Hours, and Hours, and Hours
Hours and hours and hours, then hours after hours, after yet more hours on one single game at RHP, that is to say RedHotPawn.com, the correspondence chess website. This is terrific training, and incredible depth.
What does this ultra slow, ultra long, ultra deep form of chess do for rapid tactics? A lot. The other night in live bullet chess, I was 'whipping out the moves'. What does it do for my results at CTS, that is to say, Chess Tactics Server, Chess.Emrald.net? Much also. Tonight, I did 20 in a row at 1518 elo level, and am now 47f/379s= 426 tries since coming back to CTS, or 88.97%+ 1500. For most of this time, I have been above =>90%, but was very tired the last few days, but greatly enjoying it again.
I find, a good hiatus from CTS allows me to come back not only with commitment, and energy, but passion and thirst.
Soon dogWaste will be back in action, and run up to 96.5%+ but taking a breather--for now only. This takes great concentration, and I need my juice, my volts, my amps for other things.
Yasser Seirawan is coming back to town in a week or two, and promises to meet me for lunch and a good long walk. While we always discuss investing over email, sometime ten or more a day, we always discuss the internation chess scene and his publishing and/or broadcast, webcast ventures in person. This is a great treat for me, but, then again, I can fully attest to the facts--THAT THIS MAN DOES NOT TIRE. Extra vitamin time for me. :)
Warmly, dk
posted by transformation at 3:52 AM
9 Comments:
tonight at CTS started: 1101011110 or 3/7=10 @70% at 1515 elo. Then right ended the session, next 40 @ 100%: 0/40=40, for a session of:
3/47=50 or 94% at 1500+.
As long as I was above 1500, I could slow down to raise the percentage. ☺
I finally made my move at RHP: nine days, three moves. I made the ugly move which had no visible refutation at best play. himmmm?
I am off Monday/Tuesday, as well as the subsequent Saturday/Sunday, so will hopefully get back into some bullet, albeit not nearly the same rate as last few months, but, with all the RHP study combined now with resumption of CTS with full gusto if not great energy, I am eager to see if I can integrate it all at a higher level, and, in turn, reach for my coveted bullet ELO target, the work of many months of efforting. :)
Is that his wife in the picture or a chess groupie?
http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=1834
"Chess Classic 2004: Carmen in Mainz
"06.08.2004 She is one of the top ten earning super-models in the world, and a "kick-ass" chess player. And the President of the Estonian Chess Federation. Carmen Kass is the star guest at the Chess Classic, where she took on the chess champs in blitz games. (Oh, yes, Anand scored in his Rapid Chess match against Shirov). Here's the Carmen Kass story...
"Mainz Chess Classic 2004
Rheingoldhalle Mainz
"August 4 – 8, 2004
"This year's Chess Classic was opened with a press conference featuring super-model Carmen Kass. She is not just a georgeous woman who has graced the covers of most of the fashion magazine in the world. Carmen is also, as her official write-ups put it, a kick-ass chess player who prefers a nice game with friends to the finest night clubs in New York City.
[article continued below..}
I wrote Yasser last night, and, kidded him, telling him it was better to stay married:
http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=3735
"Bessel's Birthday – a Party in Prague
"16.03.2007 Last December Bessel Kok, Dutch businessman and chess organiser, turned 65, and also married his partner Martina. All of this happened in strict privacy. Now, three months later, Bessel, who will soon be running the commercial branch of FIDE, celebrated the milestones in a party spectacular held in Prague, with former president Václav Havel acting as patron. A chess treat was included..."
"Bessel's Birthday
"Report from Prague by Frederic Friedel
"Bessel Kok started as cofounder and President of the Belgian-based Banking communications company S.W.I.F.T., an International Banking Network that today provides payment services to 110,000 banks in 124 countries. From 1989 until 1995 Bessel was President and CEO of Belgacom (the Belgian National Telecom Operator, 26,000 staff), which he transformed and prepared for privatization.
