Powersolving

Phaedrus, the dutch chessplayer who act as a sounding board for me lately, has suggested to me that the problems of Chess Tempo aren't difficult enough for my goal. Today I thought about this and I did some measurements and I think he might be right. The average solving time is 1m 42 s per problem. 16% of my answers are wrong. That means roughly that for 84% of the time I'm doing exercises that don't are a problem for me. In this stage of my development that doesn't seem a useful thing to do. It must be the other way around, 84% of the problems must go wrong. Otherwise I simply spill too much time. I didn't found a practical way to get more difficult problems with Chess Tempo.

CTS is even worse. Due to the fast mouse handling of my fellow solvers the presented problems are very leightweighted. If you forget the clock your rating will drop and the problems will become even leighter. As if you are powerlifting with 2kg a dumbell.

I decided to settle for Intensive Course Tactics II from George Renko, the advanced- and masterproblemsets. Those have suitable problems aplenty.

It's funny how I go around in circles. Years ago I stopped doing these because I found them too difficult. I didn't want to spill my time with problems so unique that I wouldn't encounter them in a thousand years. That was the moment I decided to start with CTS. And now I'm back with these problems. The difference is that I now have an idea how to make such training fruitful. We will see. I'm glad I'm not bound to methods or idea's.