Training Update

I finished reading the first 52 pages of Reassess Your Chess and have now started reading The Amateur's Mind. I will return to Reassess Your Chess after I complete this. Dan Heisman has the recommended reading order of Silman's books and Aagaard's books on his website www.danheisman.com .

I finished 2 more games in my group for the Ruy Lopez tournament, and I am winning probably winning 2 others right now, so that will bring me to 7-0 in my group and should get me through to the next round. One game went into the same wierd variation of the Exchange, with 5.Nxe5. My opponent did better than the one in the first game, but slipped and dropped a piece, then took a pawn that was poisoned with a knight that had no squares it could move to after the capture. It ended with a bishop fork of his king and the remaining rook.

In the 2nd game he played 3..Nge7, which I have no idea if it is theory or not. I can see the idea of supporting the other N on c6, but it completely blocks in the Q and B, which were given scope by playing e5. Playing Nd4 made Nge7 make even less sense. Taking the N on f3 and not noticing the weakness of f7, set off an early King hunt that culminated in the loss of a rook for black and the King finding his way back to e8. The queens came off the board soon after, and at that point I just went about mobilizing the rest of my pieces. He helped by allowing me to trade off his remaining pieces, which you don't want to do if you are behind. When ahead trade pieces, when behind trade pawns.

I think only 2 of my games so far have remained in theory more than a couple of moves, which is odd for a thematic tournament.

I have noticed that some people have lots of turn-based games (correspondence) going. Probably far too many to play properly, and end up playing each game almost as though it is rapid chess even though you get 3 days to contemplate each move. This kind of negates the value of correspondence chess if you are trying to improve as a chess player. Correspondence chess should allow you to work on getting to know your openings better, and allow you to drill & perfect your thought process. In correspondence chess there is no reason you can't go through a very thorough thought process for every single move, such as Silman's process of determining imbalances, coming up with a plan, determing candidate moves, analyzing those moves, then choosing one.