Temposchlucker

. . . . At the moment I have not the slightest idea how I am going to attack this subject. But the past weeks show that blogging is a very fruitful way to order my thoughts. A lot is clarified already, which helps to add precision in the method of chess improvement. Especially the discovery of the right and the wrong moment to add intelligence is very important. Question. Let's see where this will lead to. An important question that is not really adressed sofar is how to maximize transfer. With "transfer" I mean the the following (in the context of tactics training): If I exercise problem x in the right way then that will have a positive effect on solving problem y, which I have never seen before, but has something in common with problem x. Boundaries. Let's define the extreme boundaries first. The transfer is 100% if I only have to do 27 problems, one problem per tactical motif, and I will be able to solve every problem at CT without furth...

. . . . I made a distinction between storage and retrieval for reasons of proper thinking. After some thinking I found the following: There are two methods to add intelligence. Adding intelligence during the game. The first method is adding intelligence afterwards. When there is allready a complex position we can guide our attention to prevent that we miss out crucial patterns. You consciously think about the moves. This is what we all do when we try to solve a problem. This leads to a brainscanpattern that is typical for the amateur: we use the part of the brain that handles new problems. Allthough a thoughtprocess leads to improvement in this area this is not going to win the war. Adding intelligence during study. The second method adds intelligence beforehand. At the moment of storage. I retrieve what is stored. I cannot retrieve what is not stored. So if there is something wrong with my retrieval, there is something wrong in my process of storage...

. . . . The past week I have experimented with method A again. I observed that there is no lack of patterns stored in long term memory. The problem lies in the mechanism that decides which pattern to retrieve and which pattern not. The mechanism that controls where your attention over the the board is directed. If not under the control of guidance, that mechanism works automatically. And automatically means semi-intelligent. We can guide our attention with a thoughtprocess. This way we add real intelligence. This is a blunderprone, time- and energy consuming conscious process. During a game under competitive circumstances, there is little time for conscience guidance, so we have to rely heavily on the semi-intelligent automatic move selection process. Under the quiet circumstances of the study room, we must improve the semi-intelligence of the automatic move selection mechanism. I called this "adding intelligence". We can influence the mechanical ...

. . . . Black to move. I'm trying to figure out what is going on in my mind during the solving of a puzzle. Why doesn't the experience of one puzzle transfer to the next? This diagram is very typical. The problem has a rating of 1904. Which means I'm not the only dummy in town. After 15 seconds I played 1. ... Qxh3, which fails. I had trouble to see why. But after 2.f4 black has nothing. Of course 1. ... Qf4 prevents that and white has to give up the queen to prevent mate. Those patterns can't be more familiar: Mate with the queen on h2. Played it hundreds of times. Closing the diagonal with f4. Played it hundreds of times. Decoying the pinned knight. Played it hundreds of times. Yet, only the first pattern comes up, blinds the mind for the other two patterns and I fail. It is evident that more plan A is not going to bring me any further. Since the patterns cannot become more familiar than they already are. This is exactly the w...

. . . . We have a method for plan A of which it is more or less proven that it works. Yet I feel that there are some loose ends to tidy up. What is better, low rated problems in high quantities or high rated problems in low quantities. Low rated problems in high quantities (aka "the saltmines"). What are arguments for this approach? Pro: A grandmaster has stored 50,000 - 100,000 chunks according to prof. de Groot et al. You can compare it to learning words of a foreign language. The frequency of occurrence is high. Hence the relevance of the patterns. Con: The added intelligence per problem is extremely low. It is a daunting and time consuming task. No grandmaster ever did this. I have been in the saltmines for five years and it never quite worked. I have assimilated tenthoussands of patterns, maybe not in the most efficient way, but nevertheless. High rated problems in low quantities. Pro: DLM used low quantities of high quality. M...

The past 3 years my positional play has improved a lot. I have much more knowledge now, both about the openings I play and about the accompanying middlegames. In 90% of my games I have a clear plus in the middlegame. Yet my rating has nosedived the past 3 years from about 1850 to 1700. Since I have improved in almost all areas of chess, there can be only one explanation for this phenomenon. I haven't solved any serious tactical problems the past 3 years. For the very reason that in the 5 years before I had done a bit too much and I was simply fed up with it. In 3 years my tactical skills have detoriated. Due to neglection of "plan A". Besides that, I felt that it was necessary to improve the trainingsmethod first. And in that area I have made the biggest progress the past 3 years. . . . . Munich has implemented my suggested improvements of plan A and proved that it has become a viable method. He has made a considerable progress in little time and he has been...

The reason that I introduced guidance is this post . You may think that this is a freak accident that will not happen to you. You are wrong. This post reveals a fundamental flaw in the human mind. This flaw is one of the main reasons that started WWII. I would describe it as follows: People have the ability to see only what they expect to see. Which is a great way to simplify the world and to cut down on brain resources. But the downside of this preference is that people have difficulty to see what they don't expect to see! No matter if I was able to see the mate in 3 in 3 seconds or in 20. Before you can recognize a pattern, your mind must be prepared for it first. You must guide your attention in the right direction first. The speed of recognition has no effect, plays no role, as long as you pay no attention to that part of the board. Guiding your attention is plan B. Of course, when your attention points in the right direction, plan A kicks in immediately again. New famil...

. . . . What training is covered by CT? If you have a close look at the grand scheme of tactics of the previous post, you will find that CT already covers a training for the following elements which play a role in the grand scheme: Pin Double attack Discovered attack Skewer Rontgen attack Trap Annihilation of the defender Clearance All these can be simply trained if you are a member of CT and you define your own filters. Personally I like speedtraining , but any regimen is good, ofcourse. Munich insists, and I'm inclined to agree, that he has found a winning and proven method here. I'm going to give it a try. Maybe he is willing to repeat it one more time here and describe exactly what he is doing and in what order and at what speed. For those who didn't follow/are confused by the comments and just to be perfectly sure that we are talking about the same. What training is not covered by CT? What is in the grand scheme of a tactic n...

. . . . To understand the grand scheme I present here it is necessary to read my  previous posts about duplo-attacks and traps. To get a complete picture you should search my blog for "duplo". I devised the following scheme of a tactic: ATTACKER Road to attacking square put your attacker on the attacking square with tempo ATTACKING SQUARE get rid of the defender of the attacking square Road to target square get rid of the defender  that is blocking the road from attacking square towards the target square TARGET SQUARE get rid of the defender of the atting square Road to target square force the target towards the target square with tempo TARGET This is the complete scheme which presents all possibilities. Of course when some of the conditions are allready forfilled, you get a much simpler scheme. If the attacker is just one move away from the attacking square and the target is a...

According to Munich and Aox one plus one equals two. If you know all the constituent parts of a combination, you will be able to find the whole combination. The constituent parts are identified as "patterns". The fact that there are only about 27 tactical elements already shows a fundamental flaw in this reasoning. With only 27 elements you would know them by heart within a few weeks or so. Since it is evident that we aren't able to solve all combinations after only a few weeks, there is more to it. If you call a combination of tactical elements a pattern, in stead of the tactical element itself, another problem emerges. If you write out a combination as 27 x 27 x 27 x 27 x 27 etc. you will find that the numbers will grow rapidly. So rapidly that you need to learn at least millions patterns by heart to cover the most. Munich and Aox work their way around this by careful selecting their problemset based on their assumed frequency of occurence in real games. Of course it ...