I should tidy this up. But what the F. Who has time or energy? I am busy with finishing this cycle of
CT-Art 3.0, and in view of going back to blitz to test how much of the last seven weeks of this study has helped result in seeing more in chess, have in the last day or two gone back to CTS, aka as
Chess Tactics Server. It is the sh_t! [No time here. Quickly. Version four has problems. Be sure to get 3.0].
The skill had gone fast, but I am also very confident that this does not mean that I lost it. Slow calculation, standard as it were, is not the same as blitz, but at least from where I live, from where I stand, the one is connected to the other. Blitz feeds real chess, and real chess feeds blitz. Blitz is not food. It is fuel. You have to do a lot of it to get the raw experience, and the more you do it, the more you see. Comments below more than share my peripatetic thoughts.
Its Saturday, tomorrow promises to be the second nice day in three weeks. Some hate the weather here. I am among those who love it. The rain holds me in its gentle arms, bathing my sorrow, washing my heartache. But now that I am clearly defined as training for my first 30 mile run, but next year, and I need to put the miles in, and every two weeks need to do something big. And this is always best in the forest. That day is tomorrow. Those sort of runs can happen in horrid mud, but its good to be able to see where you are going, even if the mud is still there. OK, here goes:
Date From Message
2012, Nov 24 dktransform
Play blitz all the time? Sure. But then the skills
start to plateau. Most of all, fatigue sets in. 3 min
chess day after day can be stressful, at least if you
are doing it for real, that is to say, not 'for kicks',
but full on, urgent, each and every game, for real,
life or death, get a peak all time rating. Then you
know--relative to yourself--repeat, to yourself--you
are on form. Then you need to refresh and retrain.
Train all the time? Sure. But then you run into lack
of practical application, making comfort a value
greater than struggle. But if you are not doing tons
of training, it is not fruitful. Then you don't have
muscle building but 'routine maintenance'.
Then you
have to go and retest. The cycle repeats. Play lots
of blitz, go back and run your games in chessBase, not
for deep Fritz as it were, but to see where you have
habitual bad opening habits and constructs. You
determine to eradicate them, at least the way I do it,
go into chessBase and if you have narrowed down your
repertoire, you get to repeat. Getting to repeat, you
get to see what you do that does not work. Better
players punish you. You do deeper work, then do
tactics, then blitz. Do it all, then play standard
chess. See how good you are, and prepare for
punishment. But you get to experience yourself, in
relationship to others.
2012, Nov 24 dktransform
OK. Nothing to brag of here. Just report on recent
effort, as but one example of how one more CTS person
goes about his or her efforts. First bad form. Hard
to do 85% at 1600, 1500 level. So last day or two,
retooling. Now that I can do 1f/138s= 139t @ 99.3% for
1100 elo level. Now I step up to 1300. Once I can do
those around 97/98%, then I go back to 1500 level
problems. Once I can do those at 91% and push up into
the mid 1500's, then it is time to play blitz again.
It takes time, but you get back in shape. First and
foremost, by consistent success. 1100 is really not so
completely easy. Easy? Yes. But perfectly? Not so
easy. About 63% of those are 1300/1400 level. The
issue is not difficulty. The issue is determination to
correct thinking. Not most of the time. But each and
every time.
2012, Nov 23 dktransform
Hello CTS friends and associates, and Happy
Thanksgiving to all of you who are in an America or
American.... OK: 'How quickly it goes!' I've been busy
at CT-Art 3.0 and just about finished the entire cycle.
Great stuff. But it is also another world. I am
ramping up here again, really, really starting to
hunger for blitz, not for stimulation as such alone,
but to start feeding my brain lots of chess to see how
much I have absorbed in the last five or six weeks. I
certainly know not to loose all this hard work, by
total loss of confidence, by playing blitz, and having
a rating sink like a stone as I resync my brain to
faster board evaluation. As such, I am doing what I
have always done, and found to work, and that is work
hard, and steadily, and in size at CTS till I can do
lots of problems accurately.
