Recap for May

Granted, the month isn't over, but let's recap May since the bulk of what is going to happen has happened.

Starting out for the month I stated these goals...

Learn to mate with two bishops.

Strong Opening Prep on One White Opening and One Black Opening

Rook Endings

Continued Tactical Work

So how did I do?  Well, I actually think that I did fairly well.

I did learn how to mate with two bishops.  While I don't think that I could do it in the minimum number of moves in a given position I know I could do it in less than 50.  So I'll take it.

Strong opening prep.  This is the area in which I feel like I fell down the most.  My goal was to prep the White side of the Worrall in the Ruy Lopez and to prep the Black side of 1...e5 against the English.  I did some prep on the White side of the Worrall.  Not a ton, but some.

I didn't do any prep with 1...e5 against the English.  Perhaps I will work on that this afternoon, but even if I do I won't have reached that goal.

I am starting to realize that in order to really prep my openings I am going to need to play a lot more speed games online.  I need to work in a ton of 10-15 minute games.  How else can I truly make sure that I am understanding and memorizing the openings I want to play.  I don't get enough reps in right now to make a difference, and that must change.

Rook endings.  I worked through 20-30 pages of IM Minev's book A Practical Guide to Rook Endgames.  I should have gone through more, but if I keep this up then I will get to where I need to be.

Continued tactical work.  This is something I did.  Using my iPhone for this has really helped.  It makes it so that I can knock out 5-10 puzzles whenever/wherever I feel like it.

So how do I feel about the month overall?  I feel OK.  Like I did enough to work towards improving, even if perhaps not as much as I would have liked to have done.

On the grading scale I'd say May was a B-