An Experiment in Rapid Chess Improvement

My Rating Debut

2006-06-01T17:03:00.000-07:00

Well, the tournament results were turned in, and while the next rating list has not been published, my yet-to-be published rating will be 1542. I have no idea how my 1478 performance rating from the tournament gets converted into a 1542 provisional rating, but I'm not complaining. I was really hoping to have an initial rating in the 1500s, so I'm pretty psyched.

The club has another 4SS tournament this month, so I'm planning on playing in that. There's two sections, 1800+ and U1800, so obviously I'll be playing in the latter. I've not been playing much this month, so hopefully I won't be too rusty. :-)

I've been doing some work on my opening repertoire (highly classified, of course) but I'm getting close to at least having a vague idea of what to play against most major lines. That's a heck of a lot better than I was doing this time last year, so I am making some progress..

My First Tournament - Results

2006-05-05T16:04:00.000-07:00

I finished my first tournament last weekend, the Austin Chess Club April Standard Swiss. Overall I played OK, but there was a lot of room for improvement. My final score was 2.5/4 (2 wins, 1 draw, 1 loss). My performance rating was 1478 according to the USCF website, so I assume that will be my provisional rating. Overall I had fun, but really wish I had done better in that first game which was just terrible. Hopefully I can just chalk that up to "first tournament anxiety". We shall see! I think I learned a lot, so it was a good experience. Feel free to check out the games. I'm not happy with all my notes on them yet, but I figured if I waited to finish them before posting the games I would never get around to it.

I'm not sure I will play in the May event since I'm fairly busy, but next month there is another 4 round tournament where I can play in the U1800 section. That should be fun!

I had a tough loss against my weekly sparring partner OJ last week. I resigned with a mate in on the board because due to a poor thought process I was not checking the checks. This was after having a very nice position in the middlegame. I'm glad I lost since it has really motivated me to work on my thought process. I still have a long ways to go, but in my last two games (the tournament and a game against Chris Kilgore) my thought process was better. Not 100%, but better than usual. I guess a good drubbing really helps every now and then!

Anyway, I'm currently working on tactics, reviewing master games, and trying to broaden my repertoire a little bit since I was out of book very quickly in my tournament games.

Hope everyone is well!

My First Tournament!

2006-04-19T15:38:00.000-07:00

It’s been a while since my last posting, but I’ve actually been fairly active chess-wise. I got back from my month-long business trip to Detroit two weeks ago and jumped right into my first tournament! I’m playing in the Austin Chess Club’s April Standard Swiss. The format is one game each Sunday night for four weeks. Overall it seems like a good format for a gentle introduction into tournament play rather than jumping into a big 8 round, 3-day-weekend tournament.

Since I’m unrated I entered into the 1300-1799 group. My first game was against a USCF 1398 opponent. I played terribly. I had the advantage for most of the game, but made many, many substandard moves and finally ended up trading down into a lost endgame. Ugh.

My second game was against an opponent rated 1370. He dropped a piece in the opening, so I started trading down. Later I missed a little combination that would have ended things much more quickly, but instead I let it drag out to 60+ moves before my opponent resigned. I felt like I gave him way too much counterplay, but I still won in the end. I really need to get back to doing more tactics problems. I really feel like my calculation and board vision has declined a lot since I wrapped up the MDLM plan, so I need to do some more tactics to get “back in shape”. I’m still doing some, but not nearly enough.

Anyway, my preliminary pairing for round three is as black against a 1478 player. Should be fun. I hope to win my remaining two games to pull off an initial rating in the 1500s. If I could start out at USCF 1500, I would be super happy. At any rate, getting out and playing more should help me improve, which is the real goal. I’m trying not to get too wrapped up in the ratings thing.

I’m still doing lessons with Dan Heisman roughly every two weeks. I’m still getting a lot out of it. The summary of my current homework is:

Tactics problems.Currently I’m working on the book “Winning Chess Tactics for Juniors” (Hays and Hall).
Play through master games.Currently I’m working on Chernev’s “Most Instructive Games of Chess”.On playing through master games the idea is quantity.Basically you should make the move on the board, read the notes to that move, make the next move, etc.I used to try to guess moves, but that takes a lot longer.Now I can go through a game in 10-15 minutes.
Read other “wordy” chess books/articles.Currently I’m reading Kmoch’s “Pawn Power in Chess”, but I’ve been a bit slack in this area.
Play games.Now that I’m back home and my schedule is slowing up I’m playing three slow games per week.Dan also suggested that if I had time I should play some 2 5 blitz (2 minutes per game w/ 5 second delay or increment) to get broad exposure to more openings and learn to play quickly when I have to (standard USCF games usually have a 5-second delay per move).

Overall I am still very happy with my lessons, and I feel like I learn a lot each time. We mostly go through my games, which I like. Now if I could only remember everything Dan tells me during the games. :-) But as far as tangible results, my time management has improved a lot I started lessons, so I’m well on my way to meeting one of objectives of lessons (improving my time management). Speaking of time management, one interesting thing is that in my two tournament games I’ve been much better about it. So maybe the “tournament pressure” has helped in this regard.

Anyway, wish me luck for Sunday!

It's a Conspiracy...

2006-03-07T19:56:00.000-08:00

I think there is some sort of conspiracy against me playing OTB tournament chess. Let's consider the evidence:

Three tournaments ago: Some work thing came up to where I had to work the weekend, thereby missing the tournament.
Two tournaments ago: A nice 4 round SS and...I ended up being on call for work and got sick (I suspect some sort of poisoning from my office).
Most recent: I was hoping to play in the March 4 round SS at the new chess club in Austin, but round 1 was this past weekend and guess what? I had to work both Saturday and Sunday. Okay, it's one game each Sunday evening, so I take a bye for the first round, and play the next three Sunday evenings. Nice try. I'm going to Detroit on business for 4 weeks.

I also found out today that a weekly conference call was getting rearranged to...you guessed it...Thursday nights, right during my regular weekly game with OJ (not that it will matter for the next 4 weeks...).

Arggggghhh!

Ah, now I feel better after getting that off my chest. So, anyone know of any chess clubs in Detroit, Michigan? :-)

More Lessons

2006-02-26T20:32:00.000-08:00

Just thought I'd do a quick post since it has been a while. I think I've done four more lessons w/ Dan Heisman since my last post. Here's a brief re-cap:

2006-01-21
We went through the De Groot exercise. Dan has an article on it at the Novice Nook so I won't go into it here. Needless to say it was very enlightening to hear how Dr. Euwe went about analyzing a chess position. The takeaways for me were:

You are trying to find the best move in a position given reasonable time spent. You *do not* need to figure out how much better it is than the other moves. So if you have convinced (or "proved" as Dan would say) that you have found the best move, make it. You can find out how much better it was than the alternatives during your analysis after the game.
Dan talked about the "king of the hill" algorithm that Euwe used. Basically the idea is that as you analyze candidate moves you always compare it to the best move you have found so far, and if you find a better one, replace it. I actually used this in a game today against Chris Kilgore when I had an opportunity to trade my knight for one of his bishops, thereby depriving him of the bishop pair (which is worth about 1/2 a pawn). So in my analysis, I compared each of my other candidate moves against neutralizing his bishop pair. When I saw nothing better than that, I took the bishop.
Dr. Euwe only focused on forcing moves. Since he had a beneficial forcing sequence available, he didn't bother to analyze moves that were not forcing (i.e. routine development, improving piece placement, etc.).
I found it interesting that his analysis was not nearly as ordered as I would have thought, but it was still a lot more structured than mine. For example, at the start

Overall I thought it was useful and very instructive.

2006-02-04
We went through a game I played with Chris Kilgore and discussed, among other things:

I moved a piece twice when I still had reasonable developing moves for other pieces that had not yet moved. At least I'm gettting better since in my game today I thought about that and developed my undeveloped pieces instead of improving the position of another piece.
The benefits of not castling too soon.
How I dawdled around in an opposite-side castling scenario instead of throwing those pawns forward as fast as possible (needless to say, Chris' attack landed first).

2006-02-11

Went through another game I played with Chris in which we discussed (among other things):

In the opening I ended up with an IQP in exchange for a tempo. Dan was really excited about gaining the tempo, whereas I was worred about the isolated pawn.
We discussed (again) taking a good, hard think on your first move out of book. I'm trying to remember to do this, even when there seems to be many natural moves to play. It's a bit of a challenge since my inclination is to play way too slowly, so I am really trying to get better about playing faster when appropriate. It's taking some getting used to.
I'm still taking too long on essentially forced moves, such as protecting a pawn that is hanging when there is only one or two reasonable ways to do so.

2006-02-25

We reviewed a game I played with OJ in which we discussed among other things:

We discussed a number of positional elements that I had completely misunderstood.
I was still playing routine developing moves too slowly.
He had me do a simple quiz. Of course I completely messed it up. Just shows I still need to work on simple board vision...

In Summary
I'm still very happy with the lessons. Again, Dan's approach (at least with me) is to help me with the "basic" stuff I'm not doing well such as time management, developing my pieces, etc. It is very frustrating to not be able to do these things. They all seem so simple, but for whatever reason it all goes to hell during my games. Many of the topics have been covered in the Novice Nook articles, or is common chess knowledge. So again, maybe others could learn all this stuff themselves just by reading articles, etc. Me? I just set up two more lessons. :-)

Hope everyone is playing well...!

Lesson Three and a Chess Club

2006-01-18T20:01:00.000-08:00

I had another lesson with Dan a few weeks ago (Dec. 31) and I'm just now getting around to blogging about it. As in prior sessions, we went through a game I'd played a few days prior with OJ. I had black in a Qd6 Scandinavian. As for as the game itself (sorry I'm too lazy to post it), after a few inaccurate moves by OJ I won a pawn about 10 moves into the game, and after the queens were exchanged I picked up another pawn but had to surrender the initiative. I then dropped a knight to an oversight and had two connected passed pawns for a bishop with two rooks on the board. A draw was most likely with accurate play on both sides, but Caissa smiled and I made off with the full point.

Anyway, we spent most of our hour looking at how I spent my time during the game since time management is one area in which I need to improve. Dan noticed that in the tactic where I won a pawn there were two possible captures. I saw that too during the game but quickly discarded one. Of course it turned out that the other capture led to a winning position instead of merely being up a pawn with most of the game still to come. The interesting thing was that when he looked at the time I spent on that recapture. (This is where my DGT board comes in really handy- I hook it up to Shredder during the game and it automatically tracks the time per move for me and saves it as a comment in the game.) It turns out that of the first 10-15 moves I made, the recapture was the second or third fastest move I played (25 seconds or so), including the book moves I played. His response was that there was no way I could possibly have fully analyzed both captures in such a short time, which I agreed. So the takeaway is that (as he's mentioned in his Novice Nook columns) when you have a tactical position, slow down and really take your time since that may be a critical moment. In my defense I was trying to play more quickly, and didn't think winning a pawn was much of a critical moment. But had I spent the time like I should the game would have only lasted another 20 moves or so (since OJ likes to play all the way to mate).

Another thing I did was slow down a lot after I'd dropped the knight. His comment (summarized) was I should have spent more time earlier ensuring I didn't drop the knight in the first place. Better to spend your time trying to maintain a winning position than trying to pull some miracle save after you are already losing.

Finally, we discussed why I dropped the knight. Basically OJ attacked a pawn with his rook which I saw, but my analysis of his move stopped there. Had I looked at it more carefully I would also have noticed that the pawn had become pinned and no longer defending my knight. So the moral here is that you need to consider everything a move does, not just stop after identifying the obvious purpose.

In general I've not been so good at consistently analyzing my opponent's moves, so I thought of a framework to help my checking process. Every time my opponent moves, I should ask:

What is his piece doing now that it wasn't doing before?
What was his piece doing on its old square that it is not doing now?
What are other pieces now able to do after the move?
What are other pieces no longer able to do after the move?

I have found I often overlook things that would be covered in #3 and #4. While I realize that having a rigid though process like this is not always possible, I'm still going to try to use it until such a process becomes automatic, then I can stop consciously going through the list. Incidentally, this list is also useful for blunderchecking my own moves so I may use it there also.

Anyway, I have two more lessons scheduled, one on Saturday and one two weeks later. Overall I've been fairly happy with my lessons and plan to continue them for the time being. The only downside to the lessons is the cost, which are now up to US$70 / hour. I'm happy with what I'm getting, but I do have to wonder if there are cheaper options. I've not tried anyone else, so I have no idea what other instructors might be like.

