dear dirk, i really enjoy your blog and i really enjoy you. thank you. i have so much to say that ive been silent. im not shy or reticent, but more intending to be thoughtful.
blogger raises many questions. for example, do we (or you, or me, or anyone) write for ourselves? for others? for applause? for learning? to concretize one's own process while benefiting others? all that...
now more basic but specific stuff: what i like about you is you are half a step--i think--ahead of me in chess and chess study, i surmise. youve also done tons of great work at chess.emrald.net. 45,000 problems. wow. 10,000 buddhas bow to you sir.
ive read your plans here. all very good. i totally agree with you and appreciate your recognition of the whole elemental part of chess separate from tactics and timed exercises.
indeed, many an advanced player only moved forward or advanced there skills to a final more lofty level by studying endgames, middle-endgame transitions. have you recently looked at Shereshevsky's Endgame Strategy? my chess coach told me not only do CTS, then start CT-Art, but to get Muellers Secrets of Pawn Endgames and Endgame Strategy.
Secrets of Pawn was recommended not only as a foundation of ending theory, but as a way to practice the most detailed and objective process of calculation.
fyi, when i came back to CTS, i literally did not remember how to move the piece, just like my first day. don't laugh. it was an advanced problem, good i thought, i know how to do this... but coundn't do it, so i paged back to register a 'failed' THEN was able to recall you touch the moving piece, then the square moved to. of course, this was after 250 CTA exercises, so brain ruts firmly worn into new places, so had to relearn. there is a skill or craft at CTS seperate from chess itself as a user that practice improves. maybe shows in rapid chess as distinct from standard.
my rating fell oddly. despite 2030 elo at CTA, i fell from 1474 (really 1491 but their error from outage, as last day wiped out from last week) to 1435. ouch. but my point is, you can calculate all you want but if you cannot 'just wipp it out', you don't have all the tactics learned. that is to say you can have advanced calculating skills and chess knowledge, but speed of access is a totally different skill. i need both.
so im resolute to start each night after work CTA with exercises as non-time critical warm up, THEN do a stint on CTS, but remember, im doing both so no big numbers visible.
so we have A. CTA for raw calculation or accuracy or, in your case Renko is it called?, then B. CTS for speed and the clock element, and then C. endgame practice.
i read chernev's practical chess endings for a year, doing the whole book without a board. very hard to learn to do that mentally and fix chess pieces mentally. now i am finishing Averbakh's Chess Endgames: Essential Knowledge. very good stuff.
D. classic games: i am going through the 62 games of chernev's The Most Instructive Games of Chess Every Played WITH A PGN VIEWER, without reference to annotations, then VERY SLOWLY annotating them myself. my friend Yasser says this is very good. if you are near Amsterdam, maybe you met him?
E. of course, i also own key books by Dvoretsky, Aashagard, Stohl, Silman, Seirawan, Tisdahl, etc, but the point is, your focus on elemental things in parallel to tactics, tactics, tactics is, i feel, the right way. Endgame Strategy is so lovely, so perfect and elegant in this way.
time to get ready for work. i will copy this and post at my blog also if you dont mind?
david, in seattle
