Burning Castles

Back At CTS

2012-01-17T13:20:00.000-08:00

Some time ago I returned back to Chess Tactics Server after years of absence. So far I've done a few thousand problems, and am getting back into the groove of things. At first it felt a little weird after the ICC problem set, but I guess it went surprisingly well considering the length of the break.

When I left CTS in 2008, I was at 1632 with a 80.0% total accuracy over 107832 problems. Now I'm at 1615 with a 80.4% total accuracy over 114406 problems. which leaves me with 857 wrong for the last 6574 problems, and a 87.0% accuracy over that time. Can't really remember what kind of session averages I used to do before, but 87% doesn't really sound all that great. I'd like to get that past the 90% mark at the very least.

What's interesting though, is that the thousands of blitz games I've played during the break, don't seem to have any significant effect on my CTS rating. Yet my 5-minute blitz (peak) rating has risen from 1431 to 1705 over the same period. You might think playing a lot of blitz would improve tactics as well, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Just like the inverse wasn't true back when I began blitzing, when my 1550 CTS (or 1800 RHP) didn't affect my blitz almost at all. Instead I started from 1100-1200 and slowly fought my way up just like everyone else.

All of which is in line with my earlier hypothesis, that contrary to a popular belief, blitz is not so much about tactics. Or at least tactics don't dominate blitz strength in the way it's usually portrayed to do. Instead, blitz seems to be mostly about experience and familiarity with your openings and typical positions.

Why study tactics at all then? Well, even though it doesn't seem to do work that well for blitz, it did have a huge positive effect on my slow chess. And I firmly believe that anything you understand about slow chess, you can eventually internalize and transfer to blitz, through experience. Repetition.

CTS: 1615, 114406 problems, 80.4%

Tactics Revisited

2011-08-10T18:44:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time coming, but I finally started doing tactics again. Haven't been doing any for 3-4 years now, as there's been so much other holes to work on in my game. But I've always known I'll need to take my tactics to the next level for further improvement, and for some reason it now feels like the time to do just that.

I'm not gonna do anything overly rigorous, no big structured training plans or anything like that. Just keep it very simple and straightforward, 30 minutes or so every day. I started with the ICC training bot set for now, but if need be, I might later switch it to a 'slower' harder set for the real mind torture effect. For now I'll be just taking it relatively easy, keep it fun and establish a daily training routine.

ICC 5-minute 1705

2011-06-23T15:06:00.000-07:00

Another year, another hundred points. As usual, I haven't been training much if at all. Just playing blitz, nothing else. And also as usual, I've had some lengthy periods of inactivity during the year. Doesn't seem to matter much though, it all comes back in just a few days after a break.

I feel I've developed into a slightly more solid player. Well, 'solid' is probably misleading, I still throw stuff at my opponents as reckless as ever. But maybe a slight change there. Also my endgames seem to have become more solid. I defend lost positions better, especially in a time scramble. Which I guess is the essence of blitz in a way, making 'winning the won game' as hard as possible for the other guy. And on the flipside simplifying my own won games as quickly as possible.

That's about it really. See you next year at 1800.

ICC 5-minute: 1705, 2414 games, +1183, -1185, =46.

1613 On ICC 5-Minute Blitz

2010-05-20T16:26:00.000-07:00

Another milestone reached. It took a full year getting from breaking 1500 to here, which makes it twice as fast as getting from 1400 to 1500. The main difference no doubt is that I've been on a more or less steady diet of blitz since last december. Roughly 1300 5/0 blitz games during that time, the longest breaks having been a couple of weeks at most. During this time my slow chess hasn't improved one bit. Yet more weight to my belief that blitz is mostly about experience, mileage.

Haven't been training much, but the little I've been doing has been openings. Zero endings, zero tactics. Just playing blitz, playing, playing, playing. And it seems like the way to go regarding blitz. Still got a staggering amount of work left with my openings though, so if what I've been saying about blitz & openings has any point in it, there's nowhere to go but up.

So onwards to 1700!

ICC 5-minute: 1613, 1318 games, +643, -652, =23.
RHP: 2031, 335 games, +230, -87, =18.

Building A Repertoire, And Mastering It

2009-10-11T07:45:00.000-07:00

"I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand."

For the last months I've been busy building up an opening repertoire. Not that I didn't have one before, as I've played the same openings for a year or two already. But although I did put some work into it, it never was very systematic nor thorough. Reading books, studying games, blitzing the openings, sure, but I never really focused into it as with tactics. And I probably didn't need to, except maybe considering blitz where it really turned out to be surprisingly useful. There was just always other more important things to train.

So, now I've finally reached the point where I feel it's usefull to dive deep into it, and will be properly focusing on openings for some time. I began booking up on my selected openings a few months ago, going through videos & books and putting all the relevant lines into a database. All of which I've gone through many times already, so I'm somewhat familiar with the ideas, but shaky on the actual variations. Such knowledge is simply not digestable without extensive drilling, and although some of it stays with you, most of the details evaporate fairly soon.

It's still very much a work in progress, as playing a sicilian there's just such a huge ground to cover. I'm also already training the parts I've already plugged in, but still only beginning to cover anti-sicilians, not to even mention polar bear. I've got maybe 30% of the eventual material plugged in, of which I've now drilled (exhaustively) about 30%. So maybe 90% of the drilling still ahead, and also getting rest of the planned material into a database. This might take a while. It's not hard, but time consuming. A year, or two, but months at minimum. There are existing dbs, but I really want to construct my own versions, handpicking what I need.

The method of training is very much the same as with tactics: Drill the positions until they're second nature to you. Effortless, instant recognition of familiar elements and related patterns. -In practice I've got the lines in Chess Position Trainer, every opening as a separate sub-repertoire, from which I drill random lines until I know them inside out. Currently I'm doing lines from move 1 into the end of the line, around 16-30 moves deep generally. In sicilian the first 11-12 are pretty much fixed, so it's manageable. Also, I might not remember people's names, but this is the type of memorization I excell in.

In time I plan to switch into drilling from random positions, which requires accurate recognition of all the elements present in the given position. Out of order recollection. So far it seems that might turn out to be much easier than it sounds, the lines are not only sinking in well but also the triggering details start sort of popping up. Many of which you never knew about before, but somehow just deduce from constant exposure in different but similar positions. The black box of the brain at its best, nonverbally and unconsciously classifying patterns from a jumble of data. It doesn't need reasons or narrative, just feed it huge amount of data and let it do what it evolved to do best.

What I'm seeking to gain with all this, is a basic, rock solid opening repertoire. It won't be 'complete' by any definition of the word, nor it will be final. But it'll provide my brain a blitz-proof model of all mainlines and basic deviations, a geometry I can instantly recollect and recognize with no calculation. A base on which to build further understanding of the related typical middle- and engame positions and schemes. And when it's all in I'll probably start adding other openings as well, just to complement the understanding by learning different types of positions. But that's another project for another time.

Well, enough banter, back to work.

1506 on ICC 5-minute Blitz!

2009-06-17T18:33:00.000-07:00

F i n a l l y ! It's been over two years since I first crossed 1400 on ICC 5-minute, and even though the effort has been sporadic at best, it still took more than enough time. I've had these spells of blitz in which I decide to work on it properly, but they've seldom lasted for more than a couple of weeks at a time. Then 3-8 months of hiatus, and back on it. -It's always been hard to keep myself motivated to train blitz more, as slow chess has always gone so much better for me. Obviously you always much rather do things you're good at. Hopefully that'll change for the better now after reaching a basic level of not dropping everything in every game, so my strategic/positional strengths should also begin affecting the games. Still much to do on the basic technique though, and I'll also no doubt dive back under 1500 soon enough. Gotta just keep hammering.

It took me 1002 of 5-minute games on ICC, and 2679 on FICS, so roughly 3700 games in total over the four years I've played chess. From what I've heard from other people, they've needed less than half of it to get onto the same level. Maybe it's a side-effect of starting chess 30-years old, but frankly I doubt they've been that counting the amount that precisely. It's so easy to underestimate things like this, forget old accounts and whole sites you've played on. If I'd have to give a guesstimate on my own total amount without my training diary, I'd probably say something like a thousand games in total. But I know I've played exactly 1002 5/0s on ICC, 149 other blitz time controls, 2679 5/0s on FICS, and about 60 games on other sites. So I'd guess their real number of games is much closer to my 3700 than the 1000-2000 they often estimate. Then again, my long pauses in blitz training can't be good, so maybe... Well, I don't know for sure. But I wanted to document these things so other beginner can have at least one exact reference of how much work it took. I would've killed for data like this in my first two years.

So what worked and what didn't?

Well, for one, I must say that tactics never did anything for my blitz, even though it's always advertized as the holy grail of fast chess. It has benefitted me hugely on correspondence chess and the ability of solving tactical puzzles, but my blitz never improved on bit before I begun playing blitz heavily. Although obviously you have to have some basic proficiency in tactics, you can't just expect to survive in blitz if you never drilled tactics. But it isn't the bottleneck, at least on the low levels.

Endgames, well, that's a sort of mixed thing. Although my endgame studies have been far from what I'd like it to be (in quantity/quality), it has had some effect. But, I think the blitz endings get played 'wrong' far more often than 'correctly', so the theory doesn't have that much impact. I'd assume the training effect of playing blitz endings 'incorrectly' for thousands of games is much more relevant in practice, as is any other kind of training practical endings. On higher levels the correct theory will have an increasing effect of course, but at 1500 everybody is still playing everything 'wrong'.

Slow games haven't had much effect either. It's the area I've always used most time since the beginning, analyzing positions for hours every day. The outcome has been that I'm great at seeing what I did wrong afterwards, but that's just too little too late. The ability to analyze slow games is just too, well, slow. The revelations must come instantly, without thinking, or otherwise you lose on time. -Perhaps the slow games will some day reach a critical number, so I'll have seen all the basic situations so many times that playing them correctly becomes instinctive, but after 4 years it still takes conscious thinking time. People who've played for decades are probably in a very different situation regarding all this.

That pretty much leaves openings. The unappreciated love of beginning players, on which the experienced players always tell you not to waste study time. -And in slow chess that's actually true. But in blitz... I don't think so anymore.

During the past year that I've finally focused on my openings properly, it's become obvious that my opening knowledge has been abysmal. The shallowness and uncertainty on even the things I thought I knew has been simply enormous. As the cliché goes, I'm only beginning to undertand the extent of my ignorance. I now study openings every day, and it's paying dividends especially in blitz. I'm actually outplaying my opponents on book knowledge, and to top that I'm even understanding why their non-book moves are inferior. Of course that still happens mostly in the mainlines, and quite early at that, but it's a promising start. I'll continue on that vein and see where it'll get me.

ICC 5-minute: 1506, 1002 games, +484, -504, =14.
RHP: 2061, 324 games, +226, -81, =17.

2002 On Red Hot Pawn

2008-11-10T17:52:00.000-08:00

Finally made it, don't feel any different. It took a little over three years, but to be honest I've been mostly lazing up the last one. Have turned into a slightly more well rounded player though, due to the endgame training, which has opened up my understanding of the other phases of the game as well. Although the slowly cumulating experience probably didn't hurt either.

My openings still suck, as do my middlegame. My calculation is abysmal, and I'm really not even remotely satisfied with my tactics either. A lot of work needs to be done to cover even the basics of endgame, which I've only scratched so far. If anything, I see more holes in my game than I saw a year ago. But I guess that's positive, to know at least some of what needs fixing.

If this is 2000, I'm not impressed. I still feel like a beginner, blindly fumbling his way through the ropes. I'm turning 34 in two months, started at thirty, and getting here wasn't really that difficult (in the sense that everything's been simple repetitive training, instead of complex deep & mystical secrets). Only laborous.

Right now I'm quite confident that anybody can reach 2200, regardless of age. Probably more. There's so many simple basic things yet to learn that it isn't even funny. When those simple things are exhausted, that's the first possible 'ceiling' for an adult. Until that it's just going through those things one by one, training them until you can't get them wrong. Train more, read less.

RHP: 2002, 307 games, +212, =17, -78.
Chess.com: 2097, 15 games, +14, =0, -1.
CTS: 1632, 107832 problems, 80.0%.

KQ vs. KR Mating Tutorial, Part 1 - Philidor's Position

2008-08-04T11:13:00.000-07:00

I think the time has come to try putting it all into a tutorial. Or a series of posts, as the ground to cover is just too much for a single post. It would no doubt fill a small book, and I'm not gonna go that deep into it. Just the essentials which will allow you to figure the rest out, just like I did.

