I Am a Chess Machine

Anyone care to guess how I spent this weekend? The weather was perfect- sunny and 75 degrees. My mother-in-law was in town. The yard was in desperate need of mowing. The pool was crystal clear. Oops, wait, we don't have a pool. Anyway, no I didn't spend the time convincing my mother-in-law to mow the lawn while I kicked back on the porch with a nice pina colada. Yep, you guessed it- I spent the entire weekend doing chess problems, basking in the sunny glow of my laptop's LCD. As of Saturday morning I was nearly two days behind schedule, partially because I was just too tired to get all of Friday's problems done Friday night after dinner. However, I worked like a dweeb with no life and am now, finally, all caught up! Woohoo!

A look at the numbers so far for Circle 3:

        Circle 1 %  Circle 2 %  Circle 3%
        ----------  ----------  ---------
Level 10     96%         99%       100%
Level 20     91%         93%        95%
Level 30     74%         80%        87%
Level 40     69%         74%        82%
Level 50     67%         72%        81%
Level 60     55%         64%        75%
Level 70     60%         58%        68%
Level 80     57%         --         -- (in progress)
Level 90     55%         --

Finished 1105 of 1209 in Circle 3.
Three more days to go in Circle 3.

I was floored when I finished level 60 and saw I got 68%. I had to double-check to ensure there wasn't a decimal point between the 6 and the 8. I really picked up the pace on the last 40 problems or so and was really expecting a nose dive. But I suppose Caissa smiles upon the brave Knights Errant de la Maza who spend every moment of their precious free time begging for her favor.

I'm starting to get a little better at finding the "quieter" moves (i.e. not a capture or a check) that are rampant in level 60+. So many problems go along the lines of first using a sacrifice to open a line or drag out the enemy king, followed by moving your queen to threaten an undefended piece only to get her to a slightly better square where she can then make another easily parried threat. 10 more of these moves later, the planets (well, pieces) are in perfect alignment and the crushing blow is dealt to end up with a +/- advantage (not to be confused with the much more obvious +- advantage). I still have no clue why many of the +/- positions are better for the winning side, but at least I seem to be getting better at finding the intermediate moves...

Anyway, it's off to bed so I can get up tomorrow and do- yep, you guessed it- more chess problems. After work of course. I think I'll change my name to "Fritz"...