Tuesday, August 15, 2006

In memoriam










Yesterday prof. Adriaan de Groot passed away at an age of 91.
His famous doctoral dissertation about pattern recognition in chess was the main inspiration why I started with the circles. May he rest in peace.

I'm working my ass off at CTS, but it is difficult to blog about that. There are enough other things to blog about, but I don't do that since it takes too much time. Chessclub is still on vacation.

9 comments:

  1. How about posting a game? I assume you are playing frequently to practice your tactical skills in the context of a real chess game.

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  2. Likesforests,
    at the moment I have taken a natural break from playing, since the club is on vacation, I don't like playing over the internet and I want to concentrate on exercising. That's why I don't want to use too much time for blogging, the exercises call.

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  3. Space,
    it's not a writersblock I'm suffering from. The things I want to say will take me too much time to work out, and I want to use this time for exercising. Besides that, the subject I want to talk about is not CTS related. About the exercising self there's little to say at the moment, because I don't want to write a dull story. (mind you, I don't say the exercises are dull, but the writing about it)

    About Markusgoth: good observation.
    First we have to know what his age is. Young people have two advantages.
    First: since the pace of the biological clock changes within a lifetime on a logarithmic scale, they can do much more in the same amount of regular time than someone at an older age.
    Second, their brains are more "flexible" so they learn more or less unconscious and effortless, while adults have to make a conscious effort.

    What had he already under the belt? If he was a blank paper, an extra 170 points will come easy above his "normal" gain. I say 170, since that was the amount I gained easy after starting for the first time with tactics (even WITHOUT repetition) see my ratinggraph at http://temposchlucker.blogspot.com/2006/07/my-rating-graph.html

    Further I noticed he is from the Faroe Islands. Maybe he eats a lot of fish?

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  4. wow, I hadn't noticed about markusgoth. that's a nice result, even if he gets only 2/3 correct. based on my own experience, that gives you about 120-140 points higher rating compared to someone who pulls 85% success rate. still, it's an impressive achievement, because if I remember correctly, he started from 1100 or so. although I might mix him up with someone else...

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  5. CTS hone two tactical skills: pattern recognition and somewhat calculation.

    In real games, tacticians needs at least a couple more skills: (1) Positional knowledge to place your pieces where they will be the most effective, and (2) Intuition, where you see an almost-tactic and trick your opponent into making it a reality.

    Those other skills decay when I focus entirely on tactical puzzles.

    I wish we knew Markus' secret. If it translates well over-the-board, I mean!

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  6. Tak, he was of masterlevel and belonged to the dutch upper ten in his days.

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  7. Is this the same Markusgoth we see at the No.4 spot of the most active tacticians? Because he now has a rating of 21xx+. Talk about improvement!

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