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!

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.