Still here

So, we are half a month in the new year, and I'm still here. I've noticed that the chess blogosphere that I used to follow and try to become a part of is dead. Some moved to chess.com or other blogs, but there appears to be some fresh blood as well, there appears to be a shift from North-America to Europe, that is most promising, timezone-wise.

A. What I have been doing so far
1. At January 1st I became a member of chess.com and I've played 3 games there;
2. I've been doing 25 tactics a day at CTS and am proud to say that I've reached 78,9% correct;
3. For my chess education I've started at square one, or, to be more precise, at Step 1 using TCT and S1.

What I've noticed so far is that playing chess is very different than training chess. My former approach would be to train chess so I would understand it better and only then perhaps switch to playing. It seems to me now that to learn and understand chess at a basic level playing is very important.

B. What I will be doing for the remainder of January
1.Playing slow games, that is G30/5, G45 or slower, at least one a week and analyse for blunders;
2. 25 Tactics a day at CTS, aiming eventually to reach past 80% and stay there;
3. Daily puzzle at chess.com and 3 tactics at least 5 times a week;
4. Finishing Step 1 with TCT and S1.

C. What I plan to do after January for a couple of months
1. Playing two slow games a week and analyse them;
2. 25 Tactics a day at CTS;
3. Doing some tactics, using SCT and SCM for starters, every day later using other material for instance Predator at the Chessboard;
4. Going through Step 2 with TCT and S2, maybe getting some extra material to do that as well.;
5. Reading LC and DCO

This should get me a solid start and after a few months of playing an idea of my playing level.

It appears not all abbreviations are explained here, I'll fix that.

How've y'all been?

Did some tactics at CTS today, intend to give chess another shot; that would include blogging.

ooops

I did some work on CTS today...

Tasc Chess Tutor - report

I'm going to use this post to keep my score while I make my laps trough the Steps Method using Tasc Chess Tutor (TCT).

There will be a link to this post at the sidebar.

Last update: Wednesday, 21 October 2009.

The Steps Method, TCT Plan
Round 01: Step 1 & 2
Round 02: Step 1, 2 & 3
Round 03: Step 1, 2, 3 & 4
Round 04: Step 1, 2, 3, 4 & 5
Round 05: Step 1, 2, 3, 4 & 5
Round 06: Step 1, 2, 3, 4 & 5
Round 07: Step 2, 3, 4 & 5
Round 08: Step 3, 4 & 5
Round 09: Step 4 & 5
Round 10: Step 5
notes: The plan may be subject to change and will be put on hold every once in a while for other chess study (SCT, SCM, LC). I have to find a way to also fit the Steps Method books in here.

Report
Round 01
First lesson: Friday 05 September 2008
Last lesson: Sunday 18 October 2009
Result step 1: Average score 96 %
Result step 2: Average score 82 %
notes: I had a decline in scores at the end of step 2, this was most likely caused by the time between the lessons and the repeat exercises. That time increased due to a break from chess.

Round 02

First lesson: Monday 19 October 2009

CTS at 78%

Hi everyone,

I've been taking a break from chess for a couple of months due to other priorities, but I'm slowly becoming active again and I've started reading blogs as well, soon I'll drop you guys a line at your blogs.

At the moment I'm working on TCT and CTS. The plans are unchanged, I'm still working in Step 2 and after I finished Step 2 I will work my way from Step 1 up to Step 3 in TCT. As for CTS, I still want to reach a succes rate of 80+%.

Today's result are promising, after a session of 25 exercises with only one failure, these are my results.

Handle mentat
Country Netherlands
Rating 1153
Current RD 46.6
Highest Rating 1247
Date of HR 2008 Jul, 03 - 10:38
Tries 3775
Success 78.0 %

Latest action 2009 Oct, 12 - 15:38
Latest RD 46.6
State active
Until 2009 Nov, 17 - 20:30
Pieces standard

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.

A New Season

A new season in the chess blogosphere, now that the Summer is over various bloggers have returned to an active status. Full of energy and ideas they start with new series of posts. A few of special interest to me.

Likeforests: The Strategy of My System (in the sidebar of his blog) and now tactics, or was this just this one?

