Temposchlucker

A herd of buffalo's has an average speed by with they move forward. Prairie wolfs attack only the slowest animals which are weak or sick. In doing so, the average speed of the herd inclines. Now scientific research has found that alcohol attacks the slowest and weakest braincells. So by drinking alcohol you can speed up your brains. This is proven by the fact that when you go to your local chesscafe and challenge the guy who has obviously drunk the most beers, you will be "stampeded" of the board. Knights, I have a proposal for a modification of MDLM's program .....

Some time ago a chessfriend and I were talking about how nice it would be if you had a little chessset in your head, where you could work out all variations while playing an OTB-game. So I started a little investigation on visualisation. On a certain moment I landed on the website of Jan Matthies He has a real nice chess visualisation program that you can use online. I exercised for quite some time and found many interesting things about the human mind. I will try to explain. I hope you are willing to do a few experiments. Try the following: Close your eyes and try to visualize a rook on a chessboard which moves from d1 to a7. That it easy isn't it? It's easy to spot the file, rank and crosspoint. Now try to visualize a bishop on c1 heading to a7. (Now you can open your eyes.:) That is far more difficult isn't it? It's nearly imposible to get a good picture of the crosspoint. It is much easier to see ranks and files than diagonals. It turns out that the mind is extreme...

For years I played the Sicilian defense with black. So what's on the menu of the Sicilian kitchen: Seduce the enemy to a premature King attack by developing as slowly as possible. Beat this attack off graceful but determined, with the help of the pawnmajority in the center. Frustrate the enemy by trading off pieces. Mop up the left wreckedge of whites position. On the queenside there are now two black pawns against three white ones. Start a minority attack at the queenside. After trading off the pawns white is left with one weak pawn, which black conquers. All the other pawns are traded off until black has one pawn and white has none. Promote the pawn to rook and play around a little untill whites flag falls. I played the Najdorf variation of the Sicilian for about 3 years but never succeeded in eating all the coarses to the end. There was always someone rude to the cook by throwing tabasco in the food by a Knightsacrifice on e5 or by the Morragambit. The reason I never reached the...

During the last six year, I felt from time to time the urge to tie up my thoughtprocesses in a conscious system. To get more grip on things. But unvariably the same thing happened: I made a clear and good sytem with usefull points to do during a move. When I brought this in practice during a few weeks I forgot about the system. Thinking it over after a month or two I noticed that I followed the system in a subconscious way, "automatic". This seems to correspond with my findings in my post a few days ago about "understanding and ability". First I use the new developed system "with understanding", later on, it is etched into my brain and it becomes an ability, hence subconscious. When it is subconscious you have the feeling that there has been no progress at all, but in fact you improved. For example, when I started with tactical exercises, I had never heard about a double attack. I decided to look during every move if there were unprotected pieces. After so...

I found the following names: Mandelamaza = Don Queue Sancho Pawnza = Oneday Governor of the Isle de la Maza Pale Morning Dun = The Knight of the Big Sky Pawn Sensei = The Fair Knight Generalkaia = Der Wunderkind Knight J'adoube = The Off-Center Knight Celtic Death = The Dark Knight Temposchlucker = The International Knight of Pancakes Fussy Lizzard = The cold-blooded Knight Yet another patzer = The International Knight of Mystery King of the spill = The Knight Loquacious 65th square (Fatboy) = The Knight of the Round Margriet = Princess Errant Desperate Measures = The Knight of Last Resort Takchess = The Knight of the Secret Country Chessconfessions = Blue Devil Knight Vic = Queen-less Knight Mousetrapper = Animated Knight Harmless = Nasty Knight Satish Talim = Anand's Knight RomaLavrn = Pomaranch Knight JavaManIssa = The Prodigy Knight Zeon - The Paradoxical Knight Silver Dragon - The Pyrotechnic Knight Dread Pirate Josh - The One-Eyed Knight Guruchess - The Jovial Knight ...

I have tried to reconstruct the rating of Kasparov during his youth by researching his autobiography "high play". Age Rating Fact 05 1300 Learned the game 06 1400 07 1500 Started with lessons 08 1600 09 1700 10 1800 Botwinnik-school 11 2000 12 2100 13 2200 Candidate master, first tournaments abroad 14 2300 Master 15 2450 First victory over a grandmaster 16 2545 17 2595 2nd grandmaster result 18 2625 Grandmaster So even a very talented player like Kasparov grew only at average 100 points a year! Two years of tactical traning improved my rating from 1532 to 1701, about 170 points. In this period I solved about 10.500 tactical problems. Which is about 62 problems per ratingpoint. I didn't repeat the problems. Now I'm plateauing during a year. Inspired by de la Maza I started to repeat problems now a seven times. This new approuch seems to work. My results OTB are very good at the moment. If I don't blow things the upcoming games I'll leave the plateau of 1701. Wh...

For the quest of chess improvement I observed a lot of chessplayers. A fact that astonished me over and over again is the extreme difference in speed of calculation between two persons who differ only 300 points in rating. And what is even more amazing is that nobody ever seems to notice. It looks like a conspiracy that no one ever talks or writes about this phenomenon. To explain what I found to be the cause of this extreme difference in speed I'll give an example. Say, I want to go to Rome. For a grandmaster that is no problem since every road leads to Rome (=at least a Dutch saying). But for me, who knows nothing about cars, even the most minor event will cause me trouble. When it starts to rain, I have to pull over because I cannot see through the front window any longer. I can figure out that those two little bars have something to do with cleaning the windows. I have to open the hood, where is the handle for that? Where are the cables of the screen wiper? I have to demolish t...

