Finally posting some stuff here.

Here I am playing White. Black has nothing here.

I made a slight misstep because I was afraid of the consequences of b3 that I couldn't quite calculate. I worried about things like Bxb3, Nb4-a2, Qg5+, etc, but I end up far ahead in those lines, it turns out.

Yusupov Chapter 5

I know I was going to take it slow, but chapter five was an easy tactical chapter on double checks, so I did it quickly and got a perfect score on the test. The next section, though, is hard, so I'll spend plenty of time on it. I enjoy this a lot.

Still playing around with ideas in the bishops of opposite color endgame. Perhaps Black can hold the draw. The direct attempt to push the a-pawn after Be1 or Bd2 doesn't seem to work. If you get the white king behind his pawns and push, ...bxa3 followed by Bb4 draws immediately because the white king is now stuck in the corner and the white bishop is stuck guarding the f-pawn. If the king goes north and tries to push the a-pawn, the bishop is the only thing that can stop the a-pawn after bxa3. But, really, I don't have the analytical apparatus to think about this rigorously just yet.

EDIT: King goes north, see below. Kb5 Ka4 a3 and there's the game.

Is this drawn?

Black to move. I'm black.

I'm skeptical that it can be held, but might be possible. The obvious first move is ...Be1 or Bd2. After that, I think it's hard for White to make progress. I lost, however, but I only had like 0:20 left.

EDIT: This is trivially won. 1. ... Bd2 (or whatever) 2.Kb5 3.Ka4 4.a3 and no matter what Black does, you have two passed pawns and it's not a tricky technical endgame.

Yusupov Lesson Four

I was going to work through this slowly, but I'm pretty good with endgames, so I just went ahead and blitzed through lesson four, which was on elementary pawn endgames. I scored 19/22 on the test (excellent). I missed one problem completely. I learned something from that problem, though. There were two plausible moves, I discarded one because I thought I had refuted it, so that left the other. I had the drawing idea and thought I had calculated it out, but there was a refutation in there that I missed. However, the drawing idea works, but only with that first move. I should've thought to try cross-pollinating the idea.

Anyway, I'm not ready for lesson 5 yet, as I'm still reviewing the answers from lesson 3's quiz. It was very tough!

This Yusupov stuff is tough.

I'm on chapter 3 of the first book (opening stuff). The test was tough. I got 21/31 and was surprised that I did even that well. 15 was passing, 20 was "good". I like this. It is tough and makes me think. It would be humbling if I didn't already know I sucked.

Incidentally, on the first two chapters, I got 15/16 and 16/20 respectively (excellent and good - I just couldn't get one Damiano calculation to work and Greco did not stick with me at all).

Chess Informant

I have a few old issues of Chess Informant that I got off Amazon.com for like $1+shipping. They're old, but my intended use for them is two-fold: games to play over quickly to get a feel for grandmaster chess and positions to try myself against (the combinations and endings sections in the back). They're fairly awesome: I highly recommend trolling around Amazon.com or some other used books service every once in a while to see if you can find old issues floating around for a couple bucks (be sure to search for both "Informant" and "Informator"). One thing I didn't count on was the historical factor. I have the issue containing the Fischer-Spassky match. I have the issue where Karpov was declared world champion. I have the issue with the '86 K-K match and the issue with the '90 K-K match. I think that is fairly cool. I might try to get the Informants containing all the K-K matches. I also have the issue containing games from when I was born. Also of interest are the notes previous owners may have made in them.

NOTE: you may want to check the combinations against computer analysis, since the issue will likely be pre-computer if you purchase with this method.

LATER ASIDE: Speaking of which, Korchnoi and Smyslov are fairly impressive for their ability to perform at high levels, even contending for the world championship title, well into "old age". Interesting interview with Smyslov: http://www.gmsquare.com/interviews/smyslov.html

Yusupov's Chess Course

This isn't a review because I can't really review the books until I've used them. One thing I noticed in glancing over them is that Build Up Your Chess 1 and Boost Your Chess 1 are 90% tactics. There are a couple lessons in each that are strategic, but the rest are tactics. I looked on the Quality Chess site and the higher orders of the series are more strategic. This definitely makes sense. I am looking forward to working hard on these books as Yusupov directs: spending at least 5-10 minutes with each position in the lesson, setting them up on the board, moving them around, trying to understand fully, and then taking 5-10 minutes on each test position treating it like a position in a game and then writing down all my thoughts and the relevant variations. Each part of the lesson should take 1-2 hours. I plan to study these books while at home with a chess set. Very structured. I think the structure will be very good for me, because, while I've been working hard on tactics, it's mostly been solving problems and I've had very little thematic education (besides Lasker's phenomenal chapter on combinations, which I think has been very helpful). The combination of thematic education plus systematic discipline will help me a lot in OTB play, IMO. Most of my chess time, however, will be on the train to and from work, mostly playing over annotated games. I can't concentrate as much on the train, so I will not be doing Yusupov there.

Somebody mentioned somewhere an interesting thought about My System: the material is basic and outdated in some ways, but authors of modern positional texts don't cover the stuff in My System in as much detail as they ought to because they assume everybody has already read it. I'm going to wait until I am at least 1600, perhaps more, to start reading it, however.

I need more tournament play!

EDIT: I realize that the lessons aren't directly 90% tactics, but the topics for 90% seem a lot more tactical, if you catch my drift. In retrospect, I think this statement is wrong. And here's a more exact person commenting on it: http://www.qualitychess.co.uk/blog/gm/115#comment-3341