Tagged

Thanks to Korsmonaut, I've been tagged. Rise and Shine, you're it. My reply is over at my main blog.

Day 10: Quest Complete

July 7, 2007: 1-500

Like I did the last two days, I worked problems 500 to 250 first. Then I whipped through problems 1-250. I actually did a lot better on the 500-250 problems today.

I took lots of breaks ... working 25-50 at a time and then taking a break to watch golf of Kung Fu movies.

I am calling my "Circles" training complete.

It really feels good to be done with this.

As to the future ... I'm not going to spend so much time on tactics now. Now that this quest is complete, I will cease posting here and continue to post my improvement plans and goals at my main blog.

I have a lot of chess books I need to get to. The first one that I want to actually finish is Logical Chess Move by Move by Chernev. Reading this book has been on my to do list for a long, long time. So I'm going to finish it.

After that, I have some other chess books I want to read. I need to start working on openings, endgames and all that other jazz. I also plan on keeping at CT-ART to keep improving at tactics. There's so much more to do. But getting these circles completed is a relief.

Thank you, Knights Errant, for the encourgement and interest!

And one last thing ... I remember starting this blog on 6/6/06 and now my last post is on 7/7/07. I planned the 6/6/06 date, but I didn't plan on ending this on 7/7/07, so it must be my lucky day.

Day 9

July 6: 1-250

These are the easiest problems in the whole set. It's like playing a video game ... just blowing through them like nothing.

Tomorrow will be an endurence test for me. I recall one day a while ago when I did 300 problems in CT-ART and 301 on CTS. That was pretty fun.

I'm down to the last day! Although I've cut this program short, I'm still a little in awe that I've kept with this thing for 10 days.

Day 8

July 5: 500-250

I decided to get the tough ones over with first and then cruise on through the rest. The good thing about going backwards was I was able to remember much more from when I covered these problems yesterday. My percentage was much higher today than yesterday's.

Two more days to go!

Day 7

July 4: 333-500

The remainder of the 300's and up to around 460 were fairly easy to somewhat tough. The last 40 or so problems were tough. I'm planning on going back (after I'm done with this quest) and pound those last 40 or so in my head.

3 days to go! They'll be the toughest.

Day 6

July 3: 200-332

I forgot to post yesterday after finishing. I had a meeting to get to and I simply forgot to post the update. I was slightly amazed to get through these fairly quickly too. Perhaps all that work before wasn't all for nothing.

I have 168 to work on today.

Day 5

July 2: 1-200

On to the 3rd circle now. I'm supposed to be working 167 a day, but since I have a meeting tomorrow night, I worked a few extra so I won't have to do as many tomorrow.

The first 200 were very easy ... blew through them this time.

5 days to go.

Day 4

July 1: 376-500

Took me quite a while today to polish off the 2nd circle, but I finally did it. Problems 376-460 were tough to remember. 461-500 were problems I've not seen in a long, long time ... so I had to take my time to figure most of them out.

Thank you for all the comments of support as I push to finish The Circles.

To answer BDK ... I'm using CT-ART 3.0 and more specifically, I'm going over the practice problems (1-500) which go into the Level 30 problems.

Circle 3 is next!