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.

If I’m going to get better at chess then I need a plan.

A plan that concentrates on the areas that will yield the biggest improvements in the shortest time seems most sensible, but what will help me improve fastest? To improve fastest it pays to work on improving the areas in which you are weakest, so no one plan of action will work for everyone as we have different strengths and weaknesses. However, compared to the grandmaster I have nothing but weaknesses, so it’s not a question of what to work on (as I need to work on everything), but what areas I need to prioritise.

At the lowly level at which I play, virtually all the games are decided by some relatively simple means such as hanging pieces, knight forks, removal of a defender and pins. When you realise this, it’s obvious that to progress to the next level tactics are the key. I can’t think of many of my games where I haven’t made a move that loses material (whether the opponent sees it or not), or where I’ve missed a chance to win material. If I had seen these the outcome could have been very different.

So it follows that the better I get at spotting tactics the more games that will be decided in my favour!

Studying other areas of the game can help (like openings and strategy), and may increase tactical opportunities available during your games but if you can’t convert those chances into a material advantage then all you are doing is delaying the inevitable.

Looks like I need to mainly concentrate on tactics then!