At my wife's insistence via iron grip on the balls (ouch), I recently learned that I haven't actually been having an affair with the lovely Chessica as I thought, but rather with the flamboyant Chester. Apparently my wife feels more comfortable by restricting my sexual trysts with board games to homosexual affairs as opposed to straight ones.
So with one fell swoop of the rolling pin, I'm gay.
Great.
Despite a natural aversion to this lifestyle change, I have been faithful to my man these last three days, I just haven't been able to post. And I've made some changes to the daily regimen!
NEW DAILY ROUTINE
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Read through Concentric Square Exercise Solutions ____
Concentric squares
a. 2:00 of randomized king and rook placement
b. 2:00 of randomized king and bishop placement
c. 3:00 of randomized king and knight placement
d. 1:00 of randomized king and queen placement
Sight Drills
a. 2:00 of randomized knight placement
b. 2:00 of randomized bishop placement
c. 1:00 of randomized rook placement
d. 2:00 of randomized queen placement
IQ Test _____
15:00 of Chess Eye
Seven Circles
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I've shortened the duration of all the drills, and randomized their position on the board. This will help me to spot the attacking squares based on the king and rook/knight/bishop/queen positions rather than just memorizing which position comes next. And instead of using the solutions manual to check my answers, I will take 10-15 min to read through it prior to jumping into the randomized drills.
As you can see, the rook is back on the sight drills albeit only for one minute. I've also made it a practice to walk all around the board in a circle while doing the sight drills to make sure that the piece's path is solid in my mind even if I take my eyes off of it. Occasionally I'll add a knight and see if I can jump all around the path of the piece, being careful not to jump on a square where it could be captured. This helps to test if I can maintain the path when I add complexity to the board.
I've left the Knight IQ Test intact (see my first post for link), and I've added the Chess Eye Visualization software. This software will help me to visualize the board in my mind and make each square and it's notation second nature. It will also be good training should I ever want to play blindfold chess, which for the record I think is awesome.
Here's a link to the Chess Eye Software if anybody is interested in adding it to their program. I highly recommend it, it's a lot more comprehensive and efficient than flashcards.
http://chesseye.alexander-fleischer.de/
Here are my records for the last three days, just so you don't think I was slacking.
DAY 6
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Concentric Squares
a. Rook -> 4:43
b. Bishop -> 7:28
c. Knight -> 12:45
d. Queen -> 1:35
Sight Drills
a. Knight -> 4:19
b. Bishop -> 3:13
c. Queen -> 6:08
IQ Test -> 4:24
Seven Circles -> 819/1312
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DAY 7
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Concentric squares
a. 2:00 of randomized king and rook placement
b. 2:00 of randomized king and bishop placement
c. 3:00 of randomized king and knight placement
d. 1:00 of randomized king and queen placement
Sight Drills
a. 2:00 of randomized knight placement
b. 2:00 of randomized bishop placement
c. 1:00 of randomized rook placement
d. 2:00 of randomized queen placement
IQ Test -> 3:17 <--- Blazing Speed! Ha-sha!
Seven Circles -> 864/1312 <-- Ok, so I was slacking a little on Day 7 ----------------------------------
DAY 8
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Read through Concentric Square Exercise Solutions
Concentric squares
a. 2:00 of randomized king and rook placement
b. 2:00 of randomized king and bishop placement
c. 3:00 of randomized king and knight placement
d. 1:00 of randomized king and queen placement
Sight Drills
a. 2:00 of randomized knight placement
b. 2:00 of randomized bishop placement
c. 1:00 of randomized rook placement
d. 2:00 of randomized queen placement IQ Test -> 3:26
15:00 of Chess Eye
Seven Circles -> 932/1312
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4 comments:
My wife is considering a starting a support group for chess widows.
Its the laptop in bed that gets her frosted .... I just can't stop myself.
So what was I doing Saturday night? I was watching the Foxwood Open games live on the MonRoi website... and kibititzing in the chat room. I was excited... my wife was not.
-BP
Haha I can totally relate :)
She gets pissed when I do my circles in bed with her.
My wife would definitely join that support group ;)
Nice to see you are doing the drills first as God (MDLM) intended. They appear trivial but I think extremely helpful. I am going to revisit some this week as I feel I would like some improvement on my board vision.
I should redo those drills too.
If I did these things in bed I'd never sleep!
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