Medis Res

I am busy like wildfire right now. "The middle of things".

Five or six major projects. I intend to blog extensively still, but until my first project is done, no big posts.

Two things: I am very indebted to Underpromoted Knight for the most wonderful mention of the Ziatdinov articles at IM Silman's very useful website and while I had seen these articles before, in whole or part, never quite read them the way I did today. Here is a clip from UPK's most insightful and inspiring post today:

"In any case, I've purchased Silman's Complete Endgame course, and I'm working my way through it in addition to my opening studies and, of course, tactics. Speaking of which, if any of you followed Ziatdinov's "Training Tips" on jeremysilman.com, you would have found his rather bold claim that if you take a collection of 1000 tactical problems and learn them "by hand" (i.e. so automatically that all your calculations are actually subconscious) then you "will have the tactical ability of a Grandmaster." I don't know whether or not this claim is true; however, I'm going to, ah, pretend it's true, and spend the next year or so (as long as it takes) internalizing all main lines and side variations of the problems in CT-Art, to perfection".

Thank you UPK! It is, simply, in my humble opinion, impossible to undervalue what he says, similar to Grandpatzer. What he says, I hang onto:

"I think it's important to analyze your games--even online blitz. Part of that analysis should include how the opening was treated. Of course, you'll also be looking for errors in tactics, endgames, and strategy as well, but I don't think the opening should just be ignored, regardless of your chess strength.

"If you do not want to maintain an openings repertoire, and just fly by the seat of your pants, then you could keep your opening study down to spotting gross errors. However, if you've ever bought an opening book with the intent of playing certain lines routinely, I strongly feel you need to understand the suggested moves, and have followed the main line through the opening so that you understand what each side is aiming for. If you're plopping money down on opening books, but just "looking up the answer" to what you should have played, or just trying to memorize lines, you're wasting time and money. You owe it to yourself to try and understand the lines you want to play, and I believe that studying openings in this limited but focused way can improve your chess as a whole".

Ditto all the way baby! In martial arts, one thing you always do, is watch every move that your senior blackbelts make. Bravo!!














Secondly, the article may not stay up at Nature long, but a discussion with a friend from blogger offline about the recent chessBase article about checkers being 'solved', led to my being directed to this nice article. See link to comparison of complexity of checkers, chess, go.