The amount of different types of positions you need to be able to play is quite extensive, so I can't possibly cover all of them, nor even know all of them thoroughly. But I'll go through the essential positions, trying to point out what I found to be important and practical. The rest you'll need to fill in by yourself, by training these positions over and over and over against an engine. The reason is because, even if I managed to write it all down, it wouldn't be much use to anyone. KQkr mate is not something you can learn by reading some kind of directions, no matter how complete, it's far too complicated for that. Instead you need to get your hands dirty, work on the typical procedures until you know them like the back of your hands. Build up intuition for what kind of candidates to look for, as well as pattern recognition for the various little tricks there are, and become able to jump from technique to another without missing a beat. Which is very typical for this mate, as you'll always need no jump between 3, 5 or more different techniques to get where you want to.

This is not an easy mate, and will require quite a lot of effort to learn. But I firmly believe anyone can learn KQkr mate, it just takes time & elbow grease. It took me 3-4 weeks to get to this point, and a few hundred repetitions mating from the essential positions. It's not gonna happen quickly, and you'll need to rehash everything multiple times.

So why should you do all this work? It's not like you'll run into KQkr mate on regular bases, far from it. - Well. Just like KNB mate, it's the side-effects that count, not the mate itself. The journey is more important than the destination. - It teaches you a lot of piece coordination, how to really operate the mighty queen, and how to defend with the rook. During these weeks the constant KQkr drilling has made a tremendous impact on my board vision, as the drills require you to be aware of the whole board, diagonals, individual squares and the colour of them. It's been like a veil had been lifted from my eyes, I can see a lot more in open positions than I used to. It's definitely worth it, from the practical point of view.

Okay, enough babbling, let's get down and dirty. The first position to learn is Philidor's position, which is a forced mate from as early as 1777:

This is what you're aiming for, and also where you'll end up if you opponent plays the best defence. - What's noteworthy in this position, is that if it's black to move, he's in zugzwang and will drop a rook (I'll get back to that in a minute). But, if it's white to move, as it often happens, you need to lose a tempo. The way to do that is to triangulate with checks 1.Qe5+ (extremely typical check in other KQkr positions as well, get used to looking for these), 1...Ka7 2.Qa1+ Kb8 3.Qa5 (1...Ka8 2.Qa1+ Ra7 gets mated with typical 3.Qh8#). Now it's the same exact position, but black to move.

black's options: 3...Kc8 loses directly to 4.Qa6 pinning the rook and mating. So only rook moves are possible, but every single one of them drops the rook and gets black mated. Let's see how:

3...Re7 4.Qd8+ forks the rook.
3...Rf7 4.Qe5+ Ka7 5.Qe3+ Kb8 (Black king has to return or get mated at once, another typical check from centre) 6.Qd8+ forks the rook.
3...Rg7 4.Qe5+ forks the rook.
3...Rh7 4.Qe5+ Ka8 5.Qa1+ Kb8 6.Qb1+ forks the rook. (This is the main way to move the queen from wrong colored diagonal to right one. Learn it, you'll be using it a lot.)

That took care of the 7th rank, now let's see the other escape direction, the b-file:

3...Rb3 4.Qe5+ Ka7 5.Qg7+ (the good ol' diagonal swap) Ka8 6.Qg8+ forks the rook, or mates if black tries Rb8 to interpose.
3...Rb2 4.Qe5+ forks the rook
3...Rb1, the best defence, falls to diagonal swap, what else. 4.Qe5+ Ka7 5.Qd4+ (work out why that was needed) Ka8 6.Qh8+ Ka7 7.Qh7+ Kb8 8.Qxb1+ Kc8 9.Qb7+ Kd8 10.Qd7#

That's it, black has no other sane moves, Game Over.

The things to take home from the Philidor's position, are the importance of the typical check from the centre and the diagonal swap. Drill these lines against Fritz until you can blitz them as fast as you can move your mouse, to the point where you'll be constantly visualizing several moves ahead, and your hand just goes through the motions. Notice that in none of black's tries the king escapes, instead you can always mate directly after winning the rook. So if you're forced to mate the lone king by chasing it accross the board, you're doing something wrong. In a real game you'll likely need most of the 50 moves available, so it's important that you can mate efficiently.

I hope I didn't screw up the notation, and that the diagram actually shows.

RHP: 1988, 298 games, +204, =17, -77.
Chess.com: 1985, 7 games +7, =0 , -0.

Mating with KQ vs. KR

2008-08-01T17:59:00.000-07:00

During the last weeks I've been training the intimidating Q vs. R mate, and yes, it's every bit as hard as it's said to be. Maybe even more so.

So why is it so hard? Well, to begin with, there isn't any clear cut single technique to it like in the KNB for example, which btw. seems like a walk in the park in comparison. Instead you need to learn a bunch of typical positions, learn the ins & outs of them, then recognize similarities on the board and jump from one technique to another, in a way which seems quite random. And with a bit of luck, you'll manage to fumble your way into a forced winning of the rook.

Basically, you'll need to drill it over and over with fritz, build up a huge repository of typical maneuvers, and sort of feel your way through it. I think I've got it down fairly well now, as I can win it from random positions against tablebase most of the times. But I still don't know half of the time how I got into a 'familiar position', or why I suddenly dropped off from the beaten path. I just make moves which seem 'reasonable', and somehow end into some recognizable position eventually. So there's still lots of ground to cover, but I'm starting to get there. In slow games I think I can pull it off, but blitz is still out of the question, at least against tablebase. Agains fritz without tablebase I can blitz it, but mostly because fritz plays it very similarly every time.

I'll try to write some kind of a real tutorial at some point, but there's so much material to cover it'll take some time. And also my knowledge about it isn't really focused enough to put it into words yet either.

But anyway, here's an example against the ICC KQkr bot:

[Event "ICC"]
[Date "2008.08.03"]
[White "wormwood"]
[Black "KQkr"]
[Result "1-0"]
[WhiteElo "1329"]
[BlackElo "2200"]
[TimeControl "300+12"]
[FEN "8/7k/8/8/6Q1/8/r1K5/8 w - - 0 1"]

1. Kb3 Ra6 2. Qd7+ Kh6 3. Kc4 Rf6 4. Kd5 Kg5 5. Ke5 Rf2 6. Qg7+ Kh4 7. Qg6 Rf3 8. Ke4 Rf2 9. Qd6 Kg4 10. Qd1+ Kg3 11. Qg1+ Rg2 12. Qe3+ Kh2 13. Kf4 Rg7 14. Qe5 Rg3 15. Qd6 Kh3 16. Qe6+ Kh2 17. Qe5 Rg2 18. Kf3+ Kg1 19. Qa1+ Kh2 20. Qe1 Ra2 21. Qe5+ Kg1 22. Qd4+ Kh1 23. Qh8+ Kg1 24. Qg8+ Kh2 25. Qxa2+ Kh3 26. Qg2+ Kh4 27. Qg4# 1-0

(2008.08.03 - Updated the above example to a new, more streamlined one. This one I managed in a little over a minute against a tablebase. Getting pretty close to being able to blitz it.)

The basic idea is to force the defender in zugzwang, so that he'll have to separate the rook from the king. After which the rook should drop fairly soon. Checks are usually just tools to get into a zugzwang, and the most important (and hardest to see) moves come without a check. Up to a point where you start looking for non-checking moves for candidates rather than those familiar checks. But naturally there are some extremely important checks as well.

I doubt any of this makes much sense without diagrams and specific variations, but hopefully I'll get to that some day.

Rook Endgames, Phase I

2008-07-10T07:55:00.000-07:00

I just finished the first round of going through Karsten Müller's DVD 2 on rook endgames, and copying all of the starting positions into a database. That's about 70 positions in total, although some of them are more educational, in the sense that refuting the incorrect tries are much more important than the correct line. But quite a lot of them are also 'trainable' against Fritz as it is, meaning the meat of the positions lie in the correct mainline (along which engines probably step as sparring opponents). Which is exactly what I'm gonna do next.

So now I have all the positions in a chessbase database, even the 'untrainable' ones for completeness' sake. That way it's easy to load them up into Fritz (tools/options/training/endgame training), and use them instead of the pathetic default positions in the endgame training module.

On the first round I also went through the videos with some thought, and feel like I already gained a good familiarity with all the basic principles and techniques. Now the hard part begins, which is drilling the positions over and over, until the philidors, lucenas, vancuras, karstedts, saavedras etc. come as a second nature to me. I want to be able to blitz through all of it on autopilot if/when necessary, no matter how drunk or tired I might be. And at that point I'll attack the more discussional type of examples again, hopefully being able to spot the technical refutations and sidelines a mile away, as I should in a real game.

Quite a lot of the won lines end into a Q vs R endgame though, so maybe I should learn that first (it's on DVD 3, which I have but haven't gone through), in order to drill those positions until the bitter end? Sounds like a practical way to combine two drills, so maybe I'll just do that. it can't be that hard, can it? Although I did try it from the top of my head, and there's absolutely no way I could figure it out on my own. Seems more tricky than the KNB mate, which makes it pretty funny that most people probably resign rather than even think about trading the queen for a rook.

Back To The Drudgery Of Endgame

2008-07-04T04:23:00.000-07:00

Once more guys, this time with a feeling.

Yes, I'm back to training elementary endgames, once again. When I stopped doing tactics, the idea was to focus on endgames. But as usual, it didn't last very long, and in the end my endgame training has been sporadic at best. I certainly have done much more tactics than endgames during the last year, which isn't that much either.

So a while ago I got into it again. I started from the first Karsten Müller DVD, and went systematically through all the examples. I also trained many of them against fritz, to get it all down cold, and quick enough for blitz. I'm hoping it'll help my games, as I lose a fair portion of my blitz games from a 'won' position in the endgame. I simply lack the technique, and succumb to either braindead blunders or use too much time.

One big surprise found already: It turns out my lone queen endings were crap. I actually had big problems at winning against nasty 1P cases. But thanks to Müller and the help of assistant coach Mr.Fritz, I can now win all winnable Q vs. 1P endings. Although the rook and bishop pawn cases are still a bit hazy as Fritz adamantly refuses to play the best defense and drops the pawn the as soon as getting mated by the queen becomes the longer sequence. Another good example of the stupidity of engines. They're just oblivious to the fact that the few last tricky moves against bishop pawn are far more difficult for a human than the 10-15 move elementary mate with queen. -I guess I should train defending those endings against fritz, and that way get to the core of the best defense. There are some surprisingly difficult cases depending on where on the 'winning zone' the attacking king is.

That'll have to wait for the next iteration though, as I already moved to DVD 2 and rook endings. Which is sort of new territory for me, as although I have scratched them before, I'm really not even close to having even the simplest cases down cold.

So now I'm planning to put the positions into a file, and hopefully learn how to load them into the fritz endgame training module. That way drilling those positions would become extremely practical, especially when I'll no doubt have the need to re-learn all of it from time to time. As the KNB incident has pointed out.

KNB Blues

2008-06-15T09:29:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I finally got a KNB ending in 5/0 blitz, and naturally screwed it up. Didn't see it coming up either, and was happily exchanging everything off as fast as I could. Then of course my opponent sacs his rook for the last pawn, and I'm up against the typical textbook KNB, with the king already near the edge. I had 25 seconds left, and my opponent 1min 10s or so, but I knew I could do it, so I started pushing his king against the edge. I could already taste the sweet taste of "I told ya so" after showing him how wrong he was to even dare to suspect I couldn't mate him with a king, knight and a bishop!

So what happens? It turns out my head is suddenly totally empty of any knowledge on how to push him against the edge. So, painfully aware of the ticking clock, I start to move my pieces around rather randomly, hoping he'll accidentally move where I wanted. Because from the edge I could go more or less on autopilot, of that I was quite sure.

Of course it turns out the guy knows his KNB as well, and correctly tries to keep his pesky king in the centre, easily avoiding my futile uncoordinated piece movements. So it takes me twenty moves to even get him against the wall, at which time my clock also runs out. A cold metallic voice mocks me by informing that a draw by timeout & unsufficient mating material is a fact, and flock of birds set of from a nearby tree as a scream of frustration cuts through the air.

