Temposchlucker

Things start to become more easy now. Probably because I have seen most problems two times at average. The solving of problems costs less energy and becomes faster. I had to learn to like it, but it is very enjoyable now. Sometimes I even see the solution at a glance. You see the pieces in the edge of your eyes without seeing them. And still you know immediately what they are doing. The way you are aware of the ball with baseball without seeing it because it is to fast. (As if I have ever played baseball. BTW I saw Margriet today in a T-shirt with "Red Wings" on it. I believe it is famous in the USA. But what is it?) Since august 31 my rating hasn't been below 1500, even in my worst moments. It is still creeping upwards. Update: I have played two games at the club. 1 draw after a terrible played opening. 1 win right from the opening. The tactical exercises make me play more confident and faster. Normally I would have drawed the second game in stead of won due to time trou...

In a previous post I declared that no presents are given in this work. You have to learn every single pattern and if you forget it, you are not able to use it in the future. No bonus due to accumulated efforts whatsoever. I'm pretty sure this is the main reason why most people plateau on a certain moment. The day you stop with the intake of new patterns is the day you stop developing. That's why you all of a sudden hear nothing more of a once so talented player. Did you ever notice how often that happens? But in a capricious fashion you are given a kind of present in this work. When you have learned a pattern but you forget that you learned it, it is as if you get it out of the blue. Gee, am I brilliant or what, I think from time to time when solving a problem a tempo. If I look at the history of the problem, I see that I allready 7 times failed to solve it. But I can't remember that. So for now my conclusion about the antithesis of memorization versus pattern recognition ...

Working with CTS has given a whole new meaning to the expression "a tempo". CTS shows that the slightest hesitation costs you already a few seconds. To get the full reward at CTS you have to give the total solution within 3 seconds. That is really short. Below you see a typical situation. Black to move. The last move of white was Ne5, attacking the black queen. The first thing that came to mind was 1. ... Nxe5 but that loses the queen. Then I saw 1. ... axb5, winning a piece. I did the move, then came a shock: 2. Qa8+ I hadn't seen this check. But with 2. ... Kc7 blacks problems are solved. Total time used: 6.2 seconds. About 3 seconds per move. That I could solve the check was pure luck, I hadn't seen it coming. That is an extra on CTS what you don't have OTB, there is always a good solution somewhere. The question arises if it is actually possible to see the whole line within 3 seconds. The details of the problem revealed that there were only 6 persons out of 60...

Please all give a warm welcome to Siliconpawn At last a Knight with enough time to train! I dub him The Withdrawed Knight . For those who want to update their sidebar, mine is complete (don't forget the Hall of Fame), and further has our official historian DG a complete list.

In a comment on the last post , Mouse warned against the phenomenon of memorization. In the past we had a lot of discussions about this subject. For example here and here . But now I am working with CTS, I ask myself: Is it possible to memorize a problem without recognizing the pattern? And further: is a problem really stored in two ways in the brain and in two places? First as a memorized problem and second as a stored pattern? That doesn't look very likely. Because the brain is very efficient. Mouse supposed: "the issue is recognizing patterns in unknown positions". I have seen no convincing prove yet that it is actual possible to recognize a pattern in an unknown position. In my post no presents given I tried to tell about this. Take for instance the two following diagrams: Black to move This one costed me 10 seconds White to move This one I could not find in 3 minutes Both diagrams contain the same theme. A queen sacrifice followed by a knightfork. The first diagram...

20,000 problems done at CTS. That gives a satisfied feeling, I must say! My rating is now averaging at 1520. I'm quite confident that my rating will continue to grow in a somewhat linear way until. . . Well maybe untill I manage to disturb those two Swiss guys at the top? The reason is very simple. I'm starting to memorize problems and the amount of problems is finite. To complicate matters, CTS has released about 2000 extra problems the past few weeks and they will release another 3000 coming weeks. But that will not make an essential difference. The main question is: will it transfer to a rating gain OTB? To a certain degree it will. I'll try to explain. Last friday I watched two guys playing chess with each other. One of them has a rating of 1320, the other has about 1520. Resp. 400 and 200 points below my rating. I watched them very carefully and every now and then they made a move which was very good and which I hadn't foreseen. I realized that they both had stored...

Tomorrow I'll post about it. I'm to tired now. CTS circle 0: 1470 circle 1: 1500 circle 2: 1520 circle 3: 20,000 /70,000 Highest rating 1567

Druss asked a question about the amount of Knights Errant. Right now there are 14 active Knights, following some sort of DLM-based program and posting on it regularly. There are 13 Knights who have completed their program. From that moment on they are not obliged to continue to update their blog, but 6 of them are still posting. 14 Knights have stopped with the program so far. Of them 3 have gone 404 and are erased from the blogosphere. I joined the Knights in februari 2005, and the brotherhood has only grown ever since. The Knights who quit did this mostly in the first weeks of their program. The estimated average rating gain from the program is about 110 points. Survey. Active: 14 Graduated: 13 Stopped: 11 404: 3 CTS circle 0: 1470 circle 1: 1500 circle 2: 19,200 /70,000 Highest rating 1567

Please give all a warm welcome to our newest Knight Montse . I dub him The Musseled Knight . You can find a few rules here .

