CTS Accuracy Update

Not been doing much of CTS lately for various reasons, and it's already been a month since the last accuracy update. Also thought I wasn't doing all that well, but as it turns out I just barely managed to reach the goal of 90% session average over this short batch of 1265 problems. The numbers are: 118214 problems done at 1610 rating, 80.7% total accuracy, giving a 90.0% session average. Which is nice, but I'll need to get that accuracy higher and do much more problems. No more slacking.

CTS: 1610, 118214 problems, 80.7%.

CTS Accuracy Update

The big slow clock of accuracy at 100K+ level took a tiny step forward to 80.6% total accuracy, so it's time to calculate the session average since the last update. The numbers are now: 116949 problems, at a 1613 rating. Which gives a session average of 89.6% over the last 2543 problems. Still no 90%, but getting there... Also had a 100% accuracy session with 108 problems correct in a row today, which I believe is my record.


CTS: 1613, 116949 problems, 80.6%.

Back At CTS

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

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

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

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

"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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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