David's Dojo Journey - Installment 7

Here are some highlights from the week:

Dojo Classical Tournament: Round 6 Loss

This week saw a disappointing performance in the sixth round of the Dojo Classical Tournament. Here is the game and some points of learning are bulleted below:

Tactics Time

After 25 hours and 46 minutes of hard work and 49 pages of solutions written in a Word document, I finally finished Tactics Time! The following is a graph of my accuracy for each set of 100:

My low was 58/100 and my high was 77/100, but the range was relatively tight. The difficulty of the sets varied, so it is a bit difficult to know where my performance was stronger as opposed to the sets being easier or more difficult.

One of my favorite things about this book, as I have mentioned, was that the answers for each problem (1) were on the next page of the book (rather than having to jump back and forth to the end of the book after a set to check the answers and (2) contained words explaining the correct solutions where appropriate. Here are some of my favorite quotes:

• "LPDO - Loose Pieces Drop Off." I've heard this before, but the reference in the solution to Problem 54 really helped drive this concept home and I've been working on making sure all of my pieces are defended throughout my games. At my level, blundering less results in more wins!
• "Cutting off squares is often better than giving a check, and just chasing the King around." This was a significant insight to me in the explanation of Problem 85. Again, I had heard this maxim before, but seeing it in action in this problem helped drive it home a bit more deeply.
• "Keep it simple." My coach's tagline is beauty through simplicity. I always liked that concept and very helpful for my level. Simple and concrete is the best path every time.
• "A good example of ignoring threats to your own pieces and finding threats of your own." This concept illustrated by Problem 576 was very helpful to me and has helped me, in addition to the Polgar defensive tactics book, think more broadly about my options when responding to threats.
• "Players often turn their 'tactics radar" off in the endgame, but his is a mistake." This was a really helpful point in the explanation of Problem 675. I have heard several times that Caruana is a strong tactical player in the endgame, but this problem helped me see how that could even be true of someone at my level.
• "When you see a good move, look for a better one." (quoting Emmanuel Lasker). This quote in the answer to Problem 831 really drove the point home. My friend who got me into chess used to use this quote when we were playing together. When I was just starting out, I was lucky to find one descent move, but now with the emphasis on playing slow games, I think I'm at a point where I can start applying this concept in my play!

Chess Journeys Episode Drops!

As I mentioned in the last installment, I I had the great opportunity to be on the Chess Journeys podcast! It was a great experience and our conversation touched on a lot of really helpful topics for folks around my rating range: (1) how to find time to work on chess, (2) should I hire a coach, (3) what tactics resources are helpful?, (4) what strategy and endgame sources are helpful?, (5) why Chess Dojo is great, (6) why studies that say adult improvers can only go so far should be looked at with a healthy dose of skepticism, (7) why everyone should listen to Perpetual Chess, (8) should I learn opening theory or just play according to opening principles?, (9) what role should ratings play in my chess goals, and more!

Here is the episode if you want to give it a listen:

https://open.spotify.com/episode/0erHBZYptYYIIapuy6cPjj?si=091e9b7c39ad4566

Dojo Booklist
Given the number of books that I am going through in the Dojo, I thought it would be helpful to create a list, so I can quickly recall that part of the journey!

• Completed
  • Giannatos, Everyone's First Chess Workbook (completed)
  • Polgar S., Learning Chess the Right Way (Vol. 3) (completed)
  • Brennan and Carson, Tactics Time (in process)
• In Progress
  • Polgar; Chess:5334 Problems (in process)
  • del Rosario, First Book of Morphy (in process)
  • Chernev, Logical Chess Move by Move (in process)
  • Chernev, Most Instructive Games (in process)
  • Silman, Complete Endgame Course (in process)

Until the next installment!