Temposchlucker

When a task cannot be improved in speed, it is usually due to the fact that it is too complex. We have to decompose these tasks in more simple subtasks, and see if we can make exercises for them. In order to improve in FAC (Find All Checks), I trained the subtasks for which we already have exercises. I managed to improve those to 35 correct clicks per minute, which I consider good enough, for the moment. One exercise causes me trouble though: FAC with No Queens. I improved from 20 to 25 cpm, but since then I'm plateauing for two days. In the last session I wrote down what costs me time: Switching to the next position Switching to the other colour Switching from one piece to another Checks with pawns are overlooked Checking with a piece that turns out to be pinned One check with the bishop is overlooked while the other is not Checks by taking a piece are overlooked Checks by pawn takes pawn are overlooked Discovered checks are overlooked when the front piece is a pawn ...

There are of course a whole bunch of subtasks we can think of. Subtasks of the 1st order, the 2nd order etcetera. But can we get some order in the chaos? I will give it a try. Tactics consist for an important part of the combination of 4 elements and 4 actions. Elements: Attacker Attacking square Target Defender Actions: Attack Restrain Block Protect Sorry Dan, I'm not ready to use your terminology. The subtasks of the first order are related to the direct attack. Direct attack  The following subtasks spring to mind: Identify the attackers Identify the targets Identify the pieces that can block the attack Identify the escape squares Identify the protectors (of the target) All these subtasks are directly related to the attacker and the target. So I categorize them in the subtasks of the first order. I don't know beforehand whether such categorisation will proof to be useful, but we will see about that. The subtasks of the second order are ...

  Latest update:  2016, august 11 This table contains the results of people who do the exercises (AKA the salt mines) listed in my sidebar. The results are registered in "average correct clicks per minute". If you want your results to be on this list, apply them via the comments. This list is added to my sidebar. The initial result is the first stable result after you have adapted to the exercise, screen layout, method of clicking and so on. Usually after a few hundred exercises. The current result is what you can maintain over a longer period of time, after some serious salt mining. In the beginning, it will be the same as your initial result. Tempo Tomasz Aox Lain Munich Init-curr Init-curr Init-Curr Init-Curr Init-Curr Init-Curr Find all attackers 6 18 50 50 ?? 44 20 56 Find all defended pieces 7 18 84 84 ?? 52 15 57 FAC (Find all checks) 11 20 33 42...

After doing the following exercises: Find all checks BLACK K+P ONLY Find all checks BLACK K+WHITE N ONLY Find all checks BLACK K+WHITE Q ONLY Find all checks BLACK KING ONLY  and improving them to more than 35 CPM, I was quite a bit surprised to notice that I still struggled with FAC No Queens. All the problem causing pieces like queen and knight are mastered, so why would the simple pieces like rook, bishop and pawn cause any trouble? Find all checks for black and white  It is the sheer fact that I must shift my attention from piece to piece, and from black to white, which takes time. Every move has a little detail that disrupt a fluent processing. Rook h4 can take h5 with check but not e4 Bishop a3 can give check on d6 but not b2 since it is blocked there Knight d2 has two unequal checks since one of them is a capture Pawn moves like f4+ have a tendency to be overlooked. The result being a disruption of thought due to tiny details, counting up to a quan...

When you filter the M1-h position so that you keep only the positions with white pieces, you get the kind of positions as in the diagram. I think these are perfectly suited for the training of piece aura vision. White to mate in one I'm further breaking down the M1-h dataset in subsets like White has at least one pinned piece which for that reason cannot deliver mate. White has at least one piece that can't deliver mate because the checking square is protected White can at least give one check that can be blocked by a black piece White has at least one piece that creates an escape square for the black king when giving check The properties of these subsets are mutually exclusive, so that you can train the distinctive subtasks in isolation.

Yesterday I wrote a computer program that creates a new "database" of positions from the M1-h positions "database" by filtering them. The positions with only white pieces and maybe a few black pawns are selected. This means that black most of the time cannot interfere the mate. Neither with a protected attacking square, nor with a black piece that can be used to interpose the check. The cage around the black king is build from the aura of the white pieces. It took me just about an hour or two to write it. It works like a charm. But then I tried to upload it to the cloud, so that you guys can use it too. I saw that Aox used google drive, so I tried to publish it with onedrive. That was stupid of course, my memory failed me there. The documentation of onedrive is so crystal clear, that it took me a few ours to find out that it wasn't possible there. When I finally discovered my mistake, I tried to publish the program on google drive, but after reading their crysta...

