2008 Chess Resolutions

With New Year's rapidly approaching (or for some of you already here), I'm curious: What are your chess related New Year's resolutions? My goal is to try to reach USCF 1900 by the beginning of 2009. This may be a bit over ambitious, but I'm willing to work at it. (I'm currently USCF 1650 or so)

Originally posted by chesskid001
With New Year's rapidly approaching (or for some of you already here), I'm curious: What are your chess related New Year's resolutions? My goal is to try to reach USCF 1900 by the beginning of 2009. This may be a bit over ambitious, but I'm willing to work at it. (I'm currently USCF 1650 or so)

If you study hard and play in a lot of tournaments, then gaining 250 points in one year is certainly a difficult, but attainable, goal. Good luck to you! 🙂

I've got several endgame books lined up: "Silman's Complete Endgame Course," by Jerry Silman (I had the Grip this past week and am already up to page 177!); "Theorie und Praxis der Endspiele," by Johann Berger; "Chess Studies and End-games," by Horwitz and Kling; "Collection of Chess Studies," A. Troitzky; "Practical Endgame Play -- Beyond the Basics," by Glenn Flear (I'm pretty excited about this one since it covers endgame positions with two pieces vs. two pieces or two vs. one); "Rook Endings," by Levenfish and Smyslov (It's odd that I've never gone through this one completely -- but then again, how many RHPer's have?); "Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual," by Mark Dvoretsky (I started this one earlier in the year and the section on Pawn endings was very rigourous; I'm sure this will be the toughest of the bunch.); and lastly, I plan on finishing the year with "Capablanca's Best Chess Endings," by Chernev (this will be about the sixth time I've covered this book; what can I say: It keeps getting better with age.); and lastly, "Vasily Smyslov: Endgame Virtuoso," by the former World Champion, Vasily Smyslov (this one was at the back of my bookshelf, undisturbed for a long time; Silman had it on his list of recommended endgame books and I picked it up and saw there are about 150 games with notes by Smyslov. I'm sure the great man has plenty to say on the final phase of the game.)

Originally posted by chesskid001
With New Year's rapidly approaching (or for some of you already here), I'm curious: What are your chess related New Year's resolutions? My goal is to try to reach USCF 1900 by the beginning of 2009. This may be a bit over ambitious, but I'm willing to work at it. (I'm currently USCF 1650 or so)

Happy New Year & Good Luck with your New Years Resolution!

1) Raise my RHP rating 100 points to 1700 (round numbers are easy to add 😛).

2) Read, study and PRACTICE "My System".

3) Get my openings down better. I often am playing move-to-move at the start and just hoping for the best.

4) Do my fair share to help Pooh Clan move to page 3.

I'm going to enjoy life and not even try to get better at chess at all. Blasphemy here, im sure, but I'm sort of at a level where it takes quite a lot of work to improve much at all and I have so much more stuff to do.

Well, good luck to you both for your resolutions.

I aim not to enter every tourni I see, to take more time on my moves by reducing my overal gameload to under 75 games, to try to make my graph appear slightly more consistant than it does at the moment.

my new year chess resolution is to stop sucking so badly at chess and get my rating up from sub 1100 to plus 1200

Learn an opening that works for me other than the "english" and start learning how to play black better.

I'm just looking for 1800 RHP right now, check it out...I've even re-started my climb back towards that direction. 🙂

I guess another one of my resolutions will be to get my RHP rating up to 1650 This is more difficult since I'm not a sub, but I think I can do it.

Finish one chess book before starting another.

To teach one blind child how to play chess. I've never done it but would like to try. How ever I do work well with Autistic kids and Deaf Kids.

Renegade

Originally posted by der schwarze Ritter
I've got several endgame books lined up: "Rook Endings," by Levenfish and Smyslov (It's odd that I've never gone through this one completely -- but then again, how many RHPer's have?); "

Thanks to this book and another on endings I have by Keres I got a draw in Game 4244304 and have learnt a lot about how to achieve this OTB in future. I hope to surprise many a strong opponent by exchanging off to drawn R & 2P vs R endings in future.

I have a whole series of end game books by Averbach, rarely gone through. I only tend to look at endings when I get to them in a game and OTB that is usually too late whereas here is a different thing.

In my opinion, there can be no doubt that once you have mastered the basics and have a good opening repertoire learning how to win (endings) will convert the most points.