Semi-Annual State of the Elation Report - - - Part I

To my fellow chess improvement bloggers, since I never got to lay out my plan or overview my chess study in the New Year--as many of you did--it seems a good time to share broadly in kind. In so doing, my intention is to talk about chess only, chess improvement, and the 'DK-Randomness Factor (tm BDK, which can range between a low of 0.0 to high of 10.00--but says I had an 11 last week) well below a coefficient of 1.9 here in a disciplined, sensible way.

I need to discuss not only my plans, and those successes attained, but a fair and honest report on failings, struggles, and imbalances if not deficiencies.

Lastly, it truly pains me to have to split this into two or now probably even three parts, but it is one thing to make a plan, or to execute a plan (I have done this many, many times so writing my plan is hardly at all unique to me, but none have been posted here), but even just to write all this is daunting, and gives me a pause, as if a plan is too large, the more difficult does it become. It is in my nature to make large plans, but at the same time, I usually do them.

[link to comments above Belgium beer photo, at bottom, below:]

MAIN FOCUS,
Currently in Operation, Established in Routine:





















Youth, lacking much experience, instead contains so much raw, unlimited, potentiality...

GM Games
For the last month or six weeks, my focus has been the review of Grandmaster Games ('GM') and Reinfelds 1001 Sacrifices of Combinations. Readers know that I added to the 941 game database of classic games (compiled from canonical chess game collections), by adding the games from a large ICC collection no longer available, then notably GM-Ram and The 100 Best Chess Games of the 20th Century by Soltis. These additions brought the total to 1,663 games.

There is an old saw, in chess improvement, that every player needs to 'be familiar with' (if not 'know by hand') 2,000 games inside and out (Note 1.). If I don’t have them 'all' (I don't) then surely I have a lot of them (2). My main concern was and is to review them all, and my emphasis further in the future is to go deeper into THOSE games--rather to add MORE games.

From January of 2003 to June of 2005, I accomplished a very slow review of the first trance; and now I am reviewing the next trance. As anyone knows who has done this, this is hard work. Masterpieces in which some of the most imaginative and creative chess minds have ever unleashed in tactic magic or deep strategic inexplicable depth do not easily fall into the brain by going 'click', 'click', and 'click'. At the same time, if I go too slowly (I am not), then while depth is surely added, then volume inevitably suffers.









My solution is to go through these next 725 games swiftly, with perfect resolve to go back a second time, albeit more slowly. Added to my delight are many early games of Chigorin, Tarrasch, Lasker, Pillsbury, and of course Morphy. I had set up a spreadsheet, with games numbered 1 to 1,663, and tag each game as I go, classifying according to such mundane objects as not only date, name, ply, ECO, but promotion, sacrifice, brief mnemonic description, position, center type, or pawn structure, to name but a few. This is also hard work!

[recently, following my own inner metre, I have decided to stop tagging the games in detail, saving this for the second time around, instead only creating the basic records such as opponents, year, ply only, as this was making the process a real chore. This means that I will go a lot faster, and in so doing, become basically familiar with the games. Instead of twenty five games a week (done in five months: three per day on work days and five on weekends), I am now doing more like thirty-five to fifty+ per week, yet this means that the second time around, I will instead need a year (two per day) to cycle through them all (game 942 to 1,663).

While I have real misgivings about speeding up, instead of slowing down, this also gets me to the two per day rate SOONER, similar to the first 941 games from 2003-2005, where I chewed the games more slowly. Another option is to take two years, and do ONE per day. In any event, I move forward, the key in all study.]















1001
Daily I try to solve 5 Reinfeld problems, with 10 per day on a weekend (3), which is a rate of 45 per week. At this rate, again, as I have also said before, I will be able to complete not only this book, but his second book on Checkmates, then The Ultimate Chess Puzzle book by Emms (4), totaling 3,002 problems.