The four chess basics are: Attack Restrain Block Protect For improvement, two elements play a role, skill and condensed knowledge. Skill is something that can become better by just exercise it automatic and unconscious, “like a madman”/Troyis-style. Skill is about manipulating the pieces and the squares in the mind. Thinking is a slow conscious process which can yield knowledge. To make knowledge accessible in a practical way, it has to be “ready knowledge”. For chess, the most practical way to express knowledge is a diagram, complete with arrows and colored squares, if needed. I will use the term geometrical pattern, although that might not be quite correct technically. By learning these geometrical patterns by heart, they will become available for direct use. When your progress is stalling at a certain exercise, you can go in two ways. Either you try to acquire more condensed knowledge, or you look for more basic skills. The stalling itself means that your skill f...

I haven't exactly kept a diary, but from my memory this is what happened when I started with M1-h: day 1: Improvement from 1 to 4 mates/minute (doing several hundreds exercises) day 2-10: Plateauing at 4 mates per minute (doing several hundreds exercises per day) day 11-14: Switch to FAC. Improvement from 12 to 15 mates per minute at FAC. day 15: Switch to M1-h again. Improvement  to 7 mates per minute. If we look at day 1 as adaptation to the exercise and the board, we might decide to ignore the improvement made that day. In that case we might say that the improvement at M1-h is solely due to doing FAC. It is too premature to draw any definite conclusions already of course, but the facts are intriguing. This is a comment made by Anon this day: I started with M1-h first (because back then M1-e was not available). It was pretty difficult, and not much fun, either. Then (when it became available) I did M1-e for a while. I could improve ~20% in speed here. Then I tried ...

SEE UPDATE AT THE END!! When looking for all checks during the FAC (Find All Checks) exercise, it can be quite annoying when you have to find 8 checks, and you can only find 7 of them. Your average starts to nosedive, while your frustration hits the ceiling. The rook, bishop and knight are easy to check. They each can give check in maximum two different ways. White to give check The problem piece here is the queen, which can give check in 9 different ways, at maximum. That is because the queen can move like a rook or bishop, and can give check like a rook or bishop, in all combinations. It is easy to overlook a check, especially when the board is crammed with pieces, the checks are far apart, and/or you have to take a black piece that is heavily protected. Here is a system you might try to adopt. By dividing the 9 possible checks in 3 sets of 3 checks, it all becomes more manageable. When the queen and the king are on adjacent files, there are 3 squares next to the king, w...

I'm training "Find all checks" (FAC) lately. How could I have sunken so low? It all started with the analysis of my errors with tactical improvement. That brought to light that there are two main area's of improvement. The first is that I loose a lot of time with useless activities. I calculated that I can speed up about 6x when I am able to cut that specific waste of time. Inventing and internalizing a thought process would discipline the mind, and do exactly that: cut the waste of time. The second weakness I noticed, is in the visualization-II of future positions. Before I start working on my thought process, I want to find out if I can improve in the visualization-II of future positions. I found that this visualization leaned heavily on a certain set of subtasks. The adage being "you have to have perfect vision of the current position first, before you can improve at the future positions". And so I happened to arrive at mate in one, in an attempt to ...

In the pursuit of a universally usable thought process (TP), the following categories can be identified: Control beforehand. Looking for inspiration. Control afterwards. I use the term "control" in stead of "checks" to avoid confusion with "giving check". I like to keep the TP as minimalistic as possible. It makes no sense to cover every exotic idea you can think of. The goal of a TP must be simplifying a complex position. The idea is, that as much as possible, the TP must be automated. That implicates that steps that can be envisioned as a picture are preferred. I formulate the steps as questions, you need to interrogate the position for answers. Control beforehand. Is my king in check?    In an OTB game, this step can be skipped. Since if you don't know that your king is in check, you might be better off when seeking a hobby that suits you more. Although in time trouble, you see sometimes that kings are checked without both players noti...