Temposchlucker

 To understand why 3 hours per move is not so unreasonable, you must know what to expect from the study. When you know what to learn, you will become more patient. Especially when you notice that the grandmaster missed the move in the game too because he didn't see it either. White to move 1r2r3/p5pp/2nk4/1R1pp3/P2P4/2P3B1/3K2PP/4R3 w - - 0 1 Warmerdam, Max vs. Elgersma, Simon After the move 27.Rxe5, black has 3 captures. It takes time to work out the logical narratives for each capture. Then it takes time to absorb the three narratives so that you SEE them and don't need the verbal description of the narrative anymore. Once you SEE them, you can't UNSEE them. Max played 27.Rxb8. And there is a narrative why this capture is not so good. It is still winning, but there is work left to be done. And this narrative must be absorbed too. So there are 4 narratives in total that are in need to be absorbed.

 It takes 3 hours to absorb a problem at average . This means, that sometimes I'm finished within a minute, and sometimes it takes me six hours. I immediately admit that I use to opt for the lazy approach before efficiency. 30 repetitions of 6 minutes = 180 minutes =  3 hours. Solely remembering the moves that lead to the solution is totally useless, yet the distance from there to absorption is usually not too far. 180 minutes of fiddling around is quite a lot, though. The first worry was how to measure the absorption. I continued a problem until I was sure that I had absorbed it. And if that takes 3 hours, then so be it. But now it is time to see if it can be done more efficient. Usually a bit of new knowledge was unearthed every repetition and added to absorption. Let's see. What needs to be absorbed in the first place? White to move k7/p2q2pp/4p3/3p4/1Q4P1/1P4P1/Pr3P2/2R3K1 w - - 0 1 I already learned from other problems that you often should look first for the slow moving ...

 Yesterday I had been busy by investigating a "standard" bishop sacrifice on h7. I wrote down all preconditions. Today I had it on the board. I could tick off all the checkboxes and sacced the cleric. Stockfish showed me that I could have sacced the lancer even one move earlier, which I have to investigate yet. Woodpecking I acquired the Woodpecker method 2 positional play The method seems to be heavily inspired by MDLM. If I understand it right, then both Hans Tikkanen and Axel Smith became grandmaster with the method. Technically, there is nothing wrong with the method. All three are a proof that the method works. I would like to add the following remarks: All 3 authors don't stress enough what is the most important point of their method: understanding of the subject to the highest degree possible. The authors put far too much emphasis on speed. Speed is totally irrelevant, since speed is a result of the training, not a necessity during the training. I have done the fir...

 The past 21 months I absorbed 2571 patterns. What have I learned? Tactical themes form a language. There are only about 60 themes (30 mates, 30 motifs like pin etc.), so that are not an awful lot of words to learn. The problem lies in recognizing (seeing) the themes in all circumstances . At average I have absorbed 2571 / 60 = 43 patterns per theme. And slowly a new factor starts to emerge. You can only visualize what you have absorbed. In order to visualize a combination that exists of 3 themes, you need to be able to see the 60 x 60 x 60 patterns. There are 60 x 60 x 60 = 216,000 combinations of 3 themes. You cannot calculate this. But if you can recognize the 60 themes UNDER ALL CIRCUMSTANCES, than you can visualize any combination. If I remember well, Dan Heisman told that when he was 18, he often had opponents who stopped calculating halfway a combination. He used that to concoct a theory about calculating until quiescence. Which is a typical description by system 2 of a syst...

 The following rant is a summary of my experiences of the past 1.5 years and especially the last tournament. It might sound a bit vague because it is partly based on my gut feelings, and not hindered by common beliefs. Since it sketches a realistic view of what might be needed to improve in the following years, I think it is useful anyway. There are five areas of improvement. Technique tactics positional play Strategy endgame opening king assault From these five areas, I have only developed tactics to a certain degree. To what degree? Ad tactics I have absorbed: 389 mates 208 knight moves 122 other tactics These numbers are problems. One problem is inhabited by 3 patterns, at average. I estimate that I have absorbed 36% of the tactics that are necessary to become the tactical wizard we all want to be. Currently, the absorption of tactical patterns has as effect that my my view changes from pieces to the cooperation of pieces.  It turns out that the PoPLoAFun system is especial...

 One of the three areas where I suck is the endgame. Since I manage to screw up positions where I'm a piece ahead, I suppose that this is the area where I can gain the most with a little effort. This position came from round 5 in the tournament: Black to move 8/8/p7/PpKnk3/1P6/6P1/8/8 b - b3 0 37 I'm black, a piece ahead, and totally clueless. I was lucky to draw this position. After the game, my 14 year old opponent showed me an easy way to win for black: 37. ... Nxb4. I felt pretty silly. Since the resulting position is familiar to me. But we already noted long ago that being familiar is not enough, we need absorption. I have the feeling that the endgame is about a finite amount of scenarios, which are in general not rocket science, but can be hard to SEE when you haven't ABSORBED them. And since we are talking about LONG lines, you can't visualize them by just being familiar with the scenarios. You can't SEE them without having them absorbed before. This position...

 I have been immersed in chess the past 10 days. I scored 4 points out of 9, which is less than I expected. But for the first time in 25 years, not the method to improve was under scrutiny, but the areas in which the method can be applied. It turned out that there are 3 areas where I fail: opening endgame king side attack I didn't apply my method to these three areas, so in fact it is quite logical that these areas caused the loss of points. The third area came as a surprise to me. Which in itself is very surprising. The past time I have been busy with studying what is happening after the middlegame and before the final blow to the king. The "Vukovic" area, so to speak. And I noticed that this area is reigned by the LoA landscape (lines of attack). I didn't realize that just gathering the knowledge isn't enough by far to master this area. A stupid thing to miss, since it is very logical, but hey, that is what these tournaments or for. It was the clock which put me...