What I like about this approach is that its portability--that is to say, time away from the desktop computer, which, I strongly suspect, we all see way too much of as Knight Errants or Friends of the Knights. I can do them in a waiting room, in bed, in the commode, or at the beach. So far, I am a little behind my major goal of all of them done by October of 2008 or 31 December 2008, but I often approach my self imposed solution rate, only to fall behind with fatigue from work. At the same time, while it is a struggle, this is one of those challenging goals that I KNOW that I will attain. What winds up happening is that after falling behind (I find them if not 'hard' to do, some of them more like 'impossible' after too many days in a row at work), I have to do twelve or fifteen per day on a weekend.












As those of you--more than know already--who have processed or attempted to solve these problems, while some of them are like 'duh, this is so easy', interspaced between are some very challenging and demanding problems that can, in fact, not only take hours, but even days to solve, barring hints from 'the back of the book'. Similar to the GM game unit, in this unit, regularity is the goal rather than perfection--or, as I like to say, 'activity' level instead of 'quality' level. This is the running of laps of chess--what it is to run when tired or when the legs are not fresh, but we work through it anyway.

Coupled with the GM game review and prior efforts on CT-Art 3.0 and Chess Tactical Server, by now I often recognize positions, as if to say, "I saw this windmill combination with the Lasker game", or conversely, "I saw this problem in Reinfeld, now here it is in full in the game collection. :)"

Lastly, I am at my best organizing goals according to physically real patterns or structures, whether it be previously in architecture, financial sales, and running, or currently in chess, climbing, and writing... and quite simply, this must be done by age 50 in 14 months or before that New Year, at the end of December.





















OBP
Over the board play. I don’t play year round, which is a big failing of mine. As BDK recently said, he feels that improvement comes from continuing to play, and stopping only subverts the process (whether it be from attaining a hard won rating benchmark, and pausing so as 'not to loose it' or from exhaustion).

The flip side is that when I do play, I tend to play in huge amounts, and focus with extra intense effort upon play. For example, after attaining a 1400+ bullet rating at ICC after 1300 games in a few months at a 0/4 time frame, I didn't play for months, but returned to another site somewhat anonymously, playing some 900 games in a month. Tiring! And obsessive! My goal was to attain 1400 bullet again, but after hitting 1390, then 1398, all I could do was be exasperated. Tears! We have all been there. Give up chess :) How bad can I be?



The RD feature at FICS, while intending to be more accurate, to my mind, seems to a bedeviling degree, to reward insufficient points for wins from players 200 and 300 elo above us, granting similar points for wins against peers. It seemed to put me in a black hole at a rating level, I didn't feel the comradely I felt at ICC, and getting bullet games there is really, really hard. I guess that I kept going thinking I could get there, but could not--not then anyway. I feel a need to try again in the future, but only after the rigors of sustained CT-Art 3.0 again. Lastly, FICS doesn’t remember invites, instead wiping out the query once our game begins, unlike ICC (the latter delivers invites to players after they finish instead of saying that they are 'currently playing', conserving a lot of effort in the invite area).

Hearty 'thank you's' to Temposchlucker, who in late June generously helped me get into BabaChess for FICS, and much other help besides. A truly lovely gent, or as they say in the south: 'not dumb'.

While I very much need to start playing blitz, instead of bullet, this latter effort is not quite done, and represents a major unit for me, under the rubric, or unit of "get the rust off aggressively". Of course, as I promised to confide doubts, while I'm confident that a little play every day year round would give anyone better results, it just doesn’t fit my personality, energetic type, nor even my physiology. All or none is my way, my strength, my weakness (5).





















In maturity, more and more we learn what NOT to do, but this also leaves less and less available to be done with free abandon...

CTS
I fully intend to continue at Chess Tactical Server, but it is no longer fun for me. At this time, oddly, I have to make myself do it. Perhaps, as is my plan, after more heavy lifting at CT-Art 3.0, which started back yesterday, it can be fun again. Briefly:

When Kasparov described Fischer's incredible run to the crown of the WCC, in My Great Predecessors Volume V., he explicated how after winning so much, Bobby felt this fear and how it was as if there was nowhere to go but down, having of course attained his adolescent need to 'beat them all'.

