Thursday, February 10, 2005
Well met
"You may learn much more from a game you lose than from a game you win. You will have to lose hundreds of games before becoming a good player" Jose Raul Capablanca
Well, he never saw my wins. ;)
Greetings all. Another Knight Errant in the fold reporting in.
I too was tired of making tactical errors, so I began a modified De La Maza 7 circles approach in December 2004. I have been using books, doing groups of 40 problems 7 times, 4-6 days a week for 30 min. to 2 hours per day. I am not attempting to get rating points as quickly as his program is designed for, but simply have a good regimen of tactics practice and have a life.
I would say that all but 5 of the problems I have used would be in the "10-30" in CT-Art difficulty terms, over half in the "10" range.
In spite of the complaints I have read, I am going to eventually get CT-Art because it's simply much better at covering the themes than I would be, scouring books for a well rounded collection.
So far things look like this:
For problems 81-120 I am now using a speed/accuracy see-saw approach:
Circle 1 - 4 min/problem - Attempt to get first move, best reply, and next move(s)
Circle 2 - Take as long as is needed- Attempt to accurately calculate every variation
Circle 3 - 2 min/problem - Attempt to get first move, best reply, and next move(s)
Circle 4 - Take as long as is needed- Attempt to accurately calculate every variation
Circle 5 - 1 min/problem - Attempt to get first move, best reply, and next move(s)
Circle 6 - Take as long as is needed- Attempt to accurately calculate every variation
Circle 7 - .5 min/problem - Attempt to get first move, best reply, and next move(s)
For what it's worth, in making a version of the plan that uses less time, my feeling was that it's the regularity of the tactical problem solving much more so than the time per day that was important.
Even though my time investment has been a fraction of you all, I have experienced identical frustrations with the whole process, feeling like this is taking something fun and making it a grind. Even worse, my standard games have gotten a little bit worse, especially in messy positions, although on the plus side my blitz rating has improved. I limit my blitz games out of concern over getting bad habits that detract from whatever ability I have to play standard games. I figure the standard drop in performance is temporary.
Anyway, this is my "have a life while your learning tactics" formula.
The other thing worth mentioning is playing vision training games (where both players either write current moves and the chess board is updated regularly to show the position 2 half moves back).
More on mistakes later. Much, much more.
