Pretty much not doing chess, but it's a planned break.

I have finals this week and then another big thing on May 11th to prep for, so I'm pretty much not doing any chess right now. It's a planned break, though. I have a game for the CICL on May 2nd, and I might do a few tactics problems and play over a couple games to lead up to it, but, otherwise, I'm not spending time on chess until May 11th. Outside of idle thoughts while at work! I can easily have a tab open to a couple chess problems I can idly glance at, it's not so easy to idly prep for exams...

I saw somebody reference my opposite-colored endgame! Ha!

I just ran into somebody referring to my endgame which I discussed here and on chesspub.com. Amusing. I'm famous?

Too busy for chess

I take a few minutes to look at tactics problems in the evening. Other than that, too busy right now. I'll have that game on May 2nd. Then I'm too busy until the afternoon of May 11th to think of anything but being busy.

However, today's dinosaur comic is pretty great: chess comic!

Chess is such a difficult game.

I'm lazily going through level 30 of CT Art again. I'm not going very well because I'm going through it lazily. It's also annoying because a lot of the combinations have +/- evaluations at the end (maybe it won a pawn, sometimes it's just a won endgame), and when I'm going through lazily, I'm just looking for something more decisive. I figured it's a lower level combination, so it's going to be something obvious. On the level 60 and above, getting a +/- was good enough, so I'd look for that.

Anyway, other news: some people in the local chess league are organizing a tournament over the summer, one game every 2 weeks, eight rounds. I'm in. This will force me to get some slow practice. Though I'm kind of curious how they will do this, because they are thinking of a 9-person round-robin, but 9 is odd. I'm sure they'll figure it out. I'd also rather play in a stronger section than the one I'll probably be in. I'd rather score 2-3/8 and work hard than score 7/8 against weak players, though I certainly understand that the organizers of the tournament might not want somebody who'd score 1-2/8 in a section of a round robin.

EDIT: Not to get ahead of myself. Perhaps the low section will indeed be challenging and I'd score 4-6/8 (or less!). That would be great. However, if I'm in the low section and have a lot of easy games, I'll be bored. If you win a tournament, it's because your opposition is too weak for you (at least, while you're still a developing player).

Just finished CT Art.

Level 10: 97%
Level 20: 90%
Level 30: 77%
Level 40: 71%
Level 50: 69%
Level 60: 64%
Level 70: 61%
Level 80: 58%
Level 90+: 62%

For a final rating of 2570 (ha!) and success percentage of 71%. Now to go through at least the first five levels again!

Compare to this from a couple years ago: http://gztchess.blogspot.com/2011/02/digging-up-post-from-2-years-ago.html

Chapter 8 in Yusupov was very tough.

I worked on it on the train. I passed, but didn't get a "good" score. Not quite sure of the exact score, since I didn't write down my answers, being on the train. But there were some I got and some I didn't get, and the ones I got put me over the pass mark and the ones I didn't get put me beneath the "good" mark, so the details don't matter. I'm definitely going to go over the lesson and the answers some more. Chapter 9 is pretty easy, though.

I only have, like, 6 problems left to do in CT Art. Being at level 90+, my method at this point is to sit there for 5-10 minutes trying to figure out, at the very least, the motifs, and then giving a plausible try. These problems are too hard for me to calculate out. Sometimes, though, I get the first few moves but miss some little finesses along the way, and that's good (better than being lost). I'm not yet at the level where it would be productive, I think, to sit there for half an hour with this level of problem because I'm just at a loss for what to do, quite often. At level 80, though, it seems productive to do so sometimes.

Still plowing through Yusupov...

I had some spare time on the train and felt like I knew the lesson, so I decided to go ahead and do the 6th Yusupov test rather than go through the chapter again. I got 16/19 (excellent). Even the "positional" chapters at this point are still heavily tactical. I enjoy these books a lot. I will play through all the variations in the answers later today to gain more understanding, especially of the problems I missed.

I was amused, though, that one of the problems I ran into on CT Art the other day was from a position I had just seen as an example in this chapter, so I solved it immediately with all the variations.

In other news, I'm almost done with Capablanca's Best Endings. When I'm done, I'll switch back to Alekhine. I'm about 65 games into Alekhine. I think I'll switch between Alekhine and the Mammoth book after that.

I went ahead and did chapter 7 because it was easy tactical stuff, got a perfect score (or -1, I wasn't sure how to score one thing, because it wasn't clear to me whether the score was for getting a whole variation or just the key move). The next chapter, however, looks hard. I'll take my time.