100 days CT streak

Today I reached a 100 day streak at Chess Tempo. Time to evaluate. When I started, my average rating was about 1650, now it is about 1750. When I quitted chess before my two year break, my end rating was somewhere between 1650 and 1700. I guess I would have reached this new average of 1750 anyhow, regardless of how I exactly train at CT. I think that it save to say, that any improvement from now on will be the direct result of my training efforts. The stage of improvement due to adaptation to the exercises is over. Any improvement from now on will be against the odds of adult chess improvement. When I reach an average of 2000, I consider my method a success, and I will be going to play chess again.

Let me be clear beforehand: I obviously have not yet found a way to improve consistently. Yet I am optimistic. It feels quite different than after a few months of salt mining. I narrowed down the goal I should head for rigorously. I would describe it as:

To improve the pattern recognition of the 18 most important tactical themes by building cues that enhance retrieval.

I tried a whole lot of different methods. None of them worked. The following idea emerged, by method of exclusion of everything else. It should start with the main idea of the combination. Before everything else, that idea must be recognized. It is always one of the 18 tactical themes that forms the basis (the clue) of the combination. All other tactical themes are just part of the preparation. They maintain the initiative. Once the main idea is found, the moves that lead to implementation of the idea, are usually found fast.

I can recognize the main tactical theme often flawless almost all the time. It only takes usually an awful lot of time. What is necessary, is to speed up the recognition of those 18 most important tactical themes. Therefore, I need to build a series of frameworks of cues.

I have gathered a database of about 100 problem position which I have failed to solve correctly within a reasonable time. I use FreeMind to toss around those problems, to categorize them from different angles of view. From an initiative viewpoint, I found the following categories (amount of puzzles between the square brackets [#] ).

Problem categories from the viewpoint of CCT

Every problem category needs its own approach. Every category needs its own framework of cues. I will start of course with the most frequent occurring failure categories. You can see that I often miss a double attack, especially when one target is not a piece, I frequently miss removal of the defender, and I often fail to find the right defense after capturing an incorrect sacrifice. These 3 categories alone are responsible for 54% of my failures.

It is no sinecure to build a framework of cues that is usable in many positions, since the combinations are so diverse. But I belief it is possible, though. I'm going to give it a try.

Building a framework