I noticed that some Knights have from time to time trouble with the blunt discipline that is needed to follow de la Maza's program. Because I solved about 15.800 problems the last 3 years I can maybe shed some light on this subject. Actually I don't understand why MdlM advices such rigid schemes. Discipline can be a great tool. But discipline can work only during a short time. After this short time you have to transform the discipline to enthousiasm or quit the task altogether. For some of us this is different. Don for example uses the program of MdlM as therapy for lack of discipline. But for the most of us, who only strive to play better chess, the feeling of discipline has to be abandonned. The point which MdlM has made with his hammering on strict following his scheme is that you have to really work to get results. Well, all the Knights realize this point, so there is no point in "self flagellation". Unless you are a masochist. There is another pitfall that is cau...

Or: a few oppressing questions Part II When we were childs my older brother and I slept in the same room. Sometimes when we didn't fell asleep right away we played a game that we called "opposites". One of us said a word, like "white" for example and the other had to say the opposite, "black". At some moment I asked "horse"and my brother answered "cow". A few words later my brother asked "cow"and I answered "bull". Which maked a horse the same as a bull because they were both the opposite of a cow. Then we started a loud debating about opposites, which was ended by the severe voice of my father who urged us to sleep. Working with opposites is a very lazy way of thinking, which is extremely common and which leads to a lot of confusion and hence to useless discussions. See for an example "tactical" vs "positional" at my post of last sunday. Most of the time we try to compare things that are on ...

The problem is that when we play chess the main tool we use is our short term memory. In this memory is room for only 6 to 12 items which stay there for about 30-45 seconds. So ofcourse it is impossible to have a good thoughtproces. Not only all the moves and the subvariations do we try to store in that little space but also the bookkeeping of how much wood we win and loose during exchanges. No wonder that we play so badly! The trick is that we make use of our long term memory. When the pattern is edged in your brain (i.c. the long term memory) that a bishop or pawn on f6 causes backrank problems for the black king and that mate will follow within 5 moves when a white rook arives on the backrank than can you abbreviate this whole line to one item. So the short term memory has to work only with this one abbreviated item. The more long lines are stored in your long term memory, the more complex problems you can handle in your short term memory.

When you ask around about what is the essence of de la Maza's method then you will probably hear something like "when you train your butt off with tactical exercises you will grow in chess until you are an expert". Even de la Maza himself would possibly say so. But is this really the essence? I noticed a lot of different opinions about what tactics are. For example gm Jeremy Silman says something like "when you cannot gain wood and cannot force mate there are no tactics" Another view I heard is that endgames are for 99% based on tactics, conquering the 7th rank is tactics etc. Of course it makes a lot of difference how many things you understand by tactics. If it is little, you will possibly not agree with the idea that exercising tactics will lead to expertship. If you understand a lot by tactics you possibly agree more with this idea. This difference in definition of tactics causes a lot of confusion and disagreement. Imho is the essence that de la Maza found ...

Patzer King challenges the Knights Errant to joust. Of course I accept. The Dutch ratings are not kept overtime. To give you an idea of my rating progress: 1998 1529 1999 1532 2000 1532 During this years I studied chess in the classic way for about one hour per day. Openings, strategy, analyze your own games, playing through grandmastergames, reading books etc. These figures prove: Classic study is of no help to me. My understanding and knowledge improve but my rating doesn't. I have no special chess talent which can account for a sudden dramatic improvement in rating. 2001 1565 2002 1624 2003 1697 A gain of 170 points in rating due to a different approach: I dropped the classic study completely. I started to solve a vast amount of tactical problems. 2004 1699 2005 1701 Plateauing again, in spite of continous problemsolving. BUT... because I discovered the articles of de la Maza I changed my method. I solve the same problems as I did and I repeat them over and over ...

This will be a short post because I have little time today. I have a lot of work to do today because I'm the treasurer of the chessclub. Tonight is our clubevening. Tomorrow I probably have no time to post because I'm participating in a tournament.

Thanks for the warm welcome guys! I would be honoured to take part at the "Knights Errant". Sometimes my English is poor so I'll make mistakes, sorry for that. For example I first thought that 'Knights Errant' meant 'Knights who make Errors'. Maybe that's why I missed Don's link. I intend to spend the first posts on telling about the past six years. I don't think I missed a pitfall during this time, which should make me a connaisseur. After being thrown off the board by a 13 year old girl I started an investigation. I interviewed people, read dozens of books, talked to a master and a grandmaster, visited tournaments and spelled magazines. During a visit of the Dutch mastercompetition I noticed a stunning fact. The average age of the players was far lower than that of the racing cyclists of the Tour de France! So what happened to the older people with more experience and more knowledge? I read an interview with grandmaster John van de...

During the first three years of my quest for chess improvement I concentrated on openings and understanding of the play. I read many books about strategy and positional play. Though my understanding and knowledge of the game grew immense I actually gained no ratingpoints at all. After being thrown off the board by a 13 year old girl a realised there was something terribly wrong in my approach to the game. All my intelligence, my 46 years of experience in life, my wisdom (ahem), my fine balanced discrimination, my knowledge proved to be of no use at all in the game. So I became very intrigued by the problem what on earth IS useful for a chessplayer to play better chess.

Six years ago I started to play chess on a club. The first three years my rating stayed level at a rating of about 1530. Despite a huge amount of effort to improve my chess my rating was not growing. So one can at least say I don't have a special talent for chess.