Chess Training Pocket Book

I decided to take a break from CTS, and start working on some tactics the old way. For this I'll be using Lev Alburt's "Chess Training Pocket Book", which claims to have the "300 most important positions".

Although a small book, it seems to have a good mix of themes and ideias, including some key endgames positions.

After 10 thousand problems..

I'm still using CTS, but decided to slow down. In the beginning I was doing heaps of problems, but seems like my improvement was more because I was doing problems, than because I was doing *many* problems. I decided to slow down from about 300 problems/day to 100 problems/day, and up to now, I'm still improving at an acceptable rate. (In points/day)


CTS Report, Pt 2

• Starting rating: 1330
• After 5k problems: 1450 (+120)
• After 10k problems: 1490 (+40)

my profile.

After 5 thousand problems...

Almost 3 weeks since I started training with CTS and it's already paying off. I improved more than 100 ratings points, and I'm sure my board vision has improved *a lot*. After the beginning ``boom'' my progress is now slower, so let's see what happens in the following weeks.

CTS Report

• Starting Rating: 1330
• After 5k problems: 1450 (+120)

my profile.

CTS

Well, that's a long time since my last post.. but I'm back! heah
I took some time to read other knights blogs, and saw that many of them are now training with CTS. I do agree with the idea of doing simple problems "a tempo", so I'll give it a try.

I started with a rating of 1330, but I've been improving quite fast. Maybe cause I was so much time w/o playing, and didn't really deserve the 1330? Don't know, but I hope to continue improving. =)
(my handle at CTS is ``taerone'')

The chess player's mind

How do we think during a game? Memory, Experience, Analysis, Inspiration? Sometimes seems like there are a lot of voices screaming inside our heads, and we can hear all of them here.

Polgar's Book

I've decided to take a rest from TCT and start working with Polgar's Book. I'm right now at the "mate in two" part of the book, currently at problem 400.

The "mate in one" were all so easy that I could do most of them without thinking, but some "mate in two" are quiete challenging, specially the ones where the enemy kings lies in the middle of the board.

I don't know how it relates to the tactics I was training earlier, like forks, skewers, double attacks etc, but that's certainly helping me, and I could almost say they are helping more than the ones I was doing earlier. Working with this mate problems is very different cause I know what to look for, and thus I can consider less candidate moves, and work deeper on the variants. I think that's really improving my calculating abilities.

The training goes on..

I got a little busy lately and didn't have much time for net and chess, but hey, it happens... sometimes real life call us! heheh

Anyway, I'm about to finish Step 4 of TCT and the "Logical Chess Move by Move" book. I'm not quiet sure what to do next, if I get another book to read, or just concetrate on tactics. I was also thinking about using Fred Reinfeld's "1001 Winning Chess Sacrifices and Combinations", just need to see first if it fits my playing level(about 1500 FICS).

Between I found Mousetrapper's posts on "X-Ray vision" quiet interesting. I usually do it when looking for tactics, but just at this time. Will try to use it at every move, let's see if it helps. =)