Hey guys. There was a lot of discussion about this in previous months and a year ago also. I have finished this program and here are my results:
I collect 1000 puzzles from books and online websites, such as Winning chess tactics, Russian School of Chess, Kasp. website, etc... and sort them by diffucult. 190 of them were way to hard, 2100+ rating so I only used 810 and the others I will do when i have time. I'm a univ student and don't have much time, so I tried the best to follow the program. I took several months of now and then. The total program should have taken 4 months but I took 22 months to complete it. Not the best, but what can you do. I also did it only 6 times, since I felt that the 7th time wouldn't help much and I can't do 810 in 1 day.
Round 1: 26 Hours and 46 minutes Spent 38 days instead of 64
Round 2: 22:20 Spent 26 days instead of 32
Round 3: 17:50 Spent 17 days instead of 16
This has been 1 years since I started this program.
So I have skipped 365 days-38-26-17 inbetween now and then 🙁
Round 4: 12:46 Spent 10 days instead of 8
Round 5: 13:02 Skipped 7 months inbetween thats why my time went up Spent 14 days instead of 4. I had a halloween tournament So I would wake up at 7 and do 20 puzzles and then go to the tournament each day thats why it spent 14 days.
Round 6: 10:36 5 days instead of 2.
I tried to follow the program as best I could with my Univ workload and work during the summer.
Summary, Round 1 I spent an average of 119 sec per problem.
Round 6 I spent an average of 47 sec per problem.
I see tactics a lot better and faster and I can solve mate in 4 and 5 easily in my head whereas before mate in 2/3 was diffucult.
Those stats are interesting,but following the program did significantly raise your rating strength?
I see that your rating is pretty stable on 1600-1650 since a year.
Edit:I'm not sarcastic,I'm genuinely interested to know if it's little helpful or a lot helpful to go through such training.
Originally posted by RavelloIt raised my rating, where?
Those stats are interesting,but following the program did significantly raise your rating strength?
I see that your rating is pretty stable on 1600-1650 since a year.
Edit:I'm not sarcastic,I'm genuinely interested to know if it's little helpful or a lot helpful to go through such training.
O the rhp thing. That's just me seriously trying on here to catch my OTB ratings. I was wondering how people on here got high ratings and i'm a 1700 OTB player and my Rhp rating was 1500ish. So I got annoyed and started playing good on here.
Since then I've gone from 1525 to 1690 catching my OTB rating of 1705 soon.
My OTB rating has been resonanting around 1700 since I started this program so I would say it hasn't really helped me that much. I started with a provisional rating of 1748 because of a draw vs a 1870 luckily so that might have messed things up. I then dropped to 1689 and then went up to 1728 and then dropped to 1705.
So what i'm trying to say is, maybe I wasn't a 1748 which I don't think I was, but studying tactics and reading books maintained me at 1700ish. I found that my tactics have been improved greatly and I can play games better and see tactics quicker and my games are shorter now compared to before since I can find a small tactic here and there in most of my games.
I would say its very helpful though. I know that if I had started at say 1300 OTB rating, doing this program would have got me to 1600-1700 easily.
Originally posted by buddy2The 2 games are because i'm trying to find some opponents and my univ started today so i'm seeing how my course load is. Anyways, I find rhp games aren't very good indicaters about rating strength. After seriously playing on here for several months, my rating has risen 150+ points already.
How has your rating progressed, Rahim? Although it might be too early to tell. I see you're only carrying 2 games presently on RHP so that doesn't help much as an indicator.
I'm using my otb rating as my indicator. I do read a lot of chess books, and watch dvd's etc and spend about 2 hours on chess everyday, not just playing but studying. So all the tactics, books,dvds all combine into one so i can't really say that my rating rise was solely due to tactics program.
Tactic's are a funny thing. You can study them as much as you won't but if they don't show up in your games what can you do.
I switched from 1.d4 to 1.e4 to get wild games where the chance of tactics would be greater. After all my Otb games and Rhp games, I put them into fritz and get them analysed.
