Tuesday, July 26, 2005

Next tournament.

Today we started with The Open Dutch Championship 2005 Dieren.
9 days with 1 restday.
40 moves in 120 minutes + 60 minutes for the rest of the game.
You can find the results/standings here under "Open kampioenschap en reservegroepen".


Tournament

Temposchlucker
1751
Margriet
1420
ACT score4.55
ACT games played
99
NK Dieren score
53.5
NK Dieren games played
99
Totals
9.5/188.5/18


Day 1:
I made a mistake in the opening and was in the greatest trouble against a 14 yo boy (1640). After I had finally equalized I had a terrible oversight, which costed me the exchange. A few minutes later I had another oversight, after which I was a full knight behind in a gruesome position. So I resigned.
In Dieren there are always lots of children. I hate it to play against them. They are always underrated, when they do a good move they get their friends, who start grinning behind your back. When you resign they give you a hand and say "well played".
It should be forbidden.
Margriet had a good game against 1589, but lost the ending with a pawn down.
The "phenomenon" played against the driver of our car. He complained to the arbiter that his opponent uses a captured piece to press the clock. The rules say that you have to press the clock with the same hand as where you have done your move with. Since a piece is not a hand, it's not according the rules. Our driver had his hearing device forgotten, so he could not quite follow the discussion. When he made the same failure again, our phenomenon started to yell. He got an official warning for that yelling. He is really creative and we would miss him if he gets disqualified:)

Day 2:
Again I was bungling terribly in the opening with black against 1617. I see so much threaths that I defend myself against things that are not happening. But he played rather passive and gave me the chance to escape from my self created problems. I need only a little hole. Immediatly I began to throw the sink at him by saccing a pawn before his king. My own king wasn't very safe but he was mesmerized. I mated him at move 31. For the first time I had an opponent who said that he didn't like the game because it was so wild and complicated. Most people like that, but it made him nervous.
Margriet had an easy win against 1155.

Day 3:
The problem with the Alapin is that if black doesn't want to play chess he can force to trade off pieces. I tried to gain the bishoppair by a pawn sac, but he managed to break it. So I had to fight for a draw. I managed to lure him in a fork, which gave us an ending with bishops of opposite color. Result: draw against 1675. My brains felt much better to day. The intensive sessions at CTS do pay off.
Margriet wanted to do things too beautyful and lost against 1417.

Day 4:
Two days ago, it felt like going thru a barrier. I was very tired then and forced myself to work on CTS. Since that moment I play easy and I am far less tired. And I don't have timetrouble anymore. BUT. . . the last two days I had white and both my opponents played the Sicilian. Untill 3 years ago I used to play the Alapin (1. e4 c5 2. c3).
Then I started to play the Smith-Morra gambit (1. e4 c5 2. d4 exd4 3. c3) for 3 years. With meagre result. So these tournaments I decided to use the Alapin again. But my opponents are now about 200+ points stronger than 3 years ago and they have far more book knowledge. So all the Sicilians these tournaments lead to a quick ending with a bad isolated queen pawn.
Today I managed to get the bishoppair in the Alapin and my opponent (1675) offered a draw in equal position. Because I was frustrated I said no and blundered immediately a pawn away the same move. . . And I lost the game by this blunder. Griet van Haarlemmerliede.
Margriet is very tired, she blundered a piece away and lost here game against 1478.
Our phenomenon was in top shape today. He started a discussion with the opponent and the arbiter, and about 100 men were standing around it. Margriet was sitting next to the guy so she had to stop the clock during the discussion. She had almost earned 10 guilders. . .
The discussion was about 2 points:
First, his opponent, who was a very old man had trouble with writing correctly.
Second, his opponent adjusted a piece when a was not to move.
This leads to an illegal time advantage for the adjuster.
According to our phenomenon his opponent had to wait untill he was to move, so the piece is adjusted "in his own time".
I think he goes for the brilliancy prize with this one. . .

