Processing Failures On CTS

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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.

Eventually.