The Final Exam

Here are the final verdict after working my way through Igor Khmelnitsky's fine book.

The overall score (1446) is probably fairly accurate. My Chess Buddies at the office are both rated 1550ish and I feel half a step behind those guys.

I am still surprised by my crappy Tactics Score. Well, I just need to keep "finding those forks" on a daily basis.

Category	Score	%	ELO
Overall	280	46.6%	1446
Middlegame	158	41.6%	1372
Endgame	122	55.5%	1698
Calculation	83	46.1%	1552
Strategy	92	57.5%	1668
Tactics	105	40.4%	1274
Attack	81	50.6%	1366
Counterattack	99	49.5%	1470
Defense	100	41.7%	1609
You are Better	133	60.5%	1640
Equal	96	43.6%	1359
You are Worse	51	31.9%	1270
No Sacrifice	161	57.5%	1656
Sacrifice	119	37.2%	1257

My "Chess Exam: You vs. Fischer" Half-time Score

I am half way through Igor Khmelnitsky's excellent "Chess Exam: You vs. Fischer". As a professional statistician I could not resist predicting my final scores in the different categories based on the half time score. I did not interpolate to the last decimal as I only wanted a feel for the overall picture.

The overall score (1329) is a bit depressing and some of the scores in the different categories somewhat surprising. The Big surprise was my crappy tactics score. My Chesstempo rating has been floating upwards and I am currently rated around 1830. My Chessmagnetschool (CMS) rating has reached a plateau at 1540 and I expected the Overall score and my CMS score to agree.

On the other hand, my ICC rating has been rather stable around 1225 based on a fairly low number of recent games. I suppose the overall score is a better approximation of my true playing strength.

My middlegame skills are just non-existing. That is no surprise. However, I expected my Strategy skill to be just as bad.

Category	Score	%	ELO
Overall	116	38.6%	1329
Middlegame	51	26.8%	1059
Endgame	65	59.1%	1779
Calculation	32	40.0%	1408
Strategy	40	57.1%	1668
Tactics	44	29.3%	1040
Attack	46	46.0%	1319
Counterattack	43	47.8%	1447
Defense	27	24.5%	995
You are Better	58	52.7%	1769
Equal	38	38.0%	1245
You are Worse	20	22.2%	980
No Sacrifice	64	53.3%	1581
Sacrifice	52	28.9%	1108

Ergo: There is still a lot of hard work to do!

Training Report

February has been a rather wasted chess month. The whole family has been enjoying a majority of the colds/flues known to science. Still, My Chesstempo rating is only six points short of an all time high and the most recent slow games have had their bright moments even though I lost them all.

The fpawn-site gave me some much needed inspiration to how to defend against d4. I just might give the dutch a try.

Goals for March:

• 15+ minutes of Chesstempo per day
• 3+ slow games
• A chunk of "A First Book of Morphy"