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im glad ur starting a chess journal. If ur looking for things to do, I suggest signing up for chess tactics server. Tactics drastically improve your game. Just seeing tons of positions and drilling tactics in your head really improve your game

Good to see a journal from ya! (By the way, if you saw my bedroom it'd remove any ideas of me being organized from your head. )

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ive never tried ct art before but I really dislike chesstempo's problems. Some of them just seem ridiculous. In many of the problems there are many moves that win material but you have to find which one is the absolute best move. So i find chesstempo really frustrating

I used ct art a lot. Actually that's the best chess software I have ever seen. The rest of their programs are very cool too. They have stuff on endgames, strategy ( my favorite ), tactics and typical middlegames arising from various openings

The ones on the internet always seemed a bit artificial to me and although I used to solve them I figured that tactics books, ct art and such are just better. Well that's me, I guess someone does benefit from the internet ones a lot but my point is they are just not realistic enough. Thus if someone asks me what should they get on tactics I would say either:
CT ART 3.0 by convekta or CHESS TACTICS FOR INTERMEDIATE PLAYERS by convekta as well. I made the letters so big just to show how much I like that stuff
Oh and the so called "orange book" ( anthology of chess combinations ) which Salesman is solving and posting videos about. That's a very good one too

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I have the Polgar book with over 5000 tactics in it. (Always makes a pleasing thump when I throw it down on the plastic tables at work ) I like it quite a bit. They are nicely set up to show themes without any words at all and you get a LOT of positions to look at and themes covered. I've done the first 600 or so problems and like it quite a lot.

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Ironically, I used to know where everything is, but having another person share the room with me now makes it near impossible to find things. While I keep a mess, but always put things in the same place, when looking for things she literally turns everything upside down and makes me lose everything now.

I only comment on this now because I was reading the Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin last night and he was talking about how he purposely keeps things messy and disorganized to work on visualization and it made me think of your comment.

Very interesting idea. I doubt the wife will allow it though.

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when u talk about no rating improvements are u talking about ur FICS rating or USCF?

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