Summer Tournament Week 3

My Dear Chess Friend!

This article is written by @jay_1944, a member of Online tournament that I organized recently. And it reflects his impression about the the 2nd round of our tournament!

Hi all!

Today is Sunday which means round 4 pairings will be published around midnight here. Round 3 went well, working up another positive result. I have taken a look at some of the other players and see there will be some very tough competition coming up! For this blog, I will share the analysis on my game this week, review my work on tactical vision, and go over goals for future weeks.

This game was proof my vision is improving. If you have not read my first 2 blogs, this is the reason why! 

Of course it was very weak to begin with, but that is the reason it can quickly improve, and quickly help my chess game.

When solving tactic puzzles I use another website, but the chess.com app is perfect for the blindfold puzzle idea. You can set the skill level low, then simply go through puzzles, clicking any random move, until coming to a puzzle with very few pieces on the board. I would then "screenshoot" that puzzle (take a picture with my phone) and save them all to a photo gallery. Then you have tons of puzzles that work well for the blindfolded tactical vision exercise. After solving each one, simply edit the puzzle to have a check mark or place it in a different gallery.

In the upcoming week I would like to work harder on tactic puzzles (failed to solve as many as I wanted last week), continue working on tactical vision which will be huge for improvement, and also work on chess targets, as per the lessons in the game analysis. Focusing so much on forcing moves has left me overlooking weak targets in the opponents' position at times.

I do have one question about the tactical vision exercise if FM Neustroev is reading, and you have a minute to answer? Is it better to do VERY simple puzzles VERY slowly, and once blindfolded, taking your time to figure out each and every move again, pretending you are solving from scratch? Or once blindfolded should I simply name the pieces and squares, then play out the moves from memory? This way there can be more pieces on the board and I can do puzzles much quicker. Hope this question makes sense.

My answer:

If you make a mistake, you shouldn't run this process from the very beginning. Just correct yourself and complete the last stage properly!

However, every week try to add 1-2 pieces more on the board. And, of course, when blindfolded you solve the puzzle from the beginning not only recalling to your memory.

If you think the puzzle is too simple, skip stages 1 & 2 and solve it when blindfolded!

Thanks for reading!