1. f4 d5 2. Nf3 c5 3. g3 b6 4. Bg2 Bb7 5. d3 e6 6. O-O g6 7. c3 f5 8. Na3Bg7 9. Ne5 Nd7 10. Nb5 Nxe5 11. fxe5 Bxe5 12. Bf4 Bxf4 13. Rxf4 a6 14. Na3Nf6 15. h3 O-O 16. c4 e5 17. Rf1 Qc7 18. e3 Rad8 19. Qe2 Rfe8 20. Rac1 d421. e4 Bc8 22. Nc2 fxe4 23. Rxf6 exd3 24. Qxd3 Bf5 25. Rxf5 gxf5 26. Qxf5d3 27. Ne3 d2 28. Rd1 Rf8 29. Bd5+ Kh8 30. Qg5 b5 31. Rxd2 bxc4 32. Nxc4 e433. Qe5+ Qg7 34. Qxg7+ Kxg7 35. Bxe4 Rxd2 36. Nxd2 Re8 37. Kg2 c4 38. Kf3Kf6 39. Bxh7 Rh8 40. Bc2 Rxh3 41. Nxc4 Rh2 42. Ne3 a5 43. a3 Rh1 44. b4axb4 45. axb4 Ke5 46. b5 Kd6 47. Ke4 Kc5 48. Bd3 Rg1 49. g4 Kb6 50. Kd5 Rg351. Nc4+ Kxb5 52. Ne5+ Kb6 53. Ke4 Kc7 54. Kf5 Kd8 55. g5 Ke7 56. g6 Kf857. Bc4 Rg1 58. Kf6 Rf1+ 59. Ke6 Kg7 60. Bd3 Rf6+ 61. Kd5 Rxg6 62. Nxg6 Kf663. Nf4 Kg5 64. Ne2 Kf6 65. Ke4 Ke6 66. Ng3 Kd6 67. Kd4 Ke6 68. Ne2 Kf6 69.Ke4 Kg5 70. Kf3 Kf6 71. Nd4 Ke5 72. Ke3 Kd5 73. Nc2 Kc5 74. Ke4 Kd6 75. Kd4Kc6 76. Ne3 Kd6 77. Bc4 Kc6 78. Nf5 Kd7 79. Kd5 Kc7 80. Nd4 Kb6 81. Kd6 Ka582. Kc5 Ka4 83. Nc2 Ka5{wormstar ran out of time and LuckyAsterix has no material to mate} 1/2-1/2

So what went wrong? I did have enough time, I did know what to do basically, and I had done it dozens or maybe even hundreds of times before. But the thing was, I had never really formed any concrete mental guidelines for driving the king against the wall, and was trying to do it ad hoc. With obviously weakened knight vision compared to when I had trained KNB extensively. The controlled squares did not pop up, I failed to keep the pieces behind my king rather than in front (where they'll obstruct my king and act as a shield for the defending king), and I didn't even remember immediately which corner to head for.

So today I've been drilling KNB quite a lot, and focusing especially on systematic ways to drive the defender against the wall. Trying to visualize the squares I'm controlling, find patterns to aim for etc. And it has helped. I see more now, have more strategic guidelines developed, and of course the actual mating sequence starting from the wrong corned I can do pretty much as fast as the mouse allows. But I want to get as fast on the cattle drive part as well, so there's still work to be done.

Blitz Going Well

2008-02-04T10:32:00.000-08:00

I've been playing 5 0 blitz on FICS and ICC pretty much daily now, and it seems like it's starting to work out for me. I'm currently 1447 on FICS and 1431 on ICC 5-minute, and feel quite solid. Naturally there's the occasional dive below 1400, but it always bounces back.

So, what's changed? It's not easy to say, but suddenly it feels like my opponents are just throwing the games away. The same thing happened when I started getting better at slow chess, so now I already know it's real instead of imaginary progress. The things that once were hard, begin to seem easy after you internalize them.

I think I'm just more used to the positions I get, so that I don't miss the usual dangers that often anymore. I can also find the plans faster, and even win endgames. -It's been extremely satisfying to win the occasional pawn endgame by zugzwang, something I just always missed in fast games before. I think blitz has taught me to be more aware of what's on the board in general. The dangers, the possibilities, the weaknesses, the potential.

I've also gotten better at making reasonable moves instead of best moves, which has translated into better time managment and less tactical mistakes. Prophylactic moves are another new thing, which I almost never thought of in slow games before. Take a certain square away, and you sweep off a whole bunch of nasty problems which could or could not work for you. Very handy in blitz.

Another thing I've learned is to not force attacks when there isn't one. Just do a sane move instead, and let the opponent use his time on the position. Do something constructive instead: Remove a weakness, build an attack, activate. Those things usually require very little thinking time, but will give you better statistical chances later in the game.

"Experience can't be bought or read from a book, the only way is to live through it." -Can't remember where I heard that, but it seems to describe chess improvement the way I see it quite well.

FICS br: 1447, 1155 games, +561 -579 =15.
ICC 5-minute: 1431, 812 games, +386 -416 =10.

100,000 Problems On CTS

2008-01-05T14:18:00.000-08:00

Today I finally reached the 100K mark on CTS. Once again I haven't slept well, so both the the rating and success rate have been less than perfect for a while. Not unlike my blitz, which has pretty much crashed through the floor for the same reason. But then again, I haven't really been focusing on tactics for almost a full year, so I'm not that worried about it.

Somehow it doesn't really seem like that much, so I'll just keep going. There's still a huge ground to cover in vertical direction, and I feel like I've only scratched the surface of the problem set.

CTS: 1638, 10068 tries, 79.3%
Master games: 5

My Brilliant Brain

2007-12-29T17:40:00.000-08:00

I just watched the second episode of the documentary series "My Brilliant Brain", dealing with Susan Polgar. The episode contained a lot of familiar concepts, like 'paralysis by analysis', chunking, pattern recognition by repetition and the like. All concepts which most of us chess improvement freaks are used to dealing with. And without going into details, the documentary agreed with most of the philosophical grounds for my training, which is heavily based on training intuition and subconscious processing instead of a structured rule-based approach. Feed the brain, and let it work it all out as it sees best. Also my layman 'theory' of a specific neural 'sub-processor' being developed into the brain was confirmed by neurological scanning of Susan's brain. So, all is nice & good on the pedagogic front, and therefore there's no reason to adjust my learning methods.

Naturally I'm aware this line of reasoning has nothing to do with scientific rigour, but then again, I'm not looking to publish a paper on chess improvement theory. Lack of theoretical proof doesn't concern me, only the practical results. "It works" is close enough for me.

Also, during the latest batch of blitz craziness, I've also come to the conclusion that my paradoxically weak blitz vs. strong tactics -problem has one quite probable cause: Although I've developed the ability to spot & execute tactics very efficiently (compared to my other abilities), I haven't developed the ability to improve the position similarly. I never think about how I can improve my position while solving tactics, instead I completely ignore that aspect. And although I can think my way through all that in slow games, I need to develop my intuition and do it without thinking, just like I when I solve tactics. Thinking just isn't fast enough, I need to recognize and 'feel' the right moves. Well, 'right enough' moves to be more exact.

The way I'm planning to go about this, is to start going through master games once again. Just grinding the games in, over a long period of time. I'll start gathering games in my pet openings, handpicking them as I go, and going through them exactly the same way like I would proceed with tactical problems. I should probably keep a game count here also, to prevent the typical lapse of effort after the initial excitement wears thin.

One last thing about the documentary: Once again I'm dumbstricken by the sheer amount of work Susan has gone through already as a small child. Up to 6 hours of hard studying daily, with pops watching over in the background. That's not some half-assed doodling with the study material, watching telly at the same time, but instead sitting down and working at your desk. Somehow that's very inspirational to me. -If a little girl can have that kind of dicipline, I have a lot of room for improvement there.

Master games: 1

The First Tournament Victory On RHP

2007-12-14T05:28:00.000-08:00

I just won my first tournament on RHP, the August 2006 Banded Quartets 1550-1750, when Billnad, the other finalist, was a no-show in the rematch final. We tied for the win in the first final, because of my stupid opening blunder against him (the other game is the one a few posts ago). I would of course have rather won the final games by playing, but I can't control whether my opponent shows up or not. I did get to play him before though, and I feel I was slightly stronger, so I still feel pretty good about the win.

As usual with banded CC tournaments, both of us had grown well out of the original band, ending up to 1900+. It's pretty much customary that these 1500+ tournaments are eventually won by players in the 2000's, partly because winning the group usually means you have to win something like 80-90% of the games on every round, but also because the events span over years. I'm still playing the very first tournament I took part in, a 1600-1699 banded, and currently tied for the win with a 2070-player.

RHP: 1977, 287 games, +198 -74 =15.

How Deep Do You Look?

2007-12-13T11:35:00.000-08:00

The depth of vision/calculation between players of different strengths, is a topic that comes up pretty regularly on RHP. Last time this week.

The thing that has become apparent (to me), is that the weaker players tend to say they look very deep (5-8 moves or even deeper), while the stronger ones look only a couple of moves deep (2-4). Obviously there are exceptions in both groups, but the tendency is quite clear. Clear enough to make me a bit suspicious when a strong player claims to look 5-7 moves deep on average.

It could be because weaker players only think they see that deep, when they actually crack 1-2 moves deep, and it's probably partly true. But the real reason, in my opinion, is that weaker players have the misconception that you need to calculate deep to be strong, which simply isn't true (excluding exceptions like forced variations & endgames). The better I've become, the less deeply I calculate (on average). Nowadays I almost never calculate deeper than 2 moves in CC, and I can remember only 1 single time when looking 5 moves deep (against a 2300) would've made a slight difference (he managed to equalize my slight advantage in the endgame).

The errors happen 1-2 move deep, and the overwhelmingly most common one is underestimating a move that you did look into. And by underestimating I mean direct consequences that are blindingly obvious once you see that move made, not consequences that lie deeper. "Oh hell, that pawn move blows my center to pieces" is what happens. -You correctly assessed that you won't lose material, fall into a tactic or a mate, but you missed the amount of trouble (which may or may not be survivable) the move caused.

Another thing which I think strengthens the misconception, is that weaker players absolutely uncritically love what engines tell them. They see engine evaluation as 'objective truth', which it's not. It's a subjective numeric approximation, which has only one strength: It's not susceptible to tactical errors. - An engine can't tell shit about a position without calculating, or at best things like: "A doubled pawn is -0.2", which may not be relevant at all. A strong human can tell enough to beat weak engines.

And because weaker players know this specific kind of 'objective truth' is reached by extremely deep calculation, they think aping that will magically give them greater understanding of the position, which it generally won't.

1403 on FICS 5 0 Blitz

2007-12-06T14:13:00.000-08:00

Another milestone reached. Slightly less stupid moves, slightly more at home with my pet openings, but still quite a lot of brainwrecking collapses after reaching comfortably won positions. I need to pay more attention to playing fast, simple, solid moves to take out the counterplay when I'm a piece up.

More endgames on PCT to see faster when it's possible to simplify into a won endgame, and also to implement the correct plan quickly even under time pressure.

FICS br: 1403 (1403), 862 games played, +435 -416 =11
ICC 5-minute: 1346 (1379), 787 games played, +371 -406 =10

A Week Of Blitz

2007-12-02T06:09:00.000-08:00

I've been playing blitz daily for about a week now, and I must say it's going better all the time. Last night I even got as high as 1379 on ICC, and I feel pretty confident I can break 1400 in the next few weeks. A good night's sleep and a little luck is all it takes.

One thing occurred to me while I was thinking about the 1500's & 1600's I've played against: They play their elementary endgames a lot better. If I could get my basic endgame up to a decent level, it would make all the difference in time trouble & converting those 'won posoitions' into full points. - So, after a long break, I fired up PCT and started hammering the endgame modules once again. It turns out I've forgotten almost all the little I taught myself last winter, so it was about time too. I'll try to keep doing a little every day, as well as play some blitz games.

Back To ICC 5-minute Blitz

2007-11-24T18:18:00.000-08:00

Okay, I've finally managed to run my CC gameload down to 10 games, in order to get the energy for concentrating on my horrible blitz. So today I fired up ICC and played about 20 or so 5-minute games. First I went down to 1180, then back to 1320, and after I started getting tired I leveled around 1250. I haven't slept much, to it's an okay result. The games were nothing to write home about, I messed horribly all the time, dropped stuff, lost from being pieces ahead etc etc... The usual stuff. Surprisingly I didn't lost that many games for time.