[this is the guy who ran against Kirsan Ilyumzhinov for FIDE chairman, and latter joined his camp after a somewhat rancorous campaign. :)
blue, i respectfully submit, with your not insignificant chess erudition, it is slightly surprissing that you don't seem to read chessBase.com every day? but i construe that your circle of personal responsibilty must be great than mine. however small or arcain the article or citation, i skill virtually every article, even if for only fifteen seconds... some indifferent, some bad, many excellent--never know what you will unearth there!
similarly chessCafe.com and mark crowther's chessCenter.com, the prior of course i know that you know--cum Dan Heisman
dk
very interesting blog. curious as to what percentage correct on CTS you deem to be the most benefical to OTB chess? I would think that 96% right and perhaps you are not thinking hard enough? I boulder a lot and it's teaching the body certain repeatable engrams or neural patterns and to get to the next level I fail quite a bit before I can put all of the little pieces together. Do you think tactics is similar whereas you must force the limits of difficulty to improve or is the idea to see the patterns many many times and they sink in. I started CTS recently and I usually log in as a guest and see how high I can keep my rating for 50 problems. I have improved from about 1150 to 1350-1380 range or so but I haven't focused on % correct. Every other day I have been working about 20 problems in the 1600 range. I see you mention CT-Art, did you find it beneficial to improvement in addition to CTS?
hope the day finds you well.
thank you for the MOST fresh and thoughtful response, and, I absolutely promise to write more amply in the next week. many errands before this note, and more to go yet! but, for now, one tiny thing:
never presume!
i am also dogWaste, number seven out of 1855 tacticians, at 96.2%. :). the last 2,000 tries have been at around 98 to 98.5% at 1340 elo, and the first 2,000 were at around 1470 at 92%, so aggregated recent performance MUCH higher percentage.
yes, this is most like 'real chess' where you cultivate each move with deliberate filigree, and, in some ways, is a lot harder at 1345 elo than dkTransform at 1500 85.1%.
till next time, warmly, david
ps i own crampons/ice axe and am of course familiar with Arica and Oscar Ichazo. :)
I think correspondence has pros and cons for OTB players. The pros are deeper knowledge and understanding, especially of the opening and endgames. The cons are you get used to not having to make decisions under pressure, and also get used to analysis board facilities and the like, which detracts from OTB visualisation ability. (This is made even worse if you cheat and use a computer to help analyze.)
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lots of 'goodies' today:
at CTS or chess tactical server, i am back with gusto. while i try to practice THERE daily, i also, not often but at times, try to follow the rhythem of my soul and, in so doing, at times take a complete break (surely not from ALL of chess but from) there.
so daily now i have passion and verve there... for example, earlier tonight, i was running 2f/53s=55 tries at 1510 elo, and while i slipped at the end, i feel like i am definitely tracking there.
moreover, i finally have energy again for dogWaste, and he is gunning for a notch at 96.6% and while i will no longer do thirty or forty or a hundred a day, exercising the prerogative of my rank, where it is a lot easier to 'keep it' than to 'get it', i now have energy for ten or fifteen a day, there, to finish off my sessions when all the cylinders are firing.
along with that, i never got to say, but my mouse was troubling me, and that seems to have stopped, so 100% is VERY disturbed by things like slips and broadband lag, so that all in check enboldens me there again.
my RHP correspondence game is winding down from a terse middlegame to what soon promises to be a solid middle to endgame transition, with definite advantage to white--me. i am ashamed to say how many hours upon hours i spend, but, you know what, i know the position.
i took all my notes, at one key tree with my three candidate moves, and consolidated them, taking no less than FIVE closely cribbed pages of handwriten variations and evaluations, taping them together, surely not the nearly incommensurable 110' or whatever it was of continuous scroll of the now long deceased Mr. Jack Keuroac created in his drug induced high on benzedrill or whatever it was in writing On The Road in a cafinated one sitting stint at his manic typewriter, but, i can assure you, like that, all five pages of them in black ink, then my notes in summary in red, as us Architects do in marking or revising blueprints.