But also as always,
starting back, you find that you cannot just will
yourself into form. It was hard to do 70 or 80% at > = 1600 level with 1500 level problems, and I can assure
you, since I cannot easily do 1100 level problems at
95%, it means my form is way off. CTS is a skill like
anything else, and you just don't show up, and voila!
It takes time. I will get it back, but until I can get
back to a 91% run rate, and steadily and consistently,
there will be no blitz for me. Its running laps, hill
work, the gym, sit ups. Then when the work outs are
good, and consistently, then the fight or the track or
cross country match. That time is not now! Warmly, dk
2012, Nov 19 dktransform
Good. Even better: '
Learning How to Learn: Bateson'sDolphins. One of the best stories about learning how to
learn comes from
anthropologist Gregory Bateson In his
book, "Steps to the Ecology of Mind". In these
collected stories, Bateson describes how he saw
dolphins working it out for themselves in a
dolphinarium. On the first day of a new routine, the
dolphins were taught a new trick. If they performed it
correctly, they were rewarded with a fish. The next
day, when they performed the trick, no fish were given.
Fish were only given when a new trick was mastered.
This continued for two weeks. Then on the fourteenth
day, the dolphins performed four new tricks they hadn't
been shown before but had learnt by themselves. The
dolphins had learnt that learning, not tricks, is what
gets rewarded. It's precisely this skill that we all
need to learn for our own personal effectiveness at
work.'
2012, Nov 16 chessisajedrez
'If you were to visit a chess tournament and watch a
grandmaster in action, you would be able to observe a
surprising range of emotions. Sometimes, in apparently
simple positions, the grandmaster might lapse into
lengthy periods of concentration, where ten minutes or
more might be spent on a move. At other times the moves
will come very quickly, even in complicated positions.
You might even be shocked if the grandmaster suddenly
wins the game with a lengthy and brilliant mating
sacrifice – after thinking for just a few seconds.
Clearly the analytical process is not always directly
related to how complicated the position is on the
surface. The reason for this is pattern
recognition.
If the grandmaster can recall similar
positions encountered in the past, the same themes and
concepts might be applicable to the game in hand. This
makes it much easier and quicker to analyze a position.
It especially applies to the most basic attacking
formations around the enemy king. Once a known motif is
spotted, the moves of the potential combination are
analyzed to check that it does indeed work in the
particular position on the board. It is clear then
that chess analysis is a mixture of calculation of
individual moves and pattern recognition'. – Murray
Chandler,
How to Beat Your Dad at Chess [dk:
Quoted here. Great book. He is part of the
Emms, Nunn, Burgess nexus at Gambit Publications, UK]
2012, Nov 16 e4e5f4
Do you want to get better results on this site? Read
and use "
Thinking fast and slow" from
Daniel Kahneman.
2012, Nov 15 chessisajedrez
@dktransform - "Soilent Green is Coca Cola!"
2012, Nov 15 dktransform
Soylent Green is a 1973 American science fiction film
directed by Richard Fleischer and starring Charlton
Heston and, in his final film, Edward G. Robinson. The
film overlays the police procedural and science fiction
genres as it depicts the investigation into the murder
of a wealthy businessman in a dystopian future
suffering from pollution, overpopulation, depleted
resources, poverty, dying oceans, and a hot climate due
to the greenhouse effect. Much of the population
survives on processed food rations, including "soylent
green". The film, which is loosely based upon the 1966
science fiction novel Make Room! Make Room!, by Harry
Harrison, won the Nebula Award for Best Dramatic
Presentation and the Saturn Award for Best Science
Fiction Film in 1973.
