An Experiment in Rapid Chess Improvement

Record of my experience in undertaking Michael de la Maza's "Rapid Chess Improvement" program.

Saturday, August 27, 2005

I love my DGT board except...

...I have lost both games against OJ I've played with it. I've been in sort of a slump since OJ got back, and now I've lost two in a row. Two games ago I dropped a pawn in the opening without any compensation whatsoever and was ground down without much fanfare. My last game was going great after OJ miscalculated something and I went up a piece...but I lost on time. I've always had a problem with time-trouble, so my immediate chess-improvement goals are:
1) Improve my thought process
2) Play faster

I think by improving my thought processes I will play faster since currently my thoughts are all over the place during each move. I think also I suffer from a general lack of confidence since I will analyze the same lines over and over and over and... Well, you get the idea. I need to have confidence in my initial evaluation and move onto other thoughts, especially for non-critical moves. If I'm sacrificing a piece or something, double-checking is fine. But for other moves, I need to just think straight through and move on.

One thing the DGT board has been really helpful with is seeing just how much time I'm spending on each move. It's pretty amazing to me to actually see how much time I spend per move.

Link to replay this week's game with commentary.

2 Comments:

At 11:52 PM, Blogger Unknown said...

Would love to play a game or two with you here - www.redhotpawn.com
My Id is IndianGuru

 
At 9:25 PM, Blogger fussylizard said...

Satish, I've never played at rhp before, I'll have to give it a whirl. As for playing games, sure, I'll just have to figure out when since I have a regular Thursday night game with OJ, and Chris Kilgore and I are looking into playing. I have a busy schedule. :-) You're in India, right?

 

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