Wednesday, March 02, 2005

2-2-2

Two Pizzas, Two Toppings, and a Two liter beverage Mr. Pawnza?


No, actually it's my new method of working through tactical exercises.
I take a group of 100 problems total then I proceed to work through them in smaller blocks of 25 problems per night for two complete passes.
Then two passes at 50 problems per night.
The finale consists of two passes at 100 problems per night.
Simple and effective. I get exposure to the same problem 5 times, and I complete all of the groupings within 12 days. This allows for two complete days away from chess if I choose, or another form of chess activity. (I.e. Club night)
Another bonus is the final two days can be tackled on a weekend if one starts on a Monday. (Including the “off” days.)
Of course the starting number of 100 is one that I picked at random based off the material I am studying currently. (1000 x Checkmate CD)
I just filtered the games by number of moves, and created a database that I copied to my hard drive for ease of use. Plus it allows me to track my success rate by right clicking on the DB, selecting properties, and then the training tab.
Since I'm working through mate-in-one problems at the moment I figure 100 problems would be a manageable figure. The bottom line of course is the success rate, on which I have set 90% as being acceptable. If I fail to meet that target number I will simply have to repeat that particular set of problems again for the next 12 days.
Fortunately I met the minimum during the test run, so it is now on to the second group of 100.
I wanted to play guinea pig before I mentioned what I have been cooking up during my blogging absence.

Ahhhh! It is so nice to have a life again.

8 comments:

Temposchlucker said...

What does the expression means: "to play guinea pig"? (English is not my native language)

Don Q. said...

Guinea pigs are a type of rodent -- kind of like a cross between a rabbit and a mouse. They used to be used a lot in scientific experiements. For example, before you'd give a drug to humans you would first try it out on a guinea pig. As such, it means to be the first one to try something out. To be the test case.

Incidentally, I think you asked about "meatball surgery" a few days ago. Meatball, in this case, means the same thing as "sloppy" or "not careful". Meatball is also slang for someone who is stupid.

Sancho Pawnza said...

I think your English is fantastic!
Much better than some of the native users. :)

I just found the coolest chess utility. Go here and check this out
Chess Position Trainer

Sancho Pawnza said...

How ya holding up Don?
The problems are tough enough without being sick.

Sancho Pawnza said...

Oh yeah almost forgot, in order to make CPT work properly you must have
MICROSOFT .NET FRAMEWORK 1.1 installed. There is a link for that on the download page of CPT.

Pale Morning Dun - Errant Knight de la Maza said...

Sancho,
I like your approach. I think with CPT you can take keep track of your percentages too. I downloaded it the other day but did I've not checked it out.

Dave said...

I'll be over later and I like pepperoni and mushrooms.

If you want to import pgn positions, make sure you get the latest beta of CPT.

Don Q. said...

Feeling much better. I think it was actually a cold with an extremely bad attitude, not the flu.