Well, buoyed by excellent results at my local county championship last weekend, and a general quantum leap in confidence and understanding, I'm finally dusting off my books and hoping to make daily effort at improving.

Current rating ECF 100 but I play to a 120 standard really (theoretical elo conversion there says 1750/1850 but on FICS I'm hovering below 1600 atm.), and I have the following goals:

Long-term (ie. for my whole life! )

1/ Break into the top ten in my county or get to a grade of 170/2100. (While I would love to attain a higher rating than this, with my lack of natural ability, a la Botvinnik, it's unrealistic until I get there and see what I can do.)

2/ Go through a season unbeaten. (My best season ever included an unbeaten run of 9, and I know already I can do far better than that if I work at it.)
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Short-term goals (things I want to accomplish within 3 years or as soon as possible if not)

3/ Win my county's Minor (U130/U1900) championship, which I was close to doing this weekend.

4/ Become as knowledgable on the Slav as I am in my other major openings of Spanish Exchange and Petroff.

5/ Gain understanding in the Main Spanish. (I've already bought IM Martin's DVD which has helped, though frustratingly it doesn't cover total main lines. However, with other goals attained, this shall be easier.)
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Immediate goals (that I'm working on right now)

6/ Hone my tactical game-vision so that I no longer calculate the presence of ghosts, and only check variations once for stings in the tail. Tactical vision is not my strong point, and I can sometimes lose my way through either underconfidence, or associated lack of position understanding.

7/ Become strong enough to annotate Master games myself, with annotations that I will understand but which also include rejection of other promising-looking variations, just using Fritz as a tactical back-up or in case of very complex positions. This I intend to achieve by gaining sufficient knowledge of the game by...

8/ Studying all the books I own. At the mo I'm working on The Art of Attack (Vukovic), pasting every position/game into Fritz, and making my own annotations. (This also has the benefit that I can C&P diagrams and text into OpenOffice and make little training booklets for myself for long car journeys which I will better understand.)

8.1/ I then want to be able to crack onto making understanding annotations if necessary (those DVDs I got this wasn't required and I can already annotate my own games and independently find my own inaccurate moves ), on Fischer's 60 Memorable, and Botvinnik's 100 Selected.

8.2/ Once this happens, I can plough through How to Become a Deadly Chess Tactician (LeMoir).

8.3/ I can then, hopefully also, be adding to my workload by going through my bible, one page at a time: Fundamental Chess Endings.

9/ Try to work on tactics 3-4 times a week until I feel happy enough doing it half an hour daily. (Until that time there's no point burning myself out and losing enthusiasm by overdoing it.)

10/ I've gone partway to devising a list of commonest faults, almost like the driving test, and then I can add to this a list of common positives, and checklist every game I play, annotating it there and then that night if I can. From this, once I accrue a fault twice, I will know to set other things aside and work on it immediately. Unfortunately my working hours right now prevent my playing more than maybe 15 games a season unlike the 40 I'd like, so in the meantime games of hopefully 45 0 on FICS will serve as fodder.

I read country and was like "Holy s***!"

Your repertoire is pretty solid, Slav, Spanish Exchange, Petroff. Have you considered playing the Main Line Spanish with Black instead of White? Anyway, I'm looking forward to some games and annotations by you .

It's interesting you mention that.

Re: Petroff, 90% of my games here in Cumbria (England's chess backwater, rofl) continue with 3. Nc3, after which ...Bb4 leads to interesting play. I'll upload probably my best game from that in a minute.

However, I have an opponent who plays Lasker's 5. Qe2 ahead on Sunday (he also recently tried the Opera Game against me as Black and yet he's rated the same as me ), his openings are rubbish. If I can work myself to be confident enough in the resultant positions, and make a clear plan based on his first inaccuracy, I should be fine. After 4 Bd3 I'm currently learning the ...Be7, ...Nc6 line, having always experienced pain with perfect play in the ...Bd6 line. I do however suspect that I will try the RL proper as Black one day.

(Please note that I currently always employ the Exchange Spanish, with 5. d4, and have beaten players rated equivalent 1900 and over with this, though I freely admit that with correct play White should struggle to prove advantage.)

