Temposchlucker

 The biggest hurdle with building tactical prowess, is the unawareness of the simple. We know all tactical themes well, or motifs, or whatever we call it. For the non native English speaking folks: a motif and a motive are different things. By knowing the motif, we are unaware of the fact that our knowledge is rather superficial. We recognize a pin when we see one, but the implications of a pin are only theoretically known. If we are lucky, we can drum up the possible ways to exploit it. But since that is a system II activity, we are already 30 seconds further on the clock. Seeing the ramifications of a pin, is a whole different animal. I have learned 500 tactical positions by heart, but only now I try to dive a bit deeper into these positions, the details of the positions emerge. It is better to know 500 positions thoroughly, than 1000 positions superficially. With hindsight, 500 is way to much. Chop it up in chunks of 75. We talked about that before. And I did do that. What I didn

Update: I trained 51 days in a row I use a set of 500 themed problems from Chess Tempo I score above 95% According to Chess Tempo it took me 19 hours I estimate that painting squares and arrows took me twice the time That's where I am after 60 training hours. In stead of continuing with the next problem set of 500 themed problems, I'm going to deepen my knowledge of the 500 problems I have already done. Quality above quantity. After all, the experiment is about transfer. Transferring skill gained from the 500 problems to any tactical problem. There is some transfer, but not as much as we need. I suppose that that is because so far, the training has mainly been an intellectual exercise. And knowledge doesn't transfer very well. I intend to take the familiarization of the new patterns I learned from the 500 set to the next level. Learn them by heart. Scoring 100% a tempo. Seeking the similarities between positions. Diving more deeply into the characteristics. If the study of

 Just a few random examples from the series with discovered attack. Green square = target <i>point of pressure</i>) Yellow square = attacking square <i>point of pressure</i> Red square = piece with a <i>function</i> Yellow arrow = <i>line of attack</i> Diagram 1 white to move Diagram 2 white to move Diagram 3 white to move Diagram 4 white to move Diagram 5 white to move Diagram 6 black to move

I was dabbling around for a new opening against 1. e4. I have tried a lot in the past: Alekhine defense Scandinavian Marshall gambit Sicilian Najdorf Sicilian Pelican French defense Caro Kan Black Lion Queens Indian Polish defense Benoni Benko gambit Pirc Modern defense Petroff defense Albin counter gambit All had their function at one moment in time. But now I'm changing my style from tactical to positional, I need a decent opening that don't get me mated before move 25. And I seem to have found just that in the Hyper Accelerated Dragon (HAD)! I'm going to give it a serious try. Maybe I'm going to add the Sniper to my repertoire, which is inspired by the HAD, and suitable for a lot of other first moves.