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Showing posts from December, 2018

Mini skills

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I'm investigating all problems I published the past two years. The advantage of that is, that a lot of work has already been done by system II. I identified the following mini skills lacking or not working at full potential: recognition of the targets of a duplo attack recognition of the attackers in a discovered attack or simultaneous attack recognition of a B.A.D. piece recognition of an additional punch I estimate that a deeper scrutiny of these positions will unearth about 10 mini skills in total that devour our precious time because they are not fully automated. Besides that, a few new patterns will be found. Mainly related to tempo usage. For instance the "shoot out" position where two pieces stand opposite each other. Who will shoot first? I'm going to train these mini skills separately. I will use the problems of Chess Tempo in blitz mode  to train them. Mini skills

Taking up chess again

After five years of absence, I have been to the club again. I intend to pick up playing regularly again. I have decided to learn a new opening repertoire to refresh my look on the game. I have played the polar bear for years, but I had always troubles with the diagonal a7 g1. When black takes an early control over that diagonal I don't trust the position. I decided to take up the London system. I really think that opening has been waiting for me all along. I ordered a book to get me started. Further I discovered the videos of ginger_gm (hat tip to Aox) and I really like how he treats the London. I think this might be the system for me to play the rest of my life. Its perfectly suited for my temperament. And what is more, I understand what I try to accomplish in the opening, for the first time. Well, that's not quite true. I did understand the polar bear reasonably well,  but I always had the feeling that the positions tended to be a bit too overstretched to my liking. For b

System I, talk to me!

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Originally posted on April 15, 2017 and September 23, 2018 Once you know what a position is about, verbally, with system II completely satisfied, the question arises "Now what? What needs system I to absorb from the diagram that is reusable for other positions? How does such absorption get triggered?" In order to find out, I rework my old diagrams. Usually, my system II is already finished with them after hours spending on it in the past. So I can have a fresh look at the position with the above questions in mind. One thing I noticed, is that a position as below made me feel uncomfortable. When the mind does what it usually does, then the job is easy. But trying something new with this position was definitely out of my comfort zone. I noticed that because my mind was continuously distracted by silly tasks like checking my e-mail and looking up what is on the television tonight et cetera. It took me days actually before I was ready to dive somewhat deeper into it. Since

How to communicate with system I ?

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The narrative is the glue that binds the moves together as a chunk. But what is needed to activate system I to work its magic? Since a narrative is a verbal exercise of system II, and system I doesn't understand a word of it. When you solve an exercise, you make use of a narrative to keep you on track. That is already an advantage in comparison to trial and error at random. But I'm pretty sure there is something we should do after system II has build the initial narrative. How does system I learn to handle the brakes when entering a curve? It has been said that it works by means of feedback. A gentle feeling of success when things go right and a feeling of awkwardness when things go wrong seems to impress the right motion into system I. Nobody gets tempted to learn how to handle a curve with system II. Albeit it all starts with a verbal instruction the first few times. But how does that translate to chess? Black to move  6k1/2n4p/pp1p2pb/2pP1p1q/P3rP2/1RP2RPP/1P

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