I’ve just come off a 4 week break from chess as I felt that I was just going through the motions rather than learning anything, but kept some correspondence games going to keep my eye in.

Since the weather has turned a bit warmer I’ve spent the last month doing some different circles - circles of the local countryside on my bike that is! It’s nice and flat around here as I live by the Severn Estuary (the strong winds compensate for the lack of hills however) and I’ve been putting in about 3 or 4 hours on the bike each week. The gain in fitness has been a great help to my chronic fatigue (at least physically - the mental side is still lacking) and I can now cycle up hills without getting out of breath, I have strength in the legs which I’ve not had since my teens. Cycling is like an anti-depressant, just it’s a bit more effort than popping a pill in your mouth!

There are some great views around here too which helps with the motivation, low traffic means I can concentrate on having fun - here is the view of the estuary at high tide from the M48 cycle path.

Now I’m back with renewed energy, a greater motivation and a hunger to make some more progress. I’ve got one month before the new season starts and I’m looking forward to it again.

If you feel it’s becoming an effort to get the chess board out, take a break!

I’ve gone from ECF 83 to ECF 94.

http://grading.bcfservices.org.uk/getref.php?ref=261619B

Not too bad an improvement over the year.

My next grading goal is to break through the 100 ECF barrier, but it would seem that my grade of 83 is somewhat deflated and actually I should be there already!

From what they are saying over at the Streatham & Brixton blog, next season I will have two grades, the official one (probably about 95) and an unofficial corrected one (about 125). The season after that the corrected grade will be the one used.

Confused?

Apparently the grades have been suffering from deflation over several years. Having no idea what a 100 ECF grade player was like 20 years ago I can’t personally give an opinion as how now and then would compare, but some seem to think it’s the ECF handing out an ego boost to those whose grades have slipped rather than a deflation correction.

It makes you wonder what the ECF would have done if the grades had been inflated - I seriously doubt they would have lowered them as that would have demoralised many players, causing them to abandon league chess in their droves. However, as they are in the process of messing with the grades I can’t see why they didn’t just take the opportunity to switch over to the Elo system.

Whatever happens, looks like I’ll make 100 ECF by Summer 2009!

I’ve done some statistical analysis on players with both ECF and FIDE Elo grades and decided that the ECF formula for converting to Elo could use some work.

I propose that the new formula should be:

Elo = (ECF x 6.14) + 1050

This gives an R2 fit of 0.946 against the plotted data. The graph below shows my model (black line) vs the ECF model (red line).

I’ll give more details in a future post.

If you’ve read my previous post, you’ll know that I’m embarking on the Seven Circles in the quest for tactical mastery - the method recommended by Michael de la Maza in his book Rapid Chess Improvement.

Just over a month in things are going pretty well, although I’ve made some adaptations to the Circles - the first rather fundamental change being that there are now ten circles, not seven!

Using CT-Art as my source of tactics, while the level 10 problems were pretty easy for me, the level 30s were starting to provide a stiff challenge and I was a little worried about slogging my way through the 40s, 50s and 60s without getting to grips with the earlier problems. It would have been nearly two months before coming back to the initial problems if I even made it that far without losing motivation.

I could have done a smaller set of problems, but Don on his blog who has experienced the same issues came up with the Ten Circles idea. The total time is the same, but the longest circle is 32 days (not 64), goes over Levels 10 - 30 three times before going over the 40 - 60s three times and the whole set for the final 4 circles.

Fortunately I was at a point where I could easily switch to this new idea and it should help me to absorb the more basic material before tackling the harder levels.

Already I’m feeling sharper, the solutions are coming quicker and the patterns are starting to transfer themselves to new problems. Down Under Knight gives some good ideas on how to guarantee finishing the circles.

I’m currently on the Level 20s in my 2nd circle. Here is my progress with CT-Art - don’t laugh!

Level 10 : 90% / 93%
Level 20 : 76% / 82% (in progress)
Level 30 : 60% / —