Chess – Road to 2.000

Evaluation of Performance

“You can’t manage what you can’t measure.” Peter Drucker

If you have already read previous two documents on my chess history and bringing three spheres together, we can now move on the ‘past performance check’, and ‘shaping future expectations’. Setting targets and making plans are very crucial for success, but if they are subjective and not based on facts, then probably they would not be that functional and long-lasting. Therefore first thing to do is making an objective evaluation of performance in the light of realisations.

As Drucker, one of the most influential and well-known figure on management, stated that very wisely as I quoted above, management starts with status control and past performance measuring. Then we can set more realistic goals and benchmark them constantly to follow how well we are doing to reach them.

With this notion I have set targets for my international and national chess rating, which are called ELO and DWZ respectively, for a ten years period with yearly benchmarks. It would be better to make this term-end checks at the end of each calendar year, but unfortunately chess season starts on autumn and ends before summer. In this view, I had to adopt that schedule. My first game in Germany took place in the Season of 2017/2018, at Regional Division and at that time I only had ELO. After fulfilling the conditions my DWZ is also calculated and now I can follow my progress for both of those. 

Expectations and Planing

“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” Sun Tzu

One thing was sure for me at this third phase: I needed a clear target, means to achieve it and time. I named that project as “Road to 2.000” and training hard since 2018. I have started with 1.401 ELO in 2018 and improved it to first 1.429 then to 1.486, which is still below the target of 1.500, but satisfactory. With every year 100 points improvement goal, a tough challenge lies ahead. I know that I am optimistic, but in seven years period with a very hard training I believe that, it is possible. 

On the other hand I attend more tournaments in national level so my DWZ performance is more volatile than the ELO. Against stronger opponents I have little to lose but much to gain. I enjoy it and it is the only way to attain higher rating. However other side of the medallion is painful. Losing against the low rated opponents, who looks weaker on the paper but strong on the board, result in valuable point loses. I must learn to keep the advantage and overcome that difficulty. Than it is also achievable to keep in line with targets.

Ergun UNUTMAZ, 02.08.2019