Did we lose another one?
Is GK coming back from his Tournabout? I haven't heard a peep from him in a while. I hope Cupid didn't get to him. I hear that little bas*#$d has ruined many a potential GM. If you are reading this, run GK! Run for your life!
I'm still going through WCT even though I said I would be done by now. Go figure. Went home to visit for the weekend so didn't get much studying done. I did learn one thing though. I have uncles that play chess, but I still haven't found anyone in my family who can beat me yet. Isn't chess supposed to be hereditary? Oh well, the search continues. I did notice that WCT has helped me to see which exchanges I can win a piece. Prior to reading the book I would constantly go through an exchange and end up on the short end, not knowing how I lost the extra piece.
Something else that I found interesting about the puzzles. On the second time through I can solve more of them, and solve them quicker, however, if I don't read the description of the puzzle then it becomes MUCH harder to solve because I have to figure out what theme the position is about. On one puzzle I calculated down the completely wrong path and wasted five minutes doing so. That was unreal. I could just imagine doing that during a game and wasting all that time.
I did win my game on FICS today which brought my spirits up. I didn't make any blunders and slowly whittled away at the other guy's pieces. I think the main difference was that he moved too fast and overlooked some of my threats. The bad part is I suspect I am missing some mating patterns. I'll run the game through Fritz to see if he sees anything.
7 Comments:
Pawn - I have been thinking about creating an "Inactive Knights" category for those who haven't posted in more than a month (I guess it would be somewhat similar to Don's "Abandoned Efforts" list). Right now nobody has quite reached my (arbitrary) cutoff - unless we bring back the Orange Knight - but both GK and Yet Another Patzer seem well on their way.
I suppose some level of defection is inevitable in undertakings like this.
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True DG. Especially when you are pushing 20 people. That's more than was at my local chess club. I supposed a 5 to 10 percent drop out rate is pretty good considering the rigors of the program. I hope GK comes back though. I think I'll be the youngest again if he doesn't.
PS
GK left a comment on my blog, so he still seems to be following the rest of us at least.
DG,
A good idea. I started already to put the more active knights on top of the list, so that I don't have to check every day all knights.
GK has commented on a post of mine though on febr.24. So he's still reading our posts I think.
Re the puzzle - I go off on lines like that all the time, but for more than 5 minutes!
One month is the same arbitrary time period I had set before I move someone to the abandoned efforts list. I can always move 'em back if they start up again. I think this information is useful as well. How many people make it? When do they seem to drop out?
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