Monday, February 07, 2005

Avoiding the Sniffles!

Sorry folks, once again real life has taken over.
But the good news is I will actually start to have a little more free time.
We managed to sell both of our apartments this past weekend. WOO HOO!
I did spend all of Saturday making some repairs to satisfy the new owners.
Well actually just to help them out a bit. They both purchased the units "as is" but I said I didn't mind helping them fix a couple of things if it would help in their decision making process. So of course they seemed to think it would help, so I was repairing furnaces and replacing lines to a water heater. I still have a slight bit more to do this Saturday but I don't mind. Both of the folks are really nice people and extremely appreciative. Plus it will save them some money on having to buy new items for a couple of years.

Anyway back to chess, I just can't bring myself to fire up CT-Art and work on the exercises.
I find myself spending more and more time working on revisions, and figuring out ways to tailor the program to my needs. Along with the tinkering I'm focusing on making the exercises more productive. I just cannot see where increasing the amount of problems and reducing the time per exercise makes any sense if I’m starting to tank. The primary concern should be accuracy. Imagine that you play golf. What good would it serve if you were to hit a thousand golf balls at the driving range if your form was incorrect? All you would accomplish is reinforcing poor technique that would have to be unlearned at a later date.

I have a fairly good grasp on what I want to achieve, so hopefully by this weekend I should have my new study plan finalized. Returning to the equivalent of Circle 1 doesn’t bother me. I know that this is the correct course of action.


Added a few links to some really cool blog sites.

3 comments:

Don Q. said...

Glad you are still with us Sancho. Congrats on selling your apartments.

Unknown said...

I've thought of re-doing Circle 1 after I finish it this time and then moving to Circle 2. I really do think going all the way through Level 90 is the right thing to do because I can at least expose myslef to the really difficult tactics - I'm going to have to learn them anyway if I keep playing chess.

Pawnsensei said...

Sancho,

Congrats! Wow, you must be rolling in dough right now with the housing prices the way they are. I agree with you, this is not a race. Especially as a rank beginner I am extremely wary of picking up bad habits this early in the game. I would rather take two months to learn something right then two weeks to breeze through it. I'm even thinking about delaying Circle 1 for another round of Winning Chess Tactics. It's really helping me to see the different tactical themes and to categorize them in my head. I don't think it will hurt to go through them again, just faster the second time around.

PS