Blue Devil Knight: Chess for Zebras.
He's reading the book so at least someone will be able to tell us what it is about, since most reviewers only tell us about the first chapter.

Transformation: Tools for Structuring. It's not going to be about chess databases, but the first post already is full of useful information.

I would also like to put your attention to the great mystery of the disappearance of Tommy G, who after publishing a second article in a series on How To Study From A Book seems to have disappeared completely. He, his comments and his posts will be missed by me and probably others. Does anybody know what happened to him?

Using reviews for deceiving book titles

Walking trough a bookstore I noticed a special discount on Plaskett's Could You Be A Tactical Genius? I flipped trough the book a bit but put it back. I don't really need other chess books at this moment [1] and I sure don't need chess books that I might not be able to use in the next six months.

As I found out with Nunn's Learn Chess Tactics, titles of chess books can be most deceiving. Dan Heisman suggests this book after his Back to Basics: Tactics as one of the last books in the intermediate section on his site.[2] Also the many books that refer to "kid" in the title can be of various levels and most are very instructive to the adult beginner or improver.

Six months ago I bought Fischer's My 60 Memorable Games, of course in descriptive notation; the only genuine version at the time. I won't be needing this book soon, but today I found out that in a couple of weeks Batsford will be publishing an algebraic edition of this book, but this time round they promise only to change the notation from descriptive to algebraic instead of the rape of the text that was committed earlier.

What I did do when I got home was consulting some reviews. In my opinion a good review (perhaps even a good chess book) should very clearly state who could use this book and even narrow it down to who would benefit most from it.

This is what I found:
Chessville (Leopold Lacrimosa): "Overall, I liked this book and would recommend it to students rated 700 - 1500 ELO"

Silman (Randy Bauer): "The author provides plenty of extras to make the book workable, but the exercises themselves will provide a challenge for just about every level of player."

Seagaard: "I would say the main readership is for intermediate players up to people with ELO 2000."

ChessCafé (Bill Kaleher): "GM Plaskett's book appears to be aimed more towards the intermediate player. AND In my opinion it is most suited to players rated below 2200 FIDE, although the more difficult problems would challenge even the most advanced players."

Most out of the mean seems the first one, but even the rest of them aren't very clear.

Now I can understand that it is hard for a chess writer, often a NM, FM, IM or GM to determine what level of student can understand material that is so far below there own level. Being in chess teaching an/or working with lower level players can obviously help here, but there might not be a universal agreement on what goes best with what level.

Also, on every aspect of the game (tactics, strategy, endgame, opening) there is a certain barrier that needs to be crossed before one can continue to the next level. On all levels these differences can be huge. Someone with a lot of opening knowledge might be less strong in tactics or endgame, otherwise he may be on a different level.

Thankfully with the Internet it is always possible to find more than one review and there are always articles on chess improvement where there are hints to be found on the book levels.

Also asking around to people who are also into chess, say chess bloggers, who are not as advanced as writers and reviewers and who may have a good view on the book searchers need can be of great help and motivation. They might even advice a better one!
___
[1] At this moment the Steps Method books, TCT and Gillam's books are enough, after that there is LC and I'm also still doing CTS.

[2] http://danheisman.home.comcast.net/~danheisman/Events_Books/General_Book_Guide.htm

Am I slowing down?

Tonight while doing some mixed exercises ones on 2/3 of Step 1 in TCT I noticed that I was slowing down, for one particular exercise I even took nearly a minute.

I went on with my 25 exercises on CTS ranging in a difficulty between 904 and 1465. Here I took my time as well. Funny thing, I ended with the exact same rating as I started with. Great thing, I had a 100% success rating! (I of little faith, only now I believe it's even possible.)

I am slowing down, and it feels just great!

What has changed, am I just taking more time? No, I'm just trying to look at positions differently. Call it real chess, call it frustration on not "instantly" seeing the tactic in the second diagram and realising that I can and should, call it anew found instruction, especially the a-e and a-d lists and reading some older blogs that discussed looking at the squares that are "covered" when looking for a mate. Probably it's they sum of all of the above and a few things I don't even know.

But no matter what you call it, I think that once I get used to this I will be able to do it faster.

