CTS 1582

Almost there, only 27 tacticians between me and 1600. Four beers and 02:55 am seems to work out pretty good for me.

One thing I forgot to mention earlier: When I did that latest session, I missed a sacrifice in a problem. Nothing noteworthy in that, but thinking about why I missed it, I realized something important has happened to the way I analyze a position. Namely, I don't do much redundant analysis anymore. -I saw the sac, investigated it very quickly, decided it won't work, and moved to the next candidate. Although I was wrong about it, I feel my thought process has evolved spontaneously. I remember doing 2-3 iterations in such situations before to get any kind of decent percentage, and also actually thinking about wether I should re-check it or not, but now it's more straightforward. Take a move, check it, if not instant success move on. No hesitation, no half seconds wasted on making decisions.

I haven't focused on training 'clean analysis' at any point, instead it seems my thought process has refined itself to optimize time/accuracy. Minimal time wasted with maximal gain.

CTS: 1582, 77.7%, 59549, session 10f/57 = 82.5%

Thoughts On RHP Games

I thought I'd do a little bit on my games on Red Hot Pawn, just to get things covered.

Some days ago, I wrote I felt like I'd been winning too much games for my own good. Today I did a little counting. And well, it's even worse than I thought. Out of the last 60 games, my wld score is 49-9-2. That makes for a winning percentage of (49+2/2)/60 = 83.3%. During those 60 games, my rating has risen from 1625 to the current 1771. Out of those 9 losses, in only 3 was I outplayed. In others I just dropped a piece. And even if it can be argued that dropping pieces is an aspect of my playing strength, it's not very helpful. All you can learn about that is: "don't do mistakes." That's almost no information at all (on my level, where I don't really drop pieces much anymore).

Although it's nice to win a lot, I don't think it's particulary good for improvement. Thinking about the fact, that the best way to learn about your weaknesses is studying your lost games, and the fact that 6 of my losses were simple blunders, I'm left with only 3 'good losses' to study. Out of 60 games, that's not a lot.

So, for the past couple of weeks I've tried to get as many strong opponents as possible. Out of the current games, I have 2 against a 2100, 4 against 2000's, 4 against 1700-1800's, and 8 against 1500's. I won't deliberately start games against people under 1700 anymore, unless they come against me in a tournament. I'm also choosing my tournaments so that I'll get as many strong opponents as possible.

Of course I'll get beaten into a bloody pulp, but at bare minimum, I should get a lot of good learning material in the form of lost games. It'll probably cost me a lot of points, as I doubt I'll win any of those games against the 2000+, but I'm sure it'll be all the better in the end.


CTS: 1566, 77.6%, 59116
RHP: 1771, 172 games, wld: 112-53-9

Good rating, bad percentage

I've been in trouble with my CTS percentage again, scoring around 80% for some days. That's what you get with a 3h sleep. :-/ -Ratingswise everything is going fine though, just got my all time high on CTS, same thing with RHP.

Started a RHP clan with Bahus and Torspo, 'The Hellfire Clan'. There wasn't one, so obviously somebody had to do it. -Hopefully we'll get some tough adversaries, as well as some kind of game analysis etc. going in the clan forum. I'm trying to get tougher games all over, as I win way too much. Meaning I play against too weak players, and that can't be good for me in the long term. Got a couple against some 2000's in a new tournament I just started, that should do the trick.

Well, I'm off to bed now. Maybe I'll score better tomorrow.


CTS: 1570, 77.6%, 57512, 26f/116=77.6% (just horrible!)
RHP: 1743, 170 games, wld 109-53-8