Bad thinking algorithms
I play against someone that blindly trades, checks, attacks the queen, and sacrifices without even bothering to look at the resulting position. He gains a lot of time when doing this, but often finds himself in bad positions because of it. I can't help but notice just how often these strategies actually do him service. Sometimes the sacrifice works, oftentimes it doesn't. Sometimes the piece trade helps him, often time it doesn't. Sometimes the check actually accomplished something, other times it doesn't. He has a habit of doing pointless checks on the back rank. He does it a lot. I remember a game where I had mentioned to him that I thought he moved his rook to check my king on the bank rank. After I told him that he said, "But that check doesn't do anything," and then proceeded to tell me in another game that he thought... when it was obvious he was just being sarcastic. To this day he does those checks, and this is years later. The guy doesn't know how to man up to his mistakes. Instead of admiting to his mistakes, he simply refuses to believe he does them.
Anyway I know now that those strategies are bad, espeically in slow chess. My goal now is to get better at slow chess, and go over the Amateurs Mind by Jeremy Silman, improving on my weakness of two key chess fundamentals (also getting better at tactics by going over like 5 tactics books), and during my games get better at remembering to think about all my possible candidate moves, and thinking about what my opponent would do if I play each of those candidate moves. This ofcourse will improve my chess vision, which is another area I need to work on as well. Doing this I will work on my time management skills (working on the forth fundamental) and then will be the time to work on the fifth fundamental a bit more than I already am.
After I go over those books, play and analyze 800 30 minute live standard games, I gather I will be able to beat him quite efficiantly. Then I will explain to him the error in his thinking algorthim. If he listens I will see more improvement in his chess games, and I will have a better opponent to play. I bet he won't listen though, because he is so intent on winning on time all the time. We play blitz. 3 minute games.
