Scooby Dooby Do

just back from DTS, doggie tactical school...

a nice day at CTS, but nevertheless upon the cost of a terrable day at ctArt3.0. respective performances:

cts:
26f/132s=158 @83.5443%
1520.6 elo

this takes me down to 83.6093% overall for 14,978 problems, but we are talking about a decline of only -0.0006% (from 83.6099 yesterday so we are not talking unprecidented DISASTER!).

ctArt 3.0: 2062 elo, and session only 69%.

my overall average for ctArt 3.0 fell to 83%s upon 280 problems. but then again, i am at the end of the second level of practice problems, and soon to embark on the third level, so this is not EASY. as i have said before, my definite plan evolves over time here, and i am pretty much resolved to go to only problem 400 or so in difficulty, as i do NOT wish to do a whole circle 401-1200 problems or levels three to nine, without first deeply integrating and incorporating these three levels into the tissues of my brain.

i have all year to do levels three to nine, and also need to finish Averbakh's Endgame Essential Knowledge, which i am substantial complete on. then i need to start on Muellers, secrets of pawn endings--principly for training in another form of calculation; and start shereshevskys endgame strategy--for planning.

i finished augers chess training pocket book at the beach today, and took two naps along the way... so now get to repeat it all fast, and review the ones i couldnt do, THEN thirdly only then look up the answers.

on a personal note, i have a weeks vacation in five weeks scheduled for my annual mountaineering (glaciers), and so must run now at night on my days off--this ALWAYS enhances my tactics. im serious. you go for a run, come back, and tactics are like whamm, bamm!

following up on tempos apt mention of an article where the amount of chess knowledge and amount of pattern recognition knowledge betwen and among different levels of class A versus Master and Grandmasters command (Dr. de Groot's research of 30 years quoted in chessCafe.com's archives, under Novice Nook #29, by Dan Heisenman), i thought it appropriate to relate this to second article tempo would appreciate. it is in by NM Todd Bardwick of colorado usa, with very interesting things on progress in chess relative to ratings, and who must beat who, and in what way.

and lastly, The Dortmunder Sparkassen Chess Meeting started today. icc or playchess subscribers can view or replay the recorded games. will 'drawish kramik' show more trademark sheepish play, as he did today versus a well prepared boris gelfand, or reinvigorate the sharp form he demonstrated at the turin olympiad this spring--and in so doing perhaps presage tough going for 'fighting topolov' this fall in the WCC cycle" event?

"...if only Boris would offer me a draw! after 18 moves, i'm almost asleep. too slow!"

dortmund takes place 29th July - 6th August 2006. Players: Arkadij Naiditsch, Vladimir Kramnik, Levon Aronian, Peter Svidler, Peter Leko, Boris Gelfand, Michael Adams and Baadur Jobava". details at dortmund.chessGate.de

peter svidler today shows the way of great tactics, doing the magic that 2738+ elo's do so inimatably. my thoughts in the replay latter today was: "this man has brass chops". only can super grandmasters play like the wheels are almost going to fall off, but calculated to the end and pull through with a flourish. peter leko (black) did the same, in his game with Naiditsch (white), aptly illustrated by chessBase.com today:
"Black is already in terrible trouble, but the crunch comes after

32...Nde5 33.e7
(the pawn cannot be taken since the g-knight is forced to protect its brother on e5)

33...Rc8 34.Bh5 1-0."

Smoking Embers Indicates Flame is Gone

attentive Knights notice the inclusion of the photo of the road weiry smoker--temposchlucker, in only the brilliant way he can, completely scooped my fresh idea from two nights ago to have a photo of this type, but he beat me to it. himm? how prescient! so i felt it only fare to include mine, too, but his is better!

tonight i clocked out of chess after a BAD CT Art 3.0 session: recently ive been averaging 85 to 86% at 2131 elo, but fell like a stone tonight to 71% sat 2118 elo. so i considered myself forwarned? do i like those who covet their CTS rating, do i risk my % success when my mind is bone weiry? so i did a quick 14 guest warm ups. not usually but recently i have needed it. ok. 1540 elo as a guest. ready and go.

but after my first set was 2/17=19 and needed just one more, to have a rare short session and keep my 90% going, i missed it, so now 3/17 and all downhill trying to "get it back". i thought id get to stop and "lick my chops"?

so it wound up 10/33=43. i folded my legs under me, like a good meditator as i do during tactics, a lotus posture actually, then girded my loins, and recovered an awefull spate to 0/26=26, summs to:

10/59=69
1502
i have just work 9 of the last 11 days, and my gas tank is running down. not that i am into some terrable form of addiction to some pernicious variant of american commerce, but my company mandates a rotation which we all do once a month. we never work more than five days in a week, but WHEN those days come is the pickle!

i had rearranged my schedule in april for a trip to vancouver BC this weekend, but to make a long story short won't be able to go without a lot of hastle or headache, so will stay home close to lake washington and beach towel and lev alburts chess training pocket book comfortably in the supine position, and near my beloved new fast pc desktop, my cat with the sanskrit name, and lots of naps and downtime--and of course, lots and lots of CTS tactics, as is my custom when the pendulum swings the other way and i get MORE time off.

since i walk 8 miles a day in my gigantic building materials retail store, or 13,000 meters, this means when i work my usual 14 of 16 days i am walking 1/30th of the continental united states. im not kidding. 108 miles. the buddha proscribed 108 bows all you good buddhists know. then i work only 6 out of 12 days, then it repeats. kind of like 7 circles only much harder. so when i tell you the hours i spend at chess, as many do here, consider the miles ive have walked BEFORE i sit to do them. on rare days off, my brain is much tighter and energized.

i will plug in my brain to the transponder and start over... tomorrow. gm kasparov truly back to real chess as mr crowther posts at the week in chess?