As far as solid, in fact I consider that I have many many 25 moves and under games, from the openings I play. This is because I'm often so precise at countering errors =)

You can find the game I was telling you about in the game replayer thread.

I was just asking about the Ruy Lopez as Black, because I would think the exchange Spanish is a reasonable winning attempt and I would rather substitute the Petroff for the Lopez. I also should add that I do avoid the Petroff with 3.Nc3, because I dislike the main lines for White but find these ensuing sidelines attractive. May just me be me though.

Solid is certainly nothing negative .

The game I am showing for demonstration of my potential is unfortunately beyond my powers to install in game replayer here. I'm dumb! If you go to http://chesstempo.com/pgn-viewer.html and copy the following however, you can replay it all there until some kind soul informs me how to solve the same problem the last poster in the help thread had, which is that when I'm uploading games at the moment they're not going beyond 1. e4 before going to result.

I was Black, verbal annotations are mostly mine; variations are mostly Fritz.

[Event "Cumbria League Division 2"]
[Site "Carlisle"]
[Date "2006.11.16"]
[Round "?"]
[White "Shetty, Shashwath"]
[Black "O'Dowd, Daniel"]
[Result "*"]
[Annotator "Fritz 9 (15s)"]
[BlackElo "1715"]
[ECO "C42"]
[TimeControl "900+10"]