The plan is to start (once again) playing at least some games daily, ignoring ratings and just hammer on until I stop doing those stupid brainless blunders my blitz is filled with. Just aim for a simple solid game, and especially playing those 'won' games like they should be played. Prevent counterplay, simplify and win. Get the basic game into shape.

1650 On CTS At 90% Success Rate

2007-10-15T09:56:00.000-07:00

After eight months, I'm finally back where I was prior to my latest increase in accuracy. I've hit 1650 a couple of times during the last two weeks, but it has been with the cost of session accuracy so I haven't counted those times. Today was the first time I managed it with a 90%+ session average, or 93.5% to be exact. The average has been around 90% though.

Also, as the problem set jumps to 100 points tougher at 1650, it's been very hard to keep up the 'winning strikes' going after 1650+. It definitely requires some extra effort (meaning more solving time), so I don't think I'll be going much higher anytime soon.

Although I have been doing only a fraction of the daily amount of problems compared to the less accurate 80% sessions period before, I've still been more or less consistent with the practice. Can't say whether it has made much difference on my blitz, as I haven't really been playing it for a couple of months. But I've finally got my RHP gameload down to 16 games, and am starting to have some energy to start blitz again. After a couple of days it's obvious that my blitz openings are very rusty, but otherwise it felt pretty good. Yesterday I scored about 8/10 wins in 5 0, so I'm quite hopeful that things will pick up once I get back up to speed.

CTS: 1650, 78.9%, 95415 tries, 93.5% session.

1960 on Red Hot Pawn

2007-10-06T16:17:00.000-07:00

23. O-O-O, only sissies castle early! :) Got a nice win against benoni and broke through 1950 with a rumble. Missed some winning moves along the way, but my superior space, development and the connected passed pawns gave me just too much momentum to be stopped. I pushed the passers too early though, as I thought he couldn't take the pawn on e7. But I had missed that he could take the pawn and then block the discovered check with the rook. Luckily I still had way too much momentum and threats to be stopped, so he resigned.

[White "wormwood"]
[Black "Billnad"]
[WhiteRating "1946"]
[BlackRating "1897"]

1. d4 Ng8f6 2. c4 c5 3. d5 e6 4. Nb1c3 exd5 5. cxd5 d6 6. e4 g6 7. f4 Bf8g7 8. Bf1b5 Nf6d7 9. a4 O-O 10. Ng1f3 f5 11. Nf3g5 Nd7f6 12. e5 dxe5 13. fxe5 Nf6g4 14. e6 a6 15. Bb5e2 Bg7d4 16. Be2xg4 fxg4 17. Ng5e4 Qd8h4 18. g3 Qh4h5 19. Bc1f4 b6 20. e7 Rf8e8 21. Qd1b3 Re8xe7 22. d6 Re7e6 23. O-O-O Qh5f5 24. Rh1f1 1-0

Next stop 2000, the big one.

RHP: 1960, 275 games, +190 -72 =13
CTS: 1641, 94417 tries, 78.8%

Here Be Dragons

2007-08-22T16:54:00.000-07:00

I think I'm done with it. I've played the Sicilian Dragon exclusively in my slow games for maybe half a year now. And while it does offer some crazy attacks, those never really seem to materialize outside blitz. I always feel I'm a dead man walking, waiting for my opponent to screw up. And I really don't like that, it's a way too passive way to play for me. I crave for the initiative, no matter what the cost.

Here's a perfect example from RHP a couple of days ago. I don't really think I did any bad mistakes, the guy just tightened his grip ever so gently throughout the game. It was like he had a knife on my throat, and whatever I did his hold just got stronger. It took me 17 moves to even get equality. Which fortunately also provoked his mistake 18.Nd5. At that point I knew I was doing very well, but at the same time very aware of the complications I would be facing when the white queen finally lands on h6 with a check. I calculated my ass off to see whether I can escape the mate or not, because I knew he'd be mated if I could just escape his checks for a move or two.

23.Qh6+ and white queen finally landed into my position. I was still unsure if I could escape via e6, which now in hindsight looks obvious. So I chickened out and took the safe way to victory with a queen exchange. Sure it's more reasonable to exchange down into a won, safe endgame, but it just isn't the same as crushing your opponent with devastating massive blows.

[White "LightSoul"]
[Black "wormwood"]
[WhiteRating "1932"]
[BlackRating "1862"]
[Result "0-1"]

1. e4 c5 2. Ng1f3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nf3xd4 Ng8f6 5. Nb1c3 g6 6. Bc1e3 Bf8g7 7. Bf1e2 O-O 8. h4 Nb8c6 9. h5 Nc6xd4 10. Be3xd4 Bc8e6 11. hxg6 fxg6 12. Qd1d2 Qd8a5 13. f3 a6 14. a3 Ra8c8 15. g4 Be6c4 16. Be2xc4 Rc8xc4 17. b4 Qa5c7 18. Nc3d5 Nf6xd5 19. Bd4xg7 Rf8xf3 20. Qd2xd5 Kg8xg7 21. Qd5g5 Rc4xe4 22. Ke1d1 Qc7c3 23. Qg5h6 Kg7f7 24. Qh6xh7 Qc3g7 0-1

To put a long story short, I think I'm going to take up Scandinavian also in slow games. It's just so incredibly nice to harass white straight from the start, develop with ease, and crush! crush! crush! Well at least try, but no waiting for the coup de grâce anymore.

1310 On ICC 5-minute Blitz

2007-07-31T17:53:00.000-07:00

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.

CTS 1616 on 90.0% Success Rate

2007-07-25T12:11:00.000-07:00

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

CTS 1577 on 89.2% Success Rate

2007-06-20T15:16:00.000-07:00

Pretty close to 90%, but still no cigar. The good days were a bit over 96%, the worst I think I got 5 wrong out of twenty no matter how hard I tried. It's obvious it's better to stop the session when those failures start piling up, but I can't just seem to be able to do that. The rating was pretty steady around 1580-1590, so no big changes there.

The method dk suggested, just slowing down after a bad stretch, forcing 20 or so correct in a row regardless of the rating drop, well that does seem to do the trick. Unless you're too tired and your brain just won't work. But usually the method works.

This time it took me 768 tries to increase the overall success rate 0.1 percent, which is 240 tries less than in the last batch. Looks like a big improvement, considering that the success rate increased only 2.9%. But the hill just gets really steep the higher you get.

CTS: 1577, 86740 tries, 78.0%.

CTS 1587 on 86.3% Success Rate

2007-06-09T14:49:00.000-07:00

So the big wheel finally turned, and my success rate jumped from 77.8% to 77.9%. It took 1008 problems, give or take a couple of dozen tries, yielding an actual success rate of 86.3%. Slightly less than what I was aiming for, but I had quite a lot of bad days which drop the percentage quite easily. I'll keep pushing for the 90%, so hopefully the next increment will happen around 900 tries from now.

Winning streak on RHP keeps continuing, and regardless of some problems against the lower rated, my rating graph just keeps going up. I don't really lose much anymore, only one single loss and a draw in the last 30 games. It's probably not because I suddenly got a lot better, but because I'm getting more diciplined in the way I play my games. And most of the opponents have also been hundreds of points lower rated, so that's a factor too. Can't really do much about that, as the tournaments almost always have a lot of lower rated players. But it's still always nice to win, even though I'll only get 1 or 2 points for the win, and risk losing 30 for the occasional blunder. That's also where the diciplined approach comes in.

CTS: 1587, 85972 tries, 77.9%
RHP: 1923, 239 games, wdl 167-13-65

1902 On Red Hot Pawn

2007-05-25T14:53:00.000-07:00

My RHP games have been going very well for a while now, regardless of my chronically oversized game load (47), and I've committed only a few glaring mistakes. Subtracting the negatives, it really works.

The goal for 2007 was 1900, and it's only May. I had a feeling it might not be that difficult goal to reach, but wasn't really expecting to do it so quick. More time to work on my useless blitz I guess.

There's a couple of games in which I'm being run over, but not for those typical simple oversights, which is always good. I don't mind being outplayed strategically, as it always gives you a burning scar that won't fade away for a long time (won't be underestimating the bayonet against KID again in a hurry). It's the simple blunders which bug the hell out of me.

I've been winning most of the games, but some of the lower rated opponents have & are giving me a really hard time. They seem to just buckle up when they see my rating go up, damn them. It was a lot easier to win against 1500's when I was in the 1600's. Fortunately my endgames have come a long way, and I've even managed to draw some lost games. And no more losing won endgames against 1500's. All Hail Karsten Müller!

Nevertheless, a huge amount of work left on endgames, for I've still only scratched the surface so far. Tactics, well that's a neverending graveyard shift in the salt mines, but I think I'm pretty okay for now. Could be a lot better, especially on calculation, but there are more pressing matters to concern myself with.

Like always, I sense the impending doom looming right behind the next corner, and expect to drop back to 1800's before long. But if I do, I'm now pretty confident in staying over 1900 once I get my game load down to a manageable size. With some nice victories coming in, I might make it even now. Although I'm somewhat sceptical about that... But like always, we'll see what future brings.

On CTS I've been doing around 90% success rate for a while now, hovering around 1600, and today the overall percentage finally did budge from 77.7% to 77.8%. It's now 84 964 tries, and I thought I'd write it down so I can calculate what kind of average I've actually had when the percentage moves the next time.

RHP: 1902, 234 games, wdl 162-13-65
CTS: 1595, 84964 tries, 77.8%

Capture Blindness - A Horror Story

2007-05-14T17:09:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking a lot about why I'm so terrible at blitz, when my slow games are going better all the time. What is it that I do so differently in blitz? Well one thing is extremely obvious: I miss a lot of simple 1-movers. Meaning I drop material in every game, sometimes even missing obvious mate-in-ones. I don't miss those almost ever in slow games anymore.

One thing I've come to suspect is my thought process in blitz. Do I really check if a move drops a piece? Not really. I just make a move that looks intuitively good. There's some checking of course, but it's more unconscious, and obviously not very efficient judging by my score.

So this got me thinking about how to exercise my blitz thought process. I could obviously do it on CTS, or even in real games. But somehow that gives me the nagging feeling that it's just my laziness trying to get way without dealing with any real, and inherently uncomfortable, change. "Just carry on dude, it'll all blow over in time." - Then I suddenly remembered someone mentioning some kind of a capture training mode in fritz, so I fired it up and took a peek at the thing.

It's called 'attack training', and the basic idea is to click every piece that can be taken, regardless of color or the result. If the capture is legal, click the target. You can set a time limit for a session, and fritz automatically selects new positions from the database, as soon as you've found all the captures correctly. When the time runs out, it displays your number of found captures in that session, the average score between sessions, and the highest score. "Sounds like child's play, this must be so easy it can't possibly be useful" I thought. "There's not even looking for the simplest tactics involved, just captures."

So I set the session timer for three minutes and started clicking. And after a few sessions, it turns out my average scores were horrible!!! There was always a simple capture or two escaping my eye, and finding those simply took a lot of time! My average score for 3 minutes was 10 captures found!?! That just must be incredibly weak. I also found it surprisingly hard to concentrate on finding my opponent's captures in an orderly fashion. Which indicates that I indeed have the bad habit of just ignoring my opponent's threats.

So it seems like there's yet another element of board vision I wasn't aware of. One which is possible to disregard even while doing a huge amount of tactics. And even though it can be argued that most of these captures are irrelevant, as they simply don't have any possibility to work out, I still think I should be able to find them fast or immediately. There's clearly a lot of work to be done on that area, and I think this weakness might actually be the very reason why I play so badly in blitz.

From now on, I'm going to do a couple of 3 minute sessions daily, also focusing on the thought process I use. Nothing complex, just conduct the search in orderly and complete fashion. First search for my opponent's captures, then my own.

I would also be extremely interested in how others do on the attack training mode. So please try it out with a batch of 3min sessions, and leave your result as a comment on this post, complete with your blitz rating. I'm hoping we'll see some kind of meaningful differences between blitzers of different level.

my stats:
3min sessions
average: 10
highest 17
ICC 5-minute 1100

update: I've just been told that the 'attack training' mode wasn't introduced until Fritz 9. I'd still love to hear about it from those of you who have it. Whether you do well or not doesn't matter, I'd just like to find out if seeing those captures faster is a property that good blitzers have. A bad blitzer doing well on it would also be very interesting, as it would pretty much prove me wrong and close the case as irrelevant to blitz training.

