Temposchlucker

Today I finished the 7th circle of the 1355 "Direct Hit" problems of George Renko's CD Intensive Course Tactics. With TCT that is a total of 3035 problems I have done 7 times now. Though I am not quite satisfied with my performance I deciced to stop at this moment. It's always possible in a later phase to implement a circle 8 and 9. There will come a moment that I will repeat TCT anyway. For long I was hesitant about "what next?" In my previous post I adressed my latest findings in the middlegame. I got useful advice from Scitcat, Jim and Sancho. But I think I need more investigation, research and analysis of my games to develop the right approach for my problems in this area. The postmortem spreadsheet I got from King Ots will be of much help here. The area is very difficult and wide, and I am sure the most points can be gained here. But taking the wrong approach would mean the spill of an enormous amount of time. So I am gonna take my time to work things o...

Since my debacle at a tourney a few weeks ago I take lots of time for analysing my games to see where I actually fail. When I was outside in the rain for the first time in my life with an umbrella I was totally surprised to see how many people had an umbrella too. All those years without an umbrella I had never noticed this. So when you look at your games with a clear question in your mind, you are seeing things you didn't see before. Next game against a higher rated opponent I annotated with this special question in mind, so the comments lead to really shocking conclusions. So please take the time to read the comments. What attracts the attention is the amount of moves missed by both players. I really didn't know that I missed so much. But since I am looking for it I see it in all my games (umbrellas everywhere). Knowing this, I can tell which training will NOT be of much help to adress my problem. This does not mean that there will not be a moment in the future that I will h...

Last update: februari, 2009 This table contains the ratingprogress of The Knights Errant. I intend to update it regularly. You can always reach it via the link in my sidebar. It's difficult to compare the ratings: Some modified the plan. Some are training tactics much longer. Some have no official rating. Some have a rating from a different source. Some are not finished with the program. Some have to play more to get their new rating. Some ratings are not published yet. Some abandonned the program. Some startratings were unknown so a later (higher) rating is taken or it is estimated. You have to look at the individual blogs of The Knights to get a clue of how to interpret the figures. But overall you can get an idea of how intensive tactical training in DLM-style works out. Knight Start rating End rating Ratingsource Rating diff. Michael de la Maza 1421 2041 USCF 620 Dread Pirate Josh 1159 1712 FICS 553 Blue Devil Knight 946 1400 ICC 454 J'...

I did 1355 problems on George Renko's CD Intensive course tactics 6 times. Then I started to suffer from what I have called "memodrosis". After a "rest" of two months I continued with the 7th time. I find out now that of about 40% of the problems it is as if I have never seen them before. Well, I sort of recognize them as "I might have seen this one earlier" but I have no clue at the solution whatsoever. I think those problems were the ones in the first place that gave me a feeling of suffering from memodrosis. Which is the feeling of memorizing the moves by context in stead of absorbing the underlying pattern. Maybe the 60% that I do can solve (is this still English?) after 2 months is not bad at all, but it's not what I expected. So I have to conclude that just playing thru the solution on automatic pilot and with little calculation isn't of much help. Now I take my time to work thru the problems. I put the 40% difficult ones even on the boar...

First of course congratulations to Sir Pale Morning Dun , fear of the trouts, who just in a graceful way entered the Hall of Eternal Fame. He will be an example of endurance for youngsters everywhere in the world. Further I decided to add Bahus to the Hall of Eternal Fame, because he did a DelaMazianlike program and he regretted he didn't join the Knights Errant earlier. We have to be benevolent to late converts. I have done a lot of thinking and research lately, trying to find out the cause of my debacle last week. It's really an intriguing problem. I have experimented with the microdrills this week, but I'm now pretty sure this will not take the cause away. Internet provides more good advice than one can handle. . . For example the advice to manage your time well. Of course it is a good advice, as is the case with most advices. Though it works against the symptoms, it doesn't take away the cause. And that is what really interest me. So I have to find out what aspect ...

First I have to apologize. I screwed up (can I use this word?) the links in my sidebar to the Knights Errant some time ago. (How long?) Because IE6 seems to be very forgiving to html errors, I didn't notice. Thanks to Satish I changed to Firefox. Firefox showed me that my sidebar contained errors by showing nothing. Firefox has some nice features. The only thing is that it saves its cache on the C: drive, and I don't want it there. Does anybody know if this can be changed? Nezha posed an important question some time ago. He asked himself (or actually us) if Knights who had modified the original plan of MDLM should graduate to the same Hall of Eternal Fame as the Knights who didn't. Since the Knights are very creative in molesting the original plan, and since the program for a lot of Knights is speeding up now, it's high time to adress this point. So I think it's a good idea to divide the Hall of Eternal Fame With Your Name Written In Gold as follows: Hall of Eter...