Besides continuation there is only one thing left to do: play games and see if I can apply this.

Guess what, I have a FICS account ready and waiting.

Update:
To give credit where it should be given
It was Bleu Devil Knight who showed me the way to what was lost, he provided the very link to the article in this post on his excellent blog that seems to be a bit active once again. But there is also much te be learned from his old posts for beginners, improving players and other chess minded people.

A New Toy

This week the TASC cd 2 arrived containing TASC Chess Tutor (Henceforth known as TCT) and Chessica (a chess playing program). Chesstiger is currently using the very same program.

TCT is based on the Steps Method and as some of you might know, I got stuck in Step 3 of the Step Method working from books. I did start all over again earlier this summer, but this now got easier using the TCT on the computer.

Currently I'm working my way trough Step 1, and I'm making some mistakes every now and then. I really need to take my time doing the exercises! I have to remind myself constantly that it's okay to take more than 10 seconds if I need them, but I'm getting better at it. It's a bit the same as with CTS, forget about the time.

Currently I'm working my way trough each chapter. Reading trough the instructional text and doing the exercise sections. Before moving on to the next chapter I redo the sections in which I didn't score a 100% and the I redo those in which I still don't have a 100% score until I do.

This is level one people, even I should know this by now! But these are exactly the things that should be practiced "until I can't get it wrong"

A reply to comments, part 2

A lot of you have been giving me advice over the last posts and elsewhere. I have been wondering lately, have I done something with all these good intentions? Have I thought about them, acted accordingly?

Let's find out!

Chess Tactics Server
Chessloser, Chesstiger (aka Logis) and Polly keep hammering not to worry about rating, but about strength. My interpretation of Chess Strength at Chess Tactics Server is the success percentage, a score based only on how many exercises are solved correct. I think this is what they mean with Chess Strength. David K even suggests percentages to aim at, first he mentions 90%, later 80%.

I do think I'm getting better at this, my rating seems to be stabilising around 1150, but my success percentage is still climbing: The other day I broke the 70% barrier with, for me, an extremely good score of 90% (45/50 correct). I'm aiming to keep my average score per session above 80% and eventually get my percentage there.

Playing chess
Chesstiger suggests that I shouldn't forget about playing chess and joins Likesforests in saying that I need a stronger sparring partner.

I have played the friend from the dreaded endgame post again in August, -I wrote the game down, but cannot find it- and I lost. I think I should be playing him every now and then. I will probably keep playing against Jabba and should be able to win easier and easier or maybe he'll do some chess training himself.
Joining a club isn't a possibility now, I don't no yet what my schedule will me for the this year with work and school. Maybe I should play a bit on the Internet, but I want to play slow games and I've heard it's mostly fast time controls.

Study material
Endgame
Chesstiger (and a lot of others) suggested Jeremy Silman's Silman's Endgame Course, Tommy G was enthusiastic about Lev Alburt's Just the Facts, but he's now appears to be converted to Silman's church.

I'm not sure when I should be looking for exclusive Endgame material, there is quite some endgame training in the Steps Method, so maybe after Step 3. On the Chessvideos.tv site there are endgame exercises to play against Crafty, that might be promising. Crafty also can be strengthened with Endgame Tables, but maybe it's time for a commercial chess program, because Crafty sometimes just stops annotating or the program crashes while playing over an endgame.

Annotated games
Chesstiger advised using Max Euwe's Amateur vs. Master as a game collection to work with.

I already own Chernev's Logical Chess: Move by Move, so I would rather not buy yet another book; I do have the tendency to buy more and more and yet even more books, who doesn't in the world of chess, so I should rather use what I have.

Training & Tactics
In addittion to the Steps Method I'm using the TASC cd2, mentioned by Chesstiger. It uses the same method, but has way more exercises.
Dan says on his site that Nunn's Learn Chess Tactics (I own this book and the title is about as deceiving as the adage "for Kids" on some chess books) is a good successor book to his Back to Basics: Tactics. On that same page he also suggests a circle like approach to a basic tactics book.
Likesforests says that Susan Polgar's Chess Tactics for Champions also is a good follow up to Heisman's book.