{156MB, Fritz9.ctg, DanDesktop C42: Petroff Defence: 3 Nxe5 and unusual White
3rd moves} 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nf6 3. Nc3 {Leads to interesting play.} Bb4 4. Bc4
{White's best try is to play Nxe5, so the next move logically prevents that
before castling.} d6 5. h3 {A useless move, losing tempo. The Black Bishop
belongs on e6 anyways, except in the case of very incoherent play by White.}
Nbd7 $146 {Keeping flexibility, in case of need to go to e6 or g6 via f8, or
to attack on e4 with ...Nc5. Also, White may play Bg5 in which case the Queen
has options.} (5. ... Bxc3 6. dxc3 Nxe4 (6. ... O-O 7. Bd3 Nc6 8. O-O h6 9.
Re1 Ne7 10. c4 Ng6 11. c3 Nh5 12. Bc2 Nhf4 13. Bxf4 Nxf4 14. c5 Qf6 15. Nh2
Bxh3 16. gxh3 h5 17. Qf3 Qg5+ 18. Qg3 Nxh3+ 19. Kh1 Qxg3 20. fxg3 dxc5 21.
Rf1 {Rato,A-Liborio,E/Vila Real 2005/CBM 107 ext/1-0 (52)} ) 7. O-O O-O 8.
Qd5 Nf6 9. Qd2 Bf5 10. Ng5 d5 11. Bb3 c6 12. c4 dxc4 13. Qxd8 Rxd8 14. Bxc4
Bg6 15. Be3 e4 16. Rad1 Nbd7 17. Bd4 h6 18. Bxf6 Nxf6 19. Rxd8+ Rxd8 20. h4
{Speier,R-Wolff,H/Mehlingen 1992/GER/0-1 (50)} ) (5. ... O-O 6. Nd5 (6. d3
Nc6 7. Bg5 Na5 8. Bb3 Nxb3 9. axb3 h6 10. Bh4 Qe7 11. O-O Bxc3 12. bxc3 g5
13. Bg3 Nh5 14. Nh2 Nf4 15. Re1 Kh7 16. d4 f6 17. Nf1 Rg8 18. Ne3 Qf7 19. f3
Be6 20. Qd2 a6 {Maes,W (2285)-Biti,O (2135)/Cannes 1997/CBM 057 ext/1/2-1/2
(47)} ) Nxd5 7. Bxd5 c6 8. Bb3 d5 9. O-O Bd6 10. d4 dxe4 11. Nxe5 Nd7 12. Qh5
Nxe5 13. dxe5 g6 14. Qe2 Bxe5 15. Qxe4 Qf6 16. c3 Bf5 17. Qf3 Rfe8 18. Be3 a6
19. Rad1 Rad8 20. Bb6 {Pisk,P (2310)-Velicka,P (2430)/Zlin 1998/CBM
066/1/2-1/2} ) 6. Nd5 {White threatens to win material: Nd5xb4} Ba5 {At club
level, this tends to do better than simply taking. It keeps more tension,
which when you are confident in the opening, gives you more chances to strike
aggressively.} (6. ... Nxd5 7. Bxd5 c6 8. Bb3 $11 ) 7. Qe2 {Helping to defend
e4, but doing scant else. White's chances of playing d4 will now be much
less.} O-O 8. O-O c6 {Covers b5} 9. Nxf6+ Nxf6 {The Knight comes to f6 to
attack the pawn and prepare for Black's ...d5 break.} 10. d3 {This is simply
to develop the Bishop.} (10. d4 exd4 11. Nxd4 Re8 {Black gains time in
development, waiting for the right moment to play ...d5 and round up the
pawn.} ) Bc7 11. Bg5 {Black has no fear of the Queen coming to f6, because it
will help him attack the weakened King.} Re8 12. Rad1 h6 {This move sometimes
can be good as here, but sometimes can lead to weakness on g6, for example if
the Bishop were to retreat on its original diagonal, and Black had no time to
open ...d5, White can try the manoeuvre Nf3-h4-g6, expanding with a timely
f4.} 13. Bxf6 (13. Bh4 Qe7 $11 ) Qxf6 $15 {Black is better placed to expand
than White. His Queen occupies a better square, and when the centre opens his
Bishops will rake menacingly across.} 14. d4 {This though is a big mistake
because of my following tactical shot.} (14. a4 $5 $15 {Looks odd, but
logically derived from the idea that if Black does want to exchange on d5,
his cxd5 will weaken the a4-e8 diagonal, for Q-side counterplay with the
Bishop. It also allows a more permanent bolthole than b3 would be.} ) exd4
$17 15. Rxd4 (15. Qd3 Bd7 $17 ) d5 $1 {Theme: Clearance for c7-e5} 16. Bd3
(16. exd5 {Exploits the pin} Rxe2 ) Bf5 $1 {Black frees his game with a
strong position.} 17. Re1 (17. exf5 {A pinning theme} Rxe2 ) dxe4 18. Bxe4 c5
{The Rook's misplacement on d4 allows Black to liquidate and gain further
space, still pinning the Bishop. At the time I spent around 20 minutes on the
following played variation to check, because I had trouble calculating
precisely.} 19. Rc4 $4 {a blunder in a bad position} (19. Ra4 $142 Qxb2 (19.
... b5 20. Qxb5 ) 20. Qe3 $19 ) b5 20. Rxc5 (20. Qf1 {doesn't change anything
anymore} bxc4 21. Bxa8 Rxa8 22. Qxc4 Rc8 $19 ) Rxe4 {The decisive conversion
of space and pressure into material.} (20. ... Bxe4 $6 21. Rxc7 Qxb2 22. c4
Qxe2 23. Rxe2 bxc4 24. Rxc4 Bxf3 25. Rxe8+ Rxe8 26. gxf3 $15 ) 21. Qxb5 (21.
Qf1 {doesn't change the outcome of the game} Rxe1 22. Qxe1 Rc8 $19 ) Rxe1+
22. Nxe1 Rb8 {Removing White's Knight from the centre, it now rests
unsupported allowing Black a final flourish.} 23. Qc4 Bb6 (23. ... Bd6 $142
{seems even better} 24. Rb5 Re8 $19 ) 24. Rb5 (24. Qf4 {praying for a
miracle} Re8 25. Rxf5 Rxe1+ 26. Kh2 $19 ) Bxf2+ $1 {Demolishes the pawn
shield} 25. Kxf2 (25. Kh1 {there is nothing better in the position} Re8 26.
Nf3 Bxh3 27. Rb3 $19 ) Rxb5 {Her Majesty White's Queen is a wee bit under
fire! Black threatens to move his Bishop with check.} 26. Nf3 (26. Qf4 {no
good, but what else?} Rxb2 27. a4 $19 ) Rxb2 27. Kg1 Rxc2 28. Qa4 Rc1+ (28.
... Qg6 $142 {and Black can already relax} 29. Qxc2 Bxc2 $19 ) 29. Kh2 Qd6+
30. g3 Rc2+ 31. Kh1 (31. Qxc2 {does not win a prize} Bxc2 32. Kg2 Be4 33. Kf2
Qc5+ 34. Ke2 Qc4+ 35. Ke1 Bxf3 36. Kd2 Qd4+ 37. Kc2 Bd1+ 38. Kb1 Qd3+ 39. Ka1
Qc3+ 40. Kb1 Qc2+ 41. Ka1 Qc1# ) Qd1+ 32. Ne1 (32. Ng1 {does not improve
anything} Qd5+ 33. Nf3 Qxf3+ 34. Kg1 Qg2# ) Qxe1# *

