CT-ART #379

I've heard it before that CT-ART has its flaws. To be honest, I haven't noticed that many. For the most part I am satisfied with the explanation given. But I came across #379 tonight and I'm not sure I agree with the explanation.



Number 379 is from an actual game (Rashid Gibiatovich Nezhmetdinov vs Vladimir D Sergievsky, 1966). The game ends with 20. Rxf6 gxf6 1-0 (see below).

CT-ART has the position continue with 21. Ne4 Qa7 22. Nf6#. What threw me off was I was expected 21 ... Qe7, not Qa7. Even if Qe7, white will still go on to win, but it's better than letting the game go with Qa7.

For what it's worth, I've seen lots of problems in CT-ART where mate could have at least been avoided, but it is not. It's not big deal, but since I put a little research time into this one, I decided to blog it. Go read the kibitzes on chessgames.com for this game ... they proved to analyze better than CT-ART.

Just Keep Moving

I felt much better tonight after sleeping in this morning. Now if I could just get my exercise in each day ... there are just not enough free hours in a day to do everything!

CT-ART: 301-370
CTS: 156 (1800 total)

My rating dropped dramatically on CTS tonight. I think I just got tired head and couldn't calculate accuratly and quickly enough.

Slowly, But Surely

I'm still here ... I'm slowly going through the tactics.

Currently I've been working my way through 301-400 in CT-ART. I'm up to 350. I've been so tired at night that I can't push beyond 350 and so I've just been reviewing problems 301-350. I'm going to bed early tonight in hopes that I'll feel better tomorrow and can tackle new problems.

Chug, Chug, Chug

I'm upping the ante.

CT-ART: 301-320 memorization
CTS: 63 (1644 total)

I've decided to start working on chunks of 20 rather than 10. IF (and that's a big IF) I can keep up this pace, I may finish some form of the Circles by the end of May. We'll see how it goes.

I won my OCL game on Saturday. I'll post on that later. Nothing spectacular, but I was impressed with a potential tactic that I saw in the game that eventually helped me win it. Although later analysis showed that it wasn't a slam dunk, it did give me a pretty good advantage.

300

Today I decided to do tactics 1 to 300 in CT-ART and then do 300 tactics on CTS.

CT-ART: 1-300 (90%)
CTS: 301 (1581)

I did it!


This morning while in a boring conference call, I plowed through problems 1-300 in CT-ART. I seem to struggle the most with problems 111-200. I had a lot of mouse slips, so that affected my percentage a bit.

Tonight I mowed through 301 tactics on CTS. My rating dropped a bit, but I am so impressed that I stuck with it.

I'm 1/3 done with the circles!

Getting Up

I get the feed for Indexed and I thought this one was applicable for me today.

I haven't done tactics for almost a week now (4 days) and so getting back at them felt good tonight ... I missed doing tactics.

I didn't do a whole lot ... I just felt I needed to do something.

CT-ART: 201-300

Tomorrow I'm hoping to go through 1-300 to get a solid review before proceeding to 301.

Tactical Training Works

Suprise, suprise ... the tactical training seems to be helping. The evidence isn't hard, but I have a premonition it's working. Of course if I don't have a solid thought process and manage my time properly, I'll still lose games. Anyway ... here's the update.

CT-ART: 201-290 review and memorization
CTS: 57 (1280) hit a new high rating of 1417, but currently at 1409

As you may guess, I'm not reporting every single day as I often forget, but I am providing a quick update as to where I'm at. To see detailed progress, click on "New Approach" link to the right ... that spreadsheet tracks all the gory details. I try to upload the current file once a week.

Chipping Away

Bit by bit I'm chipping away at the 1000 tactical chunk.

After going back to problems 1-110 and from 111-200, I've found that I need to review these problems regularly. So I've incorporated a review in each session. This chews into my CTS time, but CT-ART is the primary focus, so I'm not too concerned about missing out on CTS problems.

CT-ART: 1-110, 142-172, 201-280
CTS: 23 (1223)

For CT-ART, I'm taking 10 to 15 minutes to review 1-110. Next I take a chunk of 30 from the 111-200 range. Lastly I work on 201 up to the point of memorization ... so tonight I went up to 280. The whole cycle takes about an hour. It's amazing how I just do the problems without much thought. Tonight I went into "new" territory without knowing and I just hummed right along without missing a beat. It must be working.

Ververific

I had a really good session tonight.

CT-ART: memorized 241-260, reviewed 201-260
CTS: 53 (1174)

I didn't work on tactics last night, so this morning before going to work, I memorized 241-250 and then tonight I memorized 251-260 and then did a review of 201-260 and then 251-260 again.

Then I logged on to CTS and whipped through a bunch of problems, getting most of them correct and thus boosting my rating up to 1397.

Tonight I listened to The Verve (Urban Hymns). I really like that album! I've noticed that I do pretty well on my tactics when I listen to Urban Hymns.