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. . .