Farbror's Training Journal

I am a genuine Internet Troll who have been playing turn-based chess for a little more than a year. My goal is to feel like a 1500ish OTB player by the end of the year (my New Year's Resolution is descibed elsewhere).

The plan is to play weekly live games at the office. We have a handfull of wood pushers at the office who meet for a few friendly games. Also, I will try to squeece in a few slow live games at this site and to annotate the games.

My daily routine is to solve a few tactics problem (CT-Art 3.0 and/or Tactics Trainer) every morning before the kids wake up.

Favourite Openings: King's Gambit & Latvian Gambit

my favoirite openings is King's Gambit too Fabror

Lovely! We should practice it sometime! I am at the office ritght now but maybe we can find some suitable time for a game.

I ordered the DVD Graeme mentioned in some thread: "1 e4 for the creative attacker" because the "author" suggests "2. f4" against a few defences. 

 Ah cool! you must let me know how that DVD goes. I was thinking of buying it too to add some surprise lines to my repitoire. Glad to see someones reading what im writing in these forums, i hope it goes well for you!

I tried the kings gambit for a while myself but its very complex at times.  Basically i ditched  the 3.Nf3 line and bought a book on 3.Bc4 but i havnt added it to my repitoire yet. Its definatley something im going to work on once i have ironed out some other opening inaccuracies!

fav openings

Latvian gambit

or Queens gambit

I have finally started reading "Chess for Zebras". It is a wordy and rather philosophical book but very interesting. The first tiny part which I have read is roughly about the learning process. I blunt attempt to a headline summary of the message so far is:

"skills are more important than knowledge"

or perhaps

"learning by doing instead of learning by nodding"

Farbor> My daily routine is to solve a few tactics problem (CT-Art 3.0 and/or Tactics Trainer) every morning before the kids wake up.

Yep, I know that schedule well. ;-)

I'm curious... why did you choose to begin with CT-ART instead Chess Tactics for Beginners (or for Intermediate players)? I actually started with CT-ART but then I downgraded when I realized most of the tactics that were missed in my over-the-board games were quite simple... much simpler than CT-ART level 40+ anyway.

I had heard great things about CT-Art and nothing about the other discs.

I am trying to get my daily dose of Tactics Trainer here at chess.com. It is a very bumpy ride. I almost gave up the Tactics Trainer some days ago after facing a long row of severely under rated problems.

The Tactics Trainer has been moody for some time but I managed to reach an new personal all-time high: 1711

what is the tactics trainer?

i play on chesstempo 

I will focus on the Convekta CD "Advanced Chess School" for the next few days trying to work through all the stuff on the disc. I like most of it a lot but some of the material is silly! It is really silly to face the task "Damage Blacks Pawn Structure" and after you have played the first move the engine plays ten or so moves. There are a snowflakes chance in a warn place that i woodpusher such as me would play the same sequence as the GMs who originally played the game.

CT-Art 3.0 is my fave CD disc but Advanced Chess School is also pretty good.

Yikes! 1804 at CT-Art 3.0. The family is sound asleep so I can do my best James Brown act: "I feeeeel Goooood!"

I just started working with the Chessbase discs on endgames by Dr Muller. Very good stuff!

Amazing! My coach gave me basically this pattern as home work two weeks ago. Talking about immediate rewards for studying!

http://www.chess.com/echess/game.html?id=7279932