Temposchlucker

 I always have suspected that De La Maza left out some crucial information in his articles. Not on purpose, but because he didn't know it. Or didn't deem it as important. After 15 years of investigation, I think that I know what that missing information is. Or at least a part of it. When De La Maza did his circles way back, he did something accidentally right. He educated his system 1 (subconscious thinking). His articles and book were based on his interpretation of what happened by his system 2 (conscious thinking). And system 2 (conscious thinking) has no clue of  how to educate your system 1 (subconscious thinking). So his story was actually based on a misinterpretation of something that happened to system 1 (subconscious thinking), and which accidently yielded results. Nobody of the Knights Errant has been able to come even remotely close to his results. That isn't a surprise, since we were guided by the concoctions of his system 2 (conscious thinking). And system 2 (co...

 A pawn wants promotion. It wants to queen. That clarifies its "wanderlust". The pawn opens and closes lines of attack while moving forward. diagram 1 red lines: blocked lines of attack green lines: opened lines of attack red squares: weakened squares (lines of attack for the knight) That's how pawns shape the LoA landscape.

 What should be the base of a plan when there are no targets yet? There are no points of pressure (PoP's), since there are no targets There is little function (Fun) since the pieces are too volatile Even the lines of attack (LoA's) are just lines yet without targets There can be no duplo attack because there are no targets Well, there's always at least one target: the king. A plan should be based on the pawns. Pawns form the landscape of the battle. They can open and close the lines. Thus preparing the future lines of attack (LoA's). The piece moves should be based on the pawn landscape. We must add chance to the equation. Where do my pieces have the greatest chance to have a decisive role later on in the game? The paramount feature is: the center. Hence the value of a piece should be estimated by its influence on the center. Open lines and diagonals are shaped by pawn moves. Our pieces should be placed "elastic", since you never can be sure beforehand which l...

 Chess prowess succumbs to good advice. This blog is a monument that tributes to that adage. I have been floundering knee deep in the good advice all along. Luckily is Logic destructive by its very nature. You can use it to chip off the nonsense from the useful. After 20 years of chiseling, I finally have found a few leftovers that are useful. My mind is freed from the tons of debris that continuously filled the few mental slots that form my Short Term Memory. Finally I know where to start thinking. I'm very excited about that! I'm no longer overwhelmed by the myriads of possibilities which useless good advice forced me to reckon with. Take for instance this little piece of silliness: "if you find a good move look for a better one" . You don't want to know how many games I lost due to time trouble as a result of this idea. Chess is a fuzzy game for the human mind. We must abandon the idea of the best move. We are not able to find it, and when we have found somethi...

 I'm halfway my session of 150 days in a row tactical training according my newly developed method which took me 20 years to devise. From the 75 days in a row that I have under my belt now, I spent 52 days with solving and memorizing 500 tactical puzzles. I spent the last 23 days with educating my system I (the unconscious brain). What is happening? I forget the move sequences of the solutions of the 500 tactical problems I start to see the solutions instead. When I think about a problem I am surprised that the clock ticks much slower (about a factor 5) I have way more overview in my head I feel that system I is working miracles the past 23 days Of course these are just feelings , which are subjective by definition. But have a bit patience, after another 75 days, mr. Elo will be the judge. I'm optimistic.

 I always have been surprised that I wasn't able to apply my usual logical reasoning to chess. While in normal life my logical reasoning is able to handle pretty complex situations, in chess my brains seem to stall almost immediately. The mystery why that is has been solved, now. I used to play chess like a moron. My mind felt always easily overwhelmed by the complexity of a position. I never had a clue what I was doing or trying to accomplish whatsoever. Since a year or two, the development of my tactical training method has been finished. The test of the method with myself as Guinee pig has remained inactive for a long time due to the health issues of Margriet. What I have done the past two years, though, is reading about the middlegame. As a result, I begin to know what I should try to accomplish in the middlegame. If you don't know what you are looking for, then you don't know when you have found it. That was the reason that I always have been in time trouble during a g...