2012, Nov 15 dktransform
Friends and loved ones at CTS, lets not rot our bodies
and brains while we try to build our mental acuity
here. Worth the while. Love to all of you, David Korn
PS, now at problem 1,063 at CT-Art 3.0. This stuff is
the sh_t! I will finish it this time, in about 65 days
this time, then 47, then 23, then 11, then plan to make
the move to 1800 blitz, up one notch, then from nascent
1700 USCF to 1800+ (OK, not quite, but I refused like
97 draws in my recent games, lost when thinking i was
even, even when i thought i was winning, all of them!
try this:
https://secure3.convio.net/aahf/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=1284
2012, Nov 13 dktransform
nice to see you. i am here twice a day, always enjoy
the notes. currently, after four attempts at the seven
circles, each time getting stuck at problems six
hundred, seven hundred, eight hundred, biting through
with deep, very deep commitment. drafted a xls
schedule. discipline was not and is not the issue.
these are hard problems, some mind bending. 'click,
click' and too fast, might as well not call it standard
tactics, but my old hobgobblen of 'guessing'. this
time i am biting hard. on problem 1,049, and on my way
to 1209. i do this at waking, before work, now, and
before bed. i was going to stop at level six, problem
1,039, my aim of weeks, and repeat that circle first in
40 days again recently, then 28, 14, and seven.
i do
not do it the same as michael de Mazla, but similar. i
decided two days ago not to go back, subverting my
irrevocable plan to finish at 31 dec 2012, but now the
whole thing, then repeat ALL of it. no blitz, no
chessBase, just john emms ultimate chess puzzle book in
bed. this is it. it is now time. leaving portland,
going back to washington state, to work on
sustainability, a 28th amendment to the american
constitution, into law. so first finish CT-Art 3.0,
prefatory to lots of USCF games back in WA state (not
much here, and not ready, and way overpriced here,
tournaments anyway), and nascent to that, will play
lots of blitz, and before that, lots of CTS. I will be
back, and believe me, my RD will not >100. i am awake.
2012, Nov 04 dktransform
i have been eating pretty much having a full mean every
hour for the last six hours, now constantly. when i did
a guided climb of
Glacier Peak in 2000, i had a large
pizza two days before leaving for dinner, a large pizza
for lunch the next day, and a large pizza for dinner.
only 12,000 feet vertical in 1.5 days, carrying sixty
pounds. the body needs deep fuel reserves, but water
matters FAR more. i just got back from the
trailhead,here in a far different place, driving 38 miles total,
just to drop 0.8 gallons of water at the 9.7 mile mark
off a access road along the way, to be ready to drink
up, tank up, and have water for the trip back. in the
forest, divine! then i am starving for two days after,
cannot stop eating :-).
2012, Nov 04
dktransform larry kaufman smart motherF'r!
http://chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/Kaufman+Test
2012, Nov 04 dktransform
http://chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/Bratko-Kopec+Test i do not program chess engines, just from wide
anecdotal chess reading...
2012, Nov 04 dktransform
yes. some of the old guard have a cc of a pgn of the
complete CTS problems, when there were 23k of them,
the last seven years. to the operators credit, they
added an additional 14k problems, but let it be
reminded that on one has ever or does complain about
the scope of prior. it is just that much better to
have more. ways to improve the site and user
experience? why yes, of course, but duly appreciated
all the same. a matter of what is present, not what is
absent.
please write me at
davidkorn.specialprojects@gmail.com, and I can send.
the illustrious ginger baker, who i believe still lives
in france (an american, and to my surprise, a man not a
woman... by the name only would have thought not). i am
preparing to
run 22 miles to tomorrow, so if don't
send it then will the next day. massive eating is real
work :-). second, you can get pgn's of the two
reinfeld books as well as, what is it called, the Brako
or Bradko problems for testing engines here, which
should be plenty. good luck:
2012, Oct 29 dktransform
does anyone here, please, have any direct experience
with the many variations of Renko's various tactics
courses, CD's. to me, it is hard to tell. CTS, CT-Art
3.0, Reinfeld,
Polgar's Chess Middlegames--4,158 Positions,
TASC or
Steppenmethod, at some point,
become no more or no less, you do the work, there are
no magic tricks. at the same time, if you aim too
high, i kind of ruins better work for latter. you do
not so much calculate or delve into the problems as
memorize them, as my Zen Master
Dae Soen Sa Nim called
'Number One Bad!'.