Day 5:
I had to defend with black against the Blackmar-Diemergambit.
He invested two pawns in it, but two concrete-moves got rid off all the venom.
In a better position I had to accept a draw because of time-trouble. I'm feeling stronger every day due to CTS. The combination of Slowtempo for precision and Temposchlucker for tempo works fine there.
Margriet had an off-day and lost in a silly way against an unrated 11 yo girl. She is exhausted chesswise. Two tournaments in a row are clearly too much for her.
I'm glad we have a restday now.

Day 6:
During the rest day I did a lot of problems on CTS. Today I played (again with black) against the Trompowsky. It was a rather wild game (as most of my games). While annotating the game I realized how positional I actually think. Tactics are clearly a means to an end for me.
I annotated the game here.
The opponent of Margriet tried to catch her with a combination, but she had thought one move deeper and won a piece. The restday has done a lot of good. Her opponent kept playing through untill checkmate for two hours, even with a queen, rook and knight behind in the end.

Day 7:
Today I played the Alapin-Diemer gambit against the French. We both castled queenside and after 3 hours I could show little for the invested pawn. At that moment my opponent (1619) launched a combination. But he had not thought deep enough so I could ripost it with a knightfork. Since he lost a whole rook he resigned.
Margriet had a boring game against an opponent (1398) who traded off pieces in the fasted way as possible. Though she tried it heavily, she couldn't avoid the draw.

Day 8:
I drawed after a complicated Portugese gambit declined.
Margriet has recuperated from her dip and hacked her 1589 rated from the board.
I annoted her game lightly here. I am very proud of her.

Day 9:
I got a winning position with the Kings gambit against 1729. But because of timetrouble I had to accept the draw. An old problem.
Margriet blundered a knight away at move 5 and lost at move 64.

Monday, July 25, 2005

Without words.

Some "first impression" notes.

A note on last tournament.
The "slump" I had at Whitsuntide is clearly over.
I have no difficulty to hold my own against opposition of 1750, so the new level I reached in january is no coincidence. Allthough I didn't manage to "correct" my losses at Whitsuntide.
Margriet did a good job and will increase more than 20 points.
In all games except one I had the initiative. Even in the ones I lost. Overall it were exciting games.
Timetrouble didn't play a decisive role in any of the games except one. A few draws in equal position could possibly be avoided if I had more endgame skills.
The last draw reveals a character weekness: timidity plus tiredness plus love of ease = a draw.
Staying at the board when my opponent is to move is allready a habit, much to my surprise.
In game 4 and 5 I had a slight dip because of tiredness, but after 9 days I feel that my stamina has improved.

A note on the scanmethod.
The scanmethod didn't play a decisive role this tournament but it was a significant help.
Chess is war, which means that all theoretically important checklists and thouhgtprocesses are of no use. Only something that is totally automatic and which costs virtual no energy will survive under battle circumstances. The scans were not so deeply ingrained in my brains that they could reveal their full potency. But after the opening in the early middlegame it helped my play to speed up, and it was frequently used as blunderchecking. Since I had only 4 minor oversights this tourney it definitely proved to help.

A note on CTS.
Allthough I had initially much doubts about the effectiveness of CTS it was of great help as warming up every morning. Without any effort or even noticing it, I have done allready more than 2000 problems at CTS. If you compare that with doing 7 circles of 1353 problems with George Renko, you can say that somebody who has done 26,000 problems at CTS has done little.
So I assume that it is not that strange that their rating has not improved that much.
And it doesn't mean either that CTS doesn't work.
What I learn at CTS is to focus really fast on the main properties of a position. That can't be bad.

CD has taken a good initiative to motivate us by introducing competetiveness. This competition I call "freestyle". Mousetrapper has introduced the slow but good way to use CTS. So I like to start another competition "slow", where you have to get the highest ranking with at least 90% succesrate. I wil make a new user "Slowtempo". What do you think?

A note on privacy.
A few Knights have found our real names. I don't care about that. But there are three reasons why I don't want to connect my real name with this blog.
You can see that the tournaments held in the Netherlands are well documented on the web. This means that I know the evening before against which opponent I am going to play. You will be amazed how many games I can find on the internet once I know somebodies name. I often use that to prepare my opening beforehand. I don't want to offer my opponents this help.
Another point is I don't want to help burglars by letting them know when I am not at home.
Worldwar II made that Americain names were given to many dutch children as a form of gratitude. Hence my name. I'm quite sure my father didn't know my name had another meaning. I didn't know either untill I started to use it on the internet. It revealed a lot of simple minds out there. . .

