Temposchlucker

. . . Phaedrus said: I will leave the question open for now if I think that Visualization is the key for further improvement for me. But if it is, I do not know if there is an easy fix. Yet if there is, and you would help me find it, I will carry you on my shoulders through the streets of your town to a bar where closing hour is only declared when the last customer stumbles home, or when the beer has run out! LOL. I hope he has a strong back:) Let's see if we can earn some beer. First we have to make an educated guess how big the chance is that visualisation alone can be the core of the problem. So far I have identified 3 tasks that have to be performed simultaneously: Pattern recognition. Evaluation. Visualization. From these, two tasks are performed best in an unconscious automatic matter, so that they don't put strain on the short term memory (STM). These tasks are pattern recognition and visualization. Evaluation, thinking and guiding the line of thought is done best cons

. . . Due to some close observations of what exactly happens during calculation everything falls into place. All 3 discoveries which I made in the past play a role plus, I hate to say it, visualization. Those 3 discoveries were: backwards thinking. narratives. drills that enlighten the burden of the STM by transferring subtasks from conscious thinking to the procedural memory (think of playing Troyis). The "Tempo exercise" itself consists of 3 parts: Identify the characteristics of the position. Evaluate the characteristics. Visualize the future position. diagram 1 . . . White to move. Identify the characteristics. To identify the characteristics of the position you have to formule little narratives. Those little narratives consist typically of only one sentence. Like (see diagram 1): Black threatens mate on g2 Bishop on e7 is unprotected Knightphork a6 Queen on b7 has little space Both rooks are on the same diagonal (skewer) Whites B and Q converge at g7 Pawnphork on d6 Knig

. . . There are three main "inventions" concerning exercisesI have discovered the past few years. So far the very discoveries itself has costed me so much energy and time that I have never made a serious effort to bring these techniques into practice myself. Due to my latest search for a method that is less taxing for my short term memory I decided to live up to two of these ideas: backward thinking and formulating narratives . But in stead of doing this after I have looked up the solution, I start with it immediately. That means, I skip totally the phase of trial and error. I start immediately to formulate narratives that describe what is going on in the position. I write them down and only after this I try to find candidate moves that make use of the findings in the narratives. After this I look up the solution in order to see what characteristics I didn't catch in my narratives. The first attempts to solve complex exercises this way look quite promising. Let me give a

. . . In order to improve calculation, the thoughtprocess has to be redesigned in such way that it is less taxing for the Short Term Memory (STM). Aagaard, Dvoretsky, Tisdall and others speak of generating candidate moves. While I was comparing that with my own experience I realized that that expression put me on the wrong foot. There is nothing that has to be generated by me. It is already out there, in the position. It only has to be recognized. So the first step is to recognize the ideas that are already there in the position. While pondering about this I reinvented backwards thinking. All of a sudden I remembered that I already had invented this before . Due to a change of my course towards endgame strategy I had forgotten this. If you think backwards the tree of analysis is automatically pruned drastically. Once an idea is recognized, you are ready to generate candidate moves. Not at random, as I used to, but selected moves that are the most likely to materialize the recognized id

. . . According to the chess exam I'm a fairly balanced chessplayer. I only suck at calculation. I suspected that a bit, but now I know for sure. All my tactical efforts and all the methods I have used didn't adress that problem. I am not the only one. Blunderprone recognized the same problem after doing the circles of madness. That indicates an essential flaw in our methods. The strategy I followed the last year was to avoid complex positions with heavy-duty-calculations. For instance I throwed all my gambits out of the window. I was pretty succesful with that strategy and it gained me more than 100 points. Which is in a certain way an indication of what the influence of bad calculation is. I'm sure that I can make more progress on that path (avoiding complexity), maybe another 100 points or so. But in the end I will inevitably hit the wall: bad calculation. This means that if I want to make some serious progress I must fix this problem. I have no idea what calculation act

. . . Overall rating 1768 Opening 1920 Attack 1902 Strategy 1839 Defense 1826 Middlegame 1814 Tactics 1759 Sacrifice 1710 Endgame 1691 Standard positions 1684 Recognizing threats 1575 Counterattack 1534 Calculation 1319 Well, that is about the opposite of what I expected! Painful, of course, as it always is to lose an illusion. But quite interesting too! So all the circles and tactical training didn't effect my calculation skills. At all. At least it explains where my latest boost in rating originates (see ratinggraph) . . . After long plateuing I finally found the way up again. That is the immediate result of changing my opening repertoire from gambits to positional openings. From heavy duty-calculation to less calculation intensive. The lack of calculation skills explained why I always got in time trouble with gambits. By playing simpler chess I get not in time trouble anymore hence I win from lesser rated players more often hence my rating improves lately. I wrote about simple c

At the moment I'm doing the Chess Exam of Igor Khmelnitsky. I like the idea of the book very much. I'm very curious how my score will be. Doing the exam is positional training at the same time. Take for instance the following diagram: diagram 1 . . . White to move. There are two multiple choice questions related to each diagram. Question 1: Evaluate the position. A. White is significantly better B. White is slightly better C. Nearly equal D. Black is slightly better Question 2: What is the best move? A. 1.Ba5 B. 1.Qh4 C. 1.Rd2 D. 1.f4 Solution [ Q1: A Q2:B ] . . . . . . If such position had occurred in one of my own games I wouldn't have realized that d6 is weak (my blind spot). You need somebody else to tell you that. That is why analyzing your own games all by yourself is of limited use. d6 is well restraint and cannot be pushed forward. Hence it is weak. I immediately dismissed Qh4 because it wrecks the white pawnstructure and I didn't see the point behind Rd2 at all

. . . In my story about the 3 battles (pieces, pawns, time) BP pointed rightly out that I had forgotten about a fourth battle: the battle for the centre. One of the important aspects of dominating the centre with pawns is the manoeuvring space that you obtain behind those pawns. But why is central space more important than space on the flanks? The answer which arose was that it is because of flexibility . Tarrasch said that the threat is often stronger than the execution. I always thought that that was limited to tactics, but the same is true for the best piece placement. Aagaard already pointed out that to halt your piece development one move short before it reaches its best square is often stronger than to place it on the best square right away. Actually I experienced that myself too. When I place a piece on its best square my opponent always takes his countermeasures right away. But when I place my piece on a flexible square from which I can reach two or more good squares on which

. . . The new dutch ratinglist is just published: Temposchlucker: 1856 (+37) Margriet: 1508 (+40) A new alltime high for both! This is still without our performance at Corus.

. . . We had a great tournament at Wijk aan Zee. Lots of fun, friends, chess, beer. We are very tired. Luckily I have taken an extra day off. Tempo: shared 2nd in a group of 1836 average rating. 5/9: 3 wins, 4 draws, 2 losses. TPR 1870 Margriet: first prize in her group. 7.5/9: 6 wins, 3 draws, no losses! TPR 1631 Margriet finally breaks through her plateau. Not so easy to enter 1500+ when you learned the chess rules at age 45! She already played very well, but the last years she was used to blunder a piece every other game or so. Since she has stopped to try to imitate my style lately and have found her own style the blundering has stopped. I wouldn't be surprised when she passes the 1600 mark within a year or two. I have proven I can hold my own in a 1836 field, with which I'm very content. A lot of positional errors is made on this level (by both my opponents and me) so that is very reassuring. Lots of room for improvement! For the first time I haven't looked at my oppon