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% / —

Quite simply my tactics suck. I can see the one or two movers fairly well, but anything more complicated than that leaves me staring into the tactical abyss, groping around in the dark searching for a guiding light. Something has to be done if I’m ever going to move my way up the ladder.

Looking around at how others have gone about studying tactics, I’ve decided to give the ‘Seven Circles‘ method a go. It works on the basis of repetition to repeatedly hammer the concepts into your head and many have had excellent results using this method. There is nothing to say it will work wonders for me, but it looks as good a method as any.

The idea is to work through a set tactical problems slowly, a few each day. Once completed, repeat them, but do twice as many each day in half the time. By the 7th circle they will all be done really quickly in one day.

The first few circles teaches you to understand the tactical concepts in each problem by spending plenty of time working them out. In the last few circles a very short solving time is used and relies largely on your pattern recognition to solve them.

I’ve actually been working on the circles for nearly 4 weeks now but wanted to see if I could stick them before posting about them here. I’m using CT-Art Levels 10 through to 60 to give me a set of 1039 problems with the first circle of 64 days. I’m averaging 18 problems a day, slightly ahead of the required 16/day for the first circle.

The last 2 or 3 circles are certain to be hell, but if I can get through them all I should have completed them just before the new season starts. Whether I can flex my newly toned tactical muscle in OTB play remains to be seen.

Horfield Chess Club took the spoils in both the Bristol League Knockout Cup and the Minor Knockout Cup to round off a very successful season. The committee are busy looking back through the record books to see if two Division titles and two cup victories is the biggest single season haul of trophies in the club’s history.

Something of a Minor KO specialist, the narrow 3.5 - 2.5 win over Clevedon on 29th April gave Horfield their 3rd Minor KO trophy in 4 years!

> View the Minor Knockout Match Report

However, the big game was a week later when Horfield took on Clifton in the Knockout Final. Clifton had dropped only two points in the league all season and looked favourites for the cup, but Horfield held their nerve to win 4.5 - 3.5!

> View the Knockout Match Report
> Download PGN or CBV of the games

The Knockout Trophy has eluded Horfield since 2000 so it was great to get our hands on it again, but the one we really want is the Division 1 championship which we haven’t won since 2001 - maybe next season!