Chess Club
In other news, Austin is getting a new chess club. I don't know all the history of the chess scene in Austin, but there used to be a sparsely attended club I went to once many years ago. It was reasonably fun, but I never managed to make it back (for all I know it is a big group these days). Anyway, I got a mailer a few weeks ago informing me of a new chess club meeting every Sunday night. They have a schedule of events so I'm definitely planning on participating in the March slow chess tournament (30/90, SD/1) if nothing else. I'm hoping it will be a good opportunity to play more people just to get more exposure. They are having their opening night this Sunday, so I'll probably make an effort to attend even though it will mostly be G/5 blitz. OJ may come as well, but he's mostly interested in the free pizza. :-)

Second Lesson with Dan Heisman

2005-12-18T16:39:00.000-08:00

Boy, things have been busy. November and December is a super-hectic time at work for me so I've not been playing much lately. Fortunately I have lots of games played at slow time controls I can go over with Dan, but it would be better if they were more "fresh" in my mind. Perhaps this is not the best time to be starting chess lessons, but I'm forging ahead anyway. I had my second lesson on December 10.

We started out going through a game I played against Chris Kilgore a month or so ago. I had white and played the bishop's opening. I started developing my pieces and after Chris castled queenside I tried to start a pawn storm before I had finished developing and had stablized the center. So Chris of course played ...d5 and I started suffering. We ended up trading down into an equal-material endgame where I had numerous pawn weaknesses and about five minutes left on my clock to Chris' 45 minutes plus. Needless to say I lost.

Going over the game Dan yielded two major insights. First, I never did finish getting my pieces out. Many moves Dan suggested were simple developing moves. Nothing fancy, nothing special, just getting my pieces out. I know I am supposed to do this, but for some reason I have always had this fear that if I make planless, standard developing moves I might find that my pieces are not well-coordinated or ill-equipped to handle some threat from my opponent. Dan's reasoning was to first worry about getting my pieces out consistently, and *then* worry about getting them perfectly coordinated. This makes a lot of sense...a lot more sense than my current policy of worrying excessively about piece placement and using tons of clock time while not getting my pieces out. So this seems like a simple thing to fix and should also help with my frequent time trouble.

The second major issue we discussed was my time trouble and in particular, why I spent 11 minutes choosing between Nf3 or Ne2 in a quiet position. Dan's suggestion was that if two moves are very similar in evaluation, then just pick one and move. I can spend as much time as I want after the game determining whether one move is 0.12 pawns better than the other one. So this is another thing for me to work on- realize when my candidate moves are nearly equivalent and just pick one.

So after two lessons I have been happy with Dan's approach and I feel like I'm getting a fair amount out of the lessons. I'm only doing 1 hour at a time and it goes by fast, but for now I'll keep on my schedule or 1 hour lessons every other week or so. Given the upcoming holiday my next lesson is not until December 31, but I'm looking forward to it. If you've thought about taking lessons with Dan, so far I can recommend him.

Happy holidays everyone!

Some Things Just Are Not Meant to Be

2005-12-06T20:03:00.000-08:00

Well folks, I really was looking forward to the tournament this past weekend, but work conspired to foil my plans. I had been studying a lot (working on my opening repertoire and reviewing tactics problems) but last week was just hell at work (long, super-stressful days). I was just so mentally worn out at the end of each day that I was a zombie, so I didn't study at all the week before the tournament. I was still feebly thinking about playing anyway, but Friday I was informed I had to be "on call" over the weekend, which means my cell phone had to be on all weekend. That pushed me over the edge, so I opted to skip it. Turns out it was a good choice anyway since when I woke up Saturday (tournament day) I was feeling bad, and later I discovered I had a mild fever. Not sure what the deal was, but I would not have been in any condition to play had I gone.

Anyway, there's nothing promising in the area for the near future, so I think my tournament debut will have to wait... C'est la vie...

First Chess Lesson

2005-11-13T18:47:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I had my first chess lesson with NM Dan Heisman. Overall I would say the lesson was interesting, if not a bit insightful. In general I was not expecting too much since it was only an hour, and I was certainly not disappointed. Overall I enjoyed it and found Dan pleasant to work with.

So what did we do? After discussing my goals (make expert), particular areas of focus (thought process and time management), and situation (I'm a working adult, etc.), we started off with a problem in which I was supposed to decide if the king and pawn position was a win, loss, or draw for either side . It was not too complicated and I had "unlimited" time to think about it (unlimited in that all the time I'm willing to pay for :-)...and I bungled it horribly. I was fairly surprised I messed it up, especially since I saw the major elements, etc. The really interesting thing was that it took me a looooong time time notice a few things about the position. The takeaway is that I really need to work on my board vision...just noticing basic things about positions like what pieces or pawns are hanging, etc.

We then started to go through my game vs. OJ this past Thursday (a terrible affair...I played horribly, survived a massive attack to emerge a rook ahead, allowed a perpetual check, and then decided to try out a stupid idea just to see if there was any possible winning resources in it...and I lost shortly thereafter). Unfortunately, one hour flies by and we only got partway through the game.

As a result of our first session I've decided to work some more on tactics and board vision. Tactics are easy (more CT-Art and other simple tactics...nothing too complicated, just working on recognizing basic tactics instantly, so I'll probably stick to level 10 and 20, maybe level 30), and doing the MDLM Chess Vision drills which I skipped the first time around. I also dug out my copy of Chess Mazes which is a fun way to work on board vision.

I figure I'll do 3 or 4 more lessons at a minimum and then decide if this is something I want to continue longer-term. Overall I'm relatively happy with the first lesson. Dan's and my schedules don't match up very well for the next couple of weeks so I won't be able to do lesson #2 until mid-December or so.

BTW There is a tournament in San Antonio the first weekend in December, so I'm trying to decide if I should make my tournament debut. It is a 4 game Swiss system, slow time control (30/90, SD/60) event, so it would be perfect to test the water and actually get a USCF rating. I'll probably enter the reserve ground (U1700) so I'm sure I'll get beat up by a bunch of grade-schoolers, but it will be fun and good experience nevertheless.

Chess Lessons!

2005-11-09T10:49:00.000-08:00

Boy, I'm just barely squeaking by on this "one post a month" requirement to be an active knight...

Chess Lessons!
The big news is that I'm trying out chess lessons with NM Dan Heisman of ChessCafe's Novice Nook fame. My first lesson is Saturday and I can't wait. He's not cheap (US$65/hr), but I figured I would try it out and see how I like it. Heck, I'm already spending 12+ hours a week on chess, so if it adds to the enjoyment of the game then it will be well worth it. I'll just buy fewer chess books instead.

Why did I decide to take lessons? Well, I have been playing two slow games per week for a few months now and carefully analyzing the games afterwards. This has been incredibly helpful. The main benefit has been to expose flaws in my thinking and analysis process. For example, a couple weeks ago I had white in a French Tarrasch against fellow knight Chris Kilgore. I was analyzing an unfamiliar position for maybe 10 minutes and had decided on a fairly commital plan that I had decided was of mixed benefit to me (trading knights and altering the pawn structure). During analysis I discovered I should have just played a simple move, improving the position of my queen slightly, but not making a major change to the game. Apparently the lesson was retained, because this past Sunday I had in a Sicilian Dragon and again spent 10 minutes and was poised to make another fairly commital move that I was not 100% sure was beneficial. However, this time I remembered my lesson and played a different move. So the move I chose was not best, and I still spent 10 minutes on it, but the point is that I'm improving.

What does all this have to do with Mr. Heisman? Well...I had recently read a novice nook about how the worst positional defect in your position (doubled, isolated pawns on an open file) is worth a little over one pawn. So the worst single positional weakness is worth less than a pawn, so in many cases if you are faced with material loss of even a pawn, unless you are getting significant positional compensation you are better off saving the material regardless of the cost (Dan calls this the "Principle of Tactical Dominance".) Recently I had a game where I had finally figured this out something similar to this on my own (before reading the article), so when I read the article I wondered how many of these other "principles" are there that I am missing? Anyway, I decided to give it a shot so I'll let everyone know how it goes.

Current Focus
In case anyone is interested, here's what I'm doing chess-wise these days:

I play two slow games per week (G/120). One is with OJ over-the-board, and one is with Chris Kilgore over the internet (though I set up a board, clock, and scoresheet to simulate tournament conditions). So this is 6-8 hours per week.
I analyze the games in detail. This takes maybe 2-4 hours.
I'm working on building up an opening repertoire. The time taken on this varies, but sometimes I spend up to 6-8 hours per week on it.
Various other stuff (some tactics, playing Pocket Fritz, reviewing master games, etc.)

One thing that Chris and I have been doing that has been helpful is to practice specific opening lines. This way we can both work on our repertoires. It's been helpful, and now I feel like I have a basic grounding in playing white in the French Tarrasch (whereas before I was clueless after two moves).

I need to be doing more tactics problems, but I really want to get a basic repertoire hammered out before I jump back on the tactics. I sort of miss the endless hours in front of CT-Art you know...

Anyway, if you are not playing regular slow games, I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Long time no see...

2005-10-10T21:13:00.000-07:00

Sheesh, has it been a month already since my last post? Wow, time flies when you are having fun.

I'm still playing my weekly game with OJ, and also a weekly game with fellow knight Chris Kilgore. Chris and I are practicing various openings, and somehow I've gotten myself into the Sicilian Dragon (as if I have hours of free time per day for openings study...). We had a great dragon game two weeks ago. I lost in 19 moves if I recall correctly, but it was one of the most fun games I've played in a while. I have black this coming Sunday so maybe the dragon will re-surface again. Currently I'm down 4.5 - .5 against Chris (I drew as white against his Berlin defense :-), but I'm learning a lot and having fun.

Someday I'll get around to posting games- really.

Anyway, hope everyone is doing well.

Slump

2005-09-11T18:38:00.000-07:00

I've been remiss in posting my games of late, but I've still not broken out of my slump I mentioned in my last post. I have still yet to win a game on my new DGT board (only losses and draws). Most everything is due to time trouble or just spacing out. I've been working on my time trouble and I think it is improving, but there is still more ground to cover.

Slow Games and Opening Repertoires
I've starting playing two slow games per week (about G/120), one against my usual sparring partner OJ and one against fellow MDLM graduate Chris Kilgore. Chris is up 2-0 so far, but I'm learning a lot. Playing more often was a major necessity in my chess improvement. Now that I'm playing more I'm focusing on other areas, mostly on pulling together an opening repertoire since I really don't have one. Sure, there is no substitute for thinking during the opening, etc., but I should have at least a basic idea of what line to play against all the major openings. It's pretty bad when I am out of book against the Ruy Lopez on move four. If nothing else, knowing a little more about the openings will help with my time management and add extra confidence to my game.

Anyway, I'll post some recent games soon.

I love my DGT board except...

2005-08-27T21:13:00.000-07:00

...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.

OJ vs. fussylizard- 1/2 - 1/2

2005-08-08T20:12:00.000-07:00

What a game. OJ opened with 1.d4 for the first time I can remember and played something reminscent of the London system. There were some tactics that worked out better for me and I came out with tremendous pressure on the c-file which shortly led to a blunder and I went up a rook. Then, several moves later in a completely winning position, I changed my move I was going to play right before I played it. I thought I had already analyzed it and thought it was fine, and I actually thought to myself that I should do a blunder-check, but after seeing just over 20 minutes on my clock I hurriedly played the move and got what I deserved for such an oversight. Bam! OJ takes my bishop and forces a draw by perpetual check even though I was still up an exchange. In a brief moment I had thrown all my hard work away. So the lessons of the day- never change your move at the last moment, and always do a blunder check.

Link to replay the game with my commentary.

Chess Position Trainer & Pocket Fritz

2005-08-02T16:25:00.000-07:00

I actually started using Chess Position Trainer (CPT) last night. I'd looked at it before, but now that I actually entered some lines I'm planning on playing in the future, I have gotten a better feel for it. Overall, a great application. I started by entering my lines into Pocket Fritz 2 on my PDA with a separate game for each opening. Then I beamed them via IR onto my laptop that is running CPT. I then imported the PGN database into CPT and split it up into the various sub-repertoires for white and black. I tried out the training feature that lets you practice openings. Overall a fun way to practice memorizing lines. Of course I still need to learn the reasoning behind all the moves so I'm not blindly memorizing stuff, but entering the lines into CPT is a start.

