ya know, I'm 90% certain 10. h3 is that kneejerk reaction keeping either the Bishop or Knight out of g4 - I usually play g3 instead - I know it's passive now but not as much back then - I get paranoid about losing pawn protection and pieces close to my Kingside

I have to admit, with their software allowing me to set up the position and trying out various combos by moving the pieces, it makes it a lot easier to find what I think is the best move - might not be as solid in my head when trying to visualize as it is when I'm moving thru the choices on the screen. I'm actually crushing most 1200's on that site - I should shoot up to 2500 before dying back down

I saw later that Nd5 wasn't as solid as I'd like - you still end up even on e7 since it clears up the diagonal for the bishop but adds the Knight to defense

thanks - I'll post a couple more of these correspondence games next update including one where what I read in Jeremy's book on opposition got me the right square needed for the win -

RB

If you post this game, link to it in the soon to be created book club discussion thread. Practical examples will be good.

well, not much to report - I dropped about 50 points on CTS and have crawled back up to 1280 - playing about one good game a day on playchess.com and trying not to do more - trying to play less and study more so I learn something.

The good news is there is a chess club near me with Monday night quads, and it's like almost only a mile from where I live - I went down there, signed up, will get a USCF rating, and start playing their monday night quad tourneys. The bad news is they're all around Class A players - (the three I played tonight anyways, which was the whole of all four of us)

But I got some real face time in front of a board again - we discussed (with two of my opponents) where I fouled up, and I also got my first real time in writing my moves down and playing with a real clock - (of which I sometimes forgot to click - LOL) - I also wrote a couple moves down wrong as black and forgot to mention which of the two rooks went to the e file on one game, but memory saved me.

I have also picked up an obnoxious chess book habit, with about three more Jeremy Silman books rounding out my collection - to aid in interest I have also picked up a couple books on Bobby Fischer - one listing the games he played up to the match with the Russians, and one that's just a general history of the matchups - also a history of Chess called the Immortal game - sadly, I seem to want to read and study chess more then play it - but maybe playing will be more fun when I'm winning again -

I also felt I needed to get a life so I turned up an online dating profile I've been dragging my ass for weeks on turning up - LOL - maybe I won't have time for chess pretty soon if I'm lucky

Oh yes, I'm sick of Chessmaster's opponents - they don't play easy unless they hang a piece in the mid-end game - that's not realistic, sorry - Chessmaster training, however, still rocks.

party on garth
RB

The funny thing about playing stronger players is that it can force you to play better than you would have by playing people closer to your own level.



A girlfriend will definitely cut into your chess time but good luck!

Crash

another week of fine grinding it out. My CTS is down to 1280 and has stayed right there for about the last 300 problems. Was thinking of taking a few days off, letting my RD creep up, and picking up a few points - LOL - still not seeing a lot of the 1500 problems and missing more of the easier ones then I should be right now, but life goes on.

My Gameknot rating (correspondence) is my highest (1519) and I think I can get it higher as I'm playing five games with a pretty good advantage in three of them. Playchess is around 1387 for slow games and 1284 for blitz. My win rate is terrible (30-40%) but I'm playing opponents rated 100 points higher on average and slowly creeping up.

I did an analysis of a couple games I played tonight and you can find the link here - http://www.chessvideos.tv/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=2367&p=19451#p19451 - think I'm seeing some progress - worst part is I'm starting to see what my opponent's best move is well - heh heh - once I get that down I'll start to be dangerous.

Blew an early opening game where I got the early Qh5 move as black trashing a poorly played King's Gambit, got to e4 but didn't take the h1 rook for fear of being boxed in with Ng3 - terrible move not to capture the rook since I still get great material and pin down the bishop/knight which I could have liberated later with Bg4 - if I encounter someone that bad again I won't make the same mistake twice.

Got a lot of books and more coming in - (bad habit) but I'm thru three of Yassir's books and working on number four for endings (will redo the openings one fifth, with combinations and brilliancies rounding it out) - couple books by Tal coming in sort of to study some of his tactical moves (perhaps doing what Jeremy Silman suggests and mapping them out with a notebook) - And a couple books by Kasparov going over his great predecessors - (first two volumes) - Also the Polger 5000+ chess problems since I seem to miss mates a lot, methinks, in CTS.

Will play live again tomorrow at the Chess club down the road and join the USCF, I guess. Hopefully I'll find an opponent who's not rated 2000 this time around - LOL.

Read something really interesting in that "The Immortal Game" history of chess I was reading. I guess we know chess has gone thru historic stages- summed up basically as Romantic, Scientific, Hypermodernism, and New Dynamism, which tries to fuse the previous two styles. There may be another stage in there as well, but interesting enough, I believe I read there or somewhere else that this is a development EVERY player tends to go thru - we all start out as Romantic, then go to a more strategic, then so forth and so on. Thought that was an interesting point I hadn't thought of before, and I look forward to studying more of the earlier games just to improve my game at this level.