I already had the TASC cd 2 on my wish list and ordered it. It should arrive somewhere next week. I will use TASC side by side with the Steps Method and say out loud (or when around others mentally what tactic/motif is used. Instead of buying more tactics books (Heisman's is tempting me very much), I will go trough the books of Gillam a couple of times and of course I'll be active at CTS.

A big thank you
I'm sure I haven't named everyone who has given me advise, or helped me in another way, so thank you all of you out there, named and unnamed!

Questions that remain
1. When should one start specific Endgame training (i.e. Silman's book)?
2. Does it matter if I start with Chernev's book or Euwe's? Who knows anything about the difference in level?
3. What chess program would be most beneficial to me? I want it to be able to annotate as well. For some reason I like Chessmaster IX:The Grandmaster Edition, I haven't seen it.

Instant Update on Question 02:
Heisman gives this order of difficulty on his site (Those which I own are in bold type, hiddenleaf):

"Recommended Instructive Game Anthologies (in roughly ascending order of difficulty):
Logical Chess Move by Move - Chernev
(note: the non-anthology A First Book of Morphy by del Rosario can be read here!)
Most Instructive Games of Chess Ever Played - Chernev
Chess: The Art of Logical Thinking - Neil McDonald
The Art of Planning in Chess - Neil McDonald
Chess Master vs. Chess Amateur - Euwe and Meiden
50 Essential Chess Lessons - Giddins
Chess Success: Planning After the Opening - Neil McDonald
Winning Chess Brilliancies - Seirawan (after this book I would go to individual game collections)
Understanding Chess Move by Move - Nunn
Instructive Modern Chess Masterpieces - Stohl
Zurich 1953 - Bronstein"

Back in action, got 1500 on to the next 500!

A few of you may have noted that I was active in the chess blogosphere again , today I resume posting here.

Since my last post on the Chess Tactics Server I have been making some progression there in terms of success percentage. I haven't been able to train regularly, but I have the feeling I'm getting ever more relaxed under the time pressure.

Handle mentat

My rating dropped slightly to 1162 (1186), however my success percentage increased to 69,1 % (65,3%).

03 of 10 training sessions where above 80% correct; exellent.
06 of 10 training sessions where between 70 and 80 % correct; not too bad, but still...
01 of 10 training sessions was 63 % correct; useless.

Now I must see that I continue this increase in percentage correct, but progress there is!

At this moment I have done 1500 problems, onwards to the next 500 and when this really gets a habit, I will post every thousand or so.

And remains so in round 03

After the crushing defeat in round 02 I offered Jabba that we would play again, me once more with the Black pieces. It was getting late and we were both getting tired, we had been playing chess for a couple of hours already.

In this game I tried my hand at providing some annotations myself, I hope they are correct and add something to the game.

080723_03ann.pgn


I'll be gone for at about three weeks from now, but I put some chess programs on my cellphone: Cellufun Chess, Chess Buddy, HorseCourse, iChessDemo, ShredderMobile Demo, Spruce Chess and Webgate Chess.

If you know more, or have an opinion on the above, feel free to let me know.

I'll be back!

That one is still dazed and confused in round 02

Round 02 was a very short one. I opened again with my Bishop before my Knight. I wouldn't do that if I were to play again, one of the lessons I should learn from Likesforests aka The Endgame Tactician. He was kind enough to take the time and annotate the game from round 01. I really appreciate the effort and I will learn from these lessons.

Putting the Bishop at d6 is also wrong because it blocks the d-Pawn. But I don't think I made blunders anywhere near the size of Jabba in this game. First he puts his Queen en prise and then forgets to remove his Knight. In the 8th move I planned to exchange Knights and then attack his Bishop(s), Pawns and Rooks with my Queen. Those were undeveloped and didn't have to many places to go. With a serious response I would have developed further, that was what I was preparing for anyway: I already fianchettoed to allow the Bishop in the game to put some pressure on his King side.

It's hard to decide when to develop further and when to take advantage of the situation. This one turned out all right for me, but it shouldn't have happened in the first place.

080723_02.pgn


I'm curious if there's anything I haven't seen yet, as always, feel free to comment!