And yes, I did some tactics study last night before I spent time on openings. :-)

Tactics in Pocket Fritz 2
I also figured out how to change the tactics training positions in Pocket Fritz 2 last night. Just put your own tactics problems in PGN format in the PF2 install directory as Tactics.pgn overwriting the factory default (though I did back-up the factory defaults first). There's some other file there named Tactics, but I'm not sure what the extension is so I just deleted it and it worked fine with my new tactics file. So now that I have this, I may not bother with CT-Art for my PDA. We'll see...

Happy birthday to me!

2005-07-30T13:00:00.000-07:00

My birthday was a couple of days ago and my wife got me one of those DGT sensory chess boards. It is a beautiful piece of work. I've not had a chance to try it out yet. I'm hoping it will be good for playing blitz games with OJ since it will record all of our moves. Also, I think it might be fun to let Fritz analyze our weekly games as we play and see what Fritz has to say about our moves immediately after the game...

2005-07-21: fussylizard vs. OJ: 1-0

2005-07-23T17:02:00.000-07:00

I've not done my analysis yet, but this week I came out on top against OJ. He played the accelerated dragon again and varied first from his prior game with black. I quickly got a positional advantage but shortly overlooked an annoying queen check. Instead of moving my king I offered a dubious pawn sacrifice to mix things up, and later OJ allowed a discovery on his queen. After the tactical smoke cleared I had a technically winning position with a queen versus a rook and knight with black having an extra pawn. I played carefully and ground out the win. Overall I was pleased with my play except for overlooking that irritating check (check the checks!).

I'll post the game as soon as I analyze it.

Update 2005-07-26: Game posted

OJ vs fussylizard: 1-0

2005-07-18T09:57:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the delay in my report, but I've been busy (who isn't these days?)...

Last Thursday I got to face OJ's new opening with white- the English. Fortunately it transposed into the Queen's Gambit Declined. I remembered some of the theory from Sadler's book, and ended up playing a Lasker's Defense. I worked into a technically won game with an extra pawn and a queenside pawn majority. Unfortunately I had blown through most of my 2 hours of time and ended up resigning in a lost position during the time scramble. Since OJ plays at blitz speed all the time, he was playing full strength while my play dropped dramatically. Even if I had sufficient time, I'm not sure if my current level of technique would have been sufficient to convert it into a win, but I wish I could have tried.

So the good news is I played a solid game. The bad news is that my time management was terrible, so that is an area of improvement. I just have to stop agonizing over so many moves, especially in quiet positions, and just play something reasonable and get on with it. It's that perfectionist in me wreaking havoc with my game.

I don't have much experience playing in closed games or games where slow attacks must be built up (as in last week's accelerated dragon), so I'm actually glad OJ has been steering us from the usual open tactical games we've mostly been playing. I guess his strategy of switching up the openings has been working (I'm .5 out of 2 for our last two games), but I'm learning new stuff and playing reasonably, so I'm having a lot of fun.

Anyway, I'll post the game later. I've finished my own analysis, but I've not yet run the game through Fritz (I always comment first without the computer analysis). Once I do that I'll update my comments (if necessary) and post the game. Last week Fritz didn't tell me anything I didn't already uncover in my own analysis, so I hope that means my analysis is getting better!

Update: Here's our last two games. I made them downloadable per zeon's request. The game described above is the second one on the page.

Return of the Titans, Round 1

2005-07-10T19:10:00.000-07:00

I've been doing a bit more travelling, both for business and vacation over the last couple of weeks so I am just now getting around to posting the results of the first game OJ and I have played since he got back from the Philippines. I had white and opened 1.e4 and we went into the accelerated dragon variation of the Sicilian defense. I've never played against this opening before, so it was a lot of fun and great experience. I played quite aggressively, sacrificing a pawn for an attack and pushing my kingside pawns to open up the black king. Unfortunately I overlooked a tactic and lost the initiative (and another pawn). I immediately replied with an exchange sacrifice to open up the black king in a lost position. But then Caissa smiled upon my bold play earlier and I escaped with a perpetual check! Overall an exciting game. You can replay the game with my annotations. If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know.

OJ and I will probably play this coming Thursday, so wish me luck. I can't wait to see what his new white opening is.

I confess I have been a bit lax in my chess study and in keeping up with everyone's blogs. Life has just been super-hectic lately, what can I say...?

What a Strange Feeling

2005-06-20T23:23:00.000-07:00

What a strange feeling it is to actually be reading the chess books I've bought over the years. After finishing the MDLM plan I went through Chernev's Logical Chess, and tonight I just finished Snyder's Unbeatable Chess Lessons for Juniors. It is a nice feeling to actually finish going through a chess book instead of watching it collect dust on a shelf...

I just went rummaging through my book collection and found a few more game collections I want to go through: Weeramantry's Best Lessons of a Chess Coach, Snyder's More Unbeatable Chess Lessons for Juniors (I just bought this a few weeks ago), and Nunn's Understanding Chess Move by Move. I also have game collections of Morphy and Marshall that I would like to get through as well. The first three are all extensively annotated, so I'll probably tackle them first. The Nunn book may be a bit over my head, but I'll give it a go.

I've been lacking in my tactics practice since finishing the MDLM plan, though I have finished Bain's Chess Tactics for Students (but I will continue to review it a bit more until I can do all the problems instantaneously). However, in going through the Snyder book I was pleased to see that when asked to find a move I nearly always quickly saw any move that was a simple material win, so I suppose that is encouraging.

Since OJ is now back I need to get back into the groove. He's up 11 wins versus my 9 (with a few draws), so I need to work at getting that in line. :-) We were supposed to play last week, but we ended up doing happy hour with some of our mutual friends from our grad school days. After all, no one had seen him yet since he got back from his several month long trip...

Anyway, Thurday the gauntlet will be thrown down again when OJ and I square off. OJ has a new white opening he said, but I have white this week. What to play, what to play...? Maybe I'll actually plan on something this week beyond just 1.e4...

Wish me luck!

The Return of OJ

2005-06-13T20:47:00.000-07:00

Wow, time sure flys by when you are not slaving away over chess problems in every spare moment. I regret to say that I have been quite lax in my chess studies of late. However, now that my friend OJ is back from an extended vacation, my Thursday night chess matches will resume which should provide fresh motivation. OJ says he has a new opening, so I'm looking forward to our first game in several months this Thursday. It's my turn to play white, so maybe I will surprise him with 1.d4 (I play both 1.d4 and 1.e4, but mostly I play 1.e4 with OJ). Or perhaps I'll boldly play 1.e4 and see what he's got...

Sorry I've not been keeping up with the blogs of the other knights. I will have to get back on track with that. I also need to play online at FICS so I can join in the other Knights in team play...

In chess news I am almost finished with "Unbeatable Chess Lessons for Juniors" by Snyder. It's a good book (game collection with every move commented), and I like his style and explanation better than in Chernev's "Logical Chess". Recommended.

My Life Story

2005-05-24T21:09:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm still working on the life story part, but the chapter regarding my exploits in the MDLM plan are posted on my chess page. I really want to add a few more things to it, but I also wanted to get version 1.0 posted. I'd be curious to hear everyone's feedback. If you think I should add something to it, let me know.

Other Chess Activities
Overall, I've been a bit slack lately. I'm making flashcards out of the Bain tactics book to help improve my pattern recognition there. I solve 75% of the problems almost immediately, but I need to get that to 100%.

I've been trying to play a bit more online, mostly blitz to work on opening principles.

I need to play some on FICS so I can get a rating and jump onto Team MDLM, but I've just been busy with other stuff. (Sorry!)

In the game review department I'll probably finish going through games in Snyder's "Unbeatable Chess Lessons for Juniors" and then move on to "Morphy's Games of Chess". In the tactics department, I will probably start going through "Winning Chess Tactics for Juniors" in a MDLM fashion.

Writer's Block

2005-05-16T15:53:00.000-07:00

Just a quick update on the story of my MDLM experience: I'm still working on it. I have been very busy with work (travel) and have not had much chess time lately. However, I'm going to finish my epic masterpiece about solving chess problems for months and then get back to my chess training.

I Have to Have This
Did you know that Convekta offers a Pocket PC version of CT-Art? I think I will order a copy since I love playing chess against Pocket Fritz 2, and always having CT-Art at my fingertips would be great. Not enough time to get slaughtered in a blitz game? No problem- zip through a few problems in CT-Art...

A Confession
I am embarrassed to mention it, but I went ahead and ordered Total Chess Training (mostly for Strategy 2.0 and the opening blunders CD) and Middlegame Training 3 (mostly for the stuff on the Scandinavian which I play from time to time). Overall I now have about 20,000 problems from Convekta to do. Hmmm, guess I'd better get to work!

Online Team Play
When catching up on Knight blogs I read with interest about the team competitions being organized by Pawn Sensei. G/45+45 is not too bad, though slower would be better (I prefer G/120). So I think I'll try to play a few games over at FICS to get a rating so I can join in on the fun. I definitely need to play more, so this sounds like a great opportunity.

Novice Nook & Chess Tactics for Students

2005-05-04T12:04:00.000-07:00

Novice Nook
I finished reading most of the articles from Dan Heisman's excellent Novice Nook series at ChessCafe last night. I skimmed a few that I didn't think were immediately useful to me in the process of building my own study plan, but I will go back and review those later. If you are an adult player (or maybe even a younger player) trying to improve, I highly recommend you take advantage of this fantastic resource. Dan seems to be pretty good at presenting things clearly, so his articles are well worth a read.

Based on what I already knew and Dan's suggestions from Novice Nook, here's what I'm going to work on:

Playing more slow games (G/60 or longer)- I'm working on getting some set up. I already review my games, look for opening improvements, etc.- I just need to play more.
Thought process- I need to work on this, but playing more games will help.
Tactics- The MDLM plan helped, but I still have more work to do in this area.
Evaluation- This is a new one I think I need to improve based on Dan's articles. In particular I need to focus on evaluating "quiet" positions where material and king safety are about equal.

Note that your list may vary, so read Dan's articles and figure out what you need to do for yourself. For example, Dan recommends learning general principles like rooks belong behind passed pawns, etc., but I think I know most of the big ones. Of course how often I put them into practice is another question, but whether or not I need to work on this more will become apparent after playing more games.

Bain's "Chess Tactics for Students"
I did the first 100 problems in Bain's CTFS book last night (spent maybe 45 minutes right before bed). Overall they are pretty easy after having completed the seven circles and most of them I solved in a few seconds (most of the hard ones were ones I had seen in CT-Art). However, there were maybe 5-10 easy problems that I had to think about or overlooked something in the problem, so I will probably go ahead and finish the book (a few more hours I expect), and maybe do another pass or two just to be safe. I might cut the problems out of the book (or scan them) so I can mix the problems up. They are all sorted by theme right now which makes it too easy.

Status

2005-05-02T20:58:00.000-07:00

I figured I'd update everyone on the goings-on in Chateau fussylizard:

I just finished Chernev's "Logical Chess: Move by Move" tonight. Overall an interesting book. Chernev chose games where everything looked so easy. If I could only win with such natural moves.
I'm looking forward to moving onto Snyder's "Unbeatable Chess Lessons for Juniors" (basically another book of games).
I got a copy of Bain's "Chess Tactics for Students" which is highly recommended by Heisman and other instructors. Overall it looks like a great book that "builds" from one position to another (i.e. you see a simple one-move motif, then you see the same motif except that it requires a preparatory move, etc.). Unfortunately most of it looks far too easy, but I will probably go through it anyway to ensure all the patterns are firmly burned into my brain. 434 problems should be about 3-4 hours, right? :-)

I also played a couple of games on InstantChess.com the other night. I won the first game when my opponent overlooked a pin that would win the exchange. We were playing G/15+5 and he had over 12 minutes left. The jerk just let his clock run down without making a move. This sort of thing really hacks me off. Or the people that just disconnect when they are losing since on InstantChess they get five or six minutes to reconnect before the server declares you win by forfeit. If you are losing then either defend the position or resign. Sheesh.

My next game ended abruptly after my opponent cancelled it after move 2. I guess he didn't like the way things looked after 1.e4 e5 2.d4 (he was playing black). After this I set my game seek settings to only play class B and higher players (I'm rated a low class B) so as to hopefully avoid some of the riffraff.

