Please Don't Tell My Girlfriend

I just bought $120 worth of chess books from Amazon. Two of them were library binding so they were damn expensive. She would kill me if she finds out. I hope she doesn't sign for them when they arrive. At least I put them in two different shipments so hopefully they won't arrive at the same time.

I like CD's post on OCD. I think good chess players need to have a little of it or they wouldn't keep at it. It takes a different person to do chess problem after chess problem and never get enough. I forgot which one of the knights said it but they did something like 15,000 problems in the last year or so! Can you imagine if we all did that many math problems? We would be living on the moon right about now. I'm having a hard time concentrating on work though, my mind keeps wandering to mating patterns and clearance sacs.

I'm still working on tactics but I really need to get cracking on "Winning Chess Endings", my games keep falling apart toward the endgame because I am at a loss for moves. I usually shuffle my rooks around and Fritz gets all pissy on me for that. I'm taking a DLM approach to "Winning Chess Tactics" now. I re-read three chapters at a time then I go back and only do the diagrams. So far so good, only missed two problems and it takes me a lot faster to recognize the themes this time around. I think it helps that I used a day to memorize the different motifs mentioned in the book (Double Attacks, Pins, Skewers, King Tactics, Deflection, Open Files and Diags, Pawn Tactics, Decoys, Clearance Sacrifices, X-Rays, Windmills, Zuschwizug, Types of Draws). Recognizing the different themes is becoming second nature to me now. I surprised one of my opponents at the chess club because I didn't fall for his deflection tactic that he must have thought was cleverly hidden. It shouldn't take me longer than a couple of days to go through the book in this fashion. Then I plan to tackle the endings book before going into Don's 10-Circles of Hell program.

Finally, they say you should pick a hero and I've decided to pick Steinitz. I like his style of play and I want to model my playing style after his.