Removing the Rust

The Reading list for my upcomming vacation includes two basic chess titles: "Weapons of Chess" and "Simple Attacking Plans". The last several months have not offered many time slots for studying chess. It is time to swallow My pride and take a refresher course. Here is a Little warm-up game:

The Loner's Chess Club

Chessmaster was one of the first chess products I bought and with hindsight the only chess product I really need. The Guru Mansion is filled with chess books/DVDs/Magazine et al. Most of them waiting for some love and devotion.

What makes Chessmaster unique? I think Chessmaster is among the best products when it comes to mimicing bad chess. It is not perfect but good enough if you consider that the Chessmaster Personalities are always ready for a slow came and they do not mind if you have to exit your Chess Cave using Ctrl-P and deal with your real life.

Going to a Chess Club does, in theory, sound like a nice thing but all the practicalities makes it borderline impossible.








Activities at the Loner's Chess Club

The morning work-out is always (almost daily) tactics problems. The site used depends on the amount of time available. I solve problems until I have missed the solution of three problems. That little gimmic makes the problem solving a little bit more fun and focused.

On a weekly basis, I try to get my four game matches with Chessmaster Personalities going.

The Reading group at the Loner's Chess Club is on hold as the key memeber is spending his limited chess minutes on matches against silicon opponents.

Retro Chess

As a devoted reader of Zen habits I try in my small ways to simplify my life. One attempt is to reduce the noice and distractions from the bell and whistles at the ordinary chess sites. I recently signed up with a charming low tech chess site called: IECC - International E-mail Chess Club

It is a one huge step back towards to ancient postal correspondence games and I like it a lot! It will be some extra work keeping track of time spent and record the results but I find the cost/benefit to be to my favour.

You play the games emailing pgn-files and that is the end of it. No energy draining forum trolls. Just pure chess. Give it a try!

Magic Pill Again

Some time ago Dan Heisman tweeted: "If I gave a pill to a 1400 player so that he/she memorizes MCO-15, what would their new playing strength be? Most properly guess 1400-1450"

Some member on www.chess.com is doing a simulation in a Magic Pill-esque setting and here is what (s)he reports:

"Information from my test:

Two identical engines playing each other at about 1400 elo, except one is using an opening book, and the other is not. The opening book is Sedat's Perfect v10 book, with the depth limited to no more than 15 full moves.  My guess is that this opening book is a decent approximation for MCO. So far, 700 games have been played. The engine with the book is +28 elo, with a possible error of plus or minus 12 elo at a 95% confidence interval."

Support Your Local Chess Store

On my way to the buss stop I come close to one of my favored stores in my home town. The funny thing is that I almost never buy anything from the store or visit the store on a regular basis. They sell needles and fine fabric which I rarely buy but I totally adore the pride, passion and knowledge in the store. I try my very best to contribute in my small ways because I am an honest believer in specialized stores.

The other day I mailed a link to my online chess books catalog to the chess shop in Gothenburg, another of my favorite stores, and asked which books they considered to be missing in my collection.

In reply I got suggestions on how to improve my chess (training) in practical terms and an invitation for a cup of coffee should I find myself in Gothenburg.


Try THAT with Amazon!!

The Never Ending Story

The Shredder App on my iPhone is becomming my archrival. It suffers the typical problems most engines do when it comes to mimicing bad chess but still it can be a fun opponent.

The search for a nice app for annotating chess games on the iPhone is still ongoing. Any suggestions?

My Name is Paddy. I'm a Blunderer!

Sometimes I overcome blunders easily! Yesterday I  played a training game and blundered badly. After just nine hours playing with the kids, watching a funny movie and enjoying a glass of wine with some great cheese, I was able to see some interesting moments in the game.

As part of my new approach to playing, I will go for sharper games. Of course I missed a lot of good moves both when playing and when analyzing the game but there are great learning experiences in that as well.

How? Well, the idea of annotating your own games often feels overwhelming and too demanding. "How on earth am I going to find all the errors in my games? I'd better spend the time on shopping for opening books instead!" Totally off the target! You annotate your own games in order to improve you own chess. That is the main purpose and not primarily to make perfect annotations (whatever that is?).

My ambition to play a completely new repertoire had a fairly short lifespan. I decided to make some changes before trying the stuff in a single game. Embarrassing? Not really! It was a sort of well researched decision and furthermore just a minor change.

The training game had a few interesting moments and offered a few nice insights. I think I tend to overestimate the winning chances for the side with the initiative. After working for some hours with the game, I asked Mr Houdini for a few evaluations and they were not as optimistic as my own.