Sunday, July 24, 2005

Pffeww . . .one day rest before the next tournament.

Here are a few pictures to get an impression of the ACT.
The tournament had 438 participants and was held in two halls.


Margriet in action.



The hall with the section for the grandmasters.

Sokolov in action.


Tuesday we start with a new tournament for 9 days in Dieren. Maybe I should use my Brace-O-Maza there.

Thursday, July 14, 2005

Two tournaments.

Margriet and I play in The Amsterdam Chess Tournament which starts saturday.
9 days in a row without a restday.
40 moves in 120 minutes + 30 minutes for the rest of the game (how do you abbreviate that in the US? 40/120+30 or something like that?)

Then we have one day in between, before The Open Dutch Championship 2005 Dieren starts.
9 days with 1 restday.
40 moves in 120 minutes + 60 minutes for the rest of the game.

I intend to use this post to keep you informed via updates.

Tournament

Temposchlucker
1751
Margriet
1420
ACT score4.55
ACT games played
99
NK Dieren score
00
NK Dieren games played
00
Totals
4.5/95/9



Don't be worried when the updates suddenly stop. When the results are really good or terribly bad that may happen. Or when I need to focus.
Wish us luck.

Update july 16:
I had a draw against a player with 1710. The scanmethod is workable in practice, I have not been in danger nor timetrouble. The scans change my style of playing. The chance that I get an endgame increases. So I'm going to pick that up again definitely after the tourneys.
Margriet made a calculation error against 1541. That costed her a piece and timetrouble. Which is a bad combination.

Update july 17:
I had a hefty positional struggle against 1641. We castled opposite. Resisting a draw in a better position because of timetrouble I mated him at move 40.
Margriet played against an unrated girl and had a difficult win. Even with two queens against none her opponent played thru. Hoping for stalemate, a ringing cellphone or an hartattack, I presume. Which wasn't granted.

Update july 18:
Please all give a warm welcome to Guruchess, our newest Knight.
I dub her (yes, another her) the Jovial Knight. She can use some cheering.
For those with a knowledge of Vedic astrology below all standards: Guru is a big planet, guess which one.
Today I played against a 20 yo girl with 1849.
I noticed she had difficulty in decision making. At a certain moment we had to do 17 moves before the timecontrol. I had 17 minutes at the clock, she had 31. So I offered a tactical draw. The result was as expected, she dived deep into hesitation. The position was about equal and very complex. When she had only 10 minutes left she was forced to accept.
Margriet played against a 1520 player with black and kept him under heavy pressure the whole game, untill she could trade off pieces to a better queen ending, which she cleverly managed to win. I do every day some exercises at CTS, which seems to keep me sharp.
I have had no oversights the past 3 games. Knock on wood.

Update july 19:
This morning my brain didn't seem to function at all.
So I trained for about an hour at CTS (with devastating result btw), and quite a few braincells seemed to awake.
I played with black a Portugese gambit against 1640, which my opponent declined.
We castled opposite. My pieces were more active and more vulnerable.
If I wouldn't undertake some action, my pieces would be driven back.
Since I noticed he played like a piece of wadding, I decided to sacrifice the exchange for an open line against his King. If I were him I would sacrifice immediately a bishop back, and I would be lost. But he had not the courage.
Even now things were tricky, but I thought that eternal check or eternal attack was possible in case things went wrong. But he couldn't find the best defense and I mated him at move 23.
I suspect when he runs the game thru Fritz, he will bang his head against the wall.
Margriet had again a very long game against 1532, and ended with an ending N vs B, which she couldn't hold.