My third game was against a 1700-something player which I lost on the black side of the Ruy Lopez. I can't remember the last time I played against the Ruy, and I got into trouble early. I sacrificed a pawn to stir things up but to no avail. Needless to say I now have learned a line against the Ruy for future use.

I'm still working on my summary of my MDLM experience. I can be a bit long-winded at times, but I hope everyone finds it interesting when I finish it.

Confessions of a Serial Chess Problem Solver

2005-04-30T14:46:00.000-07:00

Excerpts from the minutes of the 2005-04-29 Meeting of Chess Problem Solvers Anonymous (CPSA):

fussylizard
Hello everyone. My name is fussylizard and ...

Group Moderator
Excuse me, Mr., uh, "fussylizard" was it? Here we all use our real names, not our internet chess handles. Can you please start again but use your real name?

fussylizard
Uh, sure. Hello everyone. My name is fuss-, er, I mean, Chris, and I am, well, supposedly addicted to solving chess problems. I'm really not sure why-

Group Moderator
OK. That's enough for now. Recognizing you have a problem is the first step to recovery.

fussylizard
Yeah, that's what I've heard...

Group Moderator
Why don't you tell us why you are here.

fussylizard
Why I'm here? Well to be honest, I'm not really sure. This woman that claims to be my wife made me. I mean I've seen her around the house and all, but I didn't realize we were married, you know? I've been a bit busy lately. She said something about being a "chess widow" and was quite insistent that I attend. She seemed nice enough, so here I am.

Group Moderator
OK. Why don't you tell us about your "chess improvement plan".

fussylizard
Oh, the MDLM plan? Yeah, sure. In December 2004 I started this chess improvement program recommended by this guy named Michael de la Maza. For four months I spent nearly every spare moment outside of work solving chess problems. I did the same set of 1100 or so problems over and over and over. At first it was difficult, ignoring my friends and family while bathed in the cold glow of my laptop's LCD. Hundreds upon hundreds of problems…so many. At first I was overwhelmed, but ever so slowly I grew to enjoy it. Each pass through the problems got faster and faster, more and more. Slowly, enjoyment changed to need: the need to spend every spare moment in front of CT-Art, solving, solving, solving.

Group Moderator
And then what happened?

fussylizard
Things were going really well until, well, I finished the study program. The final day I took the whole day off from work to spend in front of the computer, solving from morning until night. And then suddenly…it was over. The joy was indescribable, suddenly being freed from the invisible shackles of the study program. The next day I didn’t even load up CT-Art on my computer at all. Nor the next day. But then...

Group Moderator
Yes?

fussylizard
Well, I began to ask myself: was I really free? Hour after hour I spent listlessly reviewing chess games played by the masters of yore, but somehow it just wasn’t enough. Sure, there was the occasional combination or kingside attack I could play through at lightening speed thanks to the plan, but outside of this, I felt…empty. Something was missing. My life was meaningless. I felt the atrophy slowly eating away my hard-earned tactical skills. There must be more. I have to have more. I must have more, More, MORE!

At this point the minutes say something about a scuffle and Chris being dragged out by a bunch of guys in white coats while he screamed, "I am the king! I am the king!!" More on this on the 11 o'clock news tonight.

Stagnation
Having finished the MDLM plan, I feel really lazy. I’ve spent pretty much every night for the last four months doing tactics problems. Now that I’m not doing that, I feel very lazy, like I’m throwing it away since I’m not keeping it up. I’ve actually been going through Chernev’s Logical Chess book, but it’s just not the same. Life has also sort of caught up again as well, so between working late at the office lately and going to see the midnight movie of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Thursday night I’ve not been able to dedicate as much time to chess as I would like.

It’s funny what having a schedule does. With a schedule, you make time for things. Without it, the things you want to do get eaten up by the zillion other little things that just come up. I need to come up with a new study schedule so I will have something to stick to.

One thing I will mention about going through Chernev’s book: I had gone through about half of it before years ago, trying to guess each move of the winning side before I read the move and notes in the book. I did rather poorly overall in my guessing percentage. Now I am doing a little better on the “regular” moves, but whenever there is a tactical sequence, it’s like my brain goes into turbo mode and I can calculate out things with lightening speed. It’s a bizarre feeling to be going along and then suddenly have my brain shift into tactics mode and zip through the upcoming combination. I hope this bodes well for my OTB play.

Another thing to mention is that I find it interesting to go through other tactics material now. I have the book Chess Tactics for Juniors which relative to CT-Art is basically 534 level 10-50 type problems. When going through it (usually for 15 minutes or so before bed) I notice that some problems I solve almost instantly, whereas others I agonize over for minutes. This tells me that many tactical patterns, even some relatively simple ones, are still not “instant”, so I think I need to continue studying a lot more tactics, even after the MDLM plan with CT-Art.

A Confession
I have to admit it but Thursday I ordered Convekta’s Total Chess Training II set which includes, essentially, a boatload of tactics and endgame problems. I’m not sure if I will take an MDLM approach to it or not (or when I will start on it), but somehow it is comforting knowing there is more material to go over.

A quick note about CT-Art- I had no idea you can have it randomly reverse the piece color or “mirror” the board left to right so as to diminish the role memorization plays in solving the problems. I did 20-30 level 10-50 problems last night just for fun and found that swapping colors made essentially zero difference in my solving times, but the mirroring required me to think for a couple extra seconds in general to recognize the pattern. I think all the review work I will do in CT-Art going forward will use this random mode, at least for levels 10-60.

The Narrative of My Experience
I’m still working on my summary about my experience with the MDLM plan. I hope to finish it this weekend. When I’m done, I’ll be sure to post a link here.

Thanks
Thanks all for the congratulations on finishing. I hope I can inspire others to do the same.

Victorious on the Field of Battle

2005-04-25T20:21:00.000-07:00

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.

The Final Assault

2005-04-24T16:00:00.000-07:00

Circle 6 Complete, on to Circle 7!
Circle 6 is now complete. Here's the stats:


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

And the Average Time Per Problem (ATPP):


Level  Circle 5 ATPP  Circle 6 ATPP
-----  -------------  -------------
10       17.5 sec       14.2 sec
20       30.2 sec       22.2 sec
30       53.8 sec       31.8 sec
40       58.2 sec       45.3 sec
50        1.5 min        1.1 min
60        1.4 min        1.5 min
70        3.4 min        2.3 min
80          --             --
90+         --             --
-----  -------------  -------------
Total    17.4 hours     13.5 hours

Since the above times are strictly solving times and don't count breaks, food, etc., Circle 7 tomorrow will be a bit of a challenge, but maybe doable if I don't take many breaks. Normally I can only do problems for a little over an hour before I need to get up and move around, get a light snack, etc. I sort of wish I'd stuck with levels 70+ throughout, but given the demands of life it just wasn't possible. I'm curious to see what my ATPP will look like for level 70 tomorrow...just how fast can one do level 70 problems?

The Com-fy Chair
In case you wonder what it's like spending all your free time solving problems, I thought I'd post a picture of me hard at work:

In order to help the newer and future followers of the Knights Errant de la Maza, I would like to point out a few key things in this picture:

It's important to have a comfortable setup. When you are doing problems for hours and hours at a time, ergonomics is a must. Personally, I have found I am pretty comfortable using a laptop computer while leaning back in one chair and propping my feet up on another.
At lower left I have a plastic cup full of water. It's important to stay well hydrated. This forces you to have to go to the bathroom every 30 minutes or so, minimizing muscle atrophy as you waste your life away with CT-Art.
Notice the pillow on my lap. This is to keep the laptop from burning my legs. Laptops run ridiculously hot these days. The MDLM plan is hard enough as it is- I can't imagine having to do it with second-degree burns. But then again, if I were confined to a hospital bed then maybe I wouldn't have all those distractions like work, etc. and could focus on problems even more. Hmmmm, I will have to research my health insurance on this point.
In case you were wondering, the aquarium to my left houses Basil, our ball python (or royal python for non-U.S. readers). He doesn't do much except sit under his rock all day, but occasionally he sticks his head out to see what's going on.

The Final Assault
Tomorrow I will sally forth on the final adventure, Circle 7! I will leave out milk and cookies or something for Caissa tonight in the hopes that she will bless my endeavor tomorrow. Heck, I even took a precious day of my two-weeks-a-year of vacation from work to do chess problems (in addition to the one I already took a few weeks ago). Surely that will merit a favorable glance from our patron goddess..!?

Wish me luck, fellow knights!

Use the Force, Luke

2005-04-23T21:12:00.000-07:00

I "finished" Circle 5 last night. It became apparent very quickly that there was no way I would be able to do all 147 level 70+ problems after work, so I decided to call it quits in level 80 and review the problems I missed in prior circles in preparation for Circle 6.

Here's the schedule for two-day Circle 6, which I started today:


Circle 6 Schedule

Day  # Problems  Total
---  ----------  -----
1        828       828
2        381      1209

Of course given my performance on prior circles I don't expect to complete all 381 problems on day two, but I will get as far as I can and then move on to the final circle.

Circle 6 has started off well. Here's the latest statistics:


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

I think it is safe to say I either understand or have memorized most of the problems in levels 10 - 40. Of the 828 problems I did today, I missed a total of 16 (2 in level 20, 4 in level 30, and 10 in level 40). Most of these mistakes were either due to carelessness or forgetting a problem that I don't understand and have had to just memorize (yes, there are still a few I have no clue on, even after doing them at least six times). After I'm done I may go back and try to understand these troublesome problems, but for now I just don't have that kind of time to spend.

Interestingly I saw a huge jump on level 70 for Circle 5, so I suppose I'm improving there though it sure felt like I was tanking when I was going through it.

Here's my average time per problem (ATPP) so far that I have recorded:


Level  Circle 5 ATPP  Circle 6 ATPP
-----  -------------  -------------
10       17.5 sec       14.2 sec
20       30.2 sec       22.2 sec
30       53.8 sec       31.8 sec
40       58.2 sec       45.3 sec
50        1.5 min     (in progress)
60        1.4 min
70        3.4 min
80         --
90+        --

Doing problems this quickly makes me feel like Luke Skywalker in Star Wars practicing with his light saber with his helmet blast shield down so he can't see and has to go "by feel" using the Force. It's a bit weird going through the problems so fast, but I have to go pretty quickly to have any chance of finishing.

Anyway, it's after midnight so I'd better run. I still need to review the problems I missed on the last circle for tomorrow.

Goodbye Don, Man de la Maza
Before I sign off I wanted to say thanks to Don for getting me involved in the MDLM blogosphere. The Knights have been a lot of fun so far, and having the peer pressure not to let everyone down has also helped keep me on the straight and narrow. I'll certainly miss his hilarious posts, but I wish him well in his future endeavors, chess related or otherwise.

Once I finish the program I don't know what I'll do with my blog. Maybe I'll "finish" it like Don so it will be a record of my MDLM adventures (and maybe start a new one for my post-MDLM chess training) or perhaps I'll just keep it going. Hmmm, something to think about...

For now, however, fare thee well, Sir Don, Knight Errant de la Maza. Bon chance!

P.S.
I haven't see Mikhail Tal again.

Caissa Smiles

2005-04-22T12:09:00.000-07:00

A quick update: Caissa smiled upon me last night and her blessing- along with staying up until 1:30 a.m.- allowed me to complete day three of four in Circle Five on schedule. The stats:


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

I barely squeaked by an improvement in level 50, but I saw a nice +10% jump in level 60- woohoo! I guess I have gotten over my mental block on level 60. The times:


Circle 5 Time

Level Avg. Time per Problem
----- ---------------------
10         17.5 seconds
20         30.2 seconds
30         53.8 seconds
40         58.2 seconds
50         89.1 seconds
60         86.4 seconds
70         (in progress)
80
90+

I'm still a little slower than I'd like to be, but since sleep is optional I am squeaking by. Making that 9 a.m. meeting this morning was a bit rough. :-)

Wish me luck as I attempt to complete Circle 5 tonight. Since I've only gone through all the level 70+ problems 3 times (since I didn't finish them on circles two and four) I think I will stop around midnight regardless of how many I have left. Unless of course I'm close... :-)

The final assault on circles six and seven starts tomorrow. Onward fellow knights! For Caissa!

Whoosh

2005-04-21T12:21:00.000-07:00

Whoosh. That's the sound problems make as they whiz by at lightening speed in Circle 5. Through the miracles of lack of sleep, I am still on-track after day two of four. (I finished problems at 1:45 this morning and still made it into work today...)