I remeber only missing 3 tactics since I started this training thing almost 2 years ago expect for those crazy mate in 9 and 10 computers do instead of just playing the position and then finding a mate after trading off all the pieces, queening some pawns etc...
So I guess if there's a tactic there, I will most probably see it.
I got better by reading Reinfelds 1001 and Lou Hays Combo challenge.
I tried CT-Art and find it somewhat steep.
Theres an intermediate version that looks like a better gradient
I also read tactic puzzles a lot.
What improved my play i think is reading some books on positional play as well as the tactics
I think all the books I read helped me get to where I am right now. I read 9 books in 04 summer mostly. Last summer 05 I didn't read much, couple of books.
I'll post a book/dvd's list on here when I compile it.
To be honest with everyone, I think if you do 10 tactic puzzles per day for a whole year it would be almost the same as this program. I did spend 90 some hours on these problems and I think if you spend 90 hours on tactics no matter how you do them, it should improve your play a lot.
Originally posted by RahimKI have found that when I do regularly solve tactics puzzles, my ability to see tactics is much sharper...but the effect tends to fade over time when I don't hit the books. Does anyone else have this experience, or should I prepare for a long bout with Alzheimer's?
I think all the books I read helped me get to where I am right now. I read 9 books in 04 summer mostly. Last summer 05 I didn't read much, couple of books.
I'll post a book/dvd's list on here when I compile it.
To be honest with everyone, I think if you do 10 tactic puzzles per day for a whole year it would be almost the same as this program. I did sp ...[text shortened]... f you spend 90 hours on tactics no matter how you do them, it should improve your play a lot.
Originally posted by BLReidI've been doing CTS for about 4 months now. 26031 problems to date. gained about 400pts since starting with a more or less steady pace. -I did have a month or so when I didn't do tactics, but it didn't really have any effect. although I have heard of others having similar fading effect.
I have found that when I do regularly solve tactics puzzles, my ability to see tactics is much sharper...but the effect tends to fade over time when I don't hit the books. Does anyone else have this experience, or should I prepare for a long bout with Alzheimer's?
rahim: 6*810 = 4860 problems doesn't seem so much? but I guess it depends on you doing harder problems, and studying them thoroughly. CTS forces on you avg. time of 9s per problem, by adjusting the difficulty until it's 9s, so your avg time is a lot longer than mine. my current succes % is around 80-85% a session. you probably do over 90% on your problems? -some feel the CTS-way is too haphazard because of the time pressure, but for me it's clearly working with a steady improvement rate. but there's also people who have gained only 20pts or so since I started, so I don't know if it works for everybody.
I only know a few people who have gained more than 100pts from DLM, most gaining only around 50pts or so. but I think there might be hidden benefits in doing it, such as better success rate.
Originally posted by BLReidchess tactics server
Sorry wormwood, don't mean to be ignorant. What is CTS?
http://chess.emrald.net/index.php
a site for drilling tactics. tens of thousands of problems, automatically selected for the user according to his rating. so as you get better, you get more harder problems.
OK thanks, I've seen that site recommended here on RHP quite a bit. I just bookmarked it. By the way, if anyone wants a nice free program to help with openings, have a look at Chess Position Trainer (chesspositiontrainer.com). It is similar to bookup, but is free, which is a good price. I haven't found an endgame site yet. I may never buy another book, with so much stuff available online. Also, for $20-$30 / mo (US$) you can subscribe to chesslectures.com which looks very good. Of course, if you are a member of ICC you can get good lectures on chessfm. Thanks again for the tip on CTS.
BLR
Originally posted by BLReidYou can see that each round I knocked off about 3-4 hours for the earlier rounds expcept when I took a 7 month break, my time increased by 20 minutes or so. I don't think its a problem that the effect fades over time. Its only natural. That's why you gotta keep at it,doing a couple everyday or doing some every week at least without taking months and months off.
I have found that when I do regularly solve tactics puzzles, my ability to see tactics is much sharper...but the effect tends to fade over time when I don't hit the books. Does anyone else have this experience, or should I prepare for a long bout with Alzheimer's?