did it work? yes. for the first time, in a long time, my opponent made what i believe to have been the second best move, but only a check latter will know...
then i went to see my holistic MD last Tuesday, for osteopathy and homeopathy, or what can otherwise be called 'fine balancing', and stopped off at Tacoma books, and sweet baby jesus, i am not an 1.e4 player, nor meet it with ...e5, but glory be to god almighty, there was Bronsteins 200 Open Games, what charm, so i bought it. it sits after browsing or perusing its contents (makes me think of the Skt. or Sanskrit of the Patanjali Sutras, where he uses the term Purusa and Prakriti, or "Purusa is the Supreme personality of Godhead or anyone who imitates the Supreme Personality of Godhead as an enjoyer, and prakrti means "nature." himmmm?
how nicely appointed it now rests next to my Vasi
iv's Tigran Petrosian's Life and Games, and Life and Games of Tal, by Tal on the other side. not too shabby.
a lot is happening. i am just finally finishing Averbakhs Chess Endings, Essential Knowledge, and have five pages to go. since i have read most of this book without a board, most of it laying down and calculating arduously and slowly, it IS SLOW GOING, but now, near the end, when many parts come together with variations, i need a board, and have two of them, but, again, slowly....
what is missing is to do two CT-Art 3.0's per day, and so do the circle by October, but in no rush.
jumba: i dont want so much to learn these problems as EXPERIENCE THEM. with no offence to my learned and most estemed collegue Wormwood, a smart young man for sure, i could do as he does and 'spin' on many, many problems, say 70,000 or 80,000 but i want to see them, and try them NOT memorize them.
for sure, there are many i have repeatedly gotten wrong, and many learned so well, i know them with my eyes closed, and go 'bam', 'bam', 'bam'. there are many that i have gotten wrong again, and again, and again which i no longer get wrong, having memorized them, even almost difficult ones.
but my distinction is experience and challenge, no more than at the gym or the track we memorize lifting more reps or running faster. the effort is my goal. sustained effort.
ideally, i find *for me and in no way wish to proclaim this as iconographic to all* that the ideal is a few CT-Art 3.0 THEN some CTS, THEN bullet chess, THEN correspondence chess, all in one day. ive done most of that, but not right now.
why dont you join? what stops you? of course, you can do 96% but can you do it three or four thousand times?
can you do 25,000 at 85.1% at 1500???
tom chives. thank you sir for the concerted and most well formulated response. you are right. which is precisely why i intend to do more tactics again, and more bullet, and more application live, in real time.
my plan for my next 12 RHP games is to play three at a time, and do this four times, to get to 20 games, or around at least 1700+ elo there, and move faster, but allow more error, but still to be very carefull, but just as we play bullet or blitz on the clock, now after eight games, to play more but allow myself thirty mintues or twenty, etc for one move. i will loose some, but adumbrate my bullet thus, and play slower without the physical stress *for me* of OBP, over the board play.
i just finished my taxes, always the grand report card for an options trader or position holder key reversal trader like me, and so great joy for me, and, in a way, the true begining of my year for me, as always, in a way. in so doing, i get to review and relive the prior years mishaps, much as we post mortem in chess.
if that were not enough, i just got my ticket, to fly east, so see my now very aged mother, for her 80th birthday ON mothers day, in may, and see spring in new jersey for the first time in 25 years or so, and my first mothers day with my mom in as long, so much is completing, and, i expect, will translate into better more energic chess, if you will...
