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. =)

Step 3 is finished.

One less to go. Step 3 of Tasc Chess Tutor(TCT) is now finished. My success rate there was 88%, which I think is ok.

My plan for now is just to go through the whole TCT collection slowly, reading all the texts, and just once, no circles. When I'm finished with this then maybe I do a circle or some mini-circles through the Steps, I'm not sure yet.