Progress

Wow, another post. I've been busy posting these past couple of weeks. I guess I've had a lot to say lately. I decided to write this post after some reflection on my progress last night.

In the last couple of months I've noticed two developments in my games. First, my candidate move intuition is starting to show. It's not necessarily the best moves but I'm less prone to being overwhelmed by a whole bunch of bad moves. Now I just cocentrate on a few moves that "pop" up. I suspect this has to do with the few hundred master games I've reviewed so far. When I'm looking for candidate moves I have always looked at the checks and captures, but now I'm starting to add on certain moves that I think I've seen in other games. d4 and f4 break moves are two examples. This has helped me to use my analysis time more efficiently, even though I may not be picking the "best" candidate moves in the positions yet.

I've also noticed that my candidate move selection process is getting better. Once I have my list of candidate moves I start to weed out the bad ones through analysis. In the beginning I would often weed out a move, or narrow the list of moves, because of a certain danger level (like a mate threat on a certain square), but then forget about it and make the move that allows the threat. I don't know what this is called but it is frustrating when it happens. I notice this happens a lot less frequently now. Almost as if my position recall or memory is getting stronger. It's tough for me to explain but this is how I feel currently. I'm not sure if this is due to having played more stadard games or something else.