Ninety Percent CTS Across 340 problems

Short and sweet today:
16f/137s =153 Monday @ 89.542%.
15f/121s =136 Tuesday @ 89.971%
3f / 48s = 51 Wednesday@ 94.118%
--------------------------------------
Short term cumulative averages at Chess Tactical Server:
34f/306s =340 @ 90.0%
1502.6

This puts me precisely and joyfully @ 90.000% for the last three days consolidated. Data point not an accident!

But will it age me so fast that I cannot live to be 116, as this woman to our left did?

Doña Josefina Salguero, nacida en el año de 1890, tuvo 12 hijos. 9 ya murieron.Conversar con ella es como si uno lo hiciera con una enciclopedia.

Fano_Quiriego's photos, Flickr Photos

I had been tossing around asking Wormstar and Temposchlucker if we all could arrive at conscensus as maybe a good way for all of us to cite our CTS progress, so that at least us low RD regular users who blog here could have the same lingua franca, when I noticed Wormster using this f after his record here. He very smartly and cogently represented it:

5f/63 = 92.1%
1521

I suggest we build on his tag, but express performances nearly identically and instead say:
5f/58=63 @ 92.1
1521

If anyone has a more clear way of saying it, I am open and will follow along, please. Just one persons opinion.



"somewhere to nowhere", by pxpxpx's photos;

his comment:

"i often feel like, i am in somewhere to nowhere."Time present and time past are both perhaps present in time future. And time future contained in time past." ---Eliot. Time is a dynamic unity.In the in-between position, we flow with the current, the flow of it. It seems logical that we tend to think about a certain point in the linear time and strive to try to predict it. It is akin to point out the possible endpoint of the flight path of an arrow. But as a part of the flow, the stream of time, our deeds inevitably affect those we've contact with and impart a factor which affects the possibility of the time stream. Only if we are determined to focus on the very moment we are living now rather than evermore looking forward to the next future moment will we have the ability of staying in peace and living the moment to the fullest. If you elude the present, you will miss the curtain to the future. Henceforth, watch carefully what transpires when we "await"."逝者如斯, 而未嘗往也; 盈虛者如彼, 而卒莫消長也. 蓋將自其變者而觀之, 則天地曾不能以瞬; 自其不變者而觀之, 則物與我皆無盡也. 而又羨乎? " ---赤壁賦

*pic: a classroom in National Taiwan University

higher percentages concretizing!

as i posted earlier, i am warming up for CTS on CT-Art3.0, and since i did NOT bring over the application data, to the new Dell Dual Core 2.0 gig MACHINE, am joyfully and now much more comfortably redoing the first circle there:










level percentage: 2nd iteration [1st indicated with (*)]: 2123 ELO @ 85% overall:
10. 95% (94%)
20. 89% (78%)
30. 85% (70%)
40. 80% (66%)
50. 84% (66%
60. 95% (85%)
70 69% (45%)
89. 76% (75%)
90. 57% (45%).

the 1st series before my outage was as far as 270 problems into level 30, but my 2nd series only to 220 as yet finishing level 20 now. i love this exercise/trainer. very low stress for me. this first partial circle was only 2127 elo at a sorrowfull 72% playing what dan heisenman in chessCafe.com calls "hope chess". no.

then the timer. obviously per above i can "calculate" and so must learn to do it FASTER. but the real news. my CTS is shifting.

last night i was 15/125=140, or session percentage 89.542. this took me to 83.5%.
tonight, i was * 15/121=136. or session percentage 88.971. this took me to 83.6%.

i was shocked to see it, and didn't expect another integer so fast. the bad news is despite trying to power stear my old brain back to 1500, i couldn't--not without staying up all night in weirdness in questionable adult behavior with the blinds down "trying to get it back" and furthermore risking loosing my hardest won 83.6%.

















photo by elsa m gomes', posted at Flickr
sweet odes to joy. "sing us of muse, oh rosy fingered dawn", as the opening of homer's odyessy recites! or bethovins 9th, or mahlers 9th or dark belgein beer.

i will get the 1500 back, but feel really, really good about this.

good night folks. vacation weekend fri/sat/sun so watch my tries soar! 30,000 31dec2006 is to come. who here does NOT dream chess in REM sleep, in the fullness of brainstuff and iterations?

Kaizen or Continuous Improvement

Knights Erants Guru is worshipped by the chess.emrald.net sub 20,000 tries crowd for his 50,000 tries Grand Jubalee:













in a system of improvment, it isn't always the things that are added, but simply removing the things that do not function well that the most stable and last improvment is effected.

(what folows is in reply to temposchlucker very brilliant post today)

dirk, in business this is called "continuous business improvement" or "Kaizen".

or in radio astronomy, is it not so that they do not so much see distant objects as infer them by negative inference? we find what is there by noticing what is not there.

and i am not talking chess only--but in life, or in investing as Warren Buffet says that "it is in the mistakes that we avoid that we make the greatest strides" (loose paraphrase). almost anybody can hit a home run in professional baseball, and some in the tour de france can sprint a stage to win the stage, but the consistent performer gets to wear the yellow jersey. david in seattle

i respect your effort so much and get inspiration by your example. thank you dirk.











wikipedia citation clipped below:
Kaizen, From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Continuous improvement)