Freezing rain and drizzle - going to milk this for as long as I can till spring, then we'll see where I go from there - LOL

pax
RB

well, I'm back up to about 1310 on CTS, so all my grinding there is paying off - finally....I've even brought my percentage solved right back up to 66% give or take, from 65.5, so the extra time is paying off, I guess.

I started studying Yassir's Endings book and got totally hammered by the Bishop/Knight ending - took me about a week of watching Josh's video, trying it out, failing, retrying, rewatching, refailing, and about the 4th time thru I sorta got it after watching the last half a couple more times - I sorta ended up breaking it down in three stages - driving the king into the corner (easy) driving him over to the checkmate corner without him escaping the net (medium) and tightening it to checkmate (hard) - I suspect an amateur player could actually make it hard for me - the PC is making optimum moves and I'm sorta in a groove with that but it should be enough to get me the rest of the way, so to speak should I ever need it - I now can beat all the basic endings on the endgame simulator and will move on to rook endings in Yassir's book.

I have ordered three Nigel Davies Fritz DVD's on the KIA, creative 1. e4 attacks, and the Accelerated Dragon to compliment my d6 stuff - His stuff comes highly rated, I've been lax on openings, and CVTV is good, but I feel a specific focus on 4 or 5 will serve me best since I'm still in the 1400's give or take. If my games ever end up being in Chessbase I may have to start diversifying.

keeping up with Silman's book in the book club - I really want to read the Amateur's mind next, and it probably would have been better to read that first, just because of the many similiar concepts that are explained at a more basic level. Got thru the first 48 mate in one's in the Polgar omnibus of puzzles and have already noticed a couple standard mating positions I never really though of before.

But no real rating progress - firmly in the 1200-1400's but I've noticed I'm playing exclusively human opponents these days, so that should be useful. Got so tired of Chessmaster giving up material and Fritz pounding me on it's easiest level - LOL.

oh get this - I bought another chess program - for the IPOD - not sure how tough it really is, but you can buy that and a backgammon game for 5 bucks on Itunes - just thought it would be cool someday in an airport.

I can't wait for spring though.

RB

been a few weeks - I sorta hit a critical burn juncture and eased way back on study/playing/reading - won about 13 of 14 games and then started not focusing - lost a lot of games - dropped 70 rating points and generally just stopped caring or wanting to play for a few weeks while I decide what to do/study next.

Had one or two small triumphs - two club players I never beat (1600 and 1900) showed up a couple weeks ago and we didn't have enough for rated quads, but we played some unrated speed chess (10 min) - I won one game of three in each, making it the first time I've beaten either player. The 1900 player I beat with my study of the KIA and a slightly dubious sacrifice (dubious only in that I thought it was easy to spot and not take, but not that it threatened my position) - but he took it and three moves later I had my queen/bishop up there for the mate.

My CTS is only 1321 right now, but my problems right percentage has gone from 65.9 to 66.2 percent, so that's a slight improvement.

Considering playing on ICC and even considered getting a coach, but right now I just have no interest in deep study - I spent two nights out at my local cardroom winning $500, and will be recording an acoustic album at the end of the month followed by a trip to Montana and then what passes for no skill at gardening, so I don't anticipate a lot of time for chess in the next 4 weeks, but will try to keep active with some casual reading - got my first issue of Chess life and am enjoying that and may just enjoy watching/reading some replays as opposed to playing for awhile.

RB

ICC is a pretty good investment. They have a lot of free training tools that I enjoy, and there are so many titled players to watch.

this'll be my last journal for a few weeks - going to Montana for vacation. I haven't been reading much but may try to get the amateur's mind in.

My CTS and Playchess ratings are pretty stable around 1300 - my percentage of right CTS questions is up to 66.6, so at least I'm getting more right if not faster.

I feel I've been totally neglecting the strategic for the tactical, so I've got to work on that - but at the same time, going thru Zibbit's pattern recognition videos has me thinking more about attacking chess.

Prime example - in a game like this, a few months ago, I would have probably gotten the material advantage and tried to get as many tactical shots in till I could reduce the board to 2-3 pieces and checkmate the king - this time I saw I could destroy the king's defenders and hit that guy in the center and made quick work of him in this third game I played with my opponent. (could have gotten the mate sooner by going straight to g5 though - LOL) -



I've also got a lot of losses where I make that sacrifice, knock down the pawn protection, but can't follow thru. I'm hoping by reading the amateur's mind I'll be able to lock the strategic concepts in again while working on my attacking chess and weakening/strengthening squares.

pax
RB

yep - back again - been a while -

nothing to report - bought a few new books, but have reverted to my hanging pieces tendencies again without any study or continuous play. I can beat 1200-1300 players part of the time but I also hang rooks vs 1000 rated players....

ratings are around 1300 in all other areas. nothing new to report there - did a live game analysis where I played one of my best attacks after studying some Morphy games -



even then I missed a couple checkmates but I was under time pressure and KNEW what the best tactical moves where while the checkmate moves would have required some extra effort -

really making no progress - but not reading much lately except going over some "Great Predecessor" analysis of Kasparov's - got some new books including Nimzowitsch and Lasker, so we'll see what I see there.

