Opening Worries

Learning Opening Theory is not on my agenda. There are too many other leaks in my game to work on. Still, it is hard to totally ignore chess openings. One of my chess dreams is to come up with a low maintenance opening repertoire that would keep me comfortable in the opening phase of the game. It would be so much better if I also would enjoy playing the repertoire.

The biggest problem is to figure out what to choose as Black. I have really enjoyed reading about Katar’s view of things but the Scandinavian is just not my cup of tea.

Any suggestions?

(Hey, I just learned how to include pictures!)

Nimzowitsch Revisited!

It is time to have a serious look at Nimzo'z Classic Book. Yeah, Tactics is Meat and Potatoes but you need some other nutriments as well!

Measures of improvement

To review your own games is excellent training. I like to look back at old games to get a better understanding of my improvement. Recently, I started to create a “Top 5 list” of all my OTB (“Over-the-Board”) games. I think such a list might be useful as a measure of your improvement. How? Well, one idea is to set goals such as: “At least one of my next ten games should make it into my Top 5 List”

Rating Improvement is of course a simply measure of improvement but the thing is that you can play the best chess of your life without winning a single game! The Top 5 List does not necessarily consist of won games.

Please note that making in into the Top 5 List is quite demanding if you have played a lot of games. A simple but crude estimate of the chance for a single game to make it into the list is “5/N”, where N = the total number of your games from where the Top 5 is created

Tactics Trainer is my Friend! A Generous Friend!

I just bumped my All Time High at the Chess.com Tactics Trainer a bit. It is a Great Site but all ratings seem to be bloated. My personal best at the tactics Trainer is 2000+ and I am nowhere near that good OTB.

Endgames!

Will I ever get those simple endgames into my head? I saw this one at www.beginchess.com and it is rather frustrating! "Distant Opposition" as in "the kings forming a square on the board where all corners have the same color" is just alien to me. What am I missing?