For Kaizen, the fantasy currency used in Priston Brazil, see Kaizen Games. Kaizen (改善, Japanese for "change for the better" or "improvement") is an approach to productivity improvement originating in applications of the work of American experts such as Frederick Winslow Taylor, Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Walter Shewhart, and of the War Department's Training Within Industry program by Japanese manufacturers after World War II. The development of Kaizen went hand-in-hand with that of quality control circles, but it was not limited to quality assurance.
The goals of kaizen include the elimination of waste (defined as "activities that add cost but do not add value"), just-in-time delivery, production load leveling of amount and types, standardized work, paced moving lines, right-sized equipment, etc. A closer definition of the Japanese usage of Kaizen is "to take it apart and put back together in a better way." What is taken apart is usually a process, system, product, or service.
Kaizen is a daily activity whose purpose goes beyond improvement. It is also a process that, when done correctly, humanizes the workplace, eliminates hard work (both mental and physical), and teaches people how to do rapid experiments using the scientific method and how to learn to see and eliminate waste in business processes.
"Kaizen" is the correct usage. "Kaizen event" or "kaizen blitz" are incorrect usage.
Kaizen is often misunderstood and applied incorrectly, resulting in bad outcomes including, for example, layoffs. This is called "kaiaku" - literally, "change for the worse." Layoffs are not the intent of kaizen. Instead, kaizen must be practiced in tandem with the "Respect for People" principle. Without "Respect for People," there can be no continuous improvement. Instead, the usual result is one-time gains that quickly fade.
Importantly, kaizen must operate with three principles in place: process and results (not results-only); systemic thinking (i.e. big picture, not solely the narrow view); and non-judgmental, non-blaming (because blaming is wasteful).
Everyone participates in kaizen; people of all levels in an organization, from the CEO on down, as well as external stakeholders if needed. The format for kaizen can be individual, suggestion system, small group, or large group.
The only way to truly understand the intent, meaning, and power of kaizen is through direct participation, many, many times.
Lean accounting and just in time production are related concepts.

Translation
The original kanji characters for this word are: In Japanese this is pronounced 'kaizen'.
改 ('kai') means 'change' and 善 ('zen') means 'good'. In Chinese this is pronounced 'gai shan':
改善 ('gai shan') means 'change for the better' or 'improve'.
改 ('gai') means 'change' or 'the action to correct'.
善 ('shan') means 'good' or 'benefit'. 'Benefit' is more related to the Taoist or Buddhist philosophy, which gives the definition as the action that 'benefits' the society but not one particular individual (i.e. multilateral improvement). In other words, one cannot benefit at another's expense. The quality of benefit that is involved here should be sustained forever, in other words the 'shan' is an act that truly benefits others.

History
After World War II, the occupational forces brought in American experts who were familiar with statistical control methods and with the War Department's Training Within Industry (TWI) training programs to restore a war-torn nation. TWI programs included Job Instruction (standard work) and Job Methods (process improvement). In conjunction with the Shewhart cycle taught by W. Edwards Deming, and other statistics-based methods taught by Joseph M. Juran, these became the basis of the kaizen revolution in Japan that took place in the 1950s.

Applications
The Toyota Production System is known for kaizen, where all line personnel are expected to stop their moving production line in the case of any abnormality, and suggestions for improvement are rewarded.
Kaizen often takes place one small step at a time, hence the English translation: "continuous improvement", or "continual improvement." Yet radical changes for the sake of goals, such as just in time and moving lines, also gain the full support of upper level management. Goals for kaizen workshops are intentionally set very high because there are countless examples of drastic reductions in process lead time to serve as proof of their practicality.
The cycle of kaizen activity can be defined as: standardize an operation -> measure the standardized operation (find cycle time and amount of in-process inventory) -> gauge measurements against requirements -> innovate to meet requirements and increase productivity -> standardize the new, improved operations -> continue cycle ad infinitum. This is also known as the Shewhart cycle, Deming cycle, or PDCA.
The "zen" in Kaizen emphasizes the learn-by-doing aspect of improving production. This philosophy is focused in a different direction from the "command-and-control" improvement programs of the mid-20th century. Kaizen methodology includes making changes and looking at the results, then adjusting. Large-scale preplanning and extensive project scheduling are replaced by smaller experiments in improvement, which can be rapidly adapted as new improvements are suggested.
Masaaki Imai made the term famous in his book, Kaizen: The Key to Japan's Competitive Success. An appendix to that book includes a reference to the 5S strategy of disciplined cleanup.

chess.emrald finickyness: dedicated to generalkaia

another way to look at it:



2006-07-24 09:37:47, 1514 solved ( 9.0 secs.) p37345 1578
2006-07-24 09:37:25, 1514 solved (11.9 secs.) p35069 1530
2006-07-24 09:23:32, 1513 solved ( 3.4 secs.) p28991 1490
2006-07-24 09:23:08, 1514 solved (17.4 secs.) p11244 1469
2006-07-24 09:22:38, 1514 solved (16.8 secs.) p06516 1513
2006-07-24 09:22:09, 1513 solved ( 4.2 secs.) p47204 1460
2006-07-24 09:21:46, 1514 solved (51.0 secs.) p33291 1595
2006-07-24 09:20:43, 1514 solved (11.7 secs.) p45822 1560
2006-07-24 09:20:20, 1516 solved (56.3 secs.) p15373 1425
2006-07-24 09:19:11, 1516 solved (11.9 secs.) p26461 1632
2006-07-24 09:18:09, 1516 solved (14.6 secs.) p21419 1635
2006-07-24 09:17:42, 1516 solved ( 9.3 secs.) p09854 1485
2006-07-24 09:17:22, 1517 solved (18.2 secs.) p49840 1493
2006-07-24 09:16:50, 1516 solved (13.5 secs.) p45977 1658
2006-07-24 09:16:23, 1517 solved (13.0 secs.) p11353 1469
2006-07-24 09:15:26, 1516 solved ( 3.7 secs.) p60663 1402
2006-07-24 09:15:06, 1515 solved ( 6.8 secs.) p06677 1584
2006-07-24 09:14:47, 1513 solved ( 3.1 secs.) p44338 1558
2006-07-24 09:14:31, 1512 solved ( 5.5 secs.) p36761 1554
2006-07-23 11:12:31, 1510 solved ( 2.7 secs.) p34376 1550
2006-07-23 11:07:13, 1509 solved ( 4.9 secs.) p02591 1593
2006-07-23 11:06:52, 1509 solved (10.6 secs.) p41723 1597

if you view Temposchlucker, SpaceCowboy, Trallala, ChessDog, etc, you will see the exact same thing, often much better than this in success and/or difficulty.

