Temposchlucker

The past few days I have played about 85 blitz games (G/10) in order to find out if I could use blitz play to train my scan habits. Allthough I resolved to scan before every single game, I didn't manage to actually do so during the game. With 10 minutes there is so little time that I can only work on my usual autopilot, in trial and error mode. I just forget to scan. So alas blitz play isn't suitable to train scan habits. Since you play on autopilot, habits are paramount in blitz. That makes it an ideal method to test your scan habits. Despite my scan training the past month ( DaBattPinOlC ) my blitz rating hasn't improved. Maybe I have to admit that Phaedrus and DLM are right, and is transfer from training to OTB a separate problem alltogether. I hoped that my approach would work around this, but obviously that hope turned out to be in vain. It's a pity, because I like to play blitz.

The program of Mike Anderson is the best way by far to do the concentric circles. It helps to see a double attack or a skewer within no time (1.7 seconds/5 days). I get more and more convinced that being able to do these simple elementary tasks at lightning speed is the root of more complex skills. Just as Troyis was an ideal program to learn to move the knight in a limited space. Concern. The main concern of this kind of programs is: is the learned skill important, fruitfull and sufficiently common. In the case of the concentric circles it is, in the case of Troyis it isn't. Maurice Ashley has made a CD with a lot of this kind of exercises (Maurice Ashley teaches chess). Those exercises are excellent for novices. For more seasoned players those exercises don't meet our major concern though. I found out that with a little discipline it is possible to transform those too simple exercises. Take for instance the following escape exercise. You have to move the white knight while t...

In my previous post I arrived at the conclusion that I had no adequate scans for knightforks and for prelimanary moves. The diagram below shows that point quite well. There is a knightfork possible on f6, but both the white knight and the targets aren't in place yet (K on h7 and Q on e8). Some prelimanary moves are needed to get the job done. White to move But how do you train for such invisible knightforks? The prelimanary moves can be found by thinking, once the pattern of the fork is recognized. The prelimanry moves don't seem to be the problem. But how do you know which virtual fork has good chances to bear fruit? How to scan for this?

Speeding up Glenn Wilson drawed our attention to the nifty program of Mike Anderson . Since I experienced trouble with my double attack-scan I decided to use his program. The scan for double attacks is quite time consuming and so far I haven't seen hardly any habit forming to speed things up or to make it easier. It is a compound scan and maybe it works better to train the constituent parts seperately. To that end I'm experimenting with Mike's great little program. The program is based on the microdrills of DLM. Let me demonstrate. White to place a queen. The problem is where you should place a white queen in order to attack both targets simultaneously in a way that you win the rook. To solve this you need to scan for the following: where do the diagonals which radiate from the rook intersect with the lines that radiate from the king? can you skewer? can the rook intercept the check? (that's why the queen can't stand on b3 in the diagram) can the king protect the ...

Lurking dangers After a few years of conscientious blogging about chess only I hope you don't mind some off topic rant. I have been thinking a lot about the phenomenon confirmation bias lately. It is very worthwhile to read the article of Wiki aboout this. If you want something to be true, you ignore reality and you only see what confirms your ideas. There is a sort of buffering what excludes non confirming ideas from entering alltogether. [Wiki] The effect is also known as belief bias, belief preservation, belief overkill, hypothesis locking, polarization effect, positive bias, the Tolstoy syndrome, selective thinking, myside bias, Plate pick-up and Morton's demon. Alternately, Murphy's Law of Research dictates that "Enough research will tend to support your theory." [/Wiki] A few years ago Margriet and I stayed at a chess camping in France . There was a guy from Belgium. In Belgium they have a language border. Everybody who is not from Belgium cannot imagine w...

Hard to spot. State of affairs of the tactical scans. I have done about 300 masterlevel problems. The paralyzing stalling of the brain hasn't occurred anymore due to the scans. That is a big plus. I was pleasantly surprised by my pace and my accuracy. Some scans are difficult, some are easy and already start to become a habit. Double attacks. This is a difficult scan since there are often multiple possibilities which have to be examined. Further you need two targets at fork distance, but the targets aren't necessary already in place. Sometimes a preliminary move or trade is necessary. Besides that, an empty square can be a target too. Batteries. This is an easy scan. Both real and potential batteries are now recognized within seconds. Pins/skewers. This is an easy scan too, which I already am able to do in a few seconds. I discovered that there is a sort of "semi-pin". Usually that concerns the pawns that are in front of the opponents king. The aren't directly pin...

Confusion. . . In order not to confuse you I had better not written this post. It is about a nagging idea which I can't get rid of, so in order to set me free I share it. Sorry, I don't mean to disturb you. I'm completely happy with the scanmethods that I described in previous posts. And that is what I am training right now. In fact the method is a form of extended microdrills, with more practical value added. The idea that I can't help thinking about might not be possible or practical at all. Yet there is a certain theoretical beauty in it that causes me to think about it. The scan methods as described are useful in any position. I mean that you can break in in the middle of a game and start the diagnosis with these scans. It is quite useful to be able to do that. But that is not how we play. We play move by move, which means that theoreticly we can diagnose the game in a cumulative way. In order to do that, all consequences of a single move must be seen. That is quite...