This is my chess-results summary for this tournament.
Here the study with all the games:

They are mostly not annotated, but on Substack I've published a very long article going through the games in detail (at times, probably too much) and delving into some of the matters not directly concerned with the chess itself, including no-draw-rules, the issues with GM tournaments and some thoughts on the psychology of bad results.
Feel free to take a look if you'd like: https://jakobpfreundt.substack.com/p/challenge-2500-12-satu-mare

Wiesbaden, 24.08. - 27.08.

After the tournament in Romania had finished, it was time to get back to Germany. A full day stop in Budapest to split up the train journey was spent walking around the city and having some rest from playing chess (although it was hardly actual rest, as my phone tells me I walked 35k steps or over 27km that day... well, I guess in a city like Budapest one has to make full use of the time one has available).

On the 24th of August though, I was back at the chess board, as I played the 7-round Schlosspark Open.
In this tournament though, I certainly felt some fatigue. While I had missed some chances to score better in Romania, I was on the lucky side of things in Wiesbaden.
I won my first 4 games and drew the remaining 3, but in two games, rounds 3 and 5, I was pretty much completely lost, though each time I tried to be as resourceful and 'slippery' as possible and my opponent let me back into the game in each case such that I actually scored 1.5/2 from those two rounds.

I ended the tournament with two solid draws, one against Khenkin (2508) with White, where I didn't manage to make something out of a slight opening advantage and one with Black against Weber (2276) where I never really got any chances.

All in all an acceptable tournament, but nothing special and certainly a performance rating below 2500 as well. Here's the scorecard. I did win 3 rating points though, yay!

Given that the games from that tournament are nowhere to be found, I'd like to keep it that way. There is no reason to give away for free potentially useful information regarding openings etc. Sorry about that!

Outlook

Wiesbaden concluded the month of August; in which I played 25 classical games. I gained about 21 rating points, and so with that I'm at 2448 now (https://ratings.fide.com/profile/12918156), which is a clear personal best and also pretty close to the halfway milestone 2450.
Having started this challenge at just over 2400, it's nice to see the training and those at times very difficult weeks of intense tournament play actually producing some tangible progress and I'm certainly inspired to continue to make ground!

My next competition is going to be a strong 9-round open tournament in Trieste, Italy. This will be the fourth and last tournament of this stretch of classical play that started early August, which, in total, will consist of 35 games in 35 days.
Given that I noticed being pretty fatigued in some of the games in Wiesbaden, I hope to return for this last stop in Italy refreshed and capable of producing some good moves.
Here's the list of participants for Trieste.

My next article here on Lichess will possibly be a summary of the month of September.
Thanks so much reading and following along... and I hope to see some of you over at Substack, where I'll recap the tournament that is about to begin.
Cheers!