you do CT Art 3.0 too slowly, you
just start to suffocate. do it too fast, its click,
click, this is not memorization, but time calculating,
with direct feedback. that said, its like the man
said, 'so many girls, so little time'. so here. begs
the question, what does
Renko have that others do not?
i duly note, the guy on paper seems like the real deal,
a person of respectable intentions, effort, imprimatur.
blessings, david korn portland oregon
2012, Oct 29 dktransform
hello friends. i continue to work hard, very, very
hard at CT-Art 3.0, this time, doing the real, full on,
full-bore seven circles. not as de la Mazla described
it, but in my own way, but more like what he did, than
not. i plan to write about it, and already did, in a
small way, and have drafted parts II, III, IV, V. just
to let you folks know, i continue to read comments,
always nice to see new blood. i wish that i could
respond to the many astute, worthwhile, smart comments.
briefly, thanks to you, Chessisajedrez, always nice to
see your most worthwhile, astute comments. always.
i
plan to be back here, but not right now. to me, CTS is
chicken and egg--if i train for standard, i don't need
it. if i am playing a lot of blitz, then it is the
gold standard for training. chessTempo, of course. a
great place. nothing bad to say about it, lots that is
good. and yes, its free, despite what some say. that
guy Richard is one smart motherF. that it is visually
attractive, to my eyes, counts for a lot. smart is the
word for him, his work, that place. i maintain, you
don't go to CTS to learn tactics, but to practice them,
duly on the clock. see you all latter, warmly, dk
2012
2012, Oct 20 dktransform
last blog post is a draft, discovery writing. i make no
appologies. been busy also doing seven circles at
CT-Art, currently doing about 25 per days around
problem 600, a real tough road. more latter, see ya,
dk: http://dk-transformation.blogspot.com/ .
http://dk-transformation.blogspot.com/2012/10/sustainability-draft-work-in-progress.html . i have given up
fear in the current economy, and i dont care.
2012, Oct 20 dktransform
sorry. speaking of accurate, not my typing. i just got
off work, am dead brain tired. but you get the idea.
you can view things in different ways. obama and
romney alike, think that increasing
GDP for the USA 4%
annually for the next six years is accomplishing
economic gain. economic gain, instead, would be taking
first two percent, then four, then six percent of all
GDP for the next three years, devoted to sustainable
energy, sustainable life, while DECREASING GDP 2% a
year for the next three years. for example, get every
highschool kid, to work three times a week, ninety
minutes at a time, going around with a glad bag and
work gloves, and clean up roads and rivers.
but no,
child labor laws and strict things about safety,
toxicity, barrier protection prevents it. we pay
unemployment, and the concrete exists, the men exists,
the skills exist, the needs exist, but no, there is no
money to retool america or rebuild roads, but rich
civil servants and police have rich pension,
congressional pages have smart phones. yea. so no,
74% at 200k is not progress, it is waking sleep.
2012, Oct 20 dktransform
there are others who have done more, and or better than
me. but let it be duly noted, going 70k at 91% is
equal to the effort of 200k at 74%. it takes a LOT
longer to do the problems, more tension, more going
back, more time. at 74% you fly through the work.
just try 1,000 each way, time it, and compare. see how
you feel. even the difference between 90% and 95% is
light years. one in twenty five wrong is not 62.5%
harder, than one in gen wrong. it is exponentially
harder.
if you are doing 98.5%, as i did for almost
two years along the way here, that means if you get one
wrong in fifty, you have to do the next hundred in a
row to get back to parity. if you are doing one in
twenty, and get one wrong in ten, you then have to do
the next one wrong in forty to get back to parity. this
takes great effort. same analogy. 74% at 200k can
alternately be said to be gigantic evidence of someone
in a hurry insuring the same mistakes keep getting
repeated, not a badge of honor. chess is learning,
chess is thinking, not gambling.