At first my rating was for 7 days between 1520 and 1567, and not even once below 1520. Then came 6 days when my rating was between 1500 and 1520, and not even once outside these boundaries. I don't understand what causes this phenomenon. Is it the few hundred extra problems that are released every week by CTS? Is my mind slower? Does the boom in tacticians lately cause this? I have no idea. Update: On the other hand, I see that my rating was nowhere above 1500 before august 10th. CTS circle 0: 1470 circle 1: 1500 circle 2: 18,600 /70,000 Highest rating 1567

Inspired by Don's Alter Ego I surfed the web and came across some so called "pro ana" sites. These are shocking sites, mostly from teenage girls, who promote the eating disorder Anorexia Nervosa as a lifestyle. Mesmerized as a rabbit I kept reading. My conclusion is that solving zillions of chesspuzzles is a totally innocent hobby, which keeps you sane and healthy. CTS circle 0: 1470 circle 1: 1500 circle 2: 18,000 /70,000 Highest rating 1567

There seems to be a hierarchy in patterns in the way they are retrieved from memory. Let's suppose there is a problem with a knightfork in the solution. Most of the time I recognize another pattern first. Only after I work this out and the pattern doesn't seem to fit, the knightfork comes to mind. A certain kind of problems causes me much trouble on CTS. That is when my king is under attack and he has different squares to go. It always takes me lots of time to work out which square is best. The top players at CTS must have these refuge squares stored as patterns in their mind, otherwise they can't solve these problems within 3 seconds. That is pretty amazing. When I work hard, I always expect to get some sort of extra bonus. I always hope that on a certain moment, for example during my sleep, a mystic brainprocess sorts out all patterns in my head. Thus creating an unknown effiency which make me recognize patterns far more easier than before. But that never happens. My rati...

When you happen to jump out of a plane, you must count to three and check your parachute. Quite a few things can be wrong then. One of them is that you look upward and you see nothing. That is called a total malfunction. Our instructor abbreviated that to a "total". I don't know why I am telling you this. Today my brains seemed to have a "total". Maybe they are a little tired by solving so many problems lately. I'm surprised my rating stayed still above 1500 today. I hope my rating will not continue the free dive tomorrow. CTS circle 0: 1470 circle 1: 1500 circle 2: 16,800 /70,000 Highest rating 1567

If you have an optimistic nature like me it is good to face from time to time reality. So I know what is going to keep me busy the next decades. . . CTS contains currently 28,469 problems. Knowing myself I probably will not rest before I can do them all a tempo. Unless new insights take over. . .(you know me long enough now to know what you can expect) Let's assume it is necessary to do them 10 times at average. That means 285,690 problems. Doing about 300 problems a day that means 952 days = 2,6 year. O well, I begin to understand why the book of DLM consists for 95% of peptalk:) Ok, enough reality for today. As J'adoube put it, back to the saltmines:) CTS circle 0: 1470 circle 1: 1500 circle 2: 16,300 /70,000 Highest rating 1567

As you might have noticed I seem to be infected by a kind of Rabies Theologorum when it comes to CTS. I will try to explain why. Have a look at this diagram. Black to move and win. At first I failed with Qxh2, because I hadn't seen the rook on a2 (a whole 4 inches away!) I tried it again and it took me 152 seconds to find the solution. This happens over and over again on CTS. 152 seconds for a mate in 3 with 3 forced moves. If you take the comparison of J'adoube of the tables of multiplication , we speak here of 7 x 8. And my answer is:"Where have I left the batteries of my pocket calculator?" I'm not the only one. 6 of the 16 people who have ever tried to solve this problem failed (hi Slowmouse). As long as I fail with such simple problems, I don't want to hear anything about positional play or endgames or thoughtprocesses or what. I'm busy. With the tables of multiplication . CTS circle 0: 1470 circle 1: 1500 circle 2: 15,800 /70,000 Highest rating 1567

Your garden may very well look like this: Remind me that I pay more attention to "balanced composition" next year. Maybe I should dig a pit of 2 meters deep so that the flowers will stand on a reasonable height. Did you know that sunflowers become so high? Welcome to a new Knight: Dutchdefence , The Wooden-Shoed Knight. CTS circle 0: 1470 circle 1: 1500 circle 2: 14,900 /70,000 Highest rating 1567

The last two days I could maintain my rating at CTS beyond 1550. The 14,000 problems before I managed not even once to do so. What's different? Usually my mind works slow the first 200 problems every day and then speeds up. These last two days my mind worked at full throttle from the beginning. Hence a higher rating then ever before. Today my mind feels slow again. And so the rating drops. I have no clue why my mind is so slow now. Not that there is something to worry about, I'm quite confident my rating will have improved another 30 points when I finish circle 2. But I like to know what makes those speed differences. When you want to learn a foreign language, like english for instance, there are an infinite amount of methods you can follow. You can go to the pub and twaddle days on end. Or you can try to translate the works of William Shakespeare. If you go to the pub, you learn the language very fast, but the quality might be not so good. If you try to translate Shakespeare y...

Today I had an all time high rating of 1554 at CTS. Update: 1567 CTS circle 0: 1470 circle 1: 1500 circle 2: 14,000 /70,000 Highest rating 1567