Friday Update
My rating at CTS took another down-turn this week. I am now rated 1640 after 16008 tries. The fact that my CTS rating has dropped each of the last two weeks coincides with starting the Ct-Art exercises. Of course, this may or may not be related. My first thought is that this indicates that CTS is a skill of its own that must be kept sharp. I would still like to see the CTS rating going up, as that indicates that I am solving more difficult problems, but it may go up more slowly if I am also focused on other chess things. That will have to be fine.CT-Art statistics:
- level 10: 97% (110 problems)
- level 20: 92% (267 done, 19 to go)
- elo: 2061
I didn't finish level 20 by the end of this week as I thought I would. Many of the problems later in the level took quite a bit longer for me to solve. This is good news, I am happy to see that this problem set will be quite challenging for me. I did get close to finishing and should wrap up level 20 shortly.
The varied difficulty in level 20 makes me question the general intelligence of the folks at Convekta. I always thought it was silly that the levels were numbered 10, 20, 30, etc. What was wrong with 1, 2, 3? Now that I see there are 286 problems of varied difficulty in level 20, I think, couldn't they have broken this into levels 20, 21, 22, etc.? Well, I don't think it affects my chess improvement so I'm not worried, but it is a head scratcher.
I've started concurrently on Stean's Simple Chess and Silman's Reassess Your Chess Workbook. Basically fitting them in where I have time between tactics study. I'll try to write something more organized about this next week.
Tournament: 2-day tournament starts tomorrow!
Labels: chess tactics server, progress report
posted by Loomis @ 11:22 PM
9 comments
9 Comments:
Wow, you got some really good scores at level 20 for a first round! Just wanted to mention that Silman is coming out with a revised edition of Reassess Your Chess in 2007, without all the faults. So maybe it would be a good idea to wait until it is released. I still have the old edition at home and find that a lot of the stuff has still given me a good basic understanding of what goes on over the chessboard. At least I hope so. ;)
I read How to Reassess Your Chess about 4 years ago. I am just now getting around to the workbook. I know all about the "faults" of HtRYC, but my opinion is that there are lots of good ideas and if you're willing to work hard, you can apply them in your games. It's not that important that all the analysis in the book is correct.
HtRYC was pretty much the only study I did for my rating to go from 1500 to nearly 1700. People can say all the negative things they want about it, but I rarely find a single text that allows me to learn so much about the game. Maybe it's not for everyone, I can live with that.
The peculiar way that the problems are numbered is originated in an old programmers habit from the time that lines of computer code were numbered. The reason was indeed to have space for forgotten instructions. If I have to number something, I tend to do it the same way.
loomis, big note to Takchess just now... wanted you and tempo and blue and samurai to know. your input appreciated. warm regards, dk
http://takchess.blogspot.com/2006/10/chess-lives-on.html
You won't catch me badmouthing HtRYC. Don't feel like I have enough experience or knowledge to base any profound critisism on. Anyway, good luck with your next tournament!
/Chris
Tempo,
I remember this way of numbering computer code. I guess it would be nice if they actually made use of it when level 20 got to be 286 problems. They could easily go back and make level 20, 25, 30, etc. Or 20, 23, 27, 30, etc.
There is definitely a wide range of difficulty in level 20. Besides, users like to feel like they have accomplished something, so breaking up the levels is a nice motivational tool.
That's what I like so much about CTS. Using a ratingsystem to rate both the players and the problems is simply brilliant. That makes it easy to see where you score below average. Any fixed system will always have its drawbacks.
Oh, and good luck with the tournament!
Thanks, Samurai, better late than never! The tournament is actually over. I am planning on posting the report this evening, I just needed some time to think about what happend in my games first.
Good luck with your game tonight!
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