Solitaire Chess by Bruce Pandolfini

I recently picked up "Solitaire Chess" by Bruce Pandolfini from the library. I am really enjoying the book, but it is consistently estimating my playing strength to be 2000 to 2200. I'm no chump, but I can't believe I am that strong.

Of course it's just a rough guide and to be taken with a big grain of salt, but I am curious if anyone else has used this book, and did the playing strength estimations match your self perception?

I've done those and have found them to be about 400 or 500 points too high as well- a great ego booster! he does solitare chess once a month in Chess Life magazine- the USCF publication that you get with membership.

Yea, I've been doing some old ones in Chess Life magazine, and I've consistently found myself at 1800+. I'm decent, but there's no way I'm that strong.

It's probably so that in those position you are that strong, but in a normal game you would make many moves which are of worse quality... and your rating won't go much above your worst moves... So, it's more like your "potential". At least, that's my experience with stuff like that.

I did a Morphy game the other night and got schooled. I guessed only 4 moves correctly or so. Ended up with an estimated score of something like 1200.

That experience illustrated an interesting point though: my score seems to be highly dependent on the particular player I am acting as. In the case of Morphy, I couldn't follow his reasoning at all. He kept moving his knights, over and over, and I kept wanting to get the rooks and other pieces developed. Then in the foot notes it would point out lines involving the knights that I hadn't considered in the least. It's like the "thread" of that particular game was so spread out and multidimensional that I couldn't follow it at all.