Saturday, June 11, 2005

Circle 1 at full throttle

The book Secrets of pawn endings from Muller & Lamprecht (from now on SOPE) clearly serves its goal. I complained earlier that I had to invent everything of my own. That's not the case anymore. SOPE has a good method to make the invisible patterns visible. This saves me a huge amount of time.
I begin to feel already more comfortable on an empty board.
Visualizing long lines is going better everyday.
What is encouraging is that a certain amount of the problems come from grandmaster games where one of the grandmasters misplayed it. Ok, maybe they where in time trouble, but they had clearly not the patterns ready.
Today I finished chapter two, I'm busy with the exercises now.
There is no reason why the diagrams in the text shouldn't count as exercises.
Then the total amount of exercises in SOPE comes at 418, which is ideal for 7 circles.
Since they are complex and a lot of the exercises have to be solved twice, for exemple "win with white, white to move, draw with black, black to move.

Circle 1: 44 done 374 to go.

I estimate that the first fruits of the study can be reaped in begin 2006.
For study reasons I want to change my openingsrepertoire before that time.
I want to increase the chance that I get an endgame on the board.
It seems a good idea to start to play the openings I always hated the most because they give too few possibilities for tactical tricks or a kingside attack.
This means maybe 1.d4 Nf6 2. Nf3 with white and the Caro-Kan with black.
Bahus gave me already good tips, where I will have a close look at.
If anybody has ideas I would be grateful.
I strongly believe that such a dramatic change in openings will enhance my possibitilies on the long term.

For example today I had a wild game against 1803.
After getting a huge attack I had to accept a draw because I was in serious time trouble and the position was extreme complicated.
That's how it often goes. In this way I can't exercise endgame technique of course.

3 comments:

  1. I suspected using 7 circles on endgame problems AFTER the tactics work would really work well. Sounds like your beginning to play on a whole new level.

    I wanted to let you know my rating has slipped to 1605 at pogo.com. I'm trying out ICC and it's even worse! lol

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  2. I always thought that open games are more speedy to an endgame whereas closed games would take longer because of a slower piece development. You think contrary, but I suspect that it is not a question of open vs. closed, but that in many open and closed variations there may be fast lanes to an endgame. Maybe a clever database search could help to build up the repertoire. It must be variations that allow trading pieces without losing the initiative. And, most important, to get a sound pawn structure!

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  3. Impressive start to your program, Tempo! I begin my endgame program tonight.

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