Victorious on the Field of Battle

Well, everyone, I defended Caissa's honor and did the Knights proud today by finishing circle 7 and the MDLM program. The seventh circle actually wasn't all that bad. I started at 9:20 a.m. and finished at 9:04 p.m. I even had time to go out to a celebratory dinner with my wife after I finished. I thought about trying to do levels 80+, but I was feeling great about finishing level 70 and lower per the last few circles and didn't want to spoil my celebratory mood. Let's look at the final stats:

Level  1 %  2 %  3 %   4 %   5 %   6 %   7 %
-----  ---  ---  ----  ----  ----  ----  ----
10     96%  99%  100%  100%  100%  100%  100%
20     91%  93%   95%   97%   98%   99%   99%
30     74%  80%   87%   93%   96%   99%   99%
40     69%  74%   82%   88%   95%   98%   99%
50     67%  72%   81%   89%   90%   97%   99%
60     55%  64%   75%   83%   93%   96%  100%
70     60%  58%   68%   --    79%   90%   99%
80     57%  --    64%   --    --    --    --
90+    55%  --    58%   --    --    --    --

I missed a total of 11 out of 1100 problems, primarily due to careless mistakes from going on autopilot most of the time (yep, autopilot even on level 70). Here's the Average Time Per Problem (ATPP):

Level  Circle 5 ATPP  Circle 6 ATPP  Circle 7 ATPP
-----  -------------  -------------  -------------
10       17.5 sec       14.2 sec       13.1 sec
20       30.2 sec       22.2 sec       18.5 sec
30       53.8 sec       31.8 sec       24.7 sec
40       58.2 sec       45.3 sec       29.1 sec
50        1.5 min        1.1 min       35.8 sec
60        1.4 min        1.5 min       40.7 sec
70        3.4 min        2.3 min       50.8 sec
80          --             --            --
90+         --             --            --
-----  -------------  -------------  -------------
Total    17.4 hours     13.5 hours      8.2 hours

"ATPP" I need to trademark that or something. Anyway, I was surprised to see my times improve so much, but doing circle 6 over the weekend sure helped. The difference between the 8.2 total hours you see above and the ~12 total time was due to lunch and breaks. I never believed it when I was starting out, but now I think it would have been possible to do all 1209 problems in a single day had I kept up with level 80+ the whole time.

Thoughts and Reflections
The only thing that comes to mind now is "wow". I did it. Time will tell if it was worth it, but anecdotal evidence thus far is encouraging. Last night, for example, I was reviewing PMD's first game from this weekend's tournament. I wasn't really thinking about it much as I went through it, but lots of things just jumped out at me. When he dropped a pawn on move 15, as soon as I played the move 15.c5 on my board I thought "oops". I wasn't consciously looking for stuff, but it just popped into my head. When I noticed his opponent played 50...d2 at the end, I immediately realized he could have done better and retained the rook, and the mating pattern that resulted from that analysis was a pattern all too familiar from CT-Art. Little flashes like this just give me the slightest hint of what it must be like to be a GM where so much of this stuff is just automatic. Speaking of GMs, here's my final Elo graph:



My final Elo was 2710, which puts me at #15 in the last FIDE ratings list, right after Boris Gelfand! Boy, I can't wait to start crushing those puny sub-2700 GMs! Just to be safe, though, I think I'll play a bit on InstantChess.com before I quit my day job and become a professional super-GM. :-)

Here's the final stats from CT-Art:



CT-Art actually shorted me 20 points on problem 954 (and I have a screenshot to prove it!), which is why the screenshot only shows 98% on level 50 instead of the 99% I quoted above.

Looking Ahead
Over the next few days I plan to collect my thoughts and sift through my 600+ line spreadsheet of data I kept throughout the program and put a page on my website describing my experience and give recommendations for future Knights. I'm also going to determine a study plan going forward. First thing is I will probably read all of Dan Heisman's Novice Nook articles at ChessCafe and get some ideas. And I will definitely get back to playing. I will also probably review the problems in CT-Art maybe twice a month to keep all the patterns fresh. I also need to figure out what to do with my blog: bring it to a close, start a new one, or just keep it going. Whatever I do, I will probably limit studying to 2-3 hours a day max. I just have too many other things going on to devote five+ hours a night to chess.

As a reward for finishing such a grueling program, I've been thinking about getting myself a nice set of chess pieces from House of Staunton, or maybe one of those sensory chess boards I've been wanting forever. However, money is a bit tight these days so I may have to hold off for now.

Anyway, thanks again to everyone for their words of encouragement and for all the hilarious posts. I hope to make all the knights proud in my future OTB play. I'll keep you posted!

Now it is time to go relax and do something other than chess problems for once.