Thought Process and Circles
I have been thinking about two matters of importance: resuming my tactics training and a thought process. For my tactics training, I am going to do the 2-2-2 plan with 100 problems. I like the level of repetition and the (hopefully) high level of retention. For that, i will be using dejascacchi's tactics problems, which are organized in convenient 100-problem packages.
I have been reading Qxh7#'s blog, and I really liked his comment that "I try to improve one of my minor peices, or increase my space on one side of the board. What I've found is that once you find one plan to work on in a game (following silmans techniques) your plan continually adapts and transforms almost on its own." It makes a lot of sense. Maybe i'm just stupid not to have thought of it that way before, but I'm glad that it has now been presented to me. So I'm going to try to use Qxh7#'s advice.
In recent games at FICS, I have had an advantage for most of the game only to squander it by missing a tactical shot by an opponent. but I feel very hopeful. So my rating is slowly stabilizing and I hope to get back up to 1700.
posted by Calvin @ 1:28 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
Goodluck with that, and thanks for visiting my blog. Can you explain this 2-2-2 method your talking about? Thanks. :)
Well, here's the 2-2-2 method. it's just a variation on the mdlm 7-circles plan, made by sancho pawnza:
"I take a group of 100 problems total then I proceed to work through them in smaller blocks of 25 problems per night for two complete passes.
Then two passes at 50 problems per night.
The finale consists of two passes at 100 problems per night.
Simple and effective. I get exposure to the same problem 5 times, and I complete all of the groupings within 12 days. This allows for two complete days away from chess if I choose, or another form of chess activity. (I.e. Club night)
Another bonus is the final two days can be tackled on a weekend if one starts on a Monday. (Including the “off” days.)
Of course the starting number of 100 is one that I picked at random based off the material I am studying currently. (1000 x Checkmate CD)
I just filtered the games by number of moves, and created a database that I copied to my hard drive for ease of use. Plus it allows me to track my success rate by right clicking on the DB, selecting properties, and then the training tab.
Since I'm working through mate-in-one problems at the moment I figure 100 problems would be a manageable figure. The bottom line of course is the success rate, on which I have set 90% as being acceptable. If I fail to meet that target number I will simply have to repeat that particular set of problems again for the next 12 days.
Fortunately I met the minimum during the test run, so it is now on to the second group of 100."
and
"Leave it to me to add up the number of problems incorrectly. It only took one complete cycle of problems longer than it should have for me to catch the error. I am actually doing 600 problems each cycle instead of the 500 I gave in the original layout. I was beginning to wonder why I was a couple of nights behind heading into the second weekend. Figured I had taken one too many nights off. Then it dawned on me that the original idea of taking a rest day each week wouldn't fit within the 2-2-2 plan, if I wanted to maintain the same start and stop days. I even have it on paper as not working in my sketch pad of ideas. In my haste and desire to allow for the club night I somehow managed to view the second grouping of 50 problems as just one pass when I was adding up the totals. That's what I get for trying to squeeze everything into a 2-week time frame.
Sorry for the confusion. So here is the corrected version which allows for time off if you don't mind starting and finishing on a different day with each complete set of 100 problems.
Really it hasn't been a problem to tackle the problems on club nights, and it actually seems to serve as a warm up. I think the only night I can remember not doing problems prior to playing at the club was this past week, which may explain why I wasn't seeing anything at the board.
(4 nights x 25 problems=100) 2 passes = 200 problems [200 completed total]
(2 nights x 50 problems=100) 2 passes = 200 problems [400 completed total]
(1 night x 100 problems=100) 2 passes = 200 problems [600 completed total]"
So, that in sum, is the 2-2-2 plan. Seems practical. And it seems to work for me.
Thanks for the run down.
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