Temposchlucker

We just submitted for the Dutch Open Championship 2007 in Dieren . That runs from july 24 to august 2. Nine games 40/120,SD/60 swiss. Right now I'm pondering which trainingapproach would be best. I see 3 things I like to do: Blindfold/visualization. According to my own arguments blindfold chess will not improve my chess. Poor visualization skills can impede my reasoning though, so that I play below my level. Since my arguments are usually wrong, I might give it a try. Reasoning. Since my latest discovery of a technique to store patterns in LTM by conscious and painful effort, I'm pondering how that can help my reasoning. I don't know yet. I'm convinced it is possible, but I have no inspiration. Endgame strategy. Analysing my own games, I see that I have no standard endgame plans. I have done a lot at endgame technique, but I have no overview over the area. Simple plans like when I must try to trade off to an endgame with bishops of opposite color, or when must I not s...

Conscious effort is unpleasant. My board visualisation exercises gave me a clear framework consisting of diagonals. The key of the exercises is that you make a conscious effort. The automatic pilot is tabu. Conscious imagining of the details will commit these details to LTM. You can easy test if something is committed to LTM: it shows immediately in the next exercise. Don't let the brain deceive you by its brilliant trick to reconstruct instaneously what you are looking at. The difference is simple: a reconstruction fades away easy while something stored in LTM doesn't. With conscious effort you can make great progress in little time. But it isn't pleasant to make a conscious effort. It is difficult to keep the focus of attention on the right spot. It is much easier to sit back and let the automatic pilot take over. The brain is very resistant against conscious efforts. Maybe I should say lazy . I hope that things will get easier after more exercise. Fill in the details. No...

Today I thought I was a bishop I'm making a huge progress with board visualization. When I started with exercises a few days ago, I saw just one black sheet before the minds eye. While starting my exercises I saw only 10% light at the places where I imagined the lines. The image was very distorted, scattered and dark. Yesterday and today I added a new exercise. I imagine a bishop trotting over the diagonals. First from rim to rim, later criss-cross over the board. Now I see about 60% of the board, especially where the bishop is. The other edge of the board still remains in the dark. It begins to look just like an ordinary chessboard. Since I know exactly what I'm after, the exercises are much more effective. What can we make of all this? I'll try to give it a shot. The brains are very efficient. When it isn't absolutely necessary, images are not stored in the long term memory (LTM). From any subject only a few outlines are stored in the LTM. You can exactly see what is...

Still developing a strategy for complex tactical positions. There are two problems here: The positions vastly differ Within a position the complexity is caused by the sheer amount of simple motifs together with their interference. The positions vastly differ. First of all an inventory must be made of the different kind of positions. Since I only research one position per 5 days or so that will take some time. Besides that I have no idea how many different kind of positions there are, so maybe it isn't even doable. But I don't worry about that, over time I will know the answer on this. Within a position. How do you "attack" a certain position? What should be your problemsolving strategy? What questions should you ask yourself to find your way in the maze? In a position I'm pretty fast "overwhelmed" by its complexity. When there are too many things to be stored in my short term memory (STM), I just tend to get paralyzed. So I try to develop a strategy how ...

Loomis said lately that he plays better blindfoldchess when looking at an empty board. I experience the same. So that's a plea for board visualization. I have done a lot of visualisation exercises at the website of Jan Matthies years ago and at a certain moment I got a chessboard with pieces before my minds eye which I could handle just like a physical set. It only lasted for a few minutes though. So I have a reasonable idea what is needed for perfect visualisation. I don't think that the system of Jan Matthies is very efficient, although it works in the end. Further I noticed a lot of methods around the web that break up the chessboard in quadrants, which you have to put together later on. If those methods work for you, good for you! But for me that looks way too complicated. There are 3 kinds of movements on a chessboard. Straight-, diagonal- and knightmovements. Straight movements are very easy to imagine before the mind's eye, since we are used to rows and columns sin...

Today I played a blindfold game and after 40 moves I took a break during an hour. After that I continued. It proofed that I had forgotten the location of only one piece from the 16 left pieces. That was because I had not taken the last move into account. I remembered the piece at its previous location, which is some kind of interference. This means that with blindfoldchess I commit the location of the pieces in my long term memory! This reminds me of a story of GM Timman who refused to train a few young masters since they weren't able to remember their last played game without a score. I have adopted a trainings regimen for blindfold chess and board visualisation of one hour per day. I guess that the standard must be that there is no or little difference between playing with or without a board. At that moment the lack of visualization skills will no longer interfere with my chess and cost me points. Are there readers around who have experience with blindfold chess during a longer p...

Blue Devil put up this important question in his latest post. So read this as a comment on his post. Blue Devil's question was inspired by a scientific article of Gobet&Jansen 2005. Based on my latest research I belief it is possible to give a definite answer to this question. My conclusion has much in common with the article of Gobet, with one big difference though. In my latest research I found 3 different aspects of solving a position: Reasoning Seeing a series of moves in the mind's eye ("blindfold chess") Board visualization Being a patzer is for 99% caused by the fact that I suck at reasoning. I don't know how to "attack" a position. So if I want to get better at chess, this is the problem to tackle. If I can't solve a position while looking at a physical board, and allowing myself to move the pieces on a second analysis board, then I can certainly not solve it blindfolded. Because that only makes it more difficult and not less. On the ...