I won my game at the weekend, in our division 2. I had a nice mate trick at the end which my opponent fell for; albeit I was a piece up in the endgame anyways. I'm annotating the game personally (avoiding Fritz for now) and will upload this soon. If anyone has read my other posted game and wishes to ask questions, comment on the analysis or otherwise, do feel free

In other news, my Botvinnik book has arrived! I'mma read some of that later methinks. I just wish I had the gumption to do sth from every area each day; ie some art of attack, and some tactics, AND some endgame, and some game analysis. Still, this game I played yesterday has a huge number of variations to look at-I'm just at move 16!

I appreciate it isn't easy to go through non-PGNized games, but I'd be very grateful for any feedback whatsoever on what I've currently posted.

I'm working through Art of Attack (AoA), just finished Fritzifying first chapter. I have since my last posting, won my next game; a Scotch *by transposition from Nimzowich* with ...f6?? which was a nice positional squeeze. I made a couple of blunders, and I'm suffering from the problem of either playing intuitively (which is leading to playing moves I know are good but which I cannot understand to be best until Fritz tells me), or taking 5 minutes every move. I did this in my last game as well, so time will be a higher priority this Thursday in my next league match.

For these matches I create player files based on every game I played against them, identifying common themes, and preparing improved openings, especially against one opponent who has taken me into two very dry positions from the opening in our last two encounters. This also has the advantage of letting me annotate my old games briefly, and seeing how far I actually have come even in just two seasons.

I've made posts in the relevant areas, but if anyone could give me some help or advice on the nature of critical moves, and any material dealing with proper positional assessment (which seems slightly more to be at the root of my old problem of getting winning positions, and not winning them, than does conducting attacks, given recent history), it'd be appreciated.

You can post these games in the game replayer by removing the comments.

Silman's How to Reassess your Chess is a excellent book for the problems you have.

I don't have much to say about the game. I got the impression you often used the engine's judgment on a position, which I don't like that much. What does = mean? What does += mean? To me they're no help if I try to think about a position, there are equal positions where Black has to play a great deal more carefully than White for example, making the position arguably not so equal after all. Maybe your problems are related to relying to much on the engine, although I don't know enough about you to make that claim, it's just a suggestion. Considering the event horizon and the positional ineptitude of the engines in a lot of positions, I don't think engines are all that helpful except for blunder checking.
One example of this in your game was (13. Bh4 Qe7 = ), where I'm not so convinced that Black has a fully equal game. Yes, he might get in d5, but the pin will be there for a long time and it is annoying to me. Maybe I'm wrong here, but descriptions like these will give you a better picture of the position than =.
I've done enough talking, considering that you are a bit stronger than I am and I don't know you at all. In the end only you can say if I was spot on or dead wrong.

Also, are you aware that AofA is available as an ebook? Makes it infinitely easier to read and worth the extra cash even if you have the print volume.

See http://www.everymanchess.com/display.php?id=7 for details ($19.95 USD)

Kamus; firstly I'm British, and secondly I much prefer the longhand because it forces me to actually look at the positions and play through them far more.

Hitchhiker, you're halfway to being right. When I look at my games under Fritz, I see its evaluations and derivatively understand them. However, I certainly don't simply go by what it says without effort to find out why. Certainly when I annotate my games in proper depth, examples of which I shall attempt to put up, and when I attempted to do videos (which failed because of my microphone), I did not simply say which side was in what level of advantage, I explained all the differences.