In my far more tiny, humble case, while number ten or eleven out of 2250 users for accuracy at CTS is sustainable, and being among the few in the top 100 (thirty-eight) for number of tries WHO are 87% and up can and will be furthered in the next year or two, I have found my ego to get in the way of what was once pure joy, and delight.

It's not all bad. But at my current 95% daily rate, at 1400, down from 1500 to 1520 at 90% (or so), ONE SINGLE PROBLEM wrong out of twenty feels disturbing. Ouch. Like it or not, after 40,447 problems at CTS (33.9k and 6.5k two ID's), I know what I need to do, and do it, but the higher the success rate, the tenser the whole thing becomes--and with it, the slower the progress rate daily, back to BDK's wisdom on 'continuing to enjoy the chess we love' as against 'not losing something'.

I aim to do the next 26,060 tries at 94% minimum, and will be 90.0% at 60,000 (95% next 6,060 and perhaps 93.61 thereafter). The rub is to see if I can convert this into better "real chess", not ego driven, false accomplishment in social isolation.

Forty per day is my goal, but might need to quit for a while, but NOT until I really bootstrap CT-Art firmly, first (cf. below), as a daily commitment that is alive and living.





















Please allow me to reproduce a comment to my blog from last October. It had a real impact on me. Without further ado:

"Thanks for your kind advice, dk - you really seem to be quite a nice person!

"But I think that, other than you, I might feel a little ambivalent to see my number of tries on CTS growing. After all, we don't know if all this is not almost entirely a waste of time. We REALLY don't have a clue what can or cannot be achieved as an adult in chess. So, speaking of ways of self-stimulation, I guess it might have a good effect not to see such a great number of problems accumulated on your account. This high number might come back to haunt you bitterly one day, if you don't live up to your expectations. On the other hand, if you use more than one ID you still invest a lot of time (deliberately, I suppose), but the burden, subjectively, will not be so great in hindsight.

"Also, I find the idea of using different handles (although CTS officially doesn't seem to approve of this) quite a nice opportunity to combine different approaches to using this fine server. You can try to maximize percentage with one handle, maximize rating with another, and even if you just want to fool around a bit it might still be more fun doing that with a separate identity than by simply using the guest account. And, come on, even you would like to track your pure rating development as well, wouldn't you?

"Concerning the percentage approach - I certainly realize that its big point is the close similarity to OTB thinking. As far as I can tell you must be completely right in finding this more effective as well as more intellectually satisfying. But there are drawbacks as well. If you allow the short time to pressure you, there is much more action in it, it will be more entertaining. Also, the responsibility involved in maximizing percentage is much greater since you can restore a fall in rating at any time while you will have to struggle for long to restore a fall in percentage. Thus, if you just look on the rating you're able to take it much more lightly at times. Anyway, that's how I see it.
- collini

I ask the kind reader not to get to intellectual in this one case as to what it means. But IN THE HEART, he really, really touches something, and says 'it' far better than I can.











CT-Art 3.0
My situation with CT-Art is 180 degrees to that of CTS. Previously, I 'gassed out' on CTA, and thirsted for CTS. Now I thirst for CTA. Yesterday I picked up level five, which I was already near the very beginnings of.

I had my best chess results ever while doing CTA daily six months, then a year ago, and I do feel that 'a bit of CTA with some CTS' is enormously better--enormously more efficacious--than 'a lot of CTS with no CTA'. To be even more exact, as I recollect: 'CTA daily, with some CTS, then daily Red Hot Pawn (RHP) coupled with that, provided me the best chess. My goal is to do two per day, but not sure if this is feasible not 'in and of itself', but given all my other areas of chess focus or activity. If I am done the first circle in April instead of the end of December, so be it, I do them very slowly--fully calculating. Currently, I am at problems 837 and 838 at 2180 elo, 72% overall, 81% for level Five now (31 of 180 problems accomplished; only FIVE moves wrong of the last 11 problems, so doing it VERY carefully!).

