Taking a Stab at Stokyo, Part 3

It is better to overestimate your prospects than underestimate them. -- Magnus Carlsen

(part 1, part 2)

I'm not sure I fully agree with Magnus on the above quote. I would rather estimate my prospects accurately, but I understand what he is saying.

With this Stokyo exercise, I really underestimated things. I underestimated the time it would take me, the evaluation on most of my positions, and how long it would take to post to the blog.

I have learned some things by doing the first exercise. I learned that I need to evaluate better. I've started reading some articles and sections of some of my books that deal with that in more detail, taking notes and getting ideas on how to get a little better.

I found that I give too much weight to material factors and not enough to things like mobility, threats and king saftey when it comes to evaluation. I focused too much of my evaluation on the fact that I was down a pawn, thinking that offset my other advantages.

I also found, that I probably spent too much time on the exercise. I easily spent 6 or 7 hours off and on in the initial evaluations and write-up. I then spent another 3 or 4 checking that evaluation against an engine.

Finally, I didn't verbalize enough my reasoning why I evaluated the way I did. I mostly only did it on the main variation, the one I had spent most time on in the game. I mainly used variations without explaining why, so I need to do that next time.

I'm hoping to do more of these in the future, so I need to find a way to not spend so much time on them. However, based on my results, I really need the practice and after talking to some people about the process I have a source of positions I'm going to start working on in the near future.

If you have thoughts or ideas, feel free to post. I know my evaluation and analysis wasn't really good but posted what I had.

Thanks for reading.

(part 1, part 2)