Level 40, redone
I've finished my second rep of level 40. As with previous levels, there is no significant change in performance. The bottom line is that I'm no better at tactics today than I was a year ago.My plan is to go back to level 10 of CT-Art and try to really learn the ideas of the problems. I find that when I miss problems it's not because I can't calculate or visualize, it's because I don't see the idea, or can't come up with the right idea.
One of the benefits of the chess blogging community is that I've had a chance to read a lot of other people's blogs. I'm not the first one to struggle with this. Other people have written about how they deal with improving at tactics, so I've got some ideas of how to work on this.
CT-Art level 40 stats:
Rep 1: 77%
Rep 2: 78%
Labels: progress report
posted by Loomis @ 1:22 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
A year ago you could solve positions A, B, and C instantly but not D or E. You don't look at the patterns for a year. When you quiz yourself, you're at the same point. On the surface, that doesn't seem too surprising. ;)
I've been putting into practice two ideas: 1. I retry and retry and retry the tactics until I can solve 99% within a few seconds per position to ensure I learn the patterns in the first place. 2. I follow the spaced repetition review scheme I mentioned earlier of a checkup at 2, 4, 8 etc weeks.
Why did De La Maza succeed? I have a hunch that the speed with which he completed the circles was a decisive factor. If someone tries to study the same problem set that he did (when he was unemployed) but does it more slowly, they'll forget more by the time they review it. Better to tackle a smaller problem set but review it regularly.
But you already know this, I guess. "I need to complete a program of learning these problems in one shot, starting and stopping and starting again didn't work. Two, if I don't get to the end of the problem set at the end of 2 months, I go back to the beginning no matter how far I've gotten."
It sounds like a good plan, with the types of changes I had to make to the MDLM program. Going over the solutions thoroughly and actively, I mentally can't handle more than ten a day while still playing one slow game. Because of this, chunks of 300 problems is about my limit as I don't want to be more than 30 days
(and technically, more than 30 days as after going through them all once, I then go through the error problems again, and then those I got wrong on the first two passes, until I've gotten every problem right once, so it takes often almost two months for the first time through: frankly 100-200 would probably have been a better number and I would have (ironically) learned the whole problem set faster).
I think you're right on the money. At least I hope you are. I've already gone back to level 10 after this completion of level 40. It took 3 weeks to go level 10-40 this time, so it's about a 3 week interval. We'll see how that goes.
What's intersting to me is that I spent hours and hours and hours solving levels 50 - 90. But solving these difficult problems, spending lots of time practicing tactics doesn't seem to have helped me one bit.
Oh, forgot to mention this topic was discussed here by Takchess.
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