Here's the stats:


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

Still seeing improvements. After four circles I finally figured out a spreadsheet format that I can use to easily track my progress and keep track of average time per problem in each level. I plan to post a spreadsheet template on my web site when I summarize my experience. Here's the times for this pass:


Circle 5 Time

Level Avg. Time per Problem
----- ---------------------
10         17.5 seconds
20         30.2 seconds
30         53.8 seconds
40         58.2 seconds
50         (in progress)
60
70
80
90+

Boy this is going fast. Since at this point I've memorized most of the problems it is not very mentally taxing except to sit and work at it for so long (day 2 took 5.6 total hours).

Unfortunately I think my numbers will tank pretty quickly. I doubt I'll be able to finish all the problems tonight or tomorrow. I plan to get as far as possible, and then start Circle 6 on Saturday. Who knows? Tonight is levels 50 and 60 (both of which I've completed on all prior circles), so perhaps Caissa will smile upon me, her humble Knight Errant de la Maza...

Five days to go including today...

Mikail Tal, Pizza, and Circle Five

2005-04-19T09:45:00.000-07:00

I had the weirdest dream Sunday night. I was staying at a hotel and I went out by the pool and guess who was there? None other than the great Mikhail Tal. "What luck!" I thought. A chance to sit down with the master of tactics himself and ask him about all those next-to-impossible combinations he found over the board that I've suffered through repeatedly in CT-Art. I wanted to go over and talk to him, but before I could I had to go order a couple of pizzas. I have no idea why, but I had to (it was one of those weird dream things). So I found the phone number of a pizza place, agonized over what to put on each of the two pizzas, and finally placed my order. I then started walking back to the pool area and saw the maestro was still there. I'm walking over, thinking maybe he might like some pizza, getting closer, thiking I hope I don't act like a moron in front of him, getting closer, getting closer, getting closer, and then...I woke up. Can you believe that? Five feet from Mikhail Tal and I woke up. What are the odds? I was hoping I would have the same dream last night (in which case I would skip the pizza), but alas there was no hotel, no pizza, and no Mikhail Tal. Rats.

Circle Four Report
Last week and this weekend were a blur. With two weddings to go to (one out of town), it was rough. My wife and I flew out Friday morning early (after four hours sleep) and it was non-stop wedding stuff until we left Sunday morning. Then we had a few hours of rest (which I used to do problems) before we had to go to a wedding reception in Austin. But with taxes, packing, etc. last week, I fell behind and couldn't make it up this weekend. The net of it is that I didn't get all the way through Circle 4. I was hoping to at least finish level 70, but I only made it through problem 1069. I will stick to my plan outlined in prior posts for just starting the next circle so as to avoid slipping the schedule. I really need to finish up so I can have a life again.

Anyway, here's the "final" stats for Circle 4:


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

Still seeing improvement. I hope to find time to go back and finish level 70 before I get to it in Circle 5, but that's probably just not going to happen given the schedule.

Speaking of Circle 5...

Circle Five Has Begun
Last night I started Circle 5. Here's the schedule:


Day  # Problems  Total
---  ----------  -----
1        488       488
2        340       828
3        234      1062
4        147      1209

"Yeah, right, this is going to happen" was my first thought. However, yesterday was day one and I actually finished all 488 problems in 3.6 hours after work. That's an average time of 24 seconds per problem. I had no idea I could do the problems that fast. It is sort of scary, moving pretty much without thinking or checking variations, but that's what it took. I even did several level 20s in 3 seconds. Miraculously, I only missed 15 problems out of the 488.

Here's the stats so far:


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

The numbers are still looking good. To get over 98% on level 20 will be tough without missing any, but we'll see how things go on circles 6 and 7.

Tonight is my wife's birthday, so I'm taking the night off from problems (woohoo!). I will finish (or get as far as possible) on Circle 5 on Friday. I'll spend Saturday and Sunday doing Circle 6, and I'm taking Monday off work for Circle 7.

I guess I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Let's just hope the light isn't an oncoming train...

From the Depths of...Houston

2005-04-12T22:15:00.000-07:00

A quick post since it is 12:15 a.m. and I'm in Houston on a business trip and I have to leave the hotel for a meeting at 7:30 a.m. tomorrow (er, today). Ouch. Like I said, sleep is for the weak...

Just finished level 50 tonight and was feeling pretty good. The stats:


Level  Circle 1 %  Circle 2 %  Circle 3%  Circle 4%
-----  ----------  ----------  ---------  ---------
10         96%         99%        100%       100%
20         91%         93%         95%        97%
30         74%         80%         87%        93%
40         69%         74%         82%        88%
50         67%         72%         81%        89%
60         55%         64%         75%   (in progress)
70         60%         58%         68%
80         57%         --          64%
90+        55%         --          58%

I was pretty psyched about my level 50 performance. It still took nearly 6 hours total time, but I'll worry about that the next time through. :-)

Thanks again to all the words of encouragement. Knowing you all are rooting for me helps a lot.

Off to bed...

From the Depths of Hell

2005-04-10T18:09:00.000-07:00

I'm well into Circle four now. Here's the numbers:


Level  Circle 1 %  Circle 2 %  Circle 3%  Circle 4%
-----  ----------  ----------  ---------  ---------
10         96%         99%        100%       100%
20         91%         93%         95%        97%
30         74%         80%         87%        93%
40         69%         74%         82%  (in progress)
50         67%         72%         81%
60         55%         64%         75%
70         60%         58%         68%
80         57%         --          64%
90+        55%         --          58%

As you can see, I'm still seeing steady improvement in the numbers. By the end of tonight I'll have level 40 finished. Boy it goes by quickly when you are doing an insane # of problems per day. A problem I'm running into is that I'm just not fast enough. The first day took 3.1 hours (not bad), but days 2 and 3 took 5.3 and 6.0 hours respectively. (I actually had to do some of day 2 on day 3). Day four (today) is looking to be between 5 and 6 hours. If I am going to have any hope of finishing on schedule, I am going to have to speed up since I just don't have 6 hours after work to do problems. (How convenient that MDLM didn't have a job while he did the plan...)

Therein lies the problem. To go as fast enough to finish in a reasonable amount of time I have to pretty much have the problems memorized, or just guess and get a pathetic score on the ones I don't remember. Of course guessing like that really doesn't help me improve much, so one has to question the benefit of this practice. Since I'm so close to being finished, I think I will continue to go forward per the plan. However, I will have to give some thought to what changes I will recommend for others who choose to undertake the plan.

I think the yardstick for measuring the plan is not "Does it work?" If you're spending 5 hours a day practicing something, you will likely improve with even the poorest of plans. The real question is, "How does MDLM plan compare to alternate plans?" Is there some better way I could be spending my 5 hours a day? (Boy I hope not...) Of course it is difficult to make such an assessment, so I'll have to settle for something like "What kind of improvement do you get from the MDLM plan?" Oh, wait, I have no rating so I have no way to measure this. Oh, well, at least my OTB play against OJ has improved. Luckily that's good enough for me.

In Other News
I got an email the other day from someone here in Austin who had read my blog and was interested in getting together and playing (Hi Chuck!). We had lunch the other day and we're planning to starting playing after I finish the MDLM plan. He's rated about 1500 OTB so we should be a good match. I'm psyched because he's also serious about improving his chess so I think we can really push each other, analyze together, etc. Even better he plays the white side of the King's Gambit, just like my sparring partner OJ...

Turns out Chuck has been taking internet lessons from Dan Heisman, so I'm curious to hear more about his experience. Right now he is doing some tactics (though not as intensely as the MDLM plan) and going over master games, and a few other things Dan has also recommended on his Novice Nook column on ChessCafe. I have been thinking about doing lessons with Dan myself (I've liked his books and columns) so I will have to learn more about this. I think the main benefit would be getting solid commentary on my games and identifying problems in my play. The other stuff- practice tactics, go over master games, fix my thinking process, and play more slow games I can do without help. I'll probably read all of Dan's Novice Nook entries and then decide what to do next. After the MDLM plan, of course...

Coming Up
Tuesday night I'm in Houston on business and since we're having dinner with a business associate, I probably won't get anything done Tuesday night. I have a wedding to go to Friday - Sunday, so I probably won't get much done then, either. The following Tuesday is my wife's birthday, so I will definitely take that night off (she's very understanding and supportive, and I want to keep it that way). I'm trying to schedule circles six and seven for a three-day weekend. The net of it is that I'll probably have to take the next two Tuesdays off, and I will try to get one day's worth of problems done over the wedding weekend. That will allow me to do circle 6 two weekends from now, and I can take the following Monday off work for the final assault in circle 7. I still don't know how on earth I will do circle 5 while still going to work every day, but I'll worry about that later. :-)

Wish me luck..!

Update at 12:19 a.m.
Just finished the day's problems. I really sped up for the last group of 59 or so (mostly level 40 and a few level 50), but I still managed to finish level 40 with 88%, a pretty decent improvement over before.

One thing that is heartening is on one of the early level 50 problems that I have had trouble with before, the move that was impossible for me to find before just jumped right out at me- not because I memorized it (I forgot that particular move), but because it was a knight fork that I hadn't noticed before. Of course the square was defended so the knight was taken, but that allowed the finishing moves. I can't believe it took this long to finally realize the forcing nature of that move. Ah, well, at least I'm starting to see a little more, even as I speed up.

One thing I forgot to mention earlier. I am really growing to hate the plan at this point. Circles 1 and 2 were fun since I had time to work through things, but now that I'm just going along at breakneck speed I am not enjoying it as much. Circle 3 was okay, but circle 4 is getting miserable.

Okay, time now to do our yearly income taxes, and then get up a little early tomorrow so I can do problems before work. Like I said before, sleep is for the weak...

Sleep is for the Weak

2005-04-07T09:25:00.000-07:00

To quote one of our illustrious co-founders, "Stick a fork in it- circle three is done." I may have stayed up past 1 a.m. most nights the last few weeks, but I made it through circle three. Let's look at the numbers:


Level  Circle 1 %  Circle 2 %  Circle 3%  Circle 4%
-----  ----------  ----------  ---------  ---------
10       96%         99%        100%   (in progress)
20       91%         93%         95%
30       74%         80%         87%
40       69%         74%         82%
50       67%         72%         81%
60       55%         64%         75%
70       60%         58%         68%
80       57%         --          64%
90+      55%         --          58%

Overall a reasonable improvement. Levels 80+ were a bit rough, but since that was only the second time I'd seen most of those problems, I'm hoping the next circle will be better. I forgot how brutally hard the level 90+ problems can be. I was pretty much going through the motions on most of them since there just isn't enough time to think about them. I probably averaged 5-8 minutes per problem, versus 12 minutes or so on the first pass. Again, I am shocked to say that it appears I'm improving (though only a meager +3%). It really is frustrating to not have any clue about what the next move might be move after move. You know it is bad when the 5x5 "help" comes up and you can't even solve that (though by that time I was probably too dejected to really think about much).

Here's a great example of the "help" you get:

Whew! Glad to know I don't need to worry about those two bishops and a few of the pawns. (For those of you dying to know, this is problem 1136, level 80.) Hmm, looking at this now doesn't ring any bells for me, so the next time I see it I'll use the tried-and-true "modified random selection method": randomly pick a move, preferably one that sacrifices something for no remotely obvious purpose. Seriously, though, despite the hellish nature of the problems, I still think it has been beneficial. I will attempt to complete all 1209 problem in the remaining circles.

Anyway, enough whining. I think this pass was more difficult than it needed to be since I switched schedules in the middle of it and I had only seen many of the level 70+ problems once before due to my scheduling fiasco on cirle two I've discussed earlier. Going forward, here's my schedule for the next 8 days:


Circle 4 Schedule

Day  # per day  Total
---  ---------  -----
1      264      264
2      224      488
3      188      676
4      152      828
5      126      954
6      108     1062
7       83     1145
8       64     1209

I have no idea how I will do 64 level 70+ in one day, but I'll worry about that when I get there. :-) For now it will be nice to get back to problems that are solveable for mere mortals like myself.

BTW Thanks for all the words of encouragement! I hope my effort will inspire others to take up the cause.

For now, continue to sally forth fellow knights and defend Caissa's honor!

I Am a Chess Machine

2005-04-03T21:43:00.000-07:00

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"...

