When Seven became Ten
By Dave on Monday, 2nd June 2008If 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% / —