Nezha supposed that I am not satisfied with my performance at the two tourneys.
Well, he is right.
We had a great time. It was nice to meet all tourney-tigers again, we drank a lot of beer and we laughed a lot. A lot of our friends did two tournaments too. (Some are now busy doing a third one after them. . .) The games were spectacular (well, most of them). It's a great way to spend your free days. No regrets here at all. (BTW, it rained all the time, so good chessweather)
The results are not bad.
For me, 5 wins (4 by knockout), 4 losses, 9 draws.
Performance rating (as I believe you call it) 1735 in Amsterdam and 1712 in Dieren. Average 1724.
So definitely above 1700, which was a plateau for quite some time.
I have no reason to say that my performance rating should be different, it represents adequately my level at this moment.
Margriet scored 1490 in Amsterdam and 1333 in Dieren. Averaging 1412, which is about her rating. I think her performance at Dieren is so bad because of exhaustion (chesswise)
This exhaustion could be measured by all players who played two tourneys after each other.
I managed to overcome it by training at CTS every morning.
I'm disappointed that my study didn't yield more results. I trained from octobre to july everyday a few hours. I don't have the feeling I wasted my time, because I enjoy studying.
And learning how not to do things is just a way of studying.
What frustates me is that I feel I'm pretty close.
When I improved 200+ points the first time, I had the feeling that all the work was done in about 6 weeks. I studied much longer, but I had the feeling the real improvement was achieved in only these 6 weeks. When all lights seemed to be green.
So I am hunting for this again.
What didn't help was the drop of my rating with 71 points at Whitsuntide at the ratinglist of august 1.
This I consider as normal statistical aberations. Sometimes you are lucky and your opponent has to go to the dentist at move 5, sometimes you have bad luck and blunder three games out of six. Nothing unusual here. But it doesn't help me to become satisfied.
What I have to conclude is that my tactical abilities are still bad. Sad but true. I improved immensily with a lot of training from terrible to just plain bad.
But I want to become good at it. So I continue to experiment and to train, untill I reach my goal.
I really have the feeling it lies in automating all simple tasks while doing a move. It's not at the complex side of a move where chances for improvement lie. It's at the simple side.
Just doing simple things automatic without effort or cost of time.
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I'd say everything you are doing is a benefit and not to expect too much too soon.
ReplyDeleteI undertook the MDLM program not really expecting to improve 400 points in 400 days - I think that was a bit of an oversell.
If you are definitely above the 1700 plateau, then keep doing what yo are doing. No one is going to get instant pattern recognition - that will come in a few more years of training.
It's good not to be satisfied with the results - just don't get discouraged.
I think some of the pattern recognition will start to come more quickly. In the last few weeks there have been several times in my weekly grudge match where my opponent made a move and I immediately I recognized a tactical element. Sometimes it was moving a piece to an undefended square or a square where it could be forked, sometimes it was a line opening up (usually allowing a possible check), sometimes it was a piece getting blocked in, etc. I got this pretty quickly under the MDLM plan with CT-Art. This pattern recogniion is nowhere close to 100%, but just seeing even simple tactical aspects of positions automatically is a huge improvement over where I was.
ReplyDeleteSo keep at it- it will come!
And 1700+? Wow, great!