Yes, it’s been a while – my situation in life has changed since last September, work related mainly, and the recession isn’t helping. Couple that with what was a very tough season and I lost some of my drive for chess. It became more of an effort than a pleasure.

After going from one of the strongest board 1s the previous season, the team was promoted and I became pretty much the weakest in the division. Rated 94 ECF, I was often playing against players rated 40 or 50 points higher and I played very defensive and ground out some good draws, but this defensive mentality was hard to shake off against the weaker players and I struggled to create any attacking play, getting stuck in dead positions more often than not. This is reflected in the fact I scored more draws (nearly 50%) last season than I had in the previous 3 seasons combined, even though the average opponent strength was not that much stronger than myself over the season. I had no edge to my game last season, lack of confidence being the cause. I was grinding out some good draws against 140+, but squandering wins against the 70s and 80s.

However, I can take some solace in that my play was solid. I made few tactical blunders in defence, but my positional play failed to yield many promising positions. I did chalk up my first win against a player rated over 100 ECF, so some progress is being made.

The “D Team” finished mid-table in Div 4, which is about where expected based on player gradings, however we were always far more at risk of demotion than promotion.

My grading started out at 94, though the ECF is in a transitional phase with the grades (they are trying to correct deflation issues) and my equivalent new-system grade was 127. After the calculations had been made, the grade came out at 130 (athough it was briefly 131), so a slight improvement, but it will take a season or two for the new grades to settle so not much can be determined from these numbers.

I don’t know how much I’ll be able to commit to chess this season, so I won’t be captaining the side. I have a feeling that work is going to get in the way, but we’ll see how it goes.

After 4 draws and 1 loss, I knew it was only a matter of time before I scored a full point in one of my games. Last Tuesday was the night, but it could so easily have been another big fat zero for me.

Playing as white, by move 2 I was out of my opening book facing the Dutch Defence which I’d never played against (if any Bristol league players are reading this, I’ve now done some preparation against 1. d4 f5 so don’t expect to catch me out if I meet you over the board!).

I probably had the slight initiative going into the middlegame, but I allowed my opponent to get some sustained pressure on the kingside. I defended well for several moves and conceding nothing. Black then tried to force his way through when there was no way forward, but I played a bad move that would have lost the exchange (and probably the game) – however, neither of us saw this and he blundered back leaving me a healthy pawn up and with an untouchable knight on the 6th rank! It was my turn to put the pressure on and after a blunder on move 33 he never recovered.

It was also my first win against an opponent rated over 100 ECF, so another milestone can be ticked off. I played solidly pretty much the whole way through only to have a good go at throwing it away on move 27.

Yes, it’s opening day of Advent, and only 24 days left till Christmas so perhaps we should dedicate a particular opening to the month of December, one which offers the opponent many gifts obviously. How about the gift of a horse? 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Nxe5 [C44] ?

Seriously though, December gets a bit busy for me (still have the Christmas shopping to do of course!) so it will be all I can do to keep up with the chess study and I’ll probably not be posting much until the new year.

In the meantime, see how much you know about the true Christmas by taking this Christmas Quiz and as always feel free to leave your comments!

Have a good Christmas and New Year!

I’ve been getting a few tactic problems under my belt in recent months but haven’t really been happy with the progress feedback from the various systems I’ve been using.

Chess Tactics for Beginners & CT-Art are good programs and very good for learning tactics, but I find the scoring a little bit hit and miss and the difficulty a bit off for some problems. It only gives you a percentage score for each set, but at least you can see if you’re improving each time round.

Chessimo, again is very good for learning tactics using the in-built repetition, but there is no system for tracking progress which is the one major let-down in this software.

I’ve played around on the Chess Tactics Server (CTS) from time to time, but didn’t really get on with the blitz style of solving as it doesn’t give much time to study the position before feeling compelled to make a move – it doesn’t really motivate me to lose rating points for solving a problem correctly. Also the interface doesn’t make it easy to review the problem. I do like the problem rating system though which gives a rating based on how difficult other users found it.

I tried ChessTempo.com last year, but wasn’t overly impressed and only tried it again a few days ago. They’ve updated the interface, making it very easy to review the problem. There is a ’standard’ style (as well as blitz) which gives you as much time as you need, really allowing you to understand the position before making a move – much closer to the OTB matches I play. The rating system is basically the same as CTS, but the ’standard’ rating swings it for me.

I’ll be keeping up with the other programs, but will try using ChessTempo.com to track my progress. I’ll let you know how it goes – currently I’m about 1700 rating.

Scientists claim that to reach the top of your chosen discipline, you need to practice for 10,000 hours.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1088735/You-genius-spare-10-000-hours.html

Over the last 5 years I’ve probably managed somewhere in the region of 500 hours study and play (most of which has been in the last couple of years), leaving me with another 9,500 hours, and at the current rate, 95 years before I reach the pinnacle of chess.

It’s not going to happen, is it?