Grinding Gears

2005-04-01T09:18:00.000-08:00

As I noted in my previous installment, the schedule I have been using in circle two (and also for circle 3) was not working for me. Here's a comparison of the two schedules for circle 3:


     MDLM Plan    My Plan
     ---------   ---------
     Per         Per
Day  Day Total   Day Total
---  --- -----   --- -----
1    136  136    200  200
2    128  264    150  350
3    116  380    110  460
4    108  488     80  540
5    100  588     70  610
6     88  676     66  676
7     84  760     65  741
8     68  828     65  806
9     66  894     56  862
10    60  954     56  918
11    56 1010     53  971
12    52 1062     50 1021
13    43 1105     50 1071
14    40 1145     48 1119
15    32 1177     46 1165
16    32 1209     44 1209

Notice that my original schedule started out with me getting ahead of the MDLM schedule, but my # of problems per day decreased too quickly. By day 6 the total # of problems completed on each schedule was equal, but after that I quickly fell behind. At day 13, when the problems are getting really difficult, my schedule doesn't decrease fast enough so I don't have time to do the level 70+ problems.

So in order to have some hope of completing all the problems in circle three, I opted to switch back onto the MDLM recommended schedule on day 6. I was already a day behind and switching put me even further behind. Switching schedules felt like I'd gone from low gear to high gear without pushing in the clutch. Yep, that horrible grinding sound was my brain struggling to adjust to the new rate of problems. To maintain hope of getting back on schedule I took Wednesday off from work and did chess problems all day. Last night I actually did all the problems prescribed in the schedule. Currently I am still one day behind, but I plan to make up this weekend and hopefully be caught up again since day 1.

For you adventurous souls pondering whether or not to do the MDLM plan, here are two key pieces of advice:
- Do as many problems as you can up front when they are easy. If you finish the number prescribed by the schedule and are up to doing a few more, do some more. Then you can lighten up he remaining schedule to have some hope for a life during later days.
- Don't get behind. It is extremely painful to get caught up. I can't wait for a weekend where I can do something other than do chess problems and take brief breaks before doing...you guessed it...more chess problems.

Status Report
Here's my current numbers:


 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%        --  (in progress)
Level 60     55%         64%
Level 70     60%         58%
Level 80     57%         --
Level 90     55%         --

Finished 894 of 1209 - 60 problems behind schedule

I'm pretty happy about my improvement in level 40. I've deliberately stopped looking at my current percentages as I'm progressing through a level- I get too hung up on watching the score fall as I progress that I get too wound up about it. So from here forward I'm just going to note the percentages at the end of each level. This has already done wonders for my blood pressure as I sit and do problems all evening. I already have a tendency to be a slave to the numbers, so I'm trying to break this bad habit.

I'm still going far too slowly on the problems. Last night my solve time averaged 4 minutes per problem on level 50. Even though that was total clock time, which included a quick dinner and a few short breaks, I still spent almost 4.5 hours doing problems. I'm trying to speed up my solving rate, but I hate to rush through them, especially when I feel like I see enough in the position to figure it out.

One thing to mention: I got 50/50 on #842 which rocked since that is one of those bizarre Tal problems. The scary thing- the whole problem pretty much made sense, whereas before I saw some general ideas in the position, but could never figure out the moves. Funny how little things like that are surprisingly motivating...

Circle Three Status Report

2005-03-28T09:20:00.000-08:00

I thought I would update everyone on the third circle. Things are going well, but with a trip to Cirque du Soleil this past Wednesday to see Varekai, and my wife's parents in town for her aunt's 60th birthday this weekend, I've fallen a little behind already. (Can someone find that pause button on the remote control of life please?) Anyway, I've finished 630 problems so far and am 36 problems behind. I tweaked my schedule slightly to make days 6, 7, and 8 go from 70, 70, and 56 problems to a more balanced 66, 65, 65 since they are pretty much all level 40 (so why do 70 one day and 56 the next?). I've been keeping closer tabs on how long it is taking me, and through level 30 I was averaging between 1.5 - 2.5 minutes per problem. And that time includes trips to the bathroom, grabbing a quick snack, etc. so I guess I'm doing okay for now.

Anyway, here's a look at my current numbers:


     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%        87% (in progress)
Level 50     67%         72%
Level 60     55%         64%
Level 70     60%         58%
Level 80     57%         --
Level 90     55%         --

Doing these problems can be surprisingly frustrating, especially when you miss problems that you got correct on prior passes. That sort of thing just drives me batty. I look at a problem, recognize it, and even remember the theme...but cannot find the answer in the allotted time. Also, I often find that about the middle of each level my scores start to fall off a bit, and then improve on the final third of the level (until I hit the "conjunction of tactical motifs" section of course). So I will miss problem after problem in the middle section, but through some freak of mathmatics I will end up with a higher percentage for the level. Of course there is the occasional pleasure of getting one right that I know I have missed on prior passes, but unfortunately the sweetness of this is usually more than offset by the bitterness of missing other problems. I should probably not get too wound up about it all since the point is to learn and half of the benefit is the process itself, but it is easy to forget that. And hell, my percentages are going up and I'm doubling the number of problems I'm doing per day from pass to pass, so I guess that means I'm improving...

Scheduling
One thing I just noticed was how my schedule differs from MDLM's proposed schedule on the later problems. I originally tweaked the original MDLM schedule since I was getting killed by level 30-40 in the first circle. Now it looks like the schedule I'm using is too light in the middle, which probably explains part of why I couldn't finish the level 70+ problems on schedule in the second circle. It may be too late to try to switch to MDLM's schedule for the third circle, but I may try to do that in hopes of having fewer problems to do per day in level 70+. I'd love to go back and finish off level 70+ from the second circle, but I don't think the laws of time and space will allow that to happen.

My New and Improved Plan

2005-03-23T09:42:00.000-08:00

As noted in my prior installment, I was unable to finish the level 70+ problems in the second circle on schedule. Instead of taking extra days to complete all 1209 problems in the second circle, I decided to move on to circle three. I was considering only doing problems through level 60 on circles three+, but instead I decided to allocate time to the level 70+ problems, and just do as many problems as possible on the days allocated for those problems, and then move on to the next circle. I think this is a good balance between the need to move forward with the program and the benefits of stretching to solve very difficult problems.

From an implementation standpoint, I think this will work well up until the last two circles or so. After that, I won't have entire days dedicated just to the super-hard problems. I guess I'll figure it out when I get there. Until then, I'll just figure out the average time it takes me to do problems in each circle and allocate the same amount time for "as many as possible" in level 70+. We'll see how this works out.

Status Report
I did 200 problems yesterday on day 1 of circle three. I got 100% for level 10 (woohoo!) and 99% on level 20 so far. Here's my planned schedule:


Circle Three Schedule
                                  Per
Day   Date                        Day  Total
---   --------------------------  ---  -----
1     Tuesday, March 22, 2005     200    200
2     Wednesday, March 23, 2005   150    350
3     Thursday, March 24, 2005    110    460
4     Friday, March 25, 2005       80    540
5     Saturday, March 26, 2005     70    610
6     Sunday, March 27, 2005       70    680
7     Monday, March 28, 2005       70    750
8     Tuesday, March 29, 2005      56    806
9     Wednesday, March 30, 2005    56    862
10    Thursday, March 31, 2005     56    918
11    Friday, April 01, 2005       53    971
12    Saturday, April 02, 2005     50   1021
13    Sunday, April 03, 2005       50   1071
14    Monday, April 04, 2005       48   1119
15    Tuesday, April 05, 2005      46   1165
16    Wednesday, April 06, 2005    44   1209

Anyway, we'll see how this goes...

Life Finally Caught Up

2005-03-20T21:09:00.000-08:00

For the last three months or so I have been living in this fantasy world where I can spend every evening doing chess problems for 2-4 hours. In order to finish the second circle on schedule I was supposed to do seven days worth of problems Friday-Sunday so I would have a final set on Monday. Well...I didn't make it. I only finished four, two of which I did Friday (I actually left work a couple of hours early to do chess problems). At this point I am probably going to just finish the remaining four days worth of problems in four days and go from there. I was hoping to finish on time, but with guests coming over to the house at night, getting various things done around the house, etc., it just wasn't happening.

One thing that has made it difficult to catch up is that on the level 70 and higher problems, I am not doing them much faster than in the first circle. One set of 25 or so problems takes about four+ hours (versus two hours for twelve or so as in the first circle), so it is difficult to do an entire set in a day, much less more than one to catch up. At this point I am seriously thinking about switching to Don's schedule and only doing through level 60 on future passes. As a side benefit I think I'll enjoy the process a whole lot more since after level 60 I find that more often than not I have no clue as to what the next move is and have to take a total guess. If anyone has actually done the entire 1209 problems for each circle in something close to MDLM's schedule, I'd love to hear from you. On the last circle you are supposed to finish each problem in 30 seconds, but on some of these level 70+ problems, I don't think you could physically move the pieces on the board fast enough to do them that quickly given the length and breadth of the variations (and sub-variations). I sort of feel like I'd be giving up to back off the full schedule at this point, but ultimately I think I must succumb to the reality of time constraints.

The Stats
Here's where things stand at the moment:


        Circle 1 %  Circle 2 %
        ----------  ----------
Level 10     96%         99%
Level 20     91%         93%
Level 30     74%         80%
Level 40     69%         74%
Level 50     67%         72%
Level 60     55%         64%
Level 70     60%         58%
Level 80     57%         70% (in progress)
Level 90     55%

Finshed 1119 of 1209.

As you can see, level 70 was pretty rough and the second circle was worse than the first. In level 70+ there are a few problems where I remember the ideas (or the moves), but for the most part its a lot of guessing. As I mentioned in prior posts, I still think there is some benefit to doing the super-hard problems, but going forward I'd rather keep the 64-32-16-8-4-2-1 schedule rather than worrying about doing level 70+.

Why I Hate Level 60

2005-03-17T20:58:00.000-08:00

My Arch-Nemisis is Back
I have a particular loathing for level 60. In the first circle, I scored a miserable 55% in level 60, which tied for my lowest score with level 90. I'd be curious to hear from others if they had a similar experience.

I think part of the reason for it is that many of the problems have "enticing" initial moves that don't work out without some sort of preparation. In prior levels, if I couldn't see a very promising continuation for the tactics I saw, the first couple of moves were correct so I could play out a move or two and then figure out the remaining wrinkles. But in level 60 this doesn't seem to work as well. Maybe I am not looking carefully enough at all the opposite side's defenses. At any rate, I find that level 60 really takes the wind out of my sails.

For the record I have finished through 1020, with my current level 60 score at 66% and falling. I am supposed to finish this circle on Monday but I'm still four days behind. I hope to catch up this weekend so I can finish on schedule.

An Observation
In an earlier post I noted the increased calculation ability and the mental stamina I had noticed when starting the second circle. Having made it a significant way into the second circle, I have realized that in many of the problems (up until level 60 of course) I am seeing the initial tactics far better than before. In the first circle I would often have to go through a mental checklist of tactical elements to try to figure out what was significant in the position. Now, I look at many problems and almost immediately I notice the major tactical feature of a position, i.e. the enemy queen is very short of squares, undefended pieces in opposition with mine, captures that drag the king out into the open, etc. I'm not sure if this is a result of having memorized parts of the problems (I am fairly good at memorizing things) or if my pattern recognition is improving. I'm not sure it matters much at this point.

Congratulations are in Order
Congratulations to Chris Kilgore who just made class A! I hope to join you some day...

Introducing the Chess Vision Trainer

2005-03-12T16:35:00.000-08:00

Don is the Man
Congratulations to Don, who just finished the seven circles of the MDLM program! You are an inspiration to us all, oh noble knight! I aspire to join you and Chris in the exhaulted ranks of those who completed the program.

Chess Vision Trainer
In 2003 I wrote a little Flash application to help do Chess Vision training drills per MDLM. I never really used it much, but if you are in the middle of doing find-the-fork drills I hope it will prove helpful. Been wondering if you found all the possible forking squares? Well wonder no more, just click the handy Next button in the program and see for yourself.

I threw together a skeleton chess page to go along with it at fussylizard.com, so check out the Chess Vision Trainer. Feel free to drop me a line on the blog or via email and give me your feedback. Bug reports and suggestions for improvement are welcome.

Status Report
Well, it's been a rough week with all my travel and such. I'm still pretty far behind (I just finished through problem 829 when I should be done with 970 by now...5 days behind). At any rate, I'm playing catch up a bit this weekend, so I hope to make up 2-3 days.

