Monthly Archives: December 2005

Goals for 2006 – blitz games

By Steve | Published: December 28, 2005
A few days ago I posted about my 2006 goals for slow games. Today I’m thinking about goals for blitz games. Most chess writers and instructors caution improving players against playing too many online blitz games. That’s not my problem. Most of my play is in OTB club tournaments. I’m not even that comfortable playing online [...]
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Santa must play chess

By Steve | Published: December 25, 2005
Santa came to my house last night and left me a couple of chess goodies: Jonathan Tisdall’s Improve Your Chess Now Andrew Soltis’ Turning Advantage into Victory in Chess Merry Christmas, everyone!
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Goals for 2006 – slow games

By Steve | Published: December 23, 2005
Dan Heisman wrote in a Novice Nook column that a “minimum of 8 OTB tournaments and about 100 slow games a year is a reasonable foundation for ongoing improvement.” In 2005 I only managed to play about 35 slow games: 32 USCF rated games, and 3 ICC games in a slow (60 5) tournament. This is [...]
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Giving GameKnot a try

By Steve | Published: December 23, 2005
Every now and then there’s a thread in the Chessville Forum asking for recommendations for online places to play turn-based chess. I played correspondence chess for a while back in my high school days (actual post cards and stamps!), and I’ve been thinking about giving the modern online version a try. In the most recent Chessville [...]
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Tactics study

By Steve | Published: December 18, 2005
Currently I have two sources for tactics study: Chess Tactics Server This is a fun online service with an interesting rating scheme. The emphasis is definitely on quick pattern recognition. Here’s my CTS profile. Chess Tactics for Beginners (Windows software by Convekta). Several times a week I find the time to do 10-20 problems in each of these [...]
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