Temposchlucker

 I never know where my logic leads me beforehand. But I reckon it as my duty to follow it where ever it goes. I put my opening study to halt a few months ago, once I noticed how weak my tactics really were. Since then I suffered a few ugly defeats, especially with black. Against the Leningrad Dutch and the Accelerated Dragon, you get often some more or less obscure gambits or variations designed to avoid the main lines. When you don't know it, it is easy to go astray. Since there are quite a lot of anti Leningrad and anti Sicilian variations, It would take an awful lot of time to protect myself against these lines. Now my tactics are steadily improving, I wondered if I could find a somewhat easier set of defenses, which would take me less time to master. With the London system, I had only learned the first three moves before I dared to play it with confidence. I wondered if I couldn't find something like that with black. I think I might have found something. I can play 1. ... e...

 When I play a chess game, generally I have no I idea what I'm doing. I even took a sabbatical of 5 years from playing to find out how to change this ridiculous situation. Now I have answered the biggest questions of all, how to absorb tactical patterns and how to transfer knowledge from one position to another, there is finally some room in my head to think about positional play more seriously. Yesterday finally the penny dropped. Matters are way simpler than I thought. Positional play is about the battle of the LoA's. Period. Increase your piece activity to the max. A piece is only active when there is a target involved, or when it has an effect on the LoA landscape. Tactics can be used to reach your positional goals. The same is true for the initiative. The initiative is a threat that needs to be addressed. You make a useful move, and at the same same time, you threaten something. Your opponent must address the threat, and hopefully he can't do something useful for himse...

 The method I have invented is about absorbing mates and tactical patterns of all sorts. You noticed that I'm optimistic about it for quite some time now. Which is a good thing, since I haven't been optimistic for more than a few months after any method that I tested the past 23 years. Besides that, you might have noticed that I'm toying with the other aspects of the game lately. I have given those aspects only scarce thought so far, but now my attention is no longer divided between developing a method to get better at tactics and these other aspects, I can dive a bit deeper. I thought that absorption of positional patterns would work the same way as tactical patterns. That is not the case. It works totally different. I studied a few positional problems. What I noticed, is that there are always tactics involved. For the very reason, that tactics deliver the force which makes the execution of a plan possible. Somehow, that is a relief. I was afraid, that absorbing positional...

 I'm plugging the holes in my bucket systematically, lately. I already have plugged all mates and all basic tactics. It took me 240 days to do so. I don't know how many hours per day I study exactly, but if I estimate it on 3 hours per day, we talk about 720 hours for the basics. I'm not quite finished yet, but when I'm 20 days further, I'm probably ready. Yesterday I outplayed a 1930 player. First I won an exchange, then I could convert it into a whole rook for two pawns. In the endgame I made a blunder in time trouble. Which is of course a bit sour after playing for four hours so well. The basic mates and tactics are enough to outplay 1950m players on a regular base. But there are other holes in my bucket that make me still drop points against them. I don't worry too much about the holes in my bucket. Like openings and endgames. It is more important to work systematically. I register all holes and will plug them in due time. The next steps are advanced tactics...

The ongoing concern My work for the coming year is exactly defined. Absorbing the mates, the basic tactics and the advanced tactics. I would be very surprised when that doesn't get me beyond a rating of 2000. But I can't help to muse about "what's next?". Piece activity  AlphaZero showed the world, that piece activity is the nec plus ultra in chess. My considerations about lines of attack and sitting ducks is an important refinement of that idea. It gives a much more precise definition of what piece activity is. Piece activity must always be considered in relation to a concrete target. No target, no piece activity. What I like about the theory of lines of attack, is that it gives concrete guidance on how to judge a move, by judging its effect on the line of attack. More about sitting ducks The slow moving pieces like the king and the pawns are the natural targets of the chess game, I said. They are the potential sitting ducks of the game. They are easy to fixate, ...

 I'm reading "the art of attack" of Vukovic again lately. An attack on the king seems to be a combination that is flexible. You mate the king OR you gain some wood OR you get a favourable endgame. There is a lot to say about preparation, provocation and preconditions in connection to an attack. But for sure you need to develop an eye for lines of attack. Black to move. Which LoA's do you see? r3k2r/p1p1qppp/b1p2n2/3p4/1bP5/1PNQ2P1/P3PPBP/R1B1K2R b KQkq - 0 1 Black to move. Bb4 => Ke1 Black to move. Bb4 => c3 => Ra1 Black to move. Qe7 => Ke1 Black to move. Ba6 => e2 Black to move. Pawn d5 => d4 => Nc3 Black to move. Ra8 => d8 => Qd3 Only if you are aware of the 5 lines of attack, you can SEE how dangerous this position is. The lines of attack describe the route from attacker to target, via pivotal points, if any. Further you can see the following pins: e2, Nc3 and c4 are pinned. The white queen is overloaded, since it must defend e2, Nc3 and ...

The current job  My work for the next year is cut out for me. First I must master the basic tactics, then I must master the advanced tactics. I have let grandmasters do the job of gathering the exact right positions for me. The work is simply to train every day, first building the basics, and then slowly extend on the basics, while repeating the basics from time to time. Openings In the build up to the tournaments I played this summer, I consciously accepted a few holes. I have three new openings in my repertoire, and I totally abandoned all opening preparations. Of course this will lead, and has already led to some weird early losses. For the coming year, I simply accept that, for a few reasons. The first is that I can only spend my time once, and I must plug the biggest holes first. The second is that I have a philosophy about openings, that when I decide to plug the holes related to the openings, I will do so with a minimum amount of effort. I expect tactics to become my forte, ...

  Rules are the language of system 2. Symbols are the language of system 1. The sign above shows a deer crossing the road. The deer stands symbol for "any wildlife". It means that you can expect mooses or swines too. The symbol is a summarization of all wildlife. All wildlife is the generalization of the deer. For tactics, we need a database with symbols. A position can act as a symbol. The position is a summarization of all positions with similar tactics. What we must learn to do during study time, is to summarize the combination into a single symbol. Having faith that system 1 is perfectly capable to recognize similar positions "in the wild". Thus generalizing a single instance into "all similar combinations". In fact, you can expect anything to cross the road.

 The human mind is very economical with its resources. In stead of working with a perfect copy in the mind which represent an object, it works with the essence of that very object. An object is summarized as it were to its essential functions. If you imagine a coffee machine before your minds eye, you don't see a detailed copy of it. In stead you see the rough contours, the idea of a container for the water, the placeholder for the filter, the can for catching the coffee, the heat element and some kind of control panel. You don't see any details, but you know what each function does. So you can talk with anyone about it, and you both will understand what you are talking about. If you take a chess position with a tactical combination, and you close your eyes, the same happens. You don't see the the details of the board or the pieces, but you see the roles they are playing. And you can perfectly manipulate the essence of the pieces and the board, without the need to see any d...