Sunday, October 10, 2010

Chess Tactics For Intermediate Players 1st Mini-Circle Complete

Chess Tactics For Intermediate Players (level 1600-1799):
79% success rate from 143 puzzles (I excluded endgames).

Sunday, October 3, 2010

Took some time Off! :)

I caught some mild virus last week and was not in the mood to study.  Due to laziness I played >40 5-min games on ICC.  My rating went from 1411 to ~1300 and back up to 1432.  I attribute the downlide to the virus.  I still feel very rusty and keep dropping Queens. Playing blitz does not noticeably remove my rustiness (have not played in 2 years).  Basically, I need to stay from ICC and focus on learning.

Sunday, September 26, 2010

Searching For A Perfect Training Set

I believe there is no way around tactical drills but the level of difficulty has to be appropriate: exclude too easy and too difficult problems. My approach right now is to aim for tactical sets where I am able to solve 75-80%.  Once the set is completed it goes into storage to be returned to later in circle2.
Right now, for circle2 i am considering only doing erroneous puzzlez from circle1 to save some time. I may repeat the whole set for circle3.

Not sure, how many circles i will go through. I am considering "retiring" the set once a certain level of performance is achieved (~95%?). Once the circles1+2 are comleted for set1 I will move to set2 where again I can solve 75-80%. I will probably have to oscillate between various software (CT-ART, Chess Blunders, Tactics for Intermediate, etc). I don't expect to be progressing so quickly as to be ready for the next level of CT-ART after solving ~200 puzzles from the previous level. Examples of my search for suitable tactics sets:
Encyclopedia of Chess Blunders, level 1400-1700, 83/553 puzzles tried, 87% success - need to go one level up.
CT-ART, level 1800-2000, 121/221 puzzle tried, 74% success - good for circle1 (maybe will use as set2 in circle1)
Tactics for Intermediates, level 1600-1799 (mates) 41/63 tried, 78% success (will use for circle1 set1)
current 5-min rating on ICC 1411 (still very slow and rusty)

Saturday, September 25, 2010

About Me

About me: My goal is to reach 2200 Elo Fide by the time I am 60 (preferably sooner).  I am in my late 30s and I don't have much time to spend on chess. Therefore, my study plan needs to be both flexible and efficient. I will be mainly using chess training software from Convekta.

According to the chess trainer Irina Mikhailova practicing with the software from Convekta can make huge contribution to chess improvement of even >2200 elo players http://www.convekta.com/softscho/l1/lesson_3.html .Therefore, the choice of the software is clear.

Now what's the most efficient way of training? I will be working on my study plan as I go along. I have learned about chess improvement via my own experience. Also I have been reading what's available online including many excellent blogs of players trying to replicate Michael De La Maza's results http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_De_La_Maza .

My immediate plan is to focus on my main weakness - tactics!

Friday, September 24, 2010

Some Old and Current Performance Results from CT-ART

I have located my old CT-ART files from ~5 years ago. At that time I finished levels 10 and 20 (together) twice. This corresponds to tactics difficulty 1600-1800.
Success rate for Level 10 and 20 (combined):
circle I: 85%
circle II: 93%

current results:
circle III: 90% (119 out of 400 tactics done).  Looks like I have not lost much or at least it is coming back fairly quickly as I am going through more puzzles.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Hello Chess World!

Welcome to my Chess Progress Blog!

Here I will document my treacherous path to becoming a Chess Master.  I estimate my rating ~1700 OTB. I actually have not played a long OTB game in >10 years.  In fact, I have not played many blitz games in the last couple of years.  I am just getting back to chess and I am still rusty. My current ICC 5-min rating ~1400 after ~50 games. I will use my ICC 5-min rating as a ruler of my progress. I am a slow thinker and I am a stronger player in longer games, but I don't have the time to play them.  I think if my blitz rating shows an improvement my strength at longer time control should improve as well.

Right now the plan is to solve tactical puzzles and to play on ICC occasionally to monitor my progress.