It was quiet on the Kingside, but boy did I win

The story

A few days ago after a lousy session on CTS and after some fine training in Tasc Chess Tutor, I decided to give the easy mode of online shredder a go.

The first game I not just lost, but I was really shot to pieces, but to my astonishment I won the second game. This is the first game I ever won a game against this engine!

Quite unfortunately the web page doesn't save your moves and I didn't keep notes. I tried to recreate the game, using the take-back button, but that didn't work either. So I'm afraid this achievement won't be more everlasting than bronze, but just forgotten.

The game

What I do remember is that I opened with 1.e4 and the program responded with 1... e5, this allowed me to start playing with basic opening principles. However, soon I found myself pausing my development and start attacking the engine with threats and tactics, this kept Black busy and allowed me to continue development with threats. This fully stopped Black's development and crippled his Queen-side: it lost its Queen, some pawns and some minor pieces. Its King side was just as it was when the game started, my back rank was empty with the exception of my Rooks and uncastled King. Instead of also taking its Rook, I mated Black on the 7th or 8th rank.

The lessons

1. I should play more often. This will also show me with trial, error and analysis how to deal with different opening moves;
2. I actually do stand a chance in simple low level games, just play "real chess";
3. I should follow opening principles, but if I can win material and stop the opponent from developing that can work as well.
4. Attacking (overwhelming and crushing) the opponent is fun! Maybe I should do it more often but it's also a bit of a risk.

The meantime

1. CTS at least 25 problems a day, 5 times a week, My focus is still on a
   80+% score, today I had only 2 mistakes;
2. TCT at least a lesson a week, currently working on Step 2.

The plan

1. Getting CTS above 80% and either keeping it there while my rating should rise* or changing to Chess Tempo, Chess Tactics for Beginners, Chessimo, Back to basics: Tactics;
2. Finishing TCT's Step 2, and then repeating Step 1 & 2 and starting with Step 3. (In the Steps method books I have I've almost finished Step 3);
3. Playing at least one game as White and one as Black a week, against easy machines, human opponents or on FICS, but with a not too fast time control (at least G15/15), no doubt slower is better, and analyse those games;
4. Some sort of analysis of 3 games a played a while back;
5. Continuing the game on my phone;

The longterm

1. Getting better and better, (success and rating) at CTS
2. Working trough Gillam's Tactics and Mates books (SCT, SCM).
3. Finishing growing "circles" of TCT and doing shrinking "circles"
4. Playing at least two games a week and analysing them

The order in all but the Lessons-list give some indication of the order of importance to me. I used the "numbered list", but somehow the numbers aren't displayed and we have to do with some chrysanthemum like bulleted lists.


* I will be focusing on correctness rather than rating, but I have found that focusing on correctness doesn't need to have a negative effect on my rating, although there is not the steep rise one gets with playing on time.

Hester Mofet's games 2008, 1 of 4.

Before I took some time off from blogging (and chess) I played some games on FICS. Today I started with an attempt to annotate them.

Here's the first of four games I played.

(show chess board)(hide chess board)

Suggestions on this game, it's annotation or annotating your own games in general are more than welcome.

sort of active again...

Sunday January 18th, 2009, 19/25 correct = 76%

Tuesday, April 21st, 2009, 22/25 correct = 88%

CTS at 75%!

I didn't mean to bore all y'all again with CTS this fast after my latest post. I intended to write a posts on my progress with the Steps Method or TCT. But I had no choice, today, with a session's splendid result of 100%, I crossed the 75% success rate barrier!

Here I come 80%! let's see if I can do that within 55 sessions (11 weeks) from November 13th?

My 100% score now in the afternoon may suggest Rolling Pawns is right in the comments under the 2500! post that at certain times of the day you're performance is better. Speaking for myself several factors come to mind: 1. biological cycle; 2. being tired and 3. being able to relax and take my time. The third one is what he suggests is a factor in what makes his time work for him.

I'm working on a poll, where you can vote if I'll make it to 80%, but this public computer is giving me trouble with it. It keeps complaining about a valid date/time, but I'd say 30/11/08 and 23:59 are correct. I will try it at home later this weekend.

2500!

As some of you might know, I try to do 25 exercises on the Chess Tactic Server on a daily basis, at least 5 times a week. This is half of my chess training, the other half consists of working in my Steps Method books or in TCT.

The other day (November 13, 2008) I reached my 2500th problem on CTS. At that time I had a success rating of 74,4%. Now I'm not getting anywhere near my peak rating of 1247, but my success rating is climbing, slowly but certainly! And obviously that's all that matters at this point.

My rating has been climbing a bit slower than I hoped, especially as I managed to have a 100% score in two sessions in September. Lately I have noticed that being tired can have huge effects at my solving ability. Thus I should make sure I get enough sleep. My goal, for now, still is to break the 80% barrier.

It would have been prettier if I could give you the info after my 2500th exercise, but since I didn't think of that at the time I leave you with the score sheet after today's session.

Handle mentat
Country Netherlands
Rating 1162 (1162)
Current RD 35.1
Highest Rating 1247
Date of HR 2008 Jul, 03 - 10:38
Tries 2575 (1500)
Success 74.6 % (69,1 %)

Between brackets are the values I had when reaching the 1500 mark. No, the fact that my rating stayed the same is not a typo, but maybe this is prettier after all.

Another flash game

Not unlike Liquid Egg Product I actually want to present a game that may not be as addictive as DTD or Gemcraft, but at least has anything to do with chess. A bit more like Temposchlucker who, trough his blog, introduced me to Troyis.

Black Knight is a game that, you guessed it takes it name from the black knight in chess. The object of this game is to move a knight on a chess board like field in the least possible moves towards the star. Sounds easy so far, and it is, but to make things more interesting our dark knight can only move over squares and some of the squares are missing. The location of the star have to be revealed by "killing" the white King (??) and other pieces join in as well, and you can "provoke" the pieces to (limited) movement.

I am currently at level. 15 with 313 moves, I got stuck once or twice. I'm sure a lot of you can do better, I would like to invite you to post your score in the comments.

Update:
Today, October 30th, I have finished the game in the beautiful number of 1492 moves, I could probably do it in less and might even try it, but I like this number. A lot of the people who inspire me in chess (that's you my fellow bloggers) life in The Americas after all.

Who will fight with me for the Red Lantern?

Everything that has an end, has a beginning. For every first place there is a last. Every Tour de France has a Red Lantern

Yours truly signed up for the L.E.P. III tournament, more info here: http://www.liquideggproduct.com/i-was-expecting-a-more-sophisticated-poster/

I have no real news, I have been training a bit irregular, but signing up for the tournament probably will get me back on a schedule.