Tuesday, July 31, 2007

1310 On ICC 5-minute Blitz

Finally. The next hundred. For some time it looked like I'd never get here. I got close so many times, only to plummet back to the low 1100's, but at last I broke through the 1300 mark. Maybe there's some hope after all.

I've also picked up Scandinavian Defense as my main weapon against 1.e4, and I must say it's been a delight. No more embarrassing, crampy failures with sicilians, and you get to flex the tactical muscle right from the beginning. Naturally I play it like crap at this point, but at least I can get the plane off the runway without exploding into thousands of flaming pieces. Well, mostly anyway. There's still a lot to learn.


ICC 5-minute: 1310, +325, =8, -358 of total 691 games.

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

CTS 1616 on 90.0% Success Rate

Finally I managed to keep the long time (794 tries) average at 90%. Although it I was a close shave, I must admit. And like before, most of the days I did 92-96% sessions, but the couple of horrible days went down to 80% or so.

On the plus side, I've been able to stay over 1600-level most of the time, with some short visits under it. Which is of course nice for a change.

On the other fronts, I've been playing quite a lot of blitz recently. With a high point of 1296 on ICC 5-minute, being a piece up halfway into the game. Which doesn't mean much though, as I still manage to screw up those 'won games' quite often, and this time was no exception. Well, everybody's gotta pay their dues to blitz I guess.


CTS: 1616, 78.5%, 90837 tries