Chess Rocky's Full Day In the Ring

Can a rusty 48-year-old Master survive a 10-game blitz gauntlet against a top junior prodigy?

How do you recreate a full day of intense, over-the-board tournament chess for someone who hasn’t played in 10 years?

This is the dilemma I faced when preparing my buddy Mike, a.k.a the Chess Rocky, for the Daniel Naroditsky Rapid and Blitz Memorial in Charlotte over the 4th of July weekend.

It’s one thing to play some friendly sparring blitz games over beers after work, but being thrown into the ring against the best players in the world to compete for 11 rounds is a completely different beast.

So, I decided to mimic the stress of the upcoming tournament in a single-day workshop.

Want to sponsor our underdog?
Mike’s ‘Rocky’ journey to Charlotte is completely community-driven. If you want to help back the ultimate underdog and cover his travel/entry fees, we set up a GoFundMe page!

Welcome to the Chess Rocky Bootcamp.

Today it’s tea instead of beer :)

Phase 1: The Blindfold Warm-Up

I needed to get Mike’s brain sweating right out of the gate. We started with a warm-up of mate-in-two problems. But, to give him a real workout, there was a caveat: He had to solve them blindfolded!

Solving blindfold puzzles is one of the absolute best ways to improve your board vision and calculation speed. Here are a few examples of what I threw at him (answers at the bottom):

White to move and mate-in-two:¹

White to move and mate-in-two:²

Phase 2: Finding the Candidate Moves

Once his brain was warmed up, I gave Mike a tricky test from a recent book I highly recommend: Find Your Next Move by Sipke Ernst and Karel Van Delft.

The puzzles in this book are fantastic for blitz training. They are only one or two moves deep, but they are incredibly tricky because you have to quickly identify your Candidate Moves. In a blitz scramble, you don’t have time to calculate deep variations, you need to instantly spot the 2 or 3 moves that actually matter.

Here are a few examples we worked through (answers at the bottom).

Black to move (easy):³

White to move (medium):⁴

Black to move (medium):⁵

White to move (medium):⁶

White to move and win (hard):⁷

White to move (hard):⁸

Phase 3: The Sparring Ring (Old Man vs. Prodigy)

Now it was time for the main event. You can’t simulate tournament stress without a real opponent across the board.

I put Mike into the ring with one of my most promising students — a 14-year-old kid who is currently ranked in the Top 30 for his age.

To mimic the fatigue of Charlotte, I set up a gauntlet: They played one long rapid game to get the serious OTB feel, followed by a 10-game blitz match.

Despite being rusty in some of his openings, Mike showed excellent, scrappy chess. He managed to completely turn around a few lost positions and score a big W.

I told him afterward: This is exactly the kind of gritty survival skill you are going to need against the big dogs in Charlotte.

The final score? Mike narrowly won the match 5.5 to 4.5.

Yay for the Old Guys!

The Aftermath

After a full day of blindfold chess, tricky candidate-move puzzles, an intense rapid game, and a 10-game blitz match, Mike was exhausted... but in a good way. He felt exactly the kind of burn you feel after a heavy workout in the gym.

More of this, and he’ll be ready. Charlotte is exactly one month away, and the chess journey continues!

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Build Old Man Intuition

Mike is surviving these grueling training camps because he is relying on intuition and practical, “Old Man Chess” structures rather than trying to memorize deep engine lines.

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1. 1.Rb3! Ka5 2.Ra3#

2. 1.Ra1! bxa1=Q+ 2.Qxa1#

3. 1…Bh3! (forcing the rook off f1-square) and 2…Bg4!

4. 1.f4! (the rook is trapped) if …Rf5 2.g4 wins

5. 1…Qh8! (board vision!) and mate on h1 next move.

6. 1.Bxb6! axb6 2.f4 trapping the knight

7. 1.Ne1! (not 2.Nd4? due to Rd8!) and White wins material

8. 1.Ba6! bxa6 2.cxd6 with a big edge