Bad Times In Blitz

2007-04-30T12:50:00.000-07:00

I guess I should record the bad things too, so the 'diary' wouldn't give too optimistic picture of my progress.

A couple of weeks ago I hit a bad day in my blitz project. I was just about to cross over 1300, when I got stuck into a huge losing streak. And like an addict I thought "just a couple of games more, and I bet my luck turns around again." No need to say, but it didn't. I just kept losing more, and after three days I was down to almost 1000 in ICC 5-minute. I tried taking a couple of days off, but it was no use. I just couldn't do anything right anymore.

The reason was the same as always, having trouble sleeping. When you sleep 3 hours a night, it's best to step away from the board. To make a long story short, it's taken me two weeks to get into any kind of shape. Still a couple of proper nights-of-rest shy from being fully awake, but hopefully I'll get more sleep this week.

So, I've been playing just for fun, completely ignoring the horrible results. Even CTS went from 1650 down to 1580, and would've gone lower had I not stopped doing it. I was losing about 15-16 out of 20 games every day, so that's what kind of a slump we're talking about.

To get some benefit from the 'down time', I've been spending it getting used to the Dutch Leningrad variation and it's white mirror image, the Polar Bear. Both openings give very lively and tactical games, at least with my suicidal attacking tendencies. And as I've never played the Dutch before, all the positions looked just confusing and random at first, but it's all slowly making more sense now.

I've also started gathering data on my time managment, as I realized losing on time is still my worst problem in blitz. The idea is to track the amount of games I finish down on time, and hopefully reach at least a 50-50 level, the bare minimum to keep statistically up with my opponents. So every time I finish a game considerably up on time, I'll give myself a big pat on the back, even if I lost the game. So far I've even won a couple of games on time, which is a good start. But I'm still just way too slow usually.

ICC 5-minute Blitz 1202

2007-04-14T10:46:00.000-07:00

Another hundred broken, and it's going better all the time. Slow but steady improvement, less and less panic, less braindead blunders, less losses by getting flagged in a won position, better endgame, more reasonable openings. And I'm getting more and more sure that reasonable is the magic word here. simple, reasonable moves, avoid crazy complications, don't shy away from exchanges unless it's a really bad one.

But I'm still lousy at staying out of trouble, always drawn to that excellent crazy but very difficult move instead of the practical one. I think I should probably aim for getting into endgame as fast as possible, playing that simple, solid chess. Let the opponent trip with the complications.

ICC 5-minute: 1202, 215 games
CTS: 1643, 82692 tries, 77.6%
RHP: 1840, 223 games, wdl 152-12-65

ICC 5-minute Blitz 1100

2007-04-04T15:48:00.000-07:00

Okay, I think I'm starting to get the hang of this blitz thing. Just broke 1100 for the first time after starting 5-minute blitz on ICC. That's +200 points from where I began. Now it seems I can actually win most of those 'won' games, and I don't panic nearly as much either (although there's still a lot to do on that area). From the last 20 games I've won 15 and lost only 5. Starting out it was around 15 losses for every 5 wins, so clear improvement there. And what's more important, is that none of the losses were flagged in a won position.

ICC 5-minute: 1101, 185 games played.

Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill!

2007-03-29T16:12:00.000-07:00

I just had a revelation: Blitz is about speed. Yeah, I know. "Who would've guessed that..." :-/ Sometimes I'm so incredibly stupid.

I keep ending a queen up, two minor pieces up, with a crushingly won endgame etc. only to lose on time. I either get flagged or throw the win because I have only 20 seconds to my opponent's 1 to 2 minutes, but those are both essentially lost because of time. I just play too slow, pure and simple.

I've tried to keep telling myself "Faster! Faster!" but I can only keep that up in the opening, and slow down right after that. I spot these Good Moves, nice combinations, and work them out. And surpisingly often I can also pull them off, winning that piece or the position. But I end up 2 minutes down on time, hence essentially lost. Often even that extra queen won't be enough then.

So, I need to stop using more time than my opponent. Before I can manage to do that consistently, it doesn't matter how much material I'm up. Move faster, take the practical move instead of complications, exchange a lot. - And after I can keep up with the clock, only then start worrying about playing better chess. Fast, basic, safe moves.

Here's a game I luckily won, but it's a perfect example of what happens. After a couple of moves I push the complications until all hell breaks loose. And I was supposed to be trying to keep it simple. How's that for a "quiet, passive 1.d4 game" by the way?

[White "wormwood"][Black "mhf"][TimeControl "300+0"]
1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 g6 3. Nc3 Bg7 4. e4 c6 5. Nf3 d5 6. cxd5 cxd5 7. e5 Ne4 8.Qb3 Qa5 9. Bd3 b6 10. O-O Bg4 11. Nxd5 Be6 12. Bxe4 O-O 13. Nc7 Bxb3 14.Bd2 Qa4 15. axb3 Qxb3 16. Bxa8 Qxb2 17. Rfb1 Qc2 18. Rc1 Qb2 19. Rxa7 Nd7 20. Nd5 f6 21. Rxd7 fxe5 22. Nxe7+ Kh8 23. Bd5 h6 24. Nxg6+ Kh7 25. Nxf8+ Kh8 26. Ne6 Bf6 27. Be4 Qb5 28. Rc8+ Bd8 29. Rcxd8# 1-0

First Week Of Blitz

2007-03-21T16:19:00.000-07:00

It turns out there's a special 5-minute variant of blitz on ICC, with automatic opponent selection (closely rated) and automatic flagging & disconnection forfeit. It also has it's own rating, which seems to be a bit harder to obtain than the regular blitz rating. At least at the lowest level where I currently am. -I was just crossing over 1200 playing far inferior blitz compared to this moment, when I discovered the 5-minute automatic player pool (It's just really handy), and I sunk like a rock to the 900's. 890 was probably the lowest point. Today I finally clawed my way back to 1000+, and it took days to accomplish. The 5-minute pool players seem to also know their openings better than players in the regular blitz pool.

Anyway, it's been a constant battle against time. In the beginning I couldn't handle it at all, scrapping openings, middlegame, endgame, and almost never beating the flag. Huge blunders left & right, and the rare game I "won" I then lost because I panicked in the haste. Now, I can mostly keep my game together up until the endgame, but often fail to end it even with a straightforward win. Missing obvious mates etc. But it's all gotten a lot better during the week, and I feel quite optimistic that I'll soon get the hang of it. I now "win" about 80% of the games, and finish about 50% of my games to an actual win. There's definite progress, but still way too many games are lost just for panicking in a won position. "Won" as in having huge material lead in the endgame, not merely positionally winning. It still doesn't matter much how well my opponents play though, the losses are almost exclusively my huge blunders.

It's a rocky road learning to survive in blitz controls. Nothing like slow chess. Nothing like CTS either.

ICC 5-minute: 1021, 83 games.

5 0 Blitz On ICC

2007-03-14T09:08:00.000-07:00

I've been giving a lot of thought to my inability to survive in blitz games. From slow games I already know that it's not the strategical understanding that kills me, and I also know that tactics is my strongest point. And on CTS I outclass strong blitz players both on rating and accuracy, so it's not whipping out tactical moves fast either. What the hell can it be then?

One thing that comes to mind is experience. I've played about 200 blitz games ever, and maybe 95% of those were with time controls of around 15 minutes. Which is so slow it's almost not blitz at all. Also, when I think about how my progress has gone on CTS, slowly inching my way up through tens of thousands of problems, I begin to wonder if the same would've happened playing similar amount of blitz games.

So, now that I've subscribed to ICC I decided to test that hypothesis there. And as the regular tournament play blitz control seems to be 5 0, that's what I'm going to play. Getting used to the time control will no doubt be my biggest problem starting out, but I'm sure it'll work out after a while.

Yesterday, well last night to be exact, I then plunged into the 5 0 pool. And just as I expected, I can't handle the 5 0 control to save my life, and got massacred. I lost a lot of games on time, got mated out of the blue a couple of times, dropped a lot of material, missed wins, blundered openings, the works. Ended up with a pathetic but totally deserved rating of 1060. So, now I'll try to keep 5 0 blitzing, and we'll see if I can claw my way up as I would expect. Coincidentally, that's exactly the same rating as on CTS when I started out 1½ years ago. Hopefully there will be a similar improvement after thousands of blitz games.

RHP: 1848, 218 games played, wdl: 149-12-63.
ICC 5 0: 1060, 14 games.

1650 On CTS

2007-02-24T18:38:00.000-08:00

Another milestone reached. I just did about a hundred problems staying on the 1645-1650 level, even though I had slept only three hours last night. My eyes felt weary, but it was like the pins, skewers and double threats were flying at me, and I solved a lot of them in less than three seconds. Still, I got only 6 wrong of the last 50 problems. That's a solid 88% success rate. Weird.

I had been forcing myself to look for my own king safety first for a couple of days, which felt very awkward and difficult to maintain. It also slowed me down quite a bit, and didn't seem to make that big of a difference. So now I just went with the feeling, mostly not concentrating on the king safety. And I just flew through the variations, spotting all relevant aspects in the positions like they had big, red lights blinking on them. I hope this isn't an isolated incident.

Feeling quite tired with my CC games. I divided them in three and now try to force myself to run through a group on most days. But I've clearly overdone it, and I'll need to cut my gameload down. Once again. There's also the 7/14 Clan Leagues starting in a week or so, which will apparently land me another 18-20 games playing board two. Which will probably mean the opponents are rated 1600-2000 depending on the clan.

I don't even have much energy for the 30 30 games, so I've slowed that down as well. Not to mention CT-ART and PCT. No sense in doing them until I have the necessary energy back.

Started going through Kasparov's KID games though, which seems nice and interesting. Taking maybe 30-45 minutes a game, not trying to wreck my brain or anything. Just getting some easy fun. I'll probably be trying KID out myself on 30 30 games soon.

CTS: 1650, 77546, 77.6%
RHP: 1822
FICS standard: 1623 (1662), wdl 28-2-16

Kicking Ass Threshold

2007-02-17T03:26:00.000-08:00

Another motivational post. TommyC just posted this link on RHP, How to be an expert, and the relevance of 'talent' and starting young in it. I've never believed in the concept of talent, and it now appears there's some scientific evidence to back that up. I find the graph especially hilarious.

Concrete Chess

2007-02-10T09:47:00.000-08:00

I ran into something Rashid Ziatdinov has said about chess. It's pretty much what I've been thinking, when I've seen people analyse games far more convincingly than I ever could, yet they're rated hundreds of points lower than I, so I thought I'd post it here.

"Students sometimes lament that they cannot apply their knowledge during a game. They cannot apply their "knowledge" because they really don't have any knowledge! What they have instead are shortcuts to chess language, what I call "chess magic spelling" (like "open the position if you are more developed", "the two bishop advantage", "don't move the queen out too early", etc.). These shortcuts are useless generalities. Chess can only be expressed with concrete variations. This often-ignored concept is so crucial to mastering chess that it bears repeating with emphasis: chess can only be expressed with concrete variations!

Imagine a musician who had never heard music, only descriptions and theories of music; Imagine a dancer who had never physically performed a pleat or twirl, only read instructions on how to dance. How is a chess player who relies on ideas expressed in words and theories any less ridiculous? A musician makes music, a dancer dances, and a chess player calculates variations!"

Although Ziatdinov seems a bit, umm, 'passionate', even crazy, I do think he has a strong point here. Procedural knowledge instead of theoretical knowledge. And the only way to get there is to get your hands dirty, sweat blood, and slam down variations. It doesn't matter if you were born a Kasparov or a Fischer, hard work for a decade or two is the only way to get there. Talk is cheap, 'BAM! BAM! BAM!' is what counts. :)

Now I'm gonna go eat a raw, bloody steak, chug some beer, burb, and get back to slamming down endgame variations. BAM! BAM! BAM!

CT-ART Level 20 Complete

2007-02-08T15:42:00.000-08:00

After the initial enthiusiasm about CT-ART, I haven't been much on it. Today I just finished level 20 after a break, that makes it 396 problems solved. I've tried to do it only when I'm not tired, concentrating on exhaustive calculation, but even one tired session brings the success percentage down quite a lot. It's really hard to fight the natural laziness and jump the gun when you're tired. But I'll try to do better again on level 30.

first round:
level 10: 96%
level 20: 88%
rating: 2007

I've also looked into the basic endgame modules of Personal Chess Trainer, which seems quite nice. Of course the interface is crap as usual, and its inability to understand anything but the one pre-set 'correct line' annoys the hell out of me. But at least there's a nice set of basic endgame problems to drill and get the theoretical knowledge transformed into procedural knowledge.