I finished level 40 earlier today and began level 50. Here's the stats so far:


    Circle 1 %  Circle 2 %
    ----------  ----------
Level 10     96%         99%
Level 20     91%         93%
Level 30     74%         80%
Level 40     69%         74%
Level 50     67%         81% (in progress)
Level 60     55%
Level 70     60%
Level 80     57%
Level 90     55%

Still showing small improvements over last time. Hopefully the trend will continue, but I find it hard to believe that I'll be able to do levels 60-90 in the allotted time and still get a reasonable score. Time will tell, I suppose...

Update on Sunday Night
I finished through 916 tonight, so I'm four days behind (just over 100 problems). I'm slowly catching up. Level 50 is hanging at around 72%.

Status Report

2005-03-06T18:22:00.000-08:00

Given everything that has been going on lately, I'm falling further behind. I just finished through 670 when I should be done with 829 by the end of tonight (ouch). I was able to do some problems on the plane this afternoon, and I think I can do another 30-40 tonight in the comfort of my hotel room. At any rate, I still have a bit of catching up to do.

I wrapped up level 30 a day or two ago, so here's where things stand:


     Circle 1 %  Circle 2 %
     ----------  ----------
Level 10     96%          99%
Level 20     91%          93%
Level 30     74%          80%
Level 40     69%          80% (in progress)
Level 50     67%
Level 60     55%
Level 70     60%
Level 80     57%
Level 90     55%

My percentages have been rising, though admittedly I was taking longer than I should have on level 20 which probably hiked up my percentage a bit. I'm doing pretty well at keeping to my planned time for my recent sets (find the first move in 1 minute, 45 seconds and complete the problem in 3 minutes, 15 seconds).

I am remembering fewer of the problems in level 40 than I expected, but I'm still doing much better than in circle 1. One thing I'm getting better at is seeing when there is nothing more to be gained in a position (i.e. I'm attacking the enemy king but there just isn't a mate there) and instead of (fruitlessly) continuing the attack, I find the (correct) "bail out" move whereby I end the attack with a material advantage. Often the bail out move captures an enemy piece that has been hanging for five moves or so. In the past I was more inclined to either try to take the hanging piece too early, or try to keep on attacking when there was nothing more to be gained. This is probably the result of being able to calculate better and seeing more in the position which translates into me trusting my calculations more. I cannot always see all the lines, but I'm getting better at evaluating when a line has promise or is a dead end.

Looks like Don is in the home stretch! Go Don go!!

Update at 11:25 CST: I just finished through 706. I was tired, but still managed 79% for this set of 36 (total time: 2 hours, 37 minutes). I'm catching up slowly but surely...

Suffering

2005-03-01T20:58:00.000-08:00

As I work through level 30 in circle 2, I realize I did a poor job of scheduling circle 2. After doing levels 50, 60, etc. I forgot that level 30 was still no picnic. In making my schedule I thought I could do 70 per day of level 30, which is simply not the case at this point (without using up more time than I really can make for chess study- about two hours a day). So the first couple of days of level 10 and 20 were cake, but moving into level 30 was like hitting a brick wall. I finally got caught up through the first week of 70 problems per day, but right now I'm over 100 problems behind (I've finished through 562 but I should be finished with 670). My schedule has me doing 36 problems per day through Thursday, then it drops to 29 per day for the week after. But come hell or high water, I will get caught up...

So the moral of the story: don't take it too easy at the start or you will suffer for it later. If I could re-do the schedule, instead of doing 70 problems a day for a week I would have done something like 110-100-90-80-70-60-50-45.

I will be doing a bit of business travel at the end of this week and the start of next week. I hope to get lots of problems done sitting on the plane. FWIW my current solve rate for level 30 is at 83% and falling, but hopefully I can keep it above the 74% I scored in the first circle.

Tragedy Strikes!

2005-02-24T19:40:00.000-08:00

Well, my weekly game with OJ could have gone better. Things were going okay- I was playing the black side of the modern defense to the King's Gambit accepted. I was under a bit of pressure, but holding. Then I chose my next move, N8d7. The 8 was necessary when I wrote the move down because there were knights on both b6 and b8. So I wrote down N8d7 on my scoresheet, carefully checked all my opponent's reasonable replies, and seeing nothing threatening I made my move and pressed the clock. Then after a few seconds I realized with horror that I actually made the move N6d7, not N8d7 as I intended. Suddenly the position went from probably +/= to +-. About two moves later, my thought-process in tatters, I dropped my queen, and promptly resigned. The really frustrating thing was in the post-mortem it looked like a few moves later I would have won a central pawn and gained a strong position had I played the correct knight move. Sigh...

On a positive note I was doing a good job of considering my opponent's replies up until I moved the wrong knight. Unfortunately my friend is getting ready to travel for a few months, so I won't have a weekly game for a while. After today's loss, my record is against OJ is +9 -11 =3, so -2 overall. Not bad considering I used to get my clock cleaned regularly, so I've made up quite a bit of ground.

BTW I have now finished levels 10 and 20 on the second circle, so here's the stats so far:


        Circle 1 %  Circle 2 %
        ----------  ----------
Level 10     96%          99%
Level 20     91%          93%
Level 30     74%
Level 40     69%
Level 50     67%
Level 60     55%
Level 70     60%
Level 80     57%
Level 90     55%

So, a modest improvement in % overall, all while doing twice as many problems per day than in the first circle. I still missed a bunch of problems on level 20, but hopefully I'll do better on circle 3. In looking at my circle 1 percentages, it is interesting to note that my second-worst score in the first circle was on level 60. Weird.

Progress Report and a Thought Process Question

2005-02-20T17:17:00.000-08:00

Progress Report
I am now three days into the second circle with 210 problems completed. Here's some things I've noticed so far:

My calculation seems to be more quick and more accurate. Still far from perfect (even on level 10-20), but much improved over the first circle. I remember struggling to calculate out a few problems during the first circle, but many of these I zipped through with little effort.
I seem to be recognizing more patterns than before. I think Don mentioned his increased "fluency" with rook and knight mates after getting into the program, and that is a pattern that I also had trouble with in the first circle. Now I seem to be doing much better with it. Improved pattern recognition also helps reduce my calculation since I see more winning lines instead of trying to calculate deeper and deeper looking for the win that I had missed a few moves earlier in my calculations.
Many of the level 10-20 problems I zip through in well under a minute (many I get in under 15 seconds), but I still am missing a few problems here and there and sometimes have to spend several minutes on some. I guess those patterns are not yet burned into my brain enough yet, so hopefully by circle three they will be second nature.

I regret that I don't have a USCF rating so as to measure my improvement in the MDLM program. That will sort of take away from my "success story" since it will never be clear how much I have improved.

I just figured out how to get the per-level stats out of CT-Art, so here's my stats from Circle 1:
Level 10: 96%
Level 20: 91%
Level 30: 74%
Level 40: 69%
Level 50: 67%
Level 60: 55%
Level 70: 60%
Level 80: 57%
Level 90+: 55%

Stats so far from Circle 2:
Level 10: 99%
Level 20: 94% (in progress)

As I go forward in the program, it will be interesting to see how my thought process and such changes versus the earlier circles (hence the major reason for this blog!).

A Thought Process Question
If you are an improving mid-range class player, I highly recommend reading the work of Dan Heisman, a well-known chess coach. In particular, his Novice Nook articles at Chess Cafe are very instructive (be sure to check out the archives for his series).

Anyway, I believe one of my biggest chess weaknesses is in my thought process. Heisman talks about playing "real chess", which basically involves checking that prior to making your move you can adequately meet all of your opponent's replies. It is pretty simple. Just visualize the board after your move, see what moves your opponent might have (forced mates, material wins, etc.), and if you overlooked something, come up with a better move. If you don't do this, you are playing what Heisman calls "hope chess": you make your move hoping that you can meet your opponent's reply, whatever that may be. To be a strong player, you have to play real chess 100% of the time. If you only check your opponents' replies 95% of the time, you will lose a lot of games due to that "risky" 5%.

So here's the question. I know I need to do it. I know how to go about doing it. But for some reason I just cannot do it. How does one go about learning this skill? I am thinking I should write down a simple thinking process and play a few games against the computer and check off each step in the thinking process as I go. Hopefully that will help, but I've tried concentrating hard on doing it, but I always forget about it and slip back into my gutter days of not thinking about my opponent's replies carefully enough. So what is a poor chess patzer to do? Suggessions welcome!

First Circle Complete!

2005-02-18T09:47:00.000-08:00

Weekly Match Result
Last night OJ and I played a game at G/1:55 w/ 5-second delay with my new chess clock. My thought process was a total mishmash, but despite me being worse in the middlegame, OJ went astray during some middlegame tactics and I ended up a piece. I think my technique was pretty good in the remaining KQRB vs. KQR and I didn't allow much counterplay.

It seems that many of our games these days follow a similar formula: OJ builds up a +/- or +- advantage by the early middlegame, I get lucky when OJ overlooks a tactical point, and I grind out a win. I really wish I could come out of the opening with a decent position, but I'm not sure I want to spend much time on openings. I'm getting better (and winning), but it is still frustrating to have to always claw back from a bad position (and be at the mercy of my opponent making a tactical mistake). At any rate, I'll finish the MDLM plan before I start working on other stuff such as openings.

As for total time used: I had about 36 minutes left on my clock. I think OJ used up about 8 minutes. So he's almost playing blitz while I'm playing a regular slow game.

Circle One Complete!
So I got home a little after 10 p.m. last night, so I decided to slog through the last 10 problems in CT-Art. There was actually a problem with 210 points (I got 171, one of my better results that night). I finished up with 45% for the final 10 problems, better than I expected.

My final Elo: 2573. Pity this isn't a "real" rating. IIRC I started at 1600. Here's a graph of my progress (though CT-Art will only show the last 813 problems):

Originally I started with MDLM's suggested schedule, but I found I was finishing the first two levels pretty quickly, but really started to slow down at level 30 which was killing me time-wise. So I revised my schedule to the following:

Circle One Schedule

Week 1: 41 problems per day
Week 2: 30 problems per day
Week 3: 19 problems per day
Week 4: 17 problems per day
Week 5: 15 problems per day
Week 6: 14 problems per day
Week 7: 13 problems per day
Week 8: 12 problems per day
Week 9: 12 problems on one day, 10 on the other 6 days
Week 10 (one day only): 10 problems
Total: 64 days, 1209 problems

I was planning on taking a day or two off, but I think I may jump right into circle two tonight.

Circle Two Schedule

Week 1: 70 problems per day
Week 2: 36 problems per day
Week 3: 29 problems per day
Week 4: 25 problems per day for the first four days, then 24 for the last day
Week 5: 24 problems for one day, then 22 for the remaining three days
Total: 32 days, 1209 problems

Wish me luck as I sally forth fellow knights!

So What Do You Really Get Out of This?

2005-02-15T19:11:00.000-08:00

So What Do You Really Get Out of This?
Earlier today I found and read Chris Kilgore's blog. I was particularly interested in what he had to say since he is a MDLM "graduate".

Chris and Don (about 2/3 through the MDLM program) have both mentioned the major improvements they have seen are more in "tactical muscle" than anything else. Basically you get better at calculating and are able to do it longer without tiring. Of course this makes complete sense. If you lift weights every day for months you will be able to do it more easily and without tiring as quickly as before you started training. This is no different, but just something I had not really thought about.

Having nearly finished the first pass, here's the minor effects I am beginning to notice:

Improving recognition of tactical patterns. No surprise here. In particular I find myself looking for certain ideas in specific positions that will make a combination work based on ideas I have seen in prior problems.
Improving confidence in my calculations. On the more difficult problems where I cannot calculate things out completely I'm getting better at weeding out variations that just don't work out. When I started I would often think that a line would not work, when it turned out I had overlooked something. Now I seem to be overlooking less and can discard lines with more confidence. Often the "correct" move in the more difficult problems is either a move I did not consider (happens often when I have no idea where a problem is going), or I can calculate only so far and I cannot hold the position in my head clearly enough to make a definite assessment. Overall it is not something dramatic, but a small but growing difference that I am beginning to notice.

In some ways I was a little disappointed that Chris didn't feel like he has been better at recognizing tactics OTB. But, he felt his tactics were already pretty good prior to starting the program. Since my tactics are not all that strong, maybe I will get more out of it. I have certainly been doing better in my weekly matches with OJ, so maybe it is working a bit better for me.