Letters to a Young Blue Devil Knight

dear blueDevil: rainer maria rilka, of Duino Eligies kind, and Sonets to Orpheus, wrote a fine book i was directed to in much younger days called Letters to a Young Poet. evidently he knew wittgenstein, Saul Frau (i don't want to look up the name, but she knew all those guys in a way that a woman would) or such, Rodin, etc. if 'etc' is not too gross a term, so i propose to write letters to a young bluedevil.



but before i quickly do such a missive, i wish to add parenthetically that when i went to korea with Zen Master Soen Sa Nim, kinda of a Fredrico Felini goes to the zen mountain temple kind of guy, on that trip i had the good pleasure of meeting translater now author Stephen Mitchel, who translated Rilke wonderfully... in fact, i read of Soen Sa Nim long befor meeting him, or Dae Soen Sa Nim (Dae: Kor. for "Great"). in any event, mitchel was a dear gentle man, with a very lovely korean accupunturist sife who manipulated the top of my crown on the top of my head (a sensative, critical point in accuncture), to alleviate some intense discomfort in my lower body, long story about over stretching in my martial arts days of long wide legs... and he latter went on to translate Job, the Book of John, the Koran, the Tao Te Ching, Rumi, what did he possibly miss? teaching himself at once first german then hebrew. those guys didn't so much as translate as learn to read good translations and render them with a poets ear, as ezra pound did with confucius's annelects, using french and german interlineal translations... so himm, where was i?



i just got off work, had one of those ten minute naps at home during lunch = two nights good sleep THEN a good cup of dark coffee, and so ready to go after writing you here if i may: hit CTA hard then CTS, then i get to lay in bed with mr. alburt with all the windows open...

i always asked Yasser, what will happen to my chess when i get a girlfriend again...

so to ("chess) young"BlueDevil:

i had the good fortune to find a coach at icc. well, not really, he found me. he wanted to trade me my teaching him investing for chess coaching. its funny, i feel no need to blog about quantitative investing, as i have mastered it, yet here like to write and master none of it. cognitive dissonance or OCD? OCD is not QGD, KGA, KID or queen gambit declined, kings gambit accepted or kings indian defence? new chess term: OCD. OCD by batesford, or gambit. soon to be in print.

charles, my coach, is 2200 fide. whether he is higher or lower does not concern me, only that he be able to tell me how to advance and has himself traversed this same terrain AND communicate clearly his learning how to learn.

he told me to do CTS, which i inhaled. of course, i already did Seirawans Winning Chess Tactics after Chernev's Winning Chess, and weak attempts to start Reinfeld's 1001 Sacrifices and Combinations.

He then told me to do CTA ** A F T E R ** i hit 10,000 chess.emrald.net. he also told me to start Muellers Secrets of Pawn Endings and to really hit Shereshevsky's Endgame Strategy.

It is important to say, that this is after about 3,000 rapid games 3 min/12 sec increment on Y!yahoo, then early this winter MAKING myself switch to 3/8. i also read chernevs Practical Chess Endings over a year without a board, VERY slowly, doing all variations in my head. that was of course after Pandolphini's Endgame Course. his work is sloppy, it is said, but HE is not bad as evidenced by his chess.cafe column which is not a stupid column by any means, as he is obviously broadly educated in the humanities and learning.

lastly, i spent three years going slowly through 941 GM classic games, from such books as Nunn, Understanding Chess Move By Move, My System, Stohl's Instructive Modern Chess Masterpieces ** W I T H ** O U T ** U S I N G ** the annotations but rather just sources the games from the books. id try to see what was going on and guess the next move. i rendered them all into pgn or used various sources including Osmitz (sp?).

all this ** B E F O R E ** trying any advanced training software or systems.

what of you?

i have not read all your posts. and i am not your coach. but someone a little ahead of you, who just as charles at 2200 can tell me at 1650 or so OBP how to improve, maybe if you are 1200+/- i can say a tiny bit, if polite and not intrusive or judgemental?

it seems to me, if you are doing tactical software or CTA or renko or whatever it is, this is too advanced. you can slow it down. those basic books sound good, including winning chess et al.

secondly, i dont know what you are playing OBP but if you haven't played 1,000 1,500, or 2,000 games+, then there is insufficient context to put the 'jaz' into.

lastly, if you were 52.4% across 94 problems, then you either are going too fast, or aren't comfortable with the interface. if you must do CTS, then please consider going slowly. the one exogenus advantage of the site is that it puts you in the context of a community of users in real time. very motivating. and try to be an 80%, 85% user, not a quick 68 or 75% user. you will notice the difference. i mean, you can just sit and stare at it. tempo does; wormwood does. and i do. it won't kill you. let the clock run. speed will come.

in tae chi, you learn to fight in slow motion latter on. then the masters add speed over the year and do they add it!

so lots of play. less advanced study which can be demoralizing. and targeted study, maybe from book tactics not timed stuff--which will demoralize you till you learn more basic stuff, or if know it, then learn to access it and see it.

very lastly: at a certain point, i decided to ONLY play folks rated > than me. i learned to fear folks who had negative win/loss ratios. like 400w/700L/50d=1150 games. but the folks who were 850w/250L/50d=1150 rated near me, id not fear them. i almost always concretely planned to win and expected the win. are ratings all the same according to asymtotes approaching a physically real but slightly incommensurable or indeterminate--fuzzy--boundary? yes and no.

i lost a lot. but only once i did this, to subject myself to regular punishiment, did my game start to improve. of course, i lost many a won game, and as pandolphini says of a class B or 1800 being someone "who can win a won game", so i lost many a won game, either on the clock, or in a superior opening lost in tactical complications too much to see in seconds on increment...

