Temposchlucker

The hypothesis. The hypothesis I'm working on right now can be summarized as: After you reach a certain level, improvement in chess can be achieved mainly by pattern recognition. What does that say, a certain level? That's the plateau where people are stalling after initial growth. When you haven't reached that level yet, probably anything will cause you to improve. A list of facts that need clarification. There are a lot of facts that need clarification. A lot of these questions seem to point in the direction of this hypothesis. That's why this hypothesis has evolved in the first place. I have tried to geather a list of these facts/questions. On a lot of these items we have posted before. So sorry for doubles The former French blitz champion. I had the honour to play a lot of games with this guy. He had drunk about a whole bottle of red wine. During the games he was talking to another guy. So he paid hardly any attention to the game. But he beated me game after game. W...

The past 8 years I tried a lot of methods to help me to improve. The main flaw of these methods was that my rating wasn't influenced a bit by any of them. Except for the tactical training which helped me gain 200 points. I strongly reject the idea that that improvement was the cumulative effect of all the training before. I'm sure that is not the case. In the years before I started with tactical training, I gained simply no point at all. Beside the main flaw, gaining no rating, a few remarks can be made by every method. This maybe helps to infer why the methods didn't work To study openings. At my level the opening proved to have little influence on the outcome of the game. It made the start of the game easier, but I kept losing from guys I usually lose from, and I kept winning from guys I usually win from. To study positional play. This is exactly how DLM describes it. I deepened my insight of the game, but I had no skills to do what I know I have to do. Positional knowled...

Ever since somebody lyed to me about the very existence of Santa Claus, I decided to take nothing for granted anymore. So if someone is telling me something, it is stored internally in a file "unverified". Only after I checked the facts myself it is relocated to the file "true according to known facts" or "false according to known facts". At a later stage relocating between true and false can take place when new facts become known. At that stage doubt is unnecessary. I just flick between files whenever new facts arrive. This attitude towards the things people are telling you has upsides and downsides. On the upside: Nobody can easily cheat me. I don't spend energy at good advice which isn't verified by the advicer. It is simply unbelievable how many people are stuffed to the eyeballs with good advice which they haven't checked or live by themselves. You can spent your whole life following such advice without coming a millimeter further. ...

Things start to become interesting. Today I played a few games at FICS to test if my skills are growing. I didn't do too well. Allthough 4 games is too little to draw conclusions, I didn't feel "muscled". Doing a tremendous effort, it would be nice if "something" happened. But there is no proof that anything is working at all. So the faith in my own reasoning is put to the test. Usually at this stage of an experiment flaws you couldn't even imagine before show itself. But no flaws become apparent. Except one: nothing happens! And that needs to be clarified. At this moment I can see only two explanations for this phenomenon. First explanation: De la Maza is wrong. Prof. de Groot is wrong. Tactical training doesn't work. Doing zillions of tactical problems is as usefull to chess improvement as solving crossword puzzles. Chess skills are innate. I will be a patzer the rest of my life. Second explanation: Pattern recognition is the ONLY way to improve at...

Today I'm halfway the 7 circles with 35,000 done of 70,000 I'm starting to recognize the problems. That doesn't mean that I remember always the solution, but that I realize "hey, I've seen this one before." I have done some counting and 32 % of the problems look familiar. The rating stays level but the succesrate has crawled up with 0.9 % to 79.9 % ! I just can't force myself to gamble so I take my time with every problem. 26 % of the problems are solved by pattern recognition alone. The same in other words: From the 10,000 problems in the problemwindow: 3,200 problems look familiar 2,600 patterns are stored in my system 5,400 problems I have to calculate 2,000 problems make me fail. An increase of 0.9 % in succesrate means that I solve 90 problems more than before. CTS circle 0: 1470 circle 1: 1500 circle 2: 1520 circle 3: 1520 circle 4: 35,100 /70,000 Highest rating 1567

How is it to live 6 meters below sealevel? The above picture give you an idea what we are talking about. The main idea is that you pump out the water faster than it oozes in. To that extend we have 4 pumpstations. One of them you see below. As you can see it has four pumps. The total capacity of one pumpstation is 2000 cubic meters per minute. That's enough to keep our feets dry. We have a mobile reserve of 5 times what is needed. Each pumpstation has 3 sources of energy: gas, diesel and electricity. The pumps are so well engineered that they haven't failed even one hour sinds they started to work in 1956. The idea is that they keep working when you need them. Our polder is surrounded by dikes. Each dike has a height that it can withstand a combination of high water and a superstorm which can occur once per 4096 year. If the dike leaks, you can put your thumb in it. If the hole is less than 60 meters, you can put a ship in it. I'm glad we have no hurricanes here. Otherwise ...

I'm the #1 at CTS until tomorrow overtakes me at the end of the week!! #1 in activity that is. With 33,712 problems solved. The weird thing is that I have the FEELING that it goes better and better every day at CTS, while my rating doesn't show that. That has everything to do with the fact that it is impossible to me to speed up. I just MUST take my time. So I have more answers correct, but not faster. Hence my succesrate steadily increases. But that doesn't look as spectacular as rating improvement. I'm about halfway the 7 circles now. In earlier efforts that was the point where calculation gradually is replaced by pattern recognition. I'm curious if the same will happen with such huge amount of problems as we have here. When pattern recognition takes over, speeding up must be the result. I'm VERY curious.