Temposchlucker

The hypothesis. The hypothesis I'm working on right now can be summarized as: After you reach a certain level, improvement in chess can be achieved mainly by pattern recognition. What does that say, a certain level? That's the plateau where people are stalling after initial growth. When you haven't reached that level yet, probably anything will cause you to improve. A list of facts that need clarification. There are a lot of facts that need clarification. A lot of these questions seem to point in the direction of this hypothesis. That's why this hypothesis has evolved in the first place. I have tried to geather a list of these facts/questions. On a lot of these items we have posted before. So sorry for doubles The former French blitz champion. I had the honour to play a lot of games with this guy. He had drunk about a whole bottle of red wine. During the games he was talking to another guy. So he paid hardly any attention to the game. But he beated me game after game. W...

The past 8 years I tried a lot of methods to help me to improve. The main flaw of these methods was that my rating wasn't influenced a bit by any of them. Except for the tactical training which helped me gain 200 points. I strongly reject the idea that that improvement was the cumulative effect of all the training before. I'm sure that is not the case. In the years before I started with tactical training, I gained simply no point at all. Beside the main flaw, gaining no rating, a few remarks can be made by every method. This maybe helps to infer why the methods didn't work To study openings. At my level the opening proved to have little influence on the outcome of the game. It made the start of the game easier, but I kept losing from guys I usually lose from, and I kept winning from guys I usually win from. To study positional play. This is exactly how DLM describes it. I deepened my insight of the game, but I had no skills to do what I know I have to do. Positional knowled...

Ever since somebody lyed to me about the very existence of Santa Claus, I decided to take nothing for granted anymore. So if someone is telling me something, it is stored internally in a file "unverified". Only after I checked the facts myself it is relocated to the file "true according to known facts" or "false according to known facts". At a later stage relocating between true and false can take place when new facts become known. At that stage doubt is unnecessary. I just flick between files whenever new facts arrive. This attitude towards the things people are telling you has upsides and downsides. On the upside: Nobody can easily cheat me. I don't spend energy at good advice which isn't verified by the advicer. It is simply unbelievable how many people are stuffed to the eyeballs with good advice which they haven't checked or live by themselves. You can spent your whole life following such advice without coming a millimeter further. ...

Things start to become interesting. Today I played a few games at FICS to test if my skills are growing. I didn't do too well. Allthough 4 games is too little to draw conclusions, I didn't feel "muscled". Doing a tremendous effort, it would be nice if "something" happened. But there is no proof that anything is working at all. So the faith in my own reasoning is put to the test. Usually at this stage of an experiment flaws you couldn't even imagine before show itself. But no flaws become apparent. Except one: nothing happens! And that needs to be clarified. At this moment I can see only two explanations for this phenomenon. First explanation: De la Maza is wrong. Prof. de Groot is wrong. Tactical training doesn't work. Doing zillions of tactical problems is as usefull to chess improvement as solving crossword puzzles. Chess skills are innate. I will be a patzer the rest of my life. Second explanation: Pattern recognition is the ONLY way to improve at...

Today I'm halfway the 7 circles with 35,000 done of 70,000 I'm starting to recognize the problems. That doesn't mean that I remember always the solution, but that I realize "hey, I've seen this one before." I have done some counting and 32 % of the problems look familiar. The rating stays level but the succesrate has crawled up with 0.9 % to 79.9 % ! I just can't force myself to gamble so I take my time with every problem. 26 % of the problems are solved by pattern recognition alone. The same in other words: From the 10,000 problems in the problemwindow: 3,200 problems look familiar 2,600 patterns are stored in my system 5,400 problems I have to calculate 2,000 problems make me fail. An increase of 0.9 % in succesrate means that I solve 90 problems more than before. CTS circle 0: 1470 circle 1: 1500 circle 2: 1520 circle 3: 1520 circle 4: 35,100 /70,000 Highest rating 1567

How is it to live 6 meters below sealevel? The above picture give you an idea what we are talking about. The main idea is that you pump out the water faster than it oozes in. To that extend we have 4 pumpstations. One of them you see below. As you can see it has four pumps. The total capacity of one pumpstation is 2000 cubic meters per minute. That's enough to keep our feets dry. We have a mobile reserve of 5 times what is needed. Each pumpstation has 3 sources of energy: gas, diesel and electricity. The pumps are so well engineered that they haven't failed even one hour sinds they started to work in 1956. The idea is that they keep working when you need them. Our polder is surrounded by dikes. Each dike has a height that it can withstand a combination of high water and a superstorm which can occur once per 4096 year. If the dike leaks, you can put your thumb in it. If the hole is less than 60 meters, you can put a ship in it. I'm glad we have no hurricanes here. Otherwise ...

I'm the #1 at CTS until tomorrow overtakes me at the end of the week!! #1 in activity that is. With 33,712 problems solved. The weird thing is that I have the FEELING that it goes better and better every day at CTS, while my rating doesn't show that. That has everything to do with the fact that it is impossible to me to speed up. I just MUST take my time. So I have more answers correct, but not faster. Hence my succesrate steadily increases. But that doesn't look as spectacular as rating improvement. I'm about halfway the 7 circles now. In earlier efforts that was the point where calculation gradually is replaced by pattern recognition. I'm curious if the same will happen with such huge amount of problems as we have here. When pattern recognition takes over, speeding up must be the result. I'm VERY curious.

Nine month's ago my new chesscomputer did arrive. I made a long natural selection before I ordered it. The engine is programmed with genetic algorithms for optimal piece evalution. "Deep Fit" is build by Darwin Evolvued LTD. The manual gave a clear description of what to do. The chess engine came with lots of biological stuff in Erlenmeyer flasks. First I had to mount the craddle. Then the different genome-rich potions had to be fertilized at the back rank of the mate-chambers. The concoctions had to be poured in special IVF-proof glass tubes. These had to be stored in the craddle at a temperature of 37 degrees Celsius (99 F) for nine months. Today the nine months are over. Conform the instruction manual I disassembled the most unfit baby-engines until two of opposite construction were left. What is left are the most unugly ones. The only thing what's left to do is to optimize them by adapting them to the internet. I'm sitting for 3 hours now staring at the two. ...

Before a break at CTS my rating hoovered around 1530. After the break of 3 weeks, my rating nose dived to 1470 Why so extreme? It took me a month to get back to 1530 again. Why so long? In the mean time my succesrate improved from 79.0 % to 79.5 % Since it is an average over all 33,000 problems that is much. Why so much? Most people's OTB-rating is about 300 points higher than their CTS-rating. Except Celtic Death, who's OTB-rating is more than 50 points LOWER than his CTS-rating. Why? My new approach to redo my failures by visualising them in the mind seems to work. Why does my rating at CTS improve so slow? There seems to be only one answer to these questions: to continue until I find out.

The role of speed. (did you see the name on the boat?) When one starts working with CTS, the most remarkable fact is that the time constraints are very tight. This easily leads to the wrong conclusion that CTS is primarily beneficial for learning how to play blitz. I made this mistake myself. It is easy to underestimate the role of speed in normal chess. I have posted about speed it in the past . It is still interesting and relevant to read. A player with a higher rating plays faster. I found an average difference of 3 x faster per 100 elopoints. Whether this is 2x or 5x in reality is not relevant for understanding. This means that 300 elopoints = 3 x 3 x 3= 27 x faster. I know this sounds unbelievable. Where does this speed come from? Of course not from a faster working brain. The difference in speed comes from switching over from one sort of brainprocess to another. One is "finding out" the other is "recognizing". The time you need to find out how to solve a chess...