I am hard core on this again. I have the next two problems (from the CTA 'browse tool) previewed on two seperate pocket chess sets, 8" x 8". I take one to bed, and one is here near my PC. I try very hard to find the positions in Blokh's book, Combinative Motif's, and till recently have been able to find most of the recent problems as an alternate way of being able to transport the position (without ANY hints, of course!) but suddenly, at level five, none are in the book, and in time I will know which are not in the book, and while the book is highly correlated, it cannot be 100% related.





















Enchantment, like those found in Invisible Cities by Calvino...

What is Missing
Correspondence Chess, Endings, Pawn Structure, and Middlegame Strategy and Plans are the significant missing parts of the overall equation, and it is with those, that we resume our essay in five days time, or Part II: NEXT FOCUS, or My Next Chess Unit.

In ten days time, we will resume the discussion with matters like lifestyle, health, purpose, and meaning, and it is with those that we will open our view, in Part III, or under Other, more Global Considerations.

Along the way--soon--I still will post my own version of 'The Tags' (already written), the Essay on Blunderprone, and more... Warmly, dk

NOTES
(1) Whether or not this originated from chess great Bobby Fischer's teacher Jack Collins, those who came after seemed to attach to this number and refer back to him. As I recall, he put Fischer early on to a assiduous study of the classics, perhaps one hundred+ games per champion.

(2) [When I get in rare cases like this the DK-meter (BDK tm) over seven for a moment, at least I will do it in footnotes. :)]

With no disrespect to Mr. Jack Le Moine, I must first say, that not unlike Nietzsche, or Thoreau, I suspect that while I have grave doubts that I would 'like the man' were we to me meet in person (something is off that I feel, but cannot quite put my finger on; I am also certain he wouldn’t like the likes of me!) but at the same time--I really like his work, which is UNIFORMALLY EXCELLENT. He recently said in his nice post called 'Chess Books' that:

"I believe that it is a mistake to buy too many books and software. It is better to have a smaller library and to know it well, then it is to know a lot of books superficially. Here are the one's that have helped me. I notice that after compiling this list, I need to go over everything again. I won't be buying more products." Triple bravo Jack. Thank you.

The rarest case is when we don’t like the work, but appreciate the man, such as Romanian mythographer cum Joseph Campbell nemesis Mircea Eliade, who's work just drives me nuts, but has a great life story, such as when he sat in a room for two or three years, was it, timing himself daily, and enforcing himself on rationed sleep to learn Sanskrit in its entirety--a terribly, terribly difficult if not most powerful language of which it is said:

"More difficult than the Latin, more exact than the Greek, Sanskrit..." Paramhansa Yogananda, Autobiography of a Yogi.

(3) Silly to say, but as both an extremely visual and emotional person, with the binding on my first 1001 Reinfeld book now completely falling apart, I now derive almost zero pleasure solving problems from the book. I toy with the idea, instead, of just quickly ordering the Lou Hays immorally plageristic version of the book, but at problem 580, reassure myself, soon if I push can just put it on the shelf and never see it again. Page 19-20 blew out at the beach, with others on different occassions, and I always carefully retrieved them... but weeks latter, find ONE page missing. I am still upset by it, and kind of ruins it for me! The charm is gone for THAT specific book now. It's a chore just to touch the book; but, the old Scott in me can't just go and buy another one. No! I must go to the library and get it, or have one of you pals mail me a copy of the page! Groan.

(4) The advantage of the Emms book, is that many of his selected puzzles come from old Soviet Championship games, and therefore not well known, as well as from his own games, also not well known, all fully intended by him. A limitation posed by even the very greatest, classic, tactical masterpieces is that, highly imaginative if not unthinkable some of them are, erudite chess students get to where WE recognize them, fostering or furthering the illusion that we know them.

(5) In the Braverman Nature Assessment, I score deficient in Serotonin and GABA, and highly excess in Dopamine and Acetylcholine. It is as if I have a great accelerator in a car, and a great power system, but no proper breaks for the wheels! Highly recommended test and process. In homeopathy I score as a Nux Vomica, Natrium Muriaticum, and Lachesis, all very types related to intensity and driveness, sensitivity, and restlessness.