Update july 20:
It becomes difficult to recuperate fully between two games. All games go about the full monty (=5 hours).
I always thought those cyclists were idiots to cycle for 1 or 2 hours on a restday in the Tour de France. But I train every morning about a wee hour at CTS. When I start with CTS I perform terrible, but the training clears the head.
Today I had a draw against 1748. I had white and he played 1. e4 Nc6.
I have only seen that once before, and I had no idea what to play.
I was terribly bungling and used half an hour more than my opponent for the opening.
In the middlegame I could take over the initiative and I had problably a winning position. But to make 40 moves in 2 hour I had to move fast, so my opponent escaped with eternal check at move 41. I was a pawn up by then.
Margriet was tired and lost against 1311 with an Icelandic gambit.

Update july 21:
In most Dutch tournaments walks a phenomenon.
This phenomenon manages to get in conflict with the arbiter or the opponent every tourney.
A new arbiter in the Netherlands is considered to be initiated only after they are sueed by this guy.
He is very strict in the rules. But not always right.
Today the chief arbiter announced by microphone "you can start to play after the stroke of the gong". Since he was in another hall, we couldn't here the gong.
So only a few guys, amongst them our phenomenon, started to play immediately.
An arbiter ran to the other hall to fetch the gong, and after a few minutes we started at the stroke of the gong.
In the mean time our phenomenon had blundered a piece away. . .
But he insisted to start the game over, because the game wasn't officially started.
His opponent was so perplex that he agreed.
Some day I will write a book about him:)

I'm still undefeated. I played with black against 1766. The queens were traded off at move 8.
He offered a draw at move 17, when the position was still closed and totally equal.
I couldn't resist to take an unofficial rest day and agreed.
Margriet was three pawns down after the opening (Alapin) against 1507.
After a few tactical tricks she got them back.
Then she lured her opponent in a discovered attack and won a rook and the game.

Update july 22:
Today I had my first defeat. I throwed the sink at my opponent from move three and he agreed that he was just plain lucky that he could escape. He was very enthousiast because he hadn't had such an exciting game with the French since long. I annotated the game here.
My head felt like a wet newspaper afterwards.
Margriet blew her opponent 1472 from the board with one trick after another.

Update july 23:
Due to an error (the tourneyleader gave me a win for yesterday) I had to play against the number two of my group (1891). I gave him a very hard time with the Fajarovicz.
But in time trouble I lost 2 pawns. I could not maintain the balance in an ending with bishops of opposite colour. A beautiful game.
Margriet posed her opponent (1497) so much problems that he couldn't do an acceptible move on move 40, so his flag fell.

Update july 24:
Today I heard myself offering a draw after a 3-hour fight. I was already in a good position by then. I don't know why I did it, it just happened. He happily agreed.
Margriet lost from a 1541 guy with a Faj(arovicz).

Wednesday, July 13, 2005

Keeping it simple

I try to decompose the target scan in simple skills that can be drilled seperate.
For example today I did "undefended target jogging".
That is, the computer plays against itself at a certain pace and I scan all undefended targets for the color to move.
Recently I started to relate the scans to the piece that actually moves.
This diminishes the amount of scans enormous, since I don't have to scan all possible targets, but only the ones that are influenced by the piece that just moved.
This trivial idea is really a great improvement.
Being trivial as it may, it requires a lot of focus to drill that way and to use not my usual way of looking at a position.

Two days to go to the tournaments.

Monday, July 11, 2005

Enthousiasm comes in waves.

In the past I would always loose to the computer at 6 ply, due to a stupid oversight of a simple tactic. To prevent that, I started with target scanning. I looked at every piece of mine and asked myself an amount of questions about it. It resembles the target filtering of Mousetrapper.
The result was that my score against the computer became much better.
There were a few important drawbacks: it was complex, it costed an enormous amount of time and energy. So I decided to split things up and train them apart.

A part of this target-evalution existed of a scan around all possible attackers.
To train this I invented rake-scanning. I need now 20% of the time for this rake-scanning due to training. In my previous post I evaluated this.
The point is that scanning of the attackers, is only a tiny part of the target evaluation. I should say about 10 - 20 %. So the main drawbacks still exist.

Because of the drawbacks my approach is somewhat different from Mousetrappers.
A post of Tackchess about the book of Rolf Wentzel inspired me to make a picture of all times I fall victim to an oversight playing against the computer at 6 ply thinking depth.
I intend to use these pictures in two ways:
I want to use them as flashcards to improve my weakest patterns.
I want to analyze the pictures, to distill the most important questions about targets, specially suited for my weaknesses.