How much do you see?
Another thing Chris noted on a comment on my Feb. 14 installment was the difference in OTB play versus doing tactics problems. Yes, in CT-Art you know there is a tactic, and without an entire game on the line it is easier to sac a piece or whatever to see if something works. But on some of the more difficult problems (say level 70+) I find it hard to believe that anyone could see everything in a problem. There are just so many variations and non-forcing moves that it seems impossible to do that. So I wonder how much strong players actually see before they embark on a long sacrificial line.

But I do have to remember watching the Kramnik-Leko post-game press conferences during their 2004 world championship match. Chessbase has video excerpts of these. If you have never seen world-class players talking about chess you simply must watch some of these. Until I saw the videos I really didn't appreciate how much GMs really know about the game. Just to give you an idea, Kramnik and Leko are fielding questions from the audience, stuff like "Why didn't you play 23...g5?" Immediately Kramnik and Leko would begin talking about that specific moment in the game, giving 10 move variations and then an evaluation of the resulting position as to why they did this or didn't do that. All without a board, and after playing a long game. Simply amazing. So it makes me wonder- maybe a GM really can see all these moves?

Update on Wednesday, February 16:
Finished 10 problems tonight, 1190- 1199 (I did 1188 and 1189 yesterday right before bed).
All level 90+, score 49%. Boy, they were brutally hard tonight. (I had no idea I could get 17 penalties and still score 60/140...) Some of them just went on and on and on. I was particularly amused by one problem that was from a correspondence game of M. Blokh (the CT-Art creator) that spanned two years (1987-1989 IIRC). How am I supposed to find in 10 minutes what Blokh spent years on? Sheesh.

However, I think I should get bonus points for finding a better move than the solution on problem 1192. My forced mate was 6 half-moves faster than the forced mate given. So surely that is worth +25% to my final score, right?

Funny thing though, I was doing so poorly that I sped up and actually scored better when I went faster (actually completing each problem in 10 minutes rather than 15-20). I don't know if the problems just got easier or what. Weird.

Only 10 more problems to go in the first circle. Tomorrow night is chess night with OJ, so I may not finish until Friday. This will be the first time I can use my brand spankin' new chess clock. There is the Lone Star Open chess tournament on March 4-6 that I'm considering entering, so it would be a good idea to get some practice at G/120 time controls. I am sort of torn on whether or not to enter or not. I've hardly played anyone OTB, much less gone to a tournament. I won't even know how to read the cross table postings. My wife and I were planning a weekend trip that same weekend, but we may reschedule it so I can play. Hmmmm.....

Progress Report

2005-02-14T21:31:00.000-08:00

Just finished my problems for Monday at 11:31 p.m.

Problems: 1168 - 1177 (Level 90+)
Score: 51% (ouch)

At least I got 110 / 110 on one. Doing well on one helps motivate me to keep going after a few < 20% on a few...

Update on Tuesday:

Finished problems 1178 - 1187 (Level 90+)
Score: 52%

Catching Up and Goals

2005-02-12T14:53:00.000-08:00

Catching Up
Since I fell a few days behind over the last couple of weeks I am trying to make it up this weekend. I've had twelve problems a day for the last week, but now the number drops down to ten per day (whew!). I just finished problems 1118-1127 (all level 80 problems) with a 60% score. Not great, but I'm hanging in there. By the end of day Sunday I need to have finshed through 1167, so I plan to do 20 more problems today, and 20 tomorrow to get fully caught up. They are taking me about 10-12 minutes or so at this level, so it will take a while. Hopefully posting my goal here will motivate me to get them all done. If I get back on track I'll finish my first pass through CT-Art on Thursday, but I play chess with OJ on Thursdays so I may not finish up until Friday. Maybe then I'll take the weekend off and start pass number two on Monday.

Regarding statistics, I'm not planning on looking at my CT-Art Elo score until I am done. When I've used CT-Art in the past I was so worried about my rating that I would do really well and quit for a while, not wanting to miss a problem and drop. Obviously this is not a good mindset to be in, so I'm not even looking at it. Of course by now I'm used to missing a few points here and there...

Ratings and Goals
Speaking of ratings, I'd be curious to hear from other folks what their chess improvement goals are. Since chess is rather open-ended from an improvement standpoint, where do you draw the line? Class A? Expert? Master? What? How much is enough?

It reminds me of a point in a juggling book I read years ago. The short of it is that it doesn't matter how many objects you can juggle (three, five, ten, whatever), people always want to see you juggle one more than you can. So learning to juggle more and more objects (which gets exponentially harder for each object added after four) is a never-ending path. Hmmm, sound familiar?

My current goal is to reach expert level. At that point I will see how things went and decide if I want to attempt to go further from there. I guess a lot of it depends on how much I am enjoying the game, and if more study will make it more rewarding. Of course I have quite a few other hobbies and interests (did I mention that I'm also trying to learn to play the guitar while I'm doing the MDLM plan?), so with limited time, I have to make tough choices. For now I'm spending most of my time on chess, but I can't do nothing but chess forever you know...

So where does your chess improvement path end?

PS: I stop juggling after four objects, though I hope someday to make the time to learn how to do five.

Update at 10:15 p.m. local time: Just finished 1128-1137 with a 50% score. You know the problems are hard when you get six penalties and still get a score of 45 points out of 80. There were a number of problems where I just had no idea on the next move. Usually I have a few reasonable moves in mind to try, but for many moves I was clueless. This is probably because I moved into the "Conjunction of combinational motifs" section which are usually the most difficult themes within a level. Typically at the start of a level I do pretty well where the major motif in a problem is relatively straightforward (opposition of pieces, a loose piece, etc.). But when there are four or five tactical elements that, in the exact position I am presented with, just happen to come together to allow some tactical shot, that's when problems are really difficult...

Given that it is already past 10, it's not looking good to finish ten more problems tonight. I'll probably do a few more and then sack it in. Nothing like a wild and crazy Saturday night with CT-Art...

Update at 12:25 p.m. local time: I made it! Just finished 1138 - 1147 (5 in level 80, and 5 in level 90+) with a 62% score. It took 1 hour, 40 minutes. I even got 100/100 on one, woohoo! If I can do 20 problems tomorrow I'll be completely caught up. Now that I am cross-eyed from doing too many problems on the computer, I should probably hit the sack...

Update at 2:12 p.m. Sunday local time: Just finished 1148-1157 (all level 90+). 64% score in 2 hours, 27 minutes. I'm going a little over the 10 minute per-problem limit, but that's okay. On the more difficult problems you will be bumbling along thinking you are okay on time, and then as if on cue the problem splits into four variations that you have to work out. And I hate to totally guess without thinking at all just to get through the problem. Also, I think CT-Art's total elapsed time includes time since you started, so quick breaks (getting some water, etc.) are included. So I'm not sure the total time is a good way to come to an average time per problem.

Ten more problems to do today to be caught up! It's a beautiful day out so I should probably do something outside instead of sitting bleary-eyed in front of the the computer all day...

Update at 7:44 p.m. Sunday local time: I'm all caught up! I will now bask in the glory of completeness...until tomorrow.
Problems: 1158-1167 (level 90+)
Time: 2.9 hours (lots of breaks)
Score: 66%

Things are Getting Serious

2005-02-11T16:49:00.000-08:00

USCF Membership
One major problem I have is that I don't have a good way to measure my improvement (or lack thereof, god forbid) on the MDLM program. I have no USCF or FIDE rating. I do play a weekly game with my friend OJ that has been going much better for me since I started spending all my spare time with CT-Art. I've gone 4.5 / 5 since I started, whereas before I was scoring 0.5 or 1 out of 6 or so, with my wins coming primarily from swindles when my opponent got lazy in completely winning positions. I used to play a bit on InstantChess.com, but I only play g/15+5, not the long, slower games that I need right now, so my rating in the low 1600's there is not a really good barometer of chess improvement either. I hadn't played a rated game there in months but last week I decided to see how I did after being on the plan and I lost in a pathetic fashion to someone rated a hundred points below me (and responded to my opening of 1.e4 with 1...g5?). I think I was wigged out by playing with a time control after not having played with one in a while, but my play was anything but encouraging.

Since getting a USCF rating would help measure my improvement, I figured a good start would be to renew my USCF membership. I was in USCF for a year but let my membership lapse in January 2004 because (1) I wasn't doing much with it, (2) I wasn't getting much out of it, and (3) I was a bit peeved at how Anna Hahn, 2003 U.S. Women's Champion, got shafted on the whole 2004 Olympiad fiasco. The women's team, sans Hahn, did well (second place), but was second place (or first, for that matter), worth crawling through all that mud? I hope so.

Anyway, I'm sure that my one-year absence has really hurt the USCF and taught them a lesson, so I opted to come back and give them another chance. As of this morning, I am once again an active member.

A Clock
In order to get used to playing long games under time pressure, I need a way to time them. So I bought a chess clock. Since I've always wanted one of those DGT electronic chessboards (though not enough to spend the $400-$500 it costs) I decided to get a DGT clock so if I do get a DGT board, my clock will work with it. I got the DGT XL, which was waiting on my doorstep after work today. Seems like a nice clock, but how would I know the difference since I've never actually used one? At any rate, I figured I'd better get used to using one if I am going to begin rated OTB play. I'll start by using it in my weekly match with OJ. He makes each of his moves in about 10 seconds, whereas I am slower than a crippled tortoise. An average game takes about three hours, and with each of his moves taking 10 seconds, you do the math. I think I will soon be reacquainted with the joys of time pressure. I'm sure OJ cannot wait.

So now that I have an ID and a clock, the next step is to find some more opponents in the Austin, Texas greater metropolitan area. Oh, yeah, and do a few more chess problems in the meantime...

Did anyone read the TOS carefully?

2005-02-10T20:56:00.000-08:00

What and Why
My chess study plan is based on suggestions by Michael de la Maza's book "Rapid Chess Improvement". Since his plan has been well documented elsewhere, I will assume if you are here you know what this entails. If not, read his "400 Points in 400 Days" articles on ChessCafe.com or get his book from your favorite bookseller.

Today at work I read all of Don's chess improvement blog (don't tell my boss). Informative and entertaining. (I thought the "letters to Santa" piece was inspired.) While my time is quite limited (who has time to spend 2+ hours doing chess problems AND maintain a blog?), Don noted it was helpful to track his thoughts as he goes through each of the "Seven Circles" in MDLM's plan. Sounds like a good idea to me, so if I'm going to do it I may as well share with others who are also on the MDLM plan.

I think the Knights Errant de la Maza group is great. It's nice to have a "support group" when subjecting oneself to such bizarre forms of self-abuse, er, I mean self-improvement...

The Terms of Service
I pretty much always read all the mind-bending legalese in software licenses just to make sure I know what I'm getting into. If you read the entire TOS you will find the following amusing section:

Now, this next part seems really damn obvious, but everyone else has it in their TOS's so someone's probably gotten sued for not having it. So: In order to use the Service, you must obtain access to the World Wide Web, either directly or through devices that access web-based content, and pay any service fees associated with such access. In addition, you must provide all equipment necessary to make such connection to the World Wide Web, including a computer and modem or other access device.

I also thought the following LOL (limitation of liability) was amusing as well:

(e) IF YOU HAVE READ THIS FAR THEN YOUR EYES PROBABLY HURT. ALL CAPS, WHAT WERE WE THINKING? HOWEVER, WE ARE NOT LIABLE FOR THIS OR ANY OTHER OCULAR MALADY.

Hey, at least someone has a sense of humor...

Now for the Chess-Related Content...
I am currently in the first pass of the 1209 problems in CT-Art 3.0. Tonight I finished through problem 1115. I'm currently doing 12 a day. Tonight it took me about 2 hours, 15 minutes and I got 61%. Not bad for level 80 I suppose. According to my schedule, I will complete the first circle a week from tonight. I am a couple of days behind but I plan to make those up this weekend.

Levels 70 and 80 have been pretty difficult. I often have to guess the first move based on the tactical elements in a position and often have no idea of the followup. Some problems, however, are long forced sequences and I tend to do better on those. But even in the most difficult positions (which are clearly way over my head), I still think it is useful to go through them. At some point in most (but not all) problems you get to something you know such as a forced sequence, a mate in two or three, a double attack that wins massive material, etc. So I try to keep alert for these possibilities.

Happy solving! I look forward to reading how the other Knights are progressing...