Otherwise I've been playing 30 30 games on FICS almost every day. Mostly it's been going well, but yesterday I messed a game like a total idiot. First I declined material on the 10th move because I got greedy trying to pressure his king in the center, then got into trouble because of the previous retreat of the pinning g5-knight which gave him a pawnstorm. I was looking for the flashy win, of course, the cardinal sin in a winning position. Then a long period of adequate defending, only to succumb into a fork, only to insanely drop the queen right after. Although the end was humiliating, I'm even more pissed off about allowing that kingside pawn storm. My only hope is that the painful mistake will burn into my brain, never to be forgotten. Here's that miserable excuse for a game:

[White "wormstar"]
[Black "Versiano"]
[Result "0-1"]
[WhiteElo "1628"]
[BlackElo "1575"]

1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e6 3. Nc3 g6 4. Bg5 Bg7 5. e4 d6 6. Qf3 Nc6 7. Rd1 h6 8.Bh4 g5 9. Bg3 Nd7 10. d5 Bxc3+ 11. bxc3 exd5 12. cxd5 Ne7 13. Bc4 Ng6 14.Bb3 b6 15. Ne2 Qe7 16. O-O Nc5 17. Rd4 h5 18. h3 g4 19. hxg4 Bxg4 20. Qe3 h4 21. Bh2 O-O-O 22. f3 Bd7 23. Ra1 h3 24. g3 Rdg8 25. Kf2 Ne5 26. Ke1 Qf6 27. Nf4 Kb7 28. Bc2 Qg5 29. a4 a5 30. Bd3 Nb3 31. Rb1 Nxd4 32. Qxd4 Nxf3+{wormstar resigns}0-1

Let that be a lesson for me.

"The Harder I Practice, The Luckier I Get"

2007-02-05T17:51:00.000-08:00

This was one of those days when you can't do anything wrong, and your opponents get the karmic counterpunch. The race is long, and it all evens out in the end, but today was my day.

[White "BTAT"]
[Black "wormstar"]
[Result "0-1"]
[WhiteElo "1821"]
[BlackElo "1562"]

1. d4 Nf6 2. f3 e6 3. e4 c5 4. Be3 Nc6 5. Bb5 cxd4 6. Bxd4 Qa5+ 7. Nc3 Bb4 8. Ne2 Qxb5 9. a3 Bxc3+ 10. Bxc3 Qg5 11. g4 O-O 12. Qd6 Ne8 13. Qd3 d5 14.h4 dxe4 15. Qxe4 Qd5 16. Qe3 b6 17. Nf4 Qc5 18. Qd2 Ba6 19. O-O-O Rd8 20.Qh2 Rxd1+ 21. Rxd1 Qe3+ 22. Kb1 Qxf3 23. Bb4 Qxd1+{BTAT resigns} 0-1

update:
I just hammered 1646 on CTS, with a 85.7% session. This is getting ridiculous.

FICS standard: 1620
CTS: 1646

Standard Games On FICS

2007-02-04T17:43:00.000-08:00

I've finally started playing standard games on FICS, after endless procrastination. It's been a full year since I played a couple of them, in my 'chess infancy' around christmas 2005. It didn't go very well, and I never got rid of being provisional.

After a couple of miserable first games, during which I played just as if I had never seen a board before, I started to get used to the pace. I've been playing 30 30 games, which seems to be a good compromise between using the whole day to a game and blitz which is just too fast for me at this time. It feels very good, and finally feel like I can fully apply the skills I've acquired playing CC for a little over a year. Nothing like the humiliating implosive disasters my blitz games have been. Today I even got past the 1500 mark, although I'm still provisional. But the people & games I've played seem to indicate I should have no problems reaching 1600's. I'll try to keep playing a couple of 30 30 games every week, and we'll see just how it turns out.

And it's also really refreshing that games start & end in one session, compared to the weeks and months of correspondence chess. You also get a better feel for the game as a whole.

RHP: 1834, 217 games, wdl 144-11-62.
FICS standard: 1518p
FICS blitz: 1226

1805 On Red Hot Pawn

2007-01-21T06:06:00.000-08:00

Wupee! Finally there. Well, at least for a while. No doubt I'll fall back under 1800 soon, but the first time you break an even hundred is always a cause for celebration. The mental barrier has been broken, and now I'll just have to establish my rating above 1800 for good. It took me 1½ years, 202 rated CC games and 73 882 problems on CTS to get there. It's time to set the sights for 1900.

CTS has been going extremely well also, after I stopped daily training. During the last two weeks I've hit another bumb, and risen up to around 1630 (1639). I think it's because I've been at it really hard the last six months, averaging at about 200-300 problems a day, so now that I've taken it easy I'm more alert and less exhausted.

I've been slacking a bit with CT-ART, mainly because I don't want to do it tired. I would just start guessing, which is the exact opposite of what I'm trying to gain from it. Which is exhaustive and complete calculation training. But I'll get back to it as soon as I feel more alert.

RHP: 1805, 202 games, wdl 134-11-61.
CTS: 1621 (1639), 73 931 problems, 77.7%

The Year 2006 And Goals For 2007

2007-01-07T16:02:00.000-08:00

I guess it's time to make a quick summary on the year 2006. Looking back, chess improvement went reasonably well, although I didn't get around to playing standard games. Other than that, I pretty much reached my goals for the year. broke 1600 on CTS, 1200 in FICS blitz, and would've even broken the 1800 on RHP without the 40 swindled points I mentioned in my previous post. So, all in all, things went pretty well.

For the year 2007 I'm making some minor changes in my training program. Tactics will no longer be the primary training I'll be using my efforts on, instead I'm concentrating on endgames. I'll still be doing some CTS just for fun and CT-ART for calculation exercises, but the bulk of my time will be devoted to mastering the material in the 3 Karsten Müller endgame dvds I acquired. I have watched through the dvds 1&2, and now I'm drilling all the examples against fritz until I can instantly recognize and perform the necessary procedures. I'm now drilling the pawn endgames, and needless to say but it has made all the difference. I'm pretty sure all of my explicit knowledge of the related theory was almost useless, as in reality I had to actually calculate K+P vs. K. Now I recognize the critical squares etc. instantly, and can tell with great certainty if the situation is won/drawn in 20 moves, and what needs to be done to make it so. Suddenly, the deadly boring endgames have actually become fun! It's almost like magic when you know the theory, and know without calculation that no move exist for the opponent to break the theory, no matter how he answers.

Goals for the year 2007: RHP 1900, FICS blitz 1500, and let's say 1600 for FICS standard if I (hopefully) get around to playing standard games. I realize the standard goal isn't exactly on par with the other goals, but I'm going to work first on my blitz, and only then standard if there's time/energy.

CT-ART 3.0 And A Status Summary

2006-12-18T12:00:00.000-08:00

I finally got CT-ART, and have been starting with the level 10 problems. As usual with any chess programs, the interface is quite amateurish and has a lot of room for improvement. But I'm getting used to it, and I guess it gets the job done... The problems are quite easy, of course, but I've still managed to get 2 wrong from the first 79. I'm going to concentrate on calculation with them, an area that I'm having serious problems with, despite the extensive drilling on CTS.

I also ordered Karsten Müller's endgame dvds 1&3, and will start drilling them as soon as they'll arrive. I'm also continuing the daily dose of blitz, and hopefully get the hang of it at some point. Now, I just keep doing ridiculous mistakes I didn't even think I was capable of anymore, and the embarrassing rating in the 1100's descibe exactly how much I suck at blitz. In CC I got swindled out of about 40 points by a 1900-2000 rated guy who mass resigned around 100 games at once, leaving me with a whopping 10 points for the two games I won against him. I would've hit 1800 otherwise, but the 40 missed points combined with a typical missplayed ending against a 1600 have dropped me back down to 1735. Well, live & learn.

CT-ART update:
day 1: level 10: 96%, level 20: 90% 61/286 done.

Mating With KBB vs. K

2006-12-11T12:32:00.000-08:00

This one I never even tried until a couple of days ago, as I thought it would we quite trivial to line up the bishops and force the king out of space. But now that I've actually drilled it, I realize there was a good chance to stalemate in time trouble, and that the efficient mating sequence actually demands some technique.

The general idea is to drive the defending king into any corner, and mate him. It's easiest done setting the bishop pair side by side as close to the defender as possible, confining him into a triangular area against the edge. Then you just move your king up, take a couple of squares and squeeze a diagonal off every time the defender retreats, until it's against the edge. Then you pick a corner, and force the king towards it by blocking it from behind with the bishops.

In the corner, confine it against either edge, line up the bishops to take the final squares with check, lose a tempo if needed, then check and mate.

A blitzed example against Chessmaster 9000:

[White "wormwood"]
[Black "Chessmaster"]
[Result "1-0"]
[Setup "1"]
[FEN "7K/3B4/8/8/8/2B2k2/8/8 w - - 0 1"]
1.Be6 Ke4 2.Bf6 Kd3 3.Kg7 Ke4 4.Kg6 Ke3 5.Kg5 Kd2 6.Kf4 Kd3 7.Be5 Ke2 8.Bd5 Kd3 9.Kf3 Kd2 10.Be4 Kc1 11.Bd4 Kd2 12.Kf2 Kc1 13.Ke3 Kd1 14.Bb2 Ke1 15.Bc2 Kf1 16.Kf3 Kg1 17.Bc3 Kh2 18.Bf5 Kg1 19.Kg3 Kh1 20.Bd3 Kg1 21.Bd4+ Kh1 22.Be4# 1-0

Mating With KNB vs. K

2006-12-10T16:13:00.000-08:00

I thought I'd make a separate post on all cases I'm going to tackle, so here is the first one. Maybe it'll even help someone else, although I'm probably not going to get overly detailed where the matters are trivial to myself.

I've tried to learn KBN several times before, so I was not completely new to the ideas behind it. Drive the enemy king to the edge, force it to the corner the color of your bishop, and mate it. Sounds simple, but in practice the king just kept slipping away before I could get it into the right corner. Once in the correct corner, the mate is pretty straightforward after some thinking.

Also the driving to the edge -part is relatively easy, just 'oppose' the enemy king with your king, restrict with K&B until it has no legal moves but to retreat towards edge, and invade all the files/ranks it gives you until it's against the edge. It helps to remember that the enemy king's best defence is to first stay in the middle of the board, and that failing to retreat towards the wrong coloured corner. So these are the directions you want to block. In practice this also means that it's usually easiest to drive it towards the wrong corner to begin with. Another tip is to avoid placing a piece between the kings (sometimes it works though), so that you'll be able to snatch the files the enemy gives you without letting the him slip away. I didn't memorize any specific patterns for this phase, but after some drilling against Chessmaster it became instinctive and easy, and I'm now able to do that in a bullet game with no thinking whatsoever.

The thing that kept me baffled until I got some tips from Dragon Fire and Varenka on RHP, was the part where you drive the king towards the mating corner along the edge. The beginning is pretty easy, you just keep the enemy king against the edge with your king, build an additional 'wall' with the knight when needed, and block from 'behind' with the bishop so the king can't return. At some points you'll also need to lose a tempo with the bishop to get the enemy king where you want it.

But around the middle of the edge, you need to let the enemy king slip off towards the centre to herd it into the right corner. A sort of 'leap of faith' is required, which of course turns out to force the stray king back against the edge, when properly executed. The trick is to form a mating net from the king onward, only it's not possible to close the gap all the way to the edge, just up to a single square shy from it. It also looks like the net leaks badly at first glance, so it's a bit hard to visualize, but the bishop has time to block the remaining escape squares even farther to the middle, forcing the king back towards the edge. After that, it's again relatively easy to complete the journey towards the mating corner. -All this I pretty much worked out by myself, but there was one final trick that's needed for the net to hold: You need to start building it the knight one square from the edge, instead of moving it to the centre as seems intuitive. So Nb5! instead of Ne6 if you're driving the king from a1 to a8. After that, the king might try heading towards c8 which looks like a way out, but the bishop pounces over to the opposite flank to block it just in time. The net is still a bit sparse, and the king can turn back and try another break for the freedom via c6, but again the bishop is on time and the net closes up permanently. Nowhere to go but back towards the edge with all hope lost.