Basically my ideas about target scanning don't differ from Mousetrappers'.
For the developing of theory it is good to have a broad approach.
But for practical play a workable subset has to be made from this broad view.
I hope that analizing the flashcards will help me with that.


Ratingprogress due to training with the Chess Tactics Server.
A few Knights allready posted on this subject.
Here is a table of everyone who did more than 10,000 problems on CTS.


# problems

Rating
now

Date old rating

Old
rating

Nabla
27,208
1874
oct 2003
1873
Rolfizoller
26,733
1715
jul 2003
1797
Samuelplayer
26,005
1690
sep 2003
1734
Hakeem
12,940
1673
dec 2003
1657
Svejoe
16,288
1651
aug 20031684
Peme
15,051
1505
mar 2005
1451

Ulrich KB

10,307

1400

jan 2005

1417
It's fascinating that no one has improved. (So be sure you have fun when playing at CTS!)
I wonder what most contributes to this phenomenon:
The short time per problem or the fact that the problems are scarcely repeated.
Or is there something else?

Saturday, July 09, 2005

The proof of the pudding.

The last 4 days I have worked on my Chess Vision.
Today I wanted to start with the target scanning.
Since I saw that Moustrapper is wrestling with the ideal form of such scan, I decided to test first where I stand now.

I played a few blitz games on FICS. I was hacked from the board a few times by players with less rating. For example Dread Pirate Josh pounded me with a few nice tricks.
I found only once per game the time to do a full scan, so the extended microdrills aren't suited for playing blitz.

I played a game against the computer at 6 ply thinking level.
These two situations occurred to me during that game:




















I have white and have to move, the computer has just played Ba3.
I have totally missed this move.
Ok, it can easely be parried, but that is not the point.
My scan of the black bishop included Ba3 and Bxb2.
But it didn't occur to me that my knight was in danger.

Another point in the same game:



















My last move was Na4, followed by blacks Nc6xd4 (winning a pawn).
Another move I totally overlooked.

If I look at those diagrams I find it hard to believe that I have a rating of 1751.
This sort of oversight happens all the time.
1 - 3 times per game.
In all the 11 OTB-games I played recently and that I have analized.
In 42 of the 51 games I played against the computer lately (6 ply).
The only explanation can be that my opponents suffer from the same ailment.

What is even more astonishing, is that I never noticed it before.
When I have an oversight as in the first diagram, I tend to ignore it because it doesn't cause damage.
In the second diagram I loose only a pawn. Since I am a gambitplayer, I tend to ignore that.
But how on earth could I move my knight into a discovered attack?

It is clear that my Chess Vision is improved due to my training. I notice that while playing.
But it is clear too that this new acquired Chess Vision doesn't protect me against these oversights.

This means that the new to invent target scan has to do the job.
It is easy enough to know when I have reached my goal.
If the target scan protects me against these oversights, it is good. Otherwise it is useless.
So I have some work to do this weekend. . .

Thursday, July 07, 2005

Going round in circles.

As you may know I had a bad tournament at Whitsuntide.
Analysis of my games showed that I might need extended micro-level drills on a crowded board.
The micro-level drills are step 1 from DLM's improvement plan. I had never done them because they are too simple and artificial. An extended version that suited my needs had to be invented.
I romped during a week with the micro drills and the unsurpassed Chess Vision Trainer from Fussy Lizzard, but I couldn't find useful excersises that satisfied me.
So I gave this route up.

After a lot more research I came up with the idea that I had to work on step 3: transferring my pattern recognition to my OTB-play. I analysed my common blunders for that and I invented a scansystem to prevent them. I got much inspiration by the other Knights, especially from King and Mousetrapper.
After that I invented a system to jog through the exercises.
Now the dust has settled and I have an honest look at what I have made, I have to acknowledge that I have actually invented extended micro-level drills on a crowded board!
So I'm back to step 1 again. . .

I train 2-3 hours a day with my extended microdrills.
Most pieces cost me less energy now, but the extended Queenvision drill is very resilient.
Maybe I have to split it in two parts.