Drifting slightly; look at this:



This is a stem position from a game I played against a good friend of mine over the last two days on the internet. I rejected the continuation that led to this position because I felt that White's pawn islands and Knight were not as strong as Black's dark Bishop. I have since found that the position is very strong for White, and I went on to play an inferior continuation. I understand that looking deeper, Black has trouble biting with his Bishop, it's near impossible to play the freeing ...d5 without further concessions (which allows White extra manoeuvre for attack based on e5), and White has more space. But my intuition as to this type of assessment being correct is often very wrong.

I think this example is not so obvious. I can't say I would've played that position without seeing the alternatives, so maybe this is not such a big mistake in your evaluation. Or maybe we are making the same mistake.
I wasn't really saying you just say what the engine says, I was more thinking along the lines of using the engine to determine who is better and than explain it. I did that for quite some time, but it really hurt my chess. I was always looking at the engine first and couldn't develop my own opinion, on which I had to rely during games.
If you evaluate positions completely on your own you get the opportunity to work on your chess, because you can check your ideas against the computer and find out what you did right and wrong. I also have to admit I always thought the engine was "Chess God" until I read Kongsted's "How to use computers to improve your chess". He takes 40 or 50 pages to explain how the engines work and which weaknesses are the result. I have to say I was amazed at how bad the engine was at planning, endgames, etc. That book is 4 or 5 years old, but I checked all the positions with my own engine and it's still reacting like the old engines in almost all positions. Now I try to use the engine as little as possible, maybe that's something you can try too. It certainly helped me.

I won my most recent game on Tuesday, and our team won the match, but I think I used up all my luck from here til Doomsday! Several times I missed tactically simple shots (tired?) and played several horrible moves. Some of these I can understand the misreasoning behind, others I'm not so sure. Still, a win is a win. The game before that had a similar pattern; I missed a move in a forcing sequence but so did my opponent, and asides that my game wasn't very bad at all. Still doing tactics 3/4 times a week, playing lots of games on FICS and winning more And AoA is going to get more work on it later, to distract me from trouble with t'gf.

I haven't posted in four months, but what a four months!

I've suddenly leapt up, in RAPIDPLAY, such that I'm scoring roughly 50% against an 1850 friend, and I've suddenly won about 15 of my last 20 games, against average opposition 1650+. But what pleases me most is my development of greater concentration, development of less fear, and more endurance. Recently I spend TWELVE HOURS in a day, 6 on videos of world champion games, 6 of playing, and though I was going through a horrid horrid blind spot (my strategical and tactical vision were both shot to pieces for no reason), and I still played the next day. In the past I would stop for a while after such intense work. I've done some more Art of Attack fritzplays, I've also been doing a lot of such work with my own games where needed; going through ideal endgame technique, or attack postures where I was inaccurate. My rating has stabilised around 1700, I'm still getting stronger, and my rapidplay skill is near equal my normal skill previously, whereas before I was weaker at rapid by a distance.

I have a tournament in Newcastle next Saturday, U140/roughly U1900, and I must install myself as a favourite for it. I will post a game or two here soon if anyone wants, I've played some near perfect games in the last few days, and I can clearly see a greater willingness and ability to keep tense positions until I resolve them in my own favour. My tactical vision I'm still working on; only once a week roughly on tactics server, because my calculation has leapt up to quick and instant again, and I'm making sure I calculate sting in tail moves at ends of innocuous looking variations.

ECF grades are changing this season but I will be close to 140, and my immediate targets are to be scoring 55% against players rated average 1750, on chesscube. I stopped using FICS in April, just a few days after my last post, because it is terrible for getting games. The payoff is that the ratings are a tad inflated on cube, because there are so few tactically strong players. I can sometimes even smash 1625s casually, which is disturbing but the confidence is nice. So all is well! I've been working my Sicilian book, and various others, and I will post an update after the tournament!

@TheArbiter

>I've done some more Art of Attack fritzplays

I know this is going back a ways, but does this mean setting up Art of Attack positions in Fritz and then playing through them? Are you still doing this and does it help your tactical vision?

Thanks

Carl