BUT, and this is a big but, when you beat someone two or three hundred elo above you, how sweet, how delectable it is? then when they start to accuse you of cheating, as i think also happened to temposchlucker was it? this is the best! accusing of using a prog. Yasser has folks write ICC all the time... : "he is a prog" (chess analytic progarma a.k.a Fritz, Crafty, Junior, etc). but they write him, "no, he is NOT a prog!".

once i started CTS, id play VERRRRY rarely and still do, but when i do, i surprise most everyone 100 or 150 elo > me.

these ++ elo' above you will punish our sins. if you loose too many, then go down one league. if start to approach 50% w/L, then aught to move up one league. also as pandolphini says.

with 100 elo, you aught to win 1 out of 3. 200 elo win 1 out of 10. the basics. slowly. lots of games. review lost games. good beer or naps.

you absolutely have to be a bright and very talented man to have accomplished what you have outside of chess, so, what is it you want here? surely your webWork and neuroWork and policalMissives so well crafted all point to an exceptionally talented and alert mind, able to do whatever it wants.

warmly, dk

Note to Generalkaia : Slowing Down at CTS to increase % success, sacrificing rating

i am 100% certain of this comment:::

greetings.

if you have only done 1661 problems at chess.emrald.net at 59.1%, then you might want to slow down. now, your rating evidences superior understanding at chess, so let me trod gently, pls.


















angryhaggis' photos @ Flickr, Gamma


SLOW Banner at the Matterhorn


i was 1420 or so at 1500 problems, at 76% or so. i made a resolute decision to play for quality there. i pushed it to 81% at 10,000. it took a long, long time. now im 14250 at 83.341%, and soon ill again be 83.450 so expressed as 83.5%. i play for percentages only there.

last night my RD at closure or log off was 16.0. i well understand low RD = high commitment.

if you do 8339 problems, at 85%, you will be there. maybe forget the 59% and if the rating need fall, let it fall. IMHO.

decide, do you want to be like Tempo, or SpaceCowboy, or Trallala, or Wormwood in % success, or do 88,000 problems fast, and learn what. if Cylk--and i dont mean at all to disrespect such a great effort, but it must be asked--has done 88,672 at only 63%, and ONLY 1532 ELO, then it begs the question, what did he or she learn? to what effect? to miss 3/8ths of all problems???? does one brag for so many attempts, or maybe it is a loss to do so much and repeat the same mistakes and not learn?

tempo on the other hand has learned CTS well, and i intend to follow close by.

dktransform at chess.emrald and here transformation, here...

thanks, david

my alogrythm for CTS and CTA

After a lot of hard work to get myself solidly and hopefully firmly =>1500 at CTS, I am not principly concerned for rating level there. Of course, artificial though it may be, I at least wish to stay over 1500 there as a boundary phenomenon, if not physically or quantitatively significant, then at least psychologically reassuring. We do all this work alone, so little "signs" tell us whether we are sinking, maintaining, or raising and thus reassure or help--at least for me--motivate.

For example, tonight, after a really long day at work, THEN CTA study afterwards, I was on around my 85th problem at CTS when I was feeling really, really tired, eager to be "done" and feeling jeaprodized to fall more or fail more, but similarly did not want to finish <1509.99, so fought it out for 9 more problems to get 1511.4, or 1/12=13 or 1 failed, 12 success, for the last 13 problems. I like to end "clean".

My plan is to get as many problems accurate as I can there, WHILE not falling back. Thus, tonight, starting out, I was 1/28=29 or 1 failed, 28 success, totaling 29. It felt like everything was "clicking, then I went through a flurry of "failed"... But I finished overall "over or at plan": 15/79/94= 84.04% for the night, not the best, but still accretive towards my "ultimate goal" long term of =>85.0% for tens of thousands of problems, so not a disaster... At 83.4632% last night, I have gained a tiny bit: overall 83.4672% today adds what I call '40'. I like to add more like 70 or 80 but cannot do this every day... Nerdy stuff!

2031 ELO at CTA, puts me back where I was when I last fell, so this is emboldening: the nine practice mode levels of difficulty with percentiles:

10. 95% (94% first 238 problems, beginning first 'cicle')
20. 89% (78%)
30. 82% (70%)
40. 71% (66%)
50. 84% (66%)
60. 100%(85%)
70. 69% (45%)
80. 73% (75%)
90. 0% (42%).

That gainsaid, I am only on problem 136, so this comparison is a bit premature yet, but clearly I am seeing more.

Do CTA * T H E N * go to CTS and it gets a LOT easier.

Lastly, I am just finishing Alburt's Chess Training Pocket Book before my afternoon nap, before bed, and during metabolic process while sitting. :). Someone once said to do this book not as study, but like an exam or test to see where you miss, and I wholely agree. It is all there. Wonderfull little gem.

I was getting concerned that as I progressed >8,000 problems at CTS that they would all get too easy, so hastened to start Alburt's CTPB as I traveled to metro New York to my Dad's in New Jersey last month, but this is not the case. Yes, now at 13,700 CTS problems some are almost immediately 'seen', but there are some that are real 'potboilers' (despite VERRYYY cheesy cover photo, I give this book four stars for players ELO 1350--1700.