Extended bishop vision. Was 30 seconds, now 5 seconds.
Extended rook vision. Was 30 seconds, now 5 seconds.
Extended queen vision. Was 45 seconds, now 25 seconds.
Extended knight sight. Was 30 seconds, now 10 seconds.
Target vision. Not started yet.

Total scantime is 65 sec (without target vision).
This is a maximum value. Most of the time do the pieces have less possibilities, so I have to scan less. So at the moment the queenscan start to cost me less energy, I have a workable system.
Only the target vision has to be implemented yet. I will start tomorrow with that.

Wednesday, July 06, 2005

Cutting the Gordian knot

King of the Spill has made a Gordian knot.
When I had a good look at it I saw that it looked complex because a lot of grass rakes were drawn on the board at the same time. If I would do that for the Queen scan then it would look complex in a similar way.
Once I realized that, I decided to keeps things simple.
My Knight scan consists now of a scan two moves deep, just like the other scans.
In a way it is similar to all the other rakes I'm working with (see diagram).


Allthough in practice it feels more like I'm scanning an umbrella shape than a rake.
Doing the Knight scan is much simpler in practice than I feared.

All this scanning with strange patterns is very unusual to my mind. I find it to be much more difficult on a screen than on a board.
The mind demonstrates a lot of resistance to this activity by feeling tired and even let me fall asleep, even while there is no physical reason for that. Especially the Queen scan is very vehement. I can only do sessions from about 20 minutes long (that's why I blog so much:).
Actually I interpret that as a good sign: my brain is undergoing some real changes.
The Bishop scan is now so familiar, that it doesn't cost me much energy anymore.
I trust that the same will happen when my brain gets used to the other patterns.

Bishop scan was 30 seconds, now 5 seconds.
Rook scan was 30 seconds, now 7 seconds.
Queenscan was 45 seconds, now 25 seconds.
Knightscan, was 30 seconds, now 20 seconds.
Target scan, not started yet.

Drawing some teeth.

















To scan only the most chanceful lines, I have drawn some teeth from the rakes.
As I said in an earlier post, I combined the X-ray scan with the real scan.
I will try to explain how that works.
Basically if a rake meets my own pieces, I do a real scan.
That is to say, I'm not trying to look with X-ray eyes through my own pieces.
UNLESS my piece is in line with a hostile target.
See for example the diagram below.

Every color represents a rake.
With the blue rake I use X-ray vision, which means that I look thru the pieces as if they weren't there.
With the green rake my piece is in line with a hostile target. This means that a discovered attack might be possible. Here I use X-ray vision too. (I forgot the teeth of the green rake: d5-c6 e6-d7 f7-e8, sorry for that)
The red rake I scan with real vision, which ends at d3.

In practice, this last restriction diminishes the amount of teeth to be scanned drastically.

Exercise does speed things up:
Bishop scan was 30 seconds, now 5 seconds.
Rook scan was 30 seconds, now 7 seconds.
Queenscan was 45 seconds, now 25 seconds.
Knightscan, under construction.
Target scan, not started yet.

Today I started with the Queenscan, which is pretty tough.
On the other hand it looks very profitable. After just two hours of work the time allmost halved.
It wouldn't surprise me if all these scans together can be done in <10 seconds after a few weeks training. I'm curious what that will do to my play.

Tuesday, July 05, 2005

The jogging has begun.

The last days I am doing Bishop-jogging.
That works as follows:
I let the computer play against itself.
I can adjust the time between two moves.
With every move of white I scan the rakes that are coming out of whites Bishops.
With every move of black I scan the rakes that are coming out of blacks Bishops.
The scan is a combination of an X-ray scan and a real scan. I will post later to explain this.

I have jogged for about 3 hours now.
The time I need for the scan of 1 Bishop is diminished from 30 seconds per ply to 10 seconds per ply, and is still dropping.
What is even important, is that it starts to consume less energy.
So this is a hopeful development.

