Apologies for the late post!

I’ve had an active week, as I began facing human players. The difference in pressure between facing a bot and facing a human player is significant, but I was able to reach a decent ELO of 1021.

 

In addition to my human games, I have continued playing against the bots. In my game against the 1000 ELO bot I did quite well, as I was able to win in 15 moves.

 

My games against the 1500 ELO bot were not quite so smooth, with it decisively beating me in our first game.

 

However, I was able to soundly beat the 1500 bot in our next game, wherein I had my best accuracy rating yet!

 

I have been learning various opening principles to help me in the early parts of the game, but this has proven a double-edged sword. That is because, while I can move more quickly and confidently in the opening phase, I am somewhat thrown off whenever my opponent makes a move that does not follow the principles I expect (Controlling the center, developing many pieces, etc.) Because of this, I find myself falling for various gambits, when I believe that my opponent has simply made a sub-par move. I hope that as I learn more specific and unorthodox openings, I will be more able to adapt to the unexpected!