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?

Recently my play has reached a new high, my chess is more consistent and I’m performing well against stronger players, but I can’t help feeling that I’ve run headlong into another brick wall.

Until recently, my games usually consisted of me throwing out some opening theory for the first few moves, then shuffling the pieces around in the middlegame waiting for a mistake to take advantage of, blundering myself, or allowing the opponent to get too much activity and overwhelm me.

Nowadays, I still throw out the same old opening theory, but I’ve strengthened my tactical play over the summer and so now I see those chances more easily, I can hold onto my material instead of chucking it away. The result of this is that I win more convincingly against the weaker player, but the games against stronger opponents seem to involve a titanic struggle for control before reaching a deadlock or else I simply crumble under the pressure.

This is where I run into my wall. Against the better player I’m hardly ever going to win unless I can capitalise on those small positional advantages, but as soon as I obtain these, the play is too subtle for me and equality is soon resumed. My games are starting to behave like an elastic band - to keep stretching till the band breaks you have to keep applying pressure, but more often than not, players round about my level don’t know how to keep applying that pressure and the band returns to its state of rest.

It’s apparent that working on my tactics is no longer as effective as it was as I’m not generating positions where tactics generally appear. The tactics which do appear are often hard to spot and would require a huge amount of study for a small return.

I’m looking for faster gains than that, so I think my next step is to work on building up those positional advantages and learning how to use them to create that extra pressure.

I think it’s time to learn some STRATEGY!