1600 on CTS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thoughts On RHP Games

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

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

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

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

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


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

Good rating, bad percentage

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

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

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


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

Recognizing Subproblems On CTS

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

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

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

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

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

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.