Hi Whymper, I suppose that after a break from Chess you arrive back with a new freshness and vigour, that's a reasonable assumption. The reason I think your better is simple....you've stopped playing blitz Chess . If blitz chess teaches you anything -it's to make your move without giving it sufficient thought.
Suddenly better after a month of no chess
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Sep 7, 2013
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#3
That always works for me too.
I don't know why.
@deepwaterman Are you really from the vatican city??
Sep 7, 2013
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#4
Bless you my son and my the black hound of hell never darken your door. Go in peace.
Thanks for your comments!
Deepwaterman - yes, I think cutting back on the blitz has helped a lot, it´s a different sort of chess; I´m not good at it, but I often found myself playing in a blitz fashion in the longer games too, which didn´t help me.
Jadarite - you´re right about the parallels with music, I´m a professional musician and that had occurred to me too! The openings - I wasn´t exactly researching, I was playing my favourite openings as often as possible and I´d have a second tab open and enter the moves in the opening data bank to make sure I always played the statistically optimal reply (for max the first 10 moves). Thing is, I was playing the lines without maybe understanding them. I hadn´t thought about every reason for a move when I made it, and so there always came the point before the middle game where I was on my own, but sometimes without concrete awareness of everything that was going on on the board.
About a month ago I was completely addicted to chess, playing 10+ hours a day here and on chesstempo, studying Silman´s endgame book avidly and analysing my games with Houdini, trying to get better. I got fed up of the way chess was dominating my life, so I deleted my accounts here and at chesstempo, threw Houdini and all my games off the hard disc, and enjoyed a normal life again.
A couple of days ago I decided I´d distanced myself enough from chess, and felt like a game for fun. So I created this account and played a few 30 minute games. Funny thing is, my rating has gone up 100 points and stays there; before the pause I was always around 1500 live standard; now I´m constantly 1600+, playing opponents in the high 1500s and low 1600s. My blitz hasn´t improved, but I´m hardly playing that any more (before the pause, constantly).
Does anyone have an explanation for this, or has anyone experienced anything similar? I know that regenerative pauses are important in sport, but I´ve never heard of them in relation to chess.
Oh, and another thing - before the pause I was, I suppose, cheating - I´d use the chesstempo database for up to the 1st 10 moves (that´s all you get there with a free membership). Now I don´t do that, I just play unfamiliar openings or lines by ear. I was expecting to be worse as a result, but no!