One of my biggest chess improvement goals this year is to simply play a lot more OTB classical tournament games.
My previous counts are:
2023 - 16 games
2022 - 8 games
2021 - 8 games
2020 - 0 games
2019 - 9 games
I haven't played a lot previously, mostly due to personal or career distractions but I believe this year that will change.
As testament to my motivation, I have already signed up for a new chess club playing in my national league which should be good for at least 9-12 games. The remaining 40 games can be covered by around playing around 6-8 6-round tournament games. Ambitious, but achievable imho.
What could go wrong is a sudden change in my personal life or career that would necessitate I step back from chess (90%) or a loss in motivation (10%)
I will only be betting on myself (YES) on this market and will resolve this as soon I either complete the 50 games, or it becomes clear to me that I won't.
I should also mention that my Manifold failure rate when making personal chess goal questions is 100% but I'm determined to not give my doubters the satisfaction of being right again.
If this gets some traction I'll post a spreadsheet tracking my OTB participation in the comments
@traders I've played 18 rated games so far, and planning to play around 12 more to close the year so I will not hit my goal. resolving NO
I skipped my first planned 4-round tournament of the year because I preferred to go on a hike instead but i don't think that changes my calculus too much: 90+% probability of playing my national open (8 games), league games (~9 games) and national championship (9 games) leaving me needing to play around 24 games in other tournaments