To read useful advice cannot hurt but quite often the full, if you like, force of the advice is hidden until you can apply the advice in a for yourself relevant situation. Sometimes two or more "advice" have to fertilize each other. Take for example Lasker's "when you see a good move then look for a better" and "the best way is not always the fastest". Let's try to tie all loose ends in this post together with one curious observation from the training game.

Look at the position after Black's 19th move (see below). White has to regain material but how? Qxc7 is obvious but look at the sneaky Qc6! A pretty neat move and it all comes together! One single discovery made the whole annotating effort to a soothing experience and I just might have transformed a few pieces of knowledge to something remotely similar to a skill. Something to be used in a future game!

(How do I set the initial diagram position using Aquarium?)

Midchesslife Crisis

My, in lack of better words, career has been ongoing for about four years. Early on I set a long term goal for my activities: Play at a 1750 level before the age of 50.

I am more than halfway there, the due date is a little more than three years away, and progress is slim to none.

What has gone wrong?

The time budget has always been infinitesimal and I have not been able to play enough slow games. That is no surprise and part of the equation from the very start. I honestly believed that my chess muscle would grow and a steady diet of tactics puzzles. The tactics muscle has improved (around 1850 at Chesstempo today) but I see no traces of improvement in my few games or in my rating.

Obviously, a lot of time have been wasted in illusionary fake training which comes in many shapes:

• Reading Chess news instead of something beneficial
• Planning, Documenting or changing your training instead of training
• Not spending enough time on a topic and not learning it properly
• Developing knowledge instead of skills

Sounds familiar?

Well, it is time to be more concrete, condensed and minimalistic. Will it help? We will see!

Goals for December 31, 2012

• 40+ slow games played and analyzed
• Three Books
• Daily Chesstempo problem(s)
• Monthly Chessmagnetschool rating tests (November 11, 2011: Rating Test. Score: 1487)

Testing My New Toy

The game was a little interesting an also very frustrating. After consulting with my silicon friend I realize that winning the won position was really hard work and probably beyond me. However, the loosing blunder was found amazingly fast.

Please note that you can step through the game using the arrow keys.

	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H
8									8
7									7
6									6
5									5
4									4
3									3
2									2
1									1
	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H

WeakDelfi - Farbror

1-0, 2011.11.05.

[#] 1.e4 b6 2.Nc3 Bb7 3.Nge2? +0.11

[3.d4 Nf6 +0.64]

3...e6 4.Nf4 Bb4? +0.48

[4...Nf6 -0.07]

5.a3 Bxc3 6.dxc3 Bxe4? +1.07

[6...Nf6 7.e5 +0.48]

7.Qd4? -0.22

[7.Nh5 Nc6 8.Nxg7 +1.07]

7...Nf6 8.Bd3? -1.06

[8.Nh5 Nxh5 9.Qxe4 Nc6 -0.22]

8...Bb7? -0.18

[8...Nc6 9.Qa4 Bxd3 -1.06]

9.Be3? -0.80

[9.Qe5 -0.18]

9...c5 10.Qe5 Nc6 11.Qg5 O-O 12.O-O e5 13.Nh5 Nxh5 14.Qxh5 g6 15.Qg4 f5 16.Qc4? -1.02

[16.Qh3 f4 -0.48]

16...d5 17.Qa2 e4 18.Be2 c4? -0.44

[18...f4 19.Bd2 -1.36]

19.Bh6 Re8 20.b3 b5 21.a4 a6 22.bxc4 bxc4 23.Rfb1 Bc8 24.Rd1 Be6? +0.76

[24...Qh4 25.Be3 -0.64]

25.Qa3? -0.68

[25.Bxc4 Qd7 +0.76]

25...Qe7 26.Qxe7 Nxe7 27.Rab1 Bd7 28.Rb4 Kf7 29.Rb7? -0.89

[29.Bxc4 dxc4 30.Rxd7 Red8 -0.29]

29...Ke6? +0.11

[29...Bc6 30.Rb2 -0.89]

30.Rb4? -0.89

[30.Rb6 Kf7 31.Bxc4 Bxa4 32.Rxd5 Nxd5 33.Bxd5 Ke7 34.Bg5 +0.11]

30...Rab8 31.Bf4? -1.55

[31.Rxc4 dxc4 32.Bxc4 Ke5 33.Bg7 Kf4 34.Rxd7 -0.68]

31...Rxb4 32.cxb4 Bxa4 33.Rd2 Nc6 34.c3 Bb3 35.Be3 Ra8 36.f3 a5 37.b5? -2.13

[37.fxe4 dxe4 38.Bc5 -1.36]

37...Ne7 38.b6 a4 39.fxe4 dxe4 40.Bf4 Nc6? +2.88

[40...Nd5 41.b7 Rh8 42.Bg3 e3 -1.75]

41.Rd6 [1-0]

Generated by Aquarium