Temposchlucker

. . . In search for microdrills that could enlighten my thinkprocessess I started to write down the time I needed to make a move during a game (hattip to Uwe). In one game I used 34 minutes for 1 move. Finally I made a positional move that changed the computerevaluation from plus 0.88 to minus 0.87. What happened? In search for a macho-move I continued to search for a forced tactical continuation which wasn't there. In stead I should have simply looked to the CCT's of my opponent and make a move that adressed his threats and that was positional good. In the end I played a move that was positionally good but that didn't adress his threats. This story revealed that I'm used to make such forceful moves that I can neglect the threats of my opponent. But if such forceful move isn't there, I continue to neglect my opponents threats. Or I continue to search for a forced combination untill I'm in time trouble. So my thoughtprocess must be adjusted. If the situation is...

. . . To learn more about the training of skills I need a clearcut example. Writing down the moves seems to fit this bill perfectly. It is not difficult to come up with a microdrill that adresses this. I take an empty board, I make knight moves on it and call out loud the names of the squares I'm visiting. In the first minute it already became clear that it takes me a few seconds to come up with the name of a square. As I have often declared, the brains seem to hate it to store information in memory when it can be reconstructed. But reconstruction needs time, takes away resources from the short term memory and needs conscience. During normal circumstances those 3 resources are available in abundance during a game. I never even noticed that it took me a few seconds extra to write down my moves. But in time trouble those resources are scarce. Hence my annotation disintegrates. So the questions are: Does this microdrill convince my brains that it is better to absorb a skill than to ha...

. . . Knowledge and skill. Let's talk a bit about skill now. I never get rid of the feeling that training skills has a huge potential. Despite the fact that I have found 101 ways to train the wrong way. When you exactly know which skill to train and how to train it would be a breakthrough. Skill is a strange phenomenon. On the one hand an adult can learn the complex motorskills necessary to drive a car within about 50 hours. On the other hand, when I'm in time trouble, I have very much problems to annotate my gamescore well. No matter the fact that I have written all my life and I have been in time trouble for way over 50 hours. It even litterally hurts to shift from thinking about the game towards coming up with the names of the pieces and the squares. At the end of the game my writings become unreadable and incomplete. Until the last 5 minutes come as a great relief. When I put my pencil down all of a sudden my chess performance boost when I can just crank out the moves. Some...

. . . Silman seems to be a somewhat chaotic character. In itself there is nothing wrong with that since I need to reange the stuff he writes anyhow in order to make it my own, no matter how it is written. What is important is that all the stuff that is needed is there. And it is. I took al the summaries he has written at the end of every chapter together with the nuggets of chess wisdom he has scattered over the pages and put it into a hat. After some shuffling I started to sort it out in a way that is logical to me. The contours of a coat hanger rack emerged out of the mist. I only have to fill it with coats now. There is one somewhat strange chapter about chesspsychological disorders one could suffer from and how to deal with them. In my opinion a little arrogance is the best remedy against a troublesome mind so it should not come as a surprise that I didn't recognize any of the symptoms he describes. But I don't want to write anything bad about the book since it is well wor...

. . . Can I? After 6 years of blogging the gist of chess improvement seems to boil down to two area's of improvement: knowledge and skill. Both have to be taken care of. Knowledge. In my case, at this moment, positional knowledge is the area where I can gain the most. I'm busy to make a summary of Silman's HTRYC 4th edition, so I consider positional knowledge to be taken care of. Skill. I did write a lot about skill-assisted thinking in the past, without ever finding an appropriate method to train it though. Today I was thinking about a certain section of De La Maza's articles: "You can refine this experiment further by creating two computerpersonalities, one that can see three moves ahead but has no positional knowledge and the other that can see two moves ahead and has complete positional knowledge. The tactical personality, which can see three moves ahead, will win the vast majority of the games. This is a key lesson: all of the positional knowledge in the wo...

. . . Happy new year! Margriet and I are preparing for the oncoming Tata/Corus tournament by solving the exercises in Reassess your chess. I'm scoring terribly bad in all area's except for one: Macho Chess. Silman describes that as "pushing your own agenda". Neglecting my opponents moves always has been a strong point of mine:) So the bad news is that I'm still a one trick pony and a positional nitwit. The good news is that there is still very much room for improvement though. Continuing with blindfold chess and visualisation of the diagonals .