Basically you can look at the scans as extended microdrills on a crowded board.
A blunderscan and a scan for tactical shots is broken down into its compounding parts.
These parts are trained seperate. In the hope that a total scan can be done at a glance or two in the end.
The idea is that this total scan will trigger my pattern recognition, when there are possibilities for tactics in the position. In this way I hope to integrate my pattern recognition into my OTB play.

What scans do I have to train?
1. Bishops.
2. Rooks. Out of the rooks come the same sort of rakes as the Bishops.
3. Queen. This is more difficult than I thought first.
It is compounded of:
  • A Rook scan (rake).
  • A Bishop scan (rake under 45 degrees).
  • First a Rook-move then a Bishop-move.
  • First a Bishop-move then a Rook-move.
4. Knights. The Knight-scan is still under construction.
5. A targets scan. See Mousetrappers blog for an explanation.


My tounaments start july 16th, so I have some time to excersise still.
After the last tourney we will know if we have found the missing link or that another experiment has failed.

Monday, July 04, 2005

Knightsight

To develop a scan for the Knight I made some pictures which I didn't want to deny you.


It is remarkable that every square of the same color can be reached within two moves (except for 5 squares on the diagonals) when the knight is in the center.


Now it becomes clear why a knight on the rim is dim.

Last friday I had an easy win at the club against 1715.
He played the Cunningham variation at my King's Gambit.
(1.e4 e5 2. f4 ef4: 3. Nf3 Be7 4. Bc4 Bh4+)
However theory clearly states that this check isn't good when whites King can go to f1, everybody plays it.
But even with everything going smooth, I missed a Knightfork at King and Queen against me.
It was pure luck I good parry it. I hope a Knightscan can prevent such oversights in the future.

Saturday, July 02, 2005

The Space-Time continuum

King of the Spill commented here that we might have found a winning scansystem (or at least drawing:)
If I look at the figures (before 0+ 0= 35- after 1+ 8= 6-) I am convinced that IN POTENCY that is the case. The scansystem has one main drawback, it consumes an enormous amount of time.
I need about 5 minutes per scan. That is way too much. I have to stay focussed during this time which costs much energy. This is exhausting so an error is easely made. Hence the minus 6 score.

The X-rake scan from my previous post was an attempt to diminish the required scantime.
What is the idea behind this rake?
I will try to explain.




















White to move (diagram above)
The scan reveals a rake with one tooth. . .
This rake allows you to have a look in the future.
If white doesn't do anything about it, he will loose his rook within 4 ply.




















White to move (diagram above)
The route to the rook is hindered by the pawn on b5.
The danger is that black trades pieces on a6 and that the rook is lost within 6 ply




















White to move.
Here are two impediments on the route.
The danger here is that black trades pieces on a6 and f5.
The rook is then lost within 8 ply.
So time can be represented as a geometrical pattern.
Scanning for these patterns helps to avoid blunders and to look for tactical shots yourself.

These patterns don't pop out for me at the moment.
This means that I have to scan every tooth of the rake.
  • Bishops 2 x 30 sec = 60 sec
  • Rooks 2 x 30 sec = 60 sec
  • Knights 2 x 45 sec = 90 sec
  • Queen 2 x 30 sec (B+R) = 60 sec
A total scan costs 4.5 minutes.
I have been drawing some teeth lately. . .
If I combine the X-ray scan with real scan (see Mousetrappers blog) I can omit the scanning of some teeth. The method is still under construction, but the scantime is halved already.
To be continued. . .

Some find it hard to believe that the patterns of our blunders are allready in our system.
But that's easy to check: set the computer at 6 ply, play and write your errors down.
If you are a solid class D player you will find that your errors contain only patterns you are already familiar with.
A 1700 player at the top of the bell-curve has about half the amount of patterns stored of a grandmaster. So the 1000 extra patterns of CT-art are not going to change that dramatically.

I don't intend to cast doubt on the 7 circles. The circles is step 2 of the program.
Though all Knights more or less improve due to the circles, I feel some disappointment since nobody seems to come near the progress of DLM from 400 points in 400 days.
We must do something wrong!

The discussion above is about step 3 though: how to apply your patterns to your play.
I am inclined to think we are making progress at step 3.
I'm curious how things appear to work out.