Think I should work on my endgame study again in the Chessmaster tutorials - just seems like a good time to work on endgame principles -

RB

So I've been regressing a bit, so I'm trying three or four books/approaches that should round out my training plan for now until I get closer to a 1500 rating.

1. - A Basic strategy book - in this case, I'm reading Aron Nimzowitsch's "My System" - liking it so far but I'm just thru the first chapter - for some reason, it seems to start off a bit more basic then some of Jeremy Silman's stuff, and I like that.

2. - An endgame book - going thru Jeremy Silman's Endgame Course (I can now rock with K+Q vs K+B but am having to review K+Q vs K+N - and I've already farted away my K+N+B vs K endings, but right now it seems pointless to study that kind of an endgame when rook and pawn endgames or the other two examples are so much more common) -

3. - Some expert replays - Right now I'm going thru Kasparov's Great Predecessors Vol 1 - going thru Steinitz right now - a couple nuggets that have stood out so far -



4. - to review some more mates, I hope to get thru a few of Polgar's Chess puzzles - (sorta got hung on the last few Mate in One's - that's a LOT of problems but may be more useful to me right now then tactics training) -

playing a game here in there, reviewing my errors - (esp. opening errors) - May get a copy of MCO-15 to help with that - undecided yet - not sure if it's even any good but it sure looks like hell to comphrend - Heisman's novice nooks however recommend checking every opening you play to figure out what should and should not be done.

that's the general plan - about 1200 blitz rating on play chess with a 1497 on slow - def. looking to play slower games for a while.

RB

I've blown about 7 games this week based on my endgame play (including a corrospondence game I first lost my pawn advantage on, then my draw) - so that will be utmost and firstmost my priority now - openings I'll keep monkeying with but I'm allright on those for now -

got thru about 70 Steinitz games in my review of 100 games of each World Champion - 30 more to go and on to Lasker and back to Kasparov's introductions/history - may read Lasker's Common Sense in Chess just for the heck of it -

Finally hit 1360 in my CTS training, which is a new high - and solved what was rated as a 1500 problem so I'm finally starting to move up slightly there - playing about 30 corrospondence games to keep warmed up on that -

but this week it's back to the recording studio - LOL

RB

back to the journal - not sure who reads this but what the heck.

I would say I'm making slow progress ratingswise, missing a bit less - hanging a few less pieces - here's my latest high from playchess.com, where the signs of a slow rising trend are taking form



my game is still replete with errors - missed two major tactical shots in this game including the game winning one Rb8, and with 8 seconds left to his minute, somehow managed with premoves to win on time, but I missed some doozies in this one (and got a couple) - don't know why I thought Rb8 was in danger to Kb7 - LOL - WTF? My visualization blows. (note moves 49-65 were done in the span of 8 seconds - otherwise I might have realized I could get the bishop - pathetic really on my part - seriously)



I'm going to try De la Maza's approach with CT-ART 3.0 to learning tactics (repeat the same problems over and over till you have them memorized, essentially what I've been trying to do with CTS without much success) and I ordered Pandolfini's endgame course just because I heard it's a good starter - still going thru Novice Nooks - still trying to do postgame analysis - not worrying so much about openings (as evidenced in the above replay where I hung a pawn and generally choked till my opponent blundered) -

but progress is progress I guess

RB

For the record I read this... not that that's a selling point or anything.

To a point I agree with what De la Maza suggests, but think that his approach is astoundingly too intense. I think it's important to be able to spot tactics quickly for a defensive point of view, but I also think it's important to solve difficult tactics that push your understanding of the concepts involved as they will actually teach you more and help you offensively. (I say offensive and defensive because I know when spotting tactics defensively I don't take the time that I do offensively so I often spot much harder tactics that benefit me then fall for a really simple one because I didn't look deep enough at my opponents options )

Improvement is good. Missed things are to be expected, even Grandmasters don't play perfectly. Their errors are just so slight that we don't realize that they're mistakes. Keep up the good work!

For the record I read this... not that that's a selling point or anything.

To a point I agree with what De la Maza suggests, but think that his approach is astoundingly too intense. I think it's important to be able to spot tactics quickly for a defensive point of view, but I also think it's important to solve difficult tactics that push your understanding of the concepts involved as they will actually teach you more and help you offensively. (I say offensive and defensive because I know when spotting tactics defensively I don't take the time that I do offensively so I often spot much harder tactics that benefit me then fall for a really simple one because I didn't look deep enough at my opponents options )

Improvement is good. Missed things are to be expected, even Grandmasters don't play perfectly. Their errors are just so slight that we don't realize that they're mistakes. Keep up the good work!