ericmittens training journal

Unfortunately I have practically no training to document!

My studies (and the girlfriend) have kept me more or less away from serious study of chess, hell I can just barely manage to keep in some semblance of physical shape.

However! Last year things were not so grim and I was able to study chess as much as 8 hours a day...ahh those were the days...ahh my youth!

Anywho I am trying to find a schedule by which I can reconcile my love of wine, women, yoga, school, economics, and chess...this is no simple task.

So far methinks I can handle this:

-100 tactics puzzles on Chess Tactics Server daily

-Going over 1 grandmaster game from my zillions of annotated game books per day.

-Keep playing on chess.com and try to take more than .5 seconds for each move, as is my habit.

-view chessbase DVDs in my spare time instead of listening to so much music.

By the way I recently recieved "1000 recordings to hear before you die" as a gift and I heartily recommend it to anyone who needs a shot of new music in their life.

Also I've been desperately trying to make the time to play in my local chess club but I feel like I'm so out of practice I'll make an ass of myself. Therefore I need to do some rocky-like mega training (including montages) so I can get myself up to speed quickly.

There just aren't enough hours in the day...

Well, I am on speaking terms with the admin for most of the time so I might dare to slip out of the correct topic (i.e. chess training)

Which are the three most important albums (right now)?

Oh the author doesn't rank them at all, he just gives a list of 1000 recordings in alphabetical order. I'm working through them in that order, currently just finishing up "B".

Currently my three favs (out of the recordings I hadn't heard before) are:

Ethiopiques, Vol 7: Era Mela Mela by Mahmoud Ahmed

Complete Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin by J.S. Bach (performed by Arthur Grumiaux)

A Meeting by the River by Vishwa Mohan Bhatt and Ry Cooder

Woo! Since my last post I've been back on the tactics bandwagon each and every day...time management rules!

So I've decided to enter a tournament next weekend. This will be my first OTB tourney since May of last year. I've been sticking to my training religiously, not missing a single day. I feel good...but due to rustyness I will probably lose every game! Oh well, I have to get back on the horse sometime!

What does your reading list look like these days?

I'm going through games from Neil McDonald's "The Art of Planning in Chess". (which is excellent). Also I've been trying my best to learn the Catalan and King's Indian better, as I often transpose to those openings from my English. To do that I'm reading "Winning with the Catalan" by Angus Dunnington and "King's Indian and Grunfeld: Fiancetto Lines" by Lasha Janjgava.

I'm thinking of ordering "The Catalan" by Raetsky and Chevernik (as Dunnington's book is good, but 12 years old) and "The Fiancetto King's Indian" by Colin McNab.

Hi,

Could you keep us posted on how the tournament goes. Also (if possible) keep the notations of the games and put them up here for us to have a look.

Cheers
Russell

Yup, will do.

On a non-chess note I'm also reading "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds" by Charles McKay. It's an excellent tomb (728 pages) dealing with mass hysteria and general public stupidity throughout the ages. It was written in 1847 but still reads very well.

Also I'm going through "accelerated C++" by Andrew Koenig and Barbara Moo. For anyone interested in learning C++ I heartily recommend this book...although some experience with Object Oriented Programming and C-style syntax is recommended.

Schoooooool's out for summer!!!

Yes indeed I'm done for the summer, leaving more time for chess chess chess.

My study will be more or less the same, only there will be more time to review openings and master games and play tons of online blitz. I've been going to a weekly lecture series put on by a local master, which has been lots of fun but not very educational. I'm already familiar with pretty much everything he's going over. Still, it's fun to sit and play/talk about chess for an hour and a half a week outside of the club.

At a tournament last weekend I managed to pull off a 1900+ performance rating which is much higher than anything else I've yet to accomplish. I feel pretty good about my progress and my next OTB rating should be somewhere in the mid-1700s. Add that to my current 1800 performance rating in the city championship and it should be up up up for awhile.

I guess my study plan consisting mostly of tactical puzzles, going through master games, playing slow chess here for opening study, and just playing a lot of games might be paying off.

Wow! "1900+ performance"

Well Done!

When can we hope for a review of the "pawn book"?

Pawn Structure Chess? When I'm done I guess. It's very very dense and is taking awhile to go through. I can say it's an excellent book so far, and its made me an Andy Soltis fan.

Ahh new plans, from now on I'm going to be doing several endgame tactics from ChessTempo.com (Thanks to Farbror and Meniscus for the suggestion) in an attempt to improve my play in that area. I'm not sure how many per day I'll be doing...maybe I'll start with 25-50 and see how that goes.

Update:

I have stumbled upon torrents for ALL of the Daniel King "power play" DVDs so I will be going through them one at a time. I'm assuming that I'm familiar with the themes discussed on the DVDs but reviewing/strengthening the fundamentals is never a bad thing.

Ericmittens,

Take a look at Rustam Kasimzhdanov's DVDs!!! I have this DVD on strategy and on Endgame. I wish I had the time to go over it (I have tons of other material to go through with my ICS courseload) but I find his DVD to be of awsome quality.

He goes over everything nice and slow and explains everything nicely unlike some of the other GMs.

Ahh yes I have those DVDs! I've gone over his DVD on attacking the king. I think I still prefer Daniel King's presentation skills to Khazimzhanov. Khazim "umms" and "ahhs" too much throughout the presentation although if you can get past that the information is very good.

He has a typical Russian accent that might be difficult for some people to understand. I was born in Russia so it's much easier for me

I have trouble understanding British English. So King is more difficult for me and forget about Andrew Martin - his accent plus he tends to go over his stuff pretty fast is just not a good combination for me.

There is no question that Kazimdzhadon is an ethinc Uzbek. Just look at him. But his native language was Russian. He has a typical Russian accent. It's possible he grew up in a big city and not the country or maybe his parents and him lived in Russia who knows.

My neighbour is from Uzbekistan and speaks perfect Russian. So, go figure.

A game would be good. Just correspondence 3/day per move perhaps?

Updates Updates...

These days my training goes something like this:

100 Chess Tactics Server Problems daily

Doing 1 Chapter of Silman's "How to Reassess Your Chess" daily

Going through several annotated games from a book, currently it's "The Giants of Strategy" by Neil McDonald

Playing lots of games here and on RedHotPawn.com

Going through the theory and annotated games on specific openings I currently have difficult with. I don't do this everyday but only when it pops up, currently I'm trying to improve my understanding of the tarrasch defence as white. I have a hell of a time dealing with black's activity and IQP. Also I'm going to do some work on the sequence 1.Nf3 d5 2.d4 c5 3.c4 from the white side as it often transposes to the tarrasch or in the event of 3...dxc4 to some offbeat lines of the QGA I'm not very familiar with.

Oh! and since school has started again I have begun doing puzzles from Lev Alburt's "Chess Training Pocketbook" on the bus ride to and from campus.