There is one more final little 'leap of faith' where you hang the knight for one move on Nb7+ to force the enemy king up, but it's easy to see and the attacking king simply moves one square up to defend the knight as the enemy king gets on striking distance.

Then it's only the mating itself left, so you just restrict the enemy king into two final squares, position the knight so that you can take the second to last square with check at will, lose a tempo with bishop to avoid stalemate if needed, then check and mate.

I personally like to set up a fixed position in the wrong corner to start the cattle drive, so I'll have a nice fixed series of 20 or so forcing moves up to the mate that I can blitz through. It's not the fastest way, and requires losing a tempo here and there, but it's systematic and reliable. There's really not many points in which the defending king has a choice, so it's pretty easy to master after the initial learning phase. maybe an hour or two of continuous drilling.

Here's an example I blitzed against Chessmaster, moving immediately after it did. It's not the fastest way to do it, but it works.

[White "wormwood"]
[Black "Chessmaster 9000"]
[Result "1-0"]
[Setup "1"]
[FEN "8/3B4/8/5K2/3k4/8/8/5N2 w - - 0 1"]
1.Ng3 Ke3 2.Bc6 Kd4 3.Kf4 Kc5 4.Bf3 Kd4 5.Nf5+ Kc3 6.Ke3 Kc2 7.Nd4+ Kc3 8.Be2 Kb4 9.Ne6 Ka3 10.Kd3 Kb3 11.Nc5+ Kb4 12.Kd4 Ka3 13.Kc3 Ka2 14.Bd1 Kb1 15.Nd3 Ka2 16.Bc2 Ka3 17.Nc5 Ka2 18.Nb3 Ka3 19.Bb1 Ka4 20.Nd4 Ka5 21.Kc4 Kb6 22.Nb5 Kb7 23.Bf5 Kc6 24.Be6 Kb6 25.Bd5 Ka5 26.Kc5 Ka4 27.Bc4 Ka5 28.Bb3 Ka6 29.Nd6 Ka5 30.Nb7+ Ka6 31.Kc6 Ka7 32.Bc4 Kb8 33.Nd6 Ka7 34.Kc7 Ka8 35.Bb5 Ka7 36.Nc8+ Ka8 37.Bc6# 1-0

Basic Endgames

2006-12-10T15:49:00.000-08:00

Now that I have reached 1600 on CTS, I'm finally redirecting my main efforts from tactics to the area I have neglected most since I started chess 1½ years ago: The basic endgames. -The plan is to work my way up from the very basics to at least the fundamental rook endings, and probably a bit further. The study plan is to go through Karsten Müller's endgame dvds I, II and III, and drill the cases against fritz until I can blitz them through from any relevant starting position with no problems.

I'm not completely sure I'm going to get the first dvd though, as I already know a lot of the material. But not all, and there's probably quite a lot of useful commentary on it as well, so maybe I'll get it after all. But for now, I'm just gonna seek similar free material and work on that.

I'm beginning with the basic mates/draws I haven't yet mastered. KNB, KBB, KR vs. KN etc. The first one being the KNB, which may be quite irrelevant to practical endings as I might never face it, but I think of it as part of the craft and a useful lesson on piece coordination and board vision.

Blitzkrieg Pop!

2006-12-04T17:25:00.000-08:00

I finally started playing blitz on FICS to get more experience and routine. I'm trying to play at least one 7 10 game (that's about 14 minutes total) a day, and go through them with light analysis. As before, I suck at blitz like an army of nuclear powered vacuum cleaners.

The openings go pretty well though, I usually get good activity and all the proper development moves seem to come quite instinctively. Clearly playing CC and using databases pay off. - Middlegame, I tend to reach crushing positions, only to throw it all away with horrible blundering. Endgames, well, I suck. But then again, I suck at endgames in CC as well, and get killed by people 200 pts lower, so that's not a big surprise. Actually I've done better than I had imagined in the few endgames I've had so far.

But it's all slowly coming together. After a couple of days blitz feels a lot less chaotic, and I've actually risen 100 points in that time. I even broke 1200 for the first time today. Got all bigheaded of course and took a couple of games against some 1400's. Needless to say, I got my ass swiftly handed back to me. It was clear those guys just had way more mileage under their belt, there really wasn't much of a contest there. But I also drew a 1300, with lots of missed opportunities to win. It's not like they played better chess, they're just making less idiotic blunders. So I'm sure it'll be okay after I've played some 100-200 games and gotten used to the fast pace.

No more 'fear of success' either, and I also think the losses have done wonders to the way I handle defeats.

FICS: br 1193 (1205), sr still 1380p as I haven't played standards this year.

1600 on CTS

2006-11-25T15:01:00.000-08:00

Now it's official, 1600 flat on CTS, after an exhausting session of 438 tries and a 13.1 RD. It was so close I just couldn't stop, although I probably should have. The success rate sunk apallingly low of course, down to 103f/438 = 76.5% but well...

The goal for 2006 was to break 1600 by christmas, but there it is, one month early.

CTS: 1600, 77.7%, 68479 tries, session 103f/438 = 76.5%

Back From A Break

2006-11-23T06:09:00.000-08:00

I took some weeks off CTS, but now I'm back again. First I took some time off for writing, and then my graphics card broke down. Been playing CC from laptop though, but the mouse pad doesn't really work well with CTS and I'd had a long run anyway, so a little break was just what I needed. CC games are looking okay, have a couple of won games against a 1900 ending soon, which should get me a few points shy from 1800. So with a little luck, I might break 1800 before christmas as I planned.

Broke also 1600 on CTS, but it doesn't really count as I was simply overshooting because of big RD and quickly plummeted to 1550's for a while. Now it seems to have stabilized around 1585, so no major negative impact from the break. I feels a bit odd to do tactics though, can't really get into the rythm. Crappy percentages. But I'm sure that'll change in a couple of days, and I'll break the 1600 for real pretty soon.

CTS: 1584, 77.7%, 67540 tries, 24f/118 = 79.7%
RHP: 1753, 190 games, wld = 122-58-10

Special Case Triggers

2006-10-27T07:35:00.000-07:00

Recently I've noticed yet another weakness in the way I prioritize when looking for a tactic. The special cases, meaning the actions which should be triggered in certain situations or after some moves the opponent makes. Mostly the weaknesses the last move created, but of course the threats also.

It seems to me there are certain cases that deserve special attention:

Did the move check or pin? (I miss surprisingly many checks, and only realize my king is checked after wasting time on other aspects of the position)
Queen en prise, check for alternative mating attacks.
A piece moves, did it leave something unguarded?
A pawn moves, did it leave something unguarded? (these I miss a lot)
Chasing a piece away, does it have an escape square with a check?

I'm sure there are a lot more, but these are some that I seem to have problems with. I don't mean I miss them alltogether, but I don't process them right away as I should, only after wasting valuable time on 'normal processing' of the position. -We all know these things, but I just realized I actually don't have a subconscious 'trigger' for them, and only spot them randomly, often as a last check before moving, if ever.

There should be some mental red lights flashing overriding everything else every time you get situations like these. So, from now on, I'm going to try to consciously focus on these things, until they become subconscious reflexes. After all, noticing any of these things take practically no time, but give your brain that missing block of information to guide your search into the right direction.

CTS: 1577, 66373 tries, 77.7%, session 12/77 = 84.4%

CTS 1582

2006-09-19T17:00:00.000-07:00

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

2006-09-14T12:54:00.000-07:00

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

2006-09-06T17:05:00.000-07:00

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

Recognizing Subproblems On CTS

2006-08-31T11:50:00.000-07:00

Today I got a problem on CTS I've never seen before, but instantly recognized a 3-move mate subproblem in it. Only this time there was a 'removal of the guard' to be done by a 'decoy' first. It took me far less time to recognize the mate, than I usually need to orient myself even to roughly see the position. Not to even mention spotting the tactics yet. It was just instantaneous. -The recognition took less than half a second, and then I just built the rest of the solution up to make that 3-move mate happen. It made me think: "this must be the way the really good players see the tactics", and strengthened my belief that I'm on the right path with massive repetition of tactical problems. Recognition, not calculation. It's all starting to come together.

CTS: 1559, 77.6%, 56175, session 25f/159 = 84.3%
RHP: 1717, 165 games, wld 106-53-8

CTS Rating 1551

2006-08-20T14:38:00.000-07:00

And not a moment too soon. - I was stuck at 1520-1530 for a long time, but finally got some new ground covered. I knew I'd do it if I just got a good night's sleep, and after last night's 10h slumber it was like snatching candy from a kid. And with an exellent success rate too, compared to yesterday's appalling 75%... I just couldn't do any better, no matter how I tried. - Goes to show how much a good night's sleep really matter.

I'm feeling very sharp in my tournament games on RHP also. Seems like I just see more than before. The new games are all against higher rated players compared to before, so there should be some sweet rating points coming my way as well. Maybe I'll finally get permanently over 1700.

CTS: 1551, 77.5%, 53208, 18f/151 = 88.0%
RHP: 1683, 160 games played

Learning The Wrong Patterns

2006-08-18T16:38:00.000-07:00

Just back from the chess tactics salt mines. Had a relatively good day ratingwise, a little bit worse getting problems right. Somewhere during a marathon session, one thing started to bother me. The problems I get wrong: -It seems I'm having pretty strong recollections of the wrong way of solving familiar problems that I've failed before. And because the time is scarce, I often jump and do the wrong move. And of course, in the fraction of a second after I see the frowning smilie, I remember "oh yes, that was the wrong solution."

I'm thinking maybe I should run through the failed ones more than once after a session. Maybe even three times, to make certain that the right pattern leaves stronger memory imprintation than the wrong one.

CTS: 1544, 52814, 77.5%, 33f/183 = 82.0%

Combinative Vision vs. Calculation

2006-08-05T16:43:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine has been nagging for months about me not training slow tactics. He seems to think CTS is comparable to blitz, and while I don't really agree on that, I do see a shortcoming in my tactical training. Which is lack of calculation exercises. - Hacking away problems on CTS is all good for developing combinative vision, but it doesn't really affect calculation that much. Which I've begun to see as the weakest link in my tactical ability.

So, I've been looking for a suitable problem set for daily solving of slow problems, calculating as I would in real game instead of the more intuitive 'spotting tactics' which CTS is all about. Unfortunately, all sets I've come by so far have been somehow inadequate, lacking solutions, wrong kind of positions etc. - I took a peek at some tactics books for intermediate players, but then I thought I'd just go ahead and order CT-ART3.0 and get loads of suitable problems with an interface. So, today I ordered it, and when it arrives I'll start doing daily slow tactics as calculation exercise. I'll be still training combinative vision on CTS as well, but probably somewhat less intensively.

good session on CTS today though:
1537, 77.4%, 51090, 4f/57 = 93.0%

50 000 Problems Done On CTS

2006-08-01T03:38:00.000-07:00

Halfway there. It was a long way from 1050, and although some stronger players have said that I should be doing slow tactics instead of CTS, I think it's been worth it. CTS has been my only method of tactical training during this first year, and I think that's the biggest reason why I'm at 1665 RHP now. I've seen a lot of people stuggling at 1300-1400's after their first year, so I think I'm doing okay. Lots of room for improvement of course, tactically and otherwise also, but I feel that I'm getting most bang for a buck with my current training program.

It seems obvious the improvement rate gets considerably slower at around 1500, but progress is still happening quite steadily. No reason to start feeling too comfortable though, it's still a long way to the goal of 2006, 1600 CTS.

stats for today:
CTS: 1517, 77.3%, 50231 problems, session % 13f/99 = 86.9%

Processing Failures On CTS

2006-07-25T13:13:00.000-07:00

Today I started doing an additional round over my failed problems after I finish a session. I just got annoyed that I missed a mate once again in a position I knew I'd seen before. I'm also still doing the problem again immediately after I fail, as I always have, but now there's an additional round for re-inforcement of the correct pattern in my mind. We'll see how it goes.

First session went pretty well, although I have slept only 3 hours last night and feel exhausted. Haven't got this kind of percentages in at least a couple of weeks, mostly I've staggered barely at 80%, and often even worse. It's obviously been the 'curse of the even hundreds' again, but I think I'm getting past it (concerning 1500), as I'm stabilizing at 1520. No need for the desperate efforts to stay over 1500 anymore, which causes havoc on success rate.