This weekend I played a 6 round Swiss tournament OTB G/120 I first wanted to describe the results for you in the Sanskrta language, but when I looked for "skewering attack" and "prophylaxis" in Sir Monier Monier Williams great dictionary I decided to be honest with you and write it in English. Besides, there's always the risk that maybe Satish can translate Sanskrta back into English or he knows someone who can. 1,5 points out of 6. Well, first there is the initial shame of course. Especially for you Knights. And my chessfriends who pester me for sitting at the lowest board, far below Margriet. Second comes disappointment. I work on my tactics for about 6 months in a row and then this. Shouldn't I buy a dartboard? Then comes curiousity. What happened? Then I feel lucky that before the next ratinglist is published we play in 2 tourneys (18 games Swiss G/180) in the last half of july so if I can understand what happened and adapt my trainingplan for the next t...

Mousetrapper showed us a list of blind spots that we patzers are prone to. This one wasn't on his list: Field A and B have exactly the same grey-value.

Who did it? (and who caused those upload problems?) It's unbelievable how much I'm forgotten during the few weeks I didn't do Intensive Course Tactics. It will take me a whole week to go through all the 1355 problems for the 7th time. And that's far from a tempo. The positive side is that I'am still learning every day. . . It's important to let go any claims on results in this area. You can't just say because I did the problems 7 times I master them. You have to work until you master them, and then go further. This means that circle 8 and 9 are unavoidable. And I know now for sure that i't is necessary to repeat the problems from time to time to keep them sharp. Maybe here spaced repetition comes in handy. 1135 down, 220 to go in circle 7. Update. What is remarkable is that I have become extreme fast in mating problems. Most mate in 3 I see a within 5 seconds (instanteneous). That's an order difference with for example a double attack, which often ta...

Why I understand Pale so well. This picture is taken standing in front of my house. No trouts here, but carps, breams and pikes. Bahus notified me at a chessquiz from Dan Heisman My advise is, don't do that, it's bad for your ego. I got a tactical rating of a pathetic 1350. It's strange that I do tactics for about 3 years, my clubmates think of me as a tactical beast and then this! The test has a strong emphasis on speed, which I didn't realize at that moment. But if I set my ego aside, a message can be learned from it. Those 3 years of training tactics gives me the feeling that I have the right to claim "I'm good at tactics now!". Well, I gained 230 ratingpoints in that period and that's not too bad. But if I am really honest, I don't have the feeling that I am very good at tactics now. The method I used the last three years was to master tactics by the sheer amount of problems I solved. This was not very effective, and after the first two years I...

A few weeks ago I did 6 circles with 1355 problems of Intensive Course Tactics from George Renko. Because I started to memorize most of the moves instead of seeing the pattern in my mind I decided to postpone the 7th circle. In the meantime I did TCT step3,4 and 5. Now I'm busy again with the 7th circle of Intensive Course Tactics. Memorization of the variations decreased with about 90% by the delay. I make an extra effort now to see the patterns in my mind before I play the solutions. Allthough the pace isn't low it's far from playing a tempo. So I think I'm gonna need more circles, maybe 8 or 9. I hope to finish that before the tourney at Witsuntide. For some reason I have the feeling that I run tru things so easy. Compare this with the heroic battles of Don, Fussy, Pale (seduction!), J'adoube (frustration!) then my efforts look rather meager. I'm grown up with "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread" so when things aren't difficult then I...

Today I did all 580 problems of step 5 in only 2 hours. I solved most problems in So I consider TCT done. After a few weeks I'll repeat all 3 steps. I even did some gardening in the problem solving way: spade everything under and spray all plants that refuse to die. I have to buy some seed. Thus it's time to continue with George Renko's CD intensive course tactics where I left it: circle 7 of 1353 problems. I have not looked at the CD after I did 6 circles of them, so I'm curious if I remember something. It feels if I have forgotten everything. . . TCT # prbs circle 1 circle 2 circle 3 circle 4 circle 5 circle 6 circle 7 Stp3 540 96% 97% 97% 99% 99% NA NA Stp4 560 94% 95% 95% 97% 99% NA NA Stp5 580 75% 84% 89% 92% 96% 99% NA