Time for bed... I move carpet and tile all day, and walk about 13k or 8 miles EVERY day in the huge building materials store that I work at full time... so my chair with CTS and CTA is heavenly, and ending with notes to the chess improvment sphere or community of knowledge.

exegencies of starting over with CT-Art

Good news. I'm 100% serious. My old Dell notebook died. No recriminations. You see, in 6.5 years I am virtually certain I put 13 years of use into it. Thank you Lord.

So now I bought a smoking fast Dual Core desktop by same. While I aught to be able to migrate most of my word and excell files and email over to the new machine, I see no reason to move application data. Thus, the first 337 exercises on CTA can stay there! What did I do? Start over! Much better the second time. Up there at 300+, I was starting to get "killed" as we chessplayers call it.

Moreover, I am now solidly 1500+ at CTS, and what I am most happy about, after a long slog for, what was it, two weeks, now got from '83.4' ('83.351+'), to 83.5 (83.4632). 84% or 84.0 here I come. No matter.

But more to the how of HOW I am doing it. Warming up with CTA, I then migrate to CTS and I am running 90% plus. Tonight, 8/78=86 I like to express it, that is to say: only 8 failed, 78 success, totals 86. Thats 90.7%.

My plan now is to hit 20,000 problems by 15_September 06 and 30,000 by 31_December 06. 100 per day. Not unheard of but, remember, I am doing CTS concurrently, so this is a LOT taken together.

Ever true to my nature, I am almost more concerned with "the process than the result". But just as brokers count phone calls, or as they were called, "developing" or "rookie brokers" when getting started in the business, so I am sure that here too "activity" will produce result. We all are "late adopters" following Temposchluckers noble example. Wormwood too. And Tralalla. High activity. High percentages. Accuracy.

To compare to an altogetherly different but equally heuristical area of needed continuous improvment, if a broker makes 100 calls a day, then he or she aught to yield 3 contacts. 15 contacts a week, or as it is called, "the Broyles system", aught to yield 12 accounts per month. Across 60 contacts in a month, 20% closure nets 12 new opened accounts "with money". 12 months times 12 = 144 per year. 144 accounts averaging $20,000 each, is three million. Ten million in three years is basic. This includes losses of accounts, referal, and capital appreciation.

First you must raise your activity; THEN in Wall Street or phone sales, ONLY THEN can you see about improving your approach. So here. Do the tactics daily. Then see about "burning it into the circuitry of your brain" (personal conversation with Yasser Seirawan last year, in front of his condo... dropping him off). First do; then memorize, that is to say, make automatic, or less of a thought process and more of an instant recognition process.

As Murray Chandler says in How to Checkmate your Dad in Chess (actually, a very good book, kind of a mini Renauld-Kahn's Art of the Checkmate on training wheels): "Grandmasters at the highest level calculate on 5% of what they see; the other 95% is recognition... but WHAT they do decide to calculate, they calculate very well" (my bad poetic license paraphrase).

Do the activity, and it will come. Less contact is ok, but "they" had better be good contacts. Or more, but lower quality, etc.

Do CTS; do CTA... and you will see. I will see. Tonight, I felt like I was seeing it all fast. Build it and they will come. Bed time now.

Contacting David for copies of 5,231 GM Classic Game Database

[revisions extensive II, Tuesday 29 Apr 2008] Again, no time to elaborate in detail, but the database is now substantially done. Since I have six years on this, with many accretions and improvements and some suggestions that have all been used and assymilated by now, it is time to write a new post, instead of adding 'one more fact here, one more fact there.

For now, I only note the addition of the 500 Master Games by Tartakower, and the 500 games from AngelFire, then another 825 from AngelFire. These last two collections while often having handsome if not salutory annotations, now unique to this database and none the worse for wear, it must be duly noted that the two latter have lots and lots of significant errors. So it was discovered by me rather quickly that while very useful and again, thank you to IvanW of Getting to 2000 for directing me to them, they also could be dependably be found to be error ridden, and all had to be checked. All of them.

But in the end, chess, chess study, chess history, chess analysis is an evolutionary process, and no blame but appreciation and, in the end, becomes the better for it. Thanks again also to Takchess who had several very valuable suggestions. These two notable chess bloggers deserve my most solemn thanks. Thank you Ivan and Jim.

[revisions extensive, 21 Jan 2008] No time right this second to elaborate in detail, but added a few hundred more games from Fine, Alekhine's book, and Tartakowers book. Updated link is here, supercedes below googlespeadsheet.doc, here: update. Self explanatory. These is the full list of the sets of games, mostly books but some by category in lieu of books.

DO NOT FORGET, WHEN WRITING ME AT THE EMAIL INDICATED, TO post a comment here, telling me to read the yahoo email. I do not read that email daily, so this is a lot faster, and clues me to check there. I do not intentionally ignore that email, but my main email is of course private, and you simply need to do three things:

tell me format (cbv or pgn)
email me at the indicated email, and finally, be sure to :
tell me in comment below you messaged me privately with your email.

I am more than glad to send this to you and share my hard earned effort, but please help me to help you. I do not ask for much, but most do not follow those steps. Odd.

I get emails from total strangers, one liners, hello goodbye, no mention on format, no comment below?? Please!

Warmest, dk

dk_experiment a t ya hoo usual business suffix dot communistic, Kom, comedy, but remove the last three letters from comedy :) May god protect me from robbots reading that text!

[revisions extensive, winter of 2007 and 2008. Here, at Friday 11Jan2008, I have added the Krabbe's 110 Most Fantastic Moves Ever Played, his 250 Chess Curiosities, his Endgame Studies and Problems download; I have added ALL the chessCafe Informant games, from 2002 to 2008. And, a true labor of love, I have added 162 games not caught within all this effort, among previously 2,600 games, those few Informant games from The marvelous book, 640 Golden Games NOT already in the database.