5f/63 = 92.1%
1521

Visualisation and Master Games

2006-07-16T06:07:00.000-07:00

I wrote the following on RHP 'only chess' forum, but I thought I'd store it here also.

I've been going through master games lately, and I was wondering if people had different ways to go about it? - At first, I went through the games without a board, but that proved much too awkward with my feeble visualisation skills. Then I started using a board, but it's still way too much effort deciphering the notation, energy which could be better used on focusing on the inner workings of that particular game. You decipher a line onto the board, but forget another, and when you try comparing some aspects of the two, you'll have to decipher the first one again, but then you're not sure about the second one anymore... You're just doing the same thing again and again, using short term memory, and getting frustrated and exhausted with all the repetition.

Then I started thinking, maybe I could actually do something to help the visualisation? So, I started doing some visualisation exercises. With time, that'll probably do the trick. But then I got and idea of combining master games & visualisation exercises: First I teach myself the game move by move on a board, and only after that start studying it. That way, I can focus completely on the annotation, and still visualize the board with practically no effort. It's also helping with the variations, even if you don't learn them by rote. It's just easier when you have the 'backbone' of the game in visual memory, so the variations have a solid visual context.

Memorizing the game fully seems to be surprisingly easy, taking up 3-10 minutes depending on the game. Not much, if you're going to take 30-60 minutes to study the actual game. I wonder how many games you can store this way, but it's probably quite a lot. -As you can as well easily memorize hundreds of song-lyrics pretty much perfectly. Of course lyrics have repetition and melody, but chess has a lot of re-occurring structures as well.

I also like the fact that I'm storing the game visually and even procedurally, rather than as little snippets of 2-5 move lines in short term memory which I'll forget within seconds. If you like, you can further strengthen the memory by reading the moves aloud as you go, combining visual, procedural and auditory memory. - And as an added bonus for memorization, I can play the games in my head as a visualisation exercise, if I feel like it.

"What are you daydreaming of?"
"- Oh, Colle vs Delvaux, Grand-Terneuzen 1929..."

The First Year

2006-07-01T05:37:00.000-07:00

It's now exactly one year since I started chess, and it has all gone a lot better than I expected. I've been playing almost exclusively correspondence chess, and I think that's the main reason I've improved so much. The massive amount of CTS probably didn't hurt either. Blitz is still going quite bad, although I haven't really played it during the last 6 months. Same thing with standard, only 12 games ever, and even those were only 20-30min and 6 months ago. I'm trying to start playing more standard games, taking part to the T31 45 45 -tournament in U1800 with bahus and a couple of other finns. I have the weakest rating of the team by far, but I think the slow time controls will work for me, and I hope to get a reasonable performance. Standard games are probably the area I should concentrate my efforts on, but we'll see how it goes.

My first goal is to get 1500+ standard on FICS, but I hope to pull over 1600 before the end of the year. Other goals for 2006 are CTS 1600 which is approaching fast, RHP 1800 and FICS blitz 1300. Although I don't think I'll be playing blitz much, but that's the goal anyway.

current stats: (hi-score in parentheses)

CTS: 1535 (1542) with 44617 problems done, at 77.2% success rate.
FICS standard: 1381p with +6 =0 -6 total 12 games.
FICS blitz: 1053 (1055) with +38 =0 -38 total 76 games.
RHP: 1686 (1725) with +97 =8 -50 total 153 games.

40 000 Tries On CTS

2006-05-30T03:51:00.000-07:00

Another big one broken. Been really tired for a couple of weeks now, can't sleep much. Needless to say, chess is going really bad. I make elementary mistakes all the time, no matter how much time I take or how much I try to focus. The brain just won't work tired.

1501 On Chess Tactics Server

2006-05-22T05:51:00.000-07:00

Just peakead at 1501 on CTS for the first time ever. Dropped right back into 1400's of course, but still, yet another milestone reached. Now I'll just have to get up there again and stabilize my rating to 1500+. Shouldn't take long, I've been hovering just under it for some time.

Been doing around 83-87% success rate per session, and my over all percentage has creeped up to 76.8%. Long way ahead to 80%...

CTS stats:
1501
38018 tries
76.8%

1704 on Red Hot Pawn!

2006-05-01T17:02:00.000-07:00

Just broke through 1700 on RHP the first time ever. At least for a while, for I also have one game pretty much lost to a 1450-player. Dropped a rook when I got careless with thought process. But other than that, everything is still going pretty well and I expect my rating to rise even higher.

well, I guess it's time to move the target up to 1800.

Rust Never Sleeps

2006-04-24T02:34:00.001-07:00

I've been neglecting CTS for a month and a half now, and just started doing it again. The time really takes it's toll, and I dropped from steady 1480 to almost 1400. Fortunately it's coming back reasonably easy, after two days I'm back at 1450's. I'll try to keep doing it regularly again.

The reason for it is I joined into a 1600-1699 tournament at RHP, and suddenly got 16 more games going on, totalling at 36. Which is clearly too much for me. Can't find the time to study anymore, nor focus into the games as thoroughly as I'd like. Anyway, the tournament games are going quite well so far. All are slightly for my advantage or even, but no clear wins yet. There's even one guy who was at 1900 a while ago, but has dropped under 1700 for some reason (probably vacation timeouts?), and I'm doing okay against him too. Still, being swamped with games has brought some side effects as well. I've neglected doing thought process a lot, and already lost a rook for a pin to the king. Also did one completely arbitrary blitz-move, but luckily it was ok. Pure luck there. I'll really have to get a grip again, and start doing thought process consistently again. Also, I'm thinking I'll take some days off from playing, and focus on studying. Maybe I'll get a better balance.

It'll be interesting to see how I'll do against such a high rated competition. winning more than half should be good score, meaning I've really established myself at 1600's. But it's a long way there.

CTS: 1454
RHP: 1658

Blunder Check Follow-Up

2006-04-04T05:42:00.000-07:00

The systematic blunder checking is working like a charm. I've started around 50 CC games since I took it up, completed about 30, with only 1 single piece dropped in total! And of the completed 30 games, I've lost 6, 5 of which I was a piece down before starting to blunder check. So, only 1 lost game after the blunder checking, 2 draws, and 20+ wins!

My rating on RHP has risen to all time high 1638 from the low point of 1530, where I started blunder checking. But it's rise has been hindered by those 5 old lost games, some against 1300's and 1400's, and I'm expecting my rating to climb even higher now that the last lost game ended 4 games ago. Of the 15 games I have going on, in four I'm up a minor piece or more, in one I'm up an exchange, and at least even in all others. So it's all looking good, Very good, and I'm quite optimistic about breaking the 1700-barrier before long. It's becoming increasingly certain that the thing keeping me in the 1500's was the lack of structured thought process, and namely the blunder checking part of it.

The way I'm doing it now, is that after I've decided on my move, I look at every piece one by one, check they're not en prise or under-defended, check specially for enemy knight forks, for alignment for possible pins and skewers, for bishops assassinating undeveloped rooks or attacking my castle. Then I check all my pawns are safe.

More complicated checking I do before blunder checking, meaning removal of guards, possible double attacks, discovered attacks, longer combinations in general. The actual blunder checking I reserve only for the simple one-move oversights, to keep it simple and fast.

Blunder Check

2006-03-10T16:19:00.000-08:00

No matter how I try, I still drop pieces in most idiotic ways. It's not the complex combinations that kill my games, but the braindead one-move blunders. Like a couple of days ago, I was two minor pieces up, when I dropped my queen. I was not even moving fast, I really had thought about the position for some time. I also saw the check coming, figured out variations it brought, and then just landed my queen right into one-move knight-fork with the king. And as usual, about 2 seconds after moving I realised what I'd done. And I do similar blunders a lot, almost all of my losses happen because of such simple errors. It doesn't matter if my opponent is 1300 or 1700, I rarely get outplayed positionally, instead I drop a piece and that's that.

So, today I finally decided to start routinely doing a blunder check before I make the move. It's surprisingly hard to remember, but I try to do it on every single move. Hopefully it'll grow on me. I already caught one possible knight fork, so it's starting to pay off immediately.

CTS Rating Bumb

2006-02-21T14:41:00.000-08:00

After being stuck on around 1420 at CTS for some time, my rating suddenly bumbed up by 50 pts in just a couple of days. It's weird how it goes, but I've heard of other people experiencing the same thing. Ratings don't increase with steady pace, but more like with sudden bursts.

CTS
rating: 1483
tries: 31 951
overall success: 76.3%
session success: 88.0%

The Curse of Correspondence Chess

2006-02-16T05:02:00.000-08:00

It's a great way to get some really slow chess going on, mulling over plans for hours or even days for one single move. Evaluating positions, analysing for tactics. Weeding out those braindead blunders, and working through combinations untill you see them in your dreams. Or so it should be, but once again I find myself blitzing the moves. Driving myself into bad situations with little or no thought, losing the games eventually after desperate struggle for counter-attack. And because CC games usually last for weeks, one bad day is often enough to lose several or even most on-going games at once. The seeds of destruction are sown in one day, and harvested in one depressing string of lost games a week or two later. It only takes one day of not focusing, being tired, or one session of drunken chess late at night.

It's not like I had not been here before. It's almost a habit to blunder a batch of games, then making promises of not doing it again. Ever. Then you go do it, of course. When will I learn? When will I take the time to recognize critical points before it's too late? -When I'm not cramped yet, the kamikaze-bishops are not targeting my castle, my counter-play has not been stifled... It seems I play with full focus only when the position is already badly complicated or I'm down. That's plain stupid. I should never let the game go there in the first place. Well, okay, that's impossible, but I should at least make an effort towards that. So I could say to myself: "Okay, the game is about gone, but I did my best to avoid it." Now I just blitz away all the 'easy moves'.

Good news is, now I do recognize when I'm cramped, counter-play is nonexistent or a sacrifise is just about to open the gates to hell. It wasn't like that just a few months ago. It's just that it's too late when I do. I guess I really should look into the concept of prophylactic thinking...

30 000 Problems Done at CTS!

2006-02-08T16:32:00.000-08:00

It's been a long and rocky road. I started doing tactics at CTS last August, and I had not really done any before. 1050 was my score for the first day, on which I did around 700 problems. The first hundred points was pretty easy, and around 1200 it started to become more difficult. Now, 5 months later, I'm almost 400pts higher. So you could say It's been beneficial. The aim is to break 1600 during 2006, which I think is possible if I just can keep on doing those tactics regularly. But there's already been a couple of longer breaks, so it's possible I'll lose the motivation somewhere down the line. We'll see.

Current status

2006-02-07T16:28:00.000-08:00

Ok. Maybe I'll get this blog going at last. - It's gonna be some kind of a documentation of my progress on learning chess, also serving as a backup for my personal notes along the way. I started keeping a chess diary right from the beginning, updating it almost daily. Unfortunately, a computer crash wiped all that clean and I lost everything.

To make a long story short, I started chess about six months ago, after watching the Garry Kasparov document "Game Over." And like so many others, I quickly became hooked. Now the addiction has overtaken all my waking hours, and to be frank, pretty much the rest also.

Ok, to get things rolling, here's my current stats for the interconnected beast to devour. I'm gonna try to document all stats I might some day be interested in:

CTS rating: 1445 tries: 29780 success: 76.0%
RHP rating: 1544 games: 69 won: 39 lost: 28 moves: 2553
FICS blitz rating: 1029 won: 32 lost: 33 best: 1055
FICS standard rating: 1381p won: 6 lost: 6

As can be seen, the faster I play, the more I suck. Hopefully that'll change as I get more experience.

At this time I play almost exclusively correspondence chess at Red Hot Pawn as wormwood. I study mostly tactics at CTS (also as wormwood), trying to get 100-200 problems done a day, with occasional slacking of course. Sometimes I blitz at FICS as wormstar. In addition to that, I'm going through Alburts endgame book "Just The Facts" and Chernev's "Capablanca's Best Chess Endings" to get some kind of initial coverage on the theory. I'm also going through Fischer's "My 60 Memorable Games."

I guess that's it for now. Short is sweet. Hopefully I'll keep this blog updated from time to time.

Maybe I will, Maybe I won't.

2005-12-09T05:11:00.000-08:00

Eventually.