When Seven became Ten
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% / —
Wednesday, June 4th 2008 at 5:06 pm
Hi I’ve just noticed your blog from a link at http://chessforallages.blogspot.com/. It looks like we’re in a similar situation chesswise. Good luck with the improvement plan, and I hope you keep up with the blog. Dean
Friday, July 11th 2008 at 2:04 pm
I started playing chess again about 3 years ago over the board at club level filling in when my team was short of players. I soon realised that I was pretty poor!
I’ve spent a considerable amount of time and energy studying lots of chess books and playing online trying to improve. However, I found a lot of the material too complicated or difficult to retain and saw little improvement.
I did make some useful discoveries though:
1. Openings WHITE: The London System and the Colle System are easy to learn and play and you can survive opening mistakes. 1. d4 seems very forgiving!
2. Openings BLACK: The French Defense 1 .. e6 is reasonably easy to learn and the ideas can be used to defend against 1. d4
Armed with the above I managed to avoid getting wiped out in the opening since immediate tactics are less of an issue and the king is fairly safe.
However, I came to the conclusion that tactics were the way forward in January 2008. I found Dan Heisman’s book recommendations the most helpful.
http://home.comcast.net/~danheisman/Events_Books/General_Book_Guide.htm
Studying – Chess Tactics for Students by John Bain made a massive improvement to my online play
Look at my graph from February onwards (http://www.playtheimmortalgame.com/profile/playerprofile.php?uid=367600)
I do have the seven circles book and I did start the process off. I did all the board vision exercises and that made a BIG difference.
I did all the CT ART level 10 and level 20 with good percentages but struggled on level 30 and found that I didn’t have the time to stick to the plan
However, it inspired me to put a programme together that includes:
Studying the Bain Book – Every theme 10 times
Studying the Woolum Book (from Heisman’s page) – Every section 10 times
Studying Pandolfini’s Endgame course – Every section 10 times
Studying the 306 mate in ones for Lazlo Polgar’s Chess 5334 problems – 10 times
Running through CT-ART level 10 and level 20 when I get opportunity – when you have a family it can be easier to put a book down than a computer.
I would disagree with the seven circles book when it comes to openings, strategy and endings. I believe you do need to study them as well but tactics is the most important thing to study and should be given the most time. However, if you don’t study openings then you probably wont survive the opening to play your tactics.
Andrew