For example, I had many of the top games from each issue if not nearly every single one of them with very, very few exceptions, but time to time didn't have game two in the selection. Now I have all the games from 1966 to 1995 in the top five, or six, or seven of ten as voted by that jury of nine, and/or all games recieving any vote by six of the nine judges. This ensures that no great games are missed.

When this revised book in published in 2008, here at the 100th jubalie issue at Informant, I will have opportunity to add those select few of game from 1997 to mid 2002 that I might have missed.

I added all the top games viewed by me in 2004-2007, and there were hundreds of those. I also added games cited by Dennis Monokroussos at chess, and anything else mentioned as significant. By virtue of that, some stuff is now getting added maybe too soon to call classic--a disadvantage--but little is getting missed that way, adding significant breadth or scope. More discusion at my most recent post, here, called Gigantic II and Gigantic.

Lastly, in the next week, I am adding the Rubin Fine games from his classic The Worlds Greatest Chess Games, some 150 to 175 but, assuredly, I must already have 2/3rd's of them already in my collection. Thus, if I add 138 games, this will put the file solidly at 2,900 games. Many ask, what is in this collection, and now I ask, what is not in this collection?! More latter. Well deserved rest, here. dk]

[revision Fri 02Nov2007: added 71 games from Reti's Masters of the ChessBoard] For copies of my database (chessbase, pgn format), with 1,775 classic games from most of the major classic game collection books, please email me here:

dk_experiment at yahoo usual business suffix

While I love to advise, share, and comment, this email is not a general email for private comments or correspondence, but to request the database only, please, if you don't mind. Thank you. Comments of course responded to at current or recent blog posts.

Please appropriately mention the database in the subject line, as otherwise I cannot open unknown or unrecognizable emails, as can be appreciated.

Let me know if you can use chessBase format (the better form of my database, recommended), or need pgn.

And finally, comment below simply alerting me of your interest, so I know to go to THAT yahoo email, as I rarely go there, and don't use it except for matters such as this.

Thank you, and appreciate your interest, Regards, David K Seattle

Direct link, here.

mixing CT-Art 3.0 and chess.emrald.net to good effect; and red letter day at CTS

... after a terrable start today (what follows: cut and paste from chess.emrald.net message board with a few small edits), 19 failed/49 success =68, somehow refocused and clawed my way back into the zone we all have time to time when we see all the squares for a spate or try to finish our 'session's in rythem with: 2 failed/59 success=61. my best previously here is more like 2/98=100 but trallala must do this all the time, my greatest inspiration of all users at CTS who's progress there motivates me all the more...

my daily average thus recovered back towards my 83.3486% for 13,128 problems with 83.7209% today (21f/108s=129 total), up from yesterdays 83.3449% for 12,999 problems.

my goal is to--no matter what--each day to increase my percentage success. of course, the more we do, the harder it gets to raise that, due to the 'law of large numbers' or 'deminishing returns'.

how do i know such exact percentages? by carefully noticing key breakpoints where chess.emrald.net rounds up to the next decimel--i.e. when i am 83.499 i am still 83.4. but at 83.501 my percentile will be rounded to 83.5. silly to some, but this is my way: percentage. percentage equates to the accuracy we strive for. while at C+/B- i am hardly a good player, im still aware that one bad move in chess and you are gone. so to be able to sustain accuracy is a good thing. mentally. physically. spiritually.

lastly, what bigcaptain said (CTS message board) is right on: our opponent gives us moves and we practice responding to them. he says this better than i can, so well below in his comment.

lastly a footnote on CT-Art 3.0, well known to senior users there, or amply blogged about by temposchlucher, also under 'chess improvment', if i recall.

i added CT-Art3.0 to my intinerary of daily study during the brief outage there (CTS). but i found, when service was restored, that CTA while deepening my calculation skills (the clock doesn't factor in there but raw accuracy), had actually hurt my CTS skills.

i had to fight to get them back. NOW im doing both: im warming up on CTA in the morning, then migrate to CTS afterwards; then the same at night only longer. much better. CTS while not nearly as challenging for combinatorial difficulty, does nevertheless stretch the speed nerves and tests rapid pattern recognition.

again, temposchlucker has writen amply and eliquently here on the many factors of chess improvement--mental states, repetition, repeated errors, and deminishing returns versus learned repetition as salutary.

top twenty at CTS, aggegrated

aggregating both not only rating, but RD, solved, and % success. interesting?

rating rd highest solved percentage lastactivity
Temposchlucker 1541 13 1564 50,399 81% Jul 05 - 22:19
trallala 1558 26 1605 31,860 93%!!! Jul 05 - 08:43
spacecowboy 1393 23 1460 18,125 88% Jul 05 - 14:46
kawala 1525 16 1565 17,514 83% Jul 05 - 21:59
morkovkin 1605 24 1618 15,559 89!% Jul 05 - 22:43
edgy 1743 32 1776 14,740 80% Jul 04 - 22:55
dktransform 1482 20 1526 12,500 83% Jul 05 - 10:26
jmsuarez 1582 32 1607 7,114 89%! Jul 05 - 22:42
clyk 1526 21 1585 87,856 63% Jul 05 - 19:34
wormwood 1527 18 1542 45,620 77% Jul 05 - 18:20
peme 1521 26 1547 44,889 76% Jul 05 - 12:29
BogusBogart 1630 32 1649 43,488 72% Jul 03 - 09:28
krhodes 1709 24 1768 19,666 69% Jul 05 - 02:58
RalfiZoller 1667 50 1783 30,524 75% Jul 04 - 22:04
uraleech 2721? 80 2721 30,593 69% Jun 09 - 12:55
bahus 1507 78 1580 10,313 90%! Jun 12 - 08:58
flatman 1504 48 1520 4,994 86% Jun 29 - 02:14
mindhack 1501 68 1527 27,929 80% Jun 16 - 11:49
wexfordfox 1550 78 1577 5,322 84% Jun 15 - 00:25
FireGarden 1489 26 1505 6,156 94%!! Jul 04 - 19:47