lastly, grandmaster Seirawan wants to take me to lunch, and while we have been friend for, now, five years, i think it is, and by now very good friends and surely not inextensive email pen pals across five to seven hundred emails, some not short texts, on wide and varied subjects centered on globalism, world opinion, cultural decline, and current affairs, and by now not so rare to see him that i tingle in anticipation as i did years ago, NEVER before can i recall seeing him and feeling like i need an outline, so as not to miss most precious time to talk. never before can i recall in life meeting someone i can blog about or read the lattest on in Wikipedia, restraining myself in every way to update their text or revisions adding a word or two of my own, knowing better than many of its writers, and so avoid conceit, or the need to one up the rest of them, and just have it be mine alone.
one thing i do wish to ask him, it is about correspondence chess, and his opinion as to whether i need read Kmocks Pawn Power after Soltis Pawn Structure in Chess, or vice a versa, or one instead of the other, the balance of public opinion surely on Soltis, as is mine.
i also want to here all of Wijk aan Zee, and more Kirsan stories, and the famous story of sleeping in Korchnois bedroom, when he lived there for a spate as second to the contestor to Karpov, the third time round, i think it was. :)
warmly, dk
at chess tactical server or CTS, dogWaste just did 3f/530s= 533 tries since problem 5,694 @99.44% between 1310 and 1330 elo, sometimes higher or lower, but almost always in that range. this is tenth in the world out of some 1841 active users there, i think it was.
i finished game eight, my eight win at RHP but sadly didnt quite hit 1600 elo, despite my opponents 1710 rating, in an epic battle, with some 50 hours on four moves, forcing me to settle for 1590. talk about unaesthetic integer breakpoints.
now i will move on to three games, but probably will wait till my return from a 12 day trip east to see my mother for her eightieth birthday at mothersday, and who can really rest on vacation with correspondence games, even if the site has a well crafted vacation set up, with approved absences? but how can i rest even if i am allowed, when the games sit? i want to win, and win with command.
dkTransform at CTS is 154f/1,066s= 1,220 tries @87.38% at 1500 elo.
while i wish to very much get back to CT-art 3.0, i just dont have the extra energy for it, again, despite wishing it were so... so this must wait till latter. i must finish Averbakh Essential finally, then move on to the also epic Secrets of Pawn Endings, surely a real piece of work???
as for RHP, i am confident that i can win and conduct analysis very deeply, if not accurately. i am more like 1900 at standard, and 2100 at CT-Art 3.0, etc. so i can do this.
but now i must learn to do this very carefully and in a highly disciplined way for three games:
using cBase but of course no engine, setting up all the variations, and determining my candidate moves, my opponents best replies to those; my possible replies to those; his to those, etc. it quickly goes off to the hundreds of variations.
you just cannot do this purely intelectually. not without great time. you must heuristically be able to evaluate the ideal position, go for key squares, forge a plan, and see the best replies, and evaluate according to space, mobility, force or time, king safety, pawn structure, etc, know how to do this.
and no cBase can, no matter how big your tree of variations can allow one to grock or see all this or comprehend all this. it is but a tool to access ones own constructs.
but we must take a notepad and annotate ONES OF EVALUATIONS, AND SO prune the tree, since it quickly goes infinite according to the well known 'horizon effect'.
after and only after the games are done, perhaps worth more than to go back and see--IN THE ACTUAL GAME--where a faster win was lost, or a loss possibly averted by a key line, or a draw garnished, or a draw given away, perhaps i can finally get a copy of Rybka, and evaluate my evaluation--IN THE EVALUATION WORK INSTEAD--again, this exercise aught to be worth its weight in gold in review, after, to see ones blind spots in strong resolution. that is to say, evaluate my accessments more than my play alone, if you follow.
yasser and i meet this next monday. i simply cannot recall the last time i saw him, despite many memorable meetings, and discussions, and walks since 2002, but since i had the concussion in august, just find it fuzzy, again, we have meet maybe fifteen or so times in the last five years--but he moved from seattle to amsterdam, and i got him all his moving boxes, but cannot see it... our last visit in person.
warmly, dk
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