Bluemaster 1950 25 2058 18,498 74% Jul 04 - 14:49
Faramir (IM) 2057 27 2067 8,126 73% Jul 04 - 21:25
TwoThreeFourOn 1315 21 1372 6,109 94% Jul 05 - 14:35
chessdog 1255 24 1358 13,792 95% Jul 05 - 23:30
malfa 1836 16 1836 7,050 68% Jul 05 - 05:32
tjeulesbetes 1533 61 1691 2,176 95% Jul 05 - 00:20
crptone2 2587 73 2587 577 97% Jun 17 - 23:55
Dougy 1574 24 1649 10,599 81% Jul 04 - 10:29
DanielD 1720 29 1769 10,191 75% Jul 04 - 20:50
Oberdan 1379 44 1427 31,678 73% Jul 03 - 15:07
gaspar 1284 47 1341 31,444 84% Jun 30 - 20:55
alvis 1490 17 1492 4,210 89% Jul 05 - 20:57
ngnblcn 1822 15 1822 3,867 67% Jul 05 - 16:48
helmt3 1667 25 1716 3,577 88% Jul 05 - 20:55
mattsu 1703 23 1725 3,111 82% Jul 05 - 11:47
navan 1507 32 1613 2,912 86% Jul 05 - 04:08
psychess2 1650 92 1691 1,936 87% Jun 03 - 18:42
edgar99 1706 27 1706 1,281 87% Jul 03 - 02:15
grandesorciere 1639 72 1641 992 85% Jun 18 - 18:39
yoav 1541 63 1562 939 86% Jul 03 - 21:20

chess.emrald.net landing

wew. i was just warming into the first 250 problems of ct-art when i hit a wall. since i am not focused on doing all 7 circles in a flash, certainly not the first circle or two, and my rating there hit 2030 then fell like a stone, THEN cts resumed operation, i went back in full confidence. the thing is, in my trip east to see my aging dad, then my mom, when i did 1500 exercises in eight days, with an RD of about 13 or 14 near the end, about 87 to 88% success in that spate, and inches from 1500 again at 1491 or so, i had EVERY expectation of 'just' getting back on, warming up a bit, then restoring +1500 as i feel and felt that i belong...

but literally on the first exercise, after the outage, when i had an rd of 38 or so, i literally couldnt move the mouse. i forgot how, just like many do when starting--you dont grab it like ICC or yahoo or playchess, you dont slide it like ct-art, but you touch the piece moved to the square intended...

ok. so one bad problem? but one after another. then my 11,500 shown as 11,340 and my rating as it was at that point, like 1474 the day before the outage. mind you, not to complain about CTS, but my failure! and frustration at rustyness... so there i was, ready to hit 1500 in a flash, but lower, then fall all the way to 1438. yikes.

not so bad. but since im trying to get my percentage success to 85% from 83.2, i fell to 83.05, so had to fight and fight, got back to the outage peak of 83.2, and now tonight 83.3449 (ive reversed engineered the break points [i.e. notice at what integers of solved problems i go from, say, 83.1 to 83.2 etc, then converge the data like a simple calculus] to track my success one single problem at a time, noting on a pad each success/fail).

but to go from 83.05 to 83.35 and soon to be printed as '83.4' (=>83.350~ 83.351 etc), with 13,000 problems, you cannot just 'whipp it out'. you to crawl one problem at a time--two to three hours a day. my settings stop at each problem as i need those few seconds to center myself...

which gets me to now. temposhlucker mentioned peak and floor ratings. right on. now that im 1500, unlike last time when i let the rd raise to do fewer or lesser problems per day and got to 1524 quite rapidly, i plan to hold the 15 level, but use extra activity NOT to push it up fast or try to, but rather see at 85 to 90% how much i can hold that. some days i can do 90%. then i crash and burn, then must 'get it back'. it really averages now 85.5% to 86.5% pretty steadily. there is a certain exchange between rating, speed, and success. so now i will see how far i can push my % success, while holding the rating. rating falls, i must speed up. rating raises, i can slow down and extract greater % success.

at 12,999 at 83.3449, ive done 10,834 correct, 2,165 failed. IF i can do the next 7,001 at 86%, that would be 6,021 success. thus id be at 16,855 or 84.28% for 20,000. i aim for more like 85%+ for 30 or 40,000 but my own jubilee is a LONG ways off--but not that far off!

deminishing returns... as resistence.

lastly, i really need to get back to cta, but i did NOT like cta when im learning to calculate better but cannot do it fast! so my plan is to start each day, 20 cta3.0 exercises, THEN 40 cts, then 20 cta at pm, then maybe 60 cts at pm. i dont really need or want 150 cts per day--takes a lot of time, and, again, to use tempoS term, a LOT of stress--and ensuent exhaustion...

thus, with the dualness of this, run both horses: the horse of accuracy; the horse of rapidity and automating pattern recognition. like tempS, ive seen the same cts exercise again and again, only to fail, then others a slam dunk EVERY time--like the one with P a7, Ke7 is it, and R at a8, goes over to h7 to check Blk K. how many times must i do this?????

so deminishing returns on new patterns, yet use enough time to NOT this time loose the skill while encorporating it into rapid (3 min/8 sec increm), then standard (20 min--or so/12 sec increm).

i will finish reading Averbakh's: Endings, Essential Knowledge, and am much enjoying Alburt's Chess Training Pocket Manual at bedtime or at the beach (laying down in swim shorts with earplugs {children!}), and am at problem 185 or so, an excellent counter point to CTS and CTA3.0.

thank you to this extended community--CTS and blogger. you all are the best.

dk