I am starting month four today.

Well the content looks lighter than month 3. Here we GO!

Month 4 show off

Great job my man! I just finished month 1. Good luck, and keep plugging away!

hoopy wrote:Month 4 show off

Serious point though.When you get this far through the course how do you intend splitting your work between new material and revision? Congratulations on being the first to Month 4. ( Although I suppose you will be first to every future month as well!!)

thanks for the encouragement guys.
Thankfully month 4 material is lighter!

Month 4 is all exercises. However, there are 3 sets of problems, 60 total problems and they are not easy!

fanat wrote:Month 4 is all exercises. However, there are 3 sets of problems, 60 total problems and they are not easy!

Crap! You’re not kidding fanat.
I am working on part 2 and out of the 15 exercises I have only done7. I am finding them insanely hard.
This is really showing my weakness in my play. It is really a love hate relationship I have going on here. I may need several years of deep therapy after this course.
I know if I can get my head around this I may just achieve 1800. But right now, I don’t think I have the aptitude to break 1700.

What about all of the rest of us?

Question: Do you believe?

Thanks to CMoB for this piece.
http://education.arts.unsw.edu.au/fidestudy/results

When I get a string of problems wrong, my confidence suffers the same way as when I lose a bunch of games in a row. I start to think, "This isn't for me, I suck." I remind myself that the questions are better treated not as tests, but as opportunities for further instruction. If I got all the problems right, I wouldn't need the course.

That study you cite is interesting, though it is difficult to interpret statistics when the results are self-reported from self-selected individuals. There was a characteristically rompous post about it at DK Transform's blog a while ago:
http://dk-transformation.blogspot.com/2008/12/chess-what-it-really-takes.html

Chess? wrote:

fanat wrote:Month 4 is all exercises. However, there are 3 sets of problems, 60 total problems and they are not easy!

Crap! You’re not kidding fanat.
I am working on part 2 and out of the 15 exercises I have only done7. I am finding them insanely hard.
This is really showing my weakness in my play. It is really a love hate relationship I have going on here. I may need several years of deep therapy after this course.
I know if I can get my head around this I may just achieve 1800. But right now, I don’t think I have the aptitude to break 1700.

What about all of the rest of us?

Question: Do you believe?

Thanks to CMoB for this piece.
http://education.arts.unsw.edu.au/fidestudy/results

The tests are VERY hard. Getting them wrong say NOTHING about how well YOU are doing. There is no rating or strength minimum to this course and yet the goal is to introduce to you what 2300 players thinking process is. If you are below 2000 I would be stunned if you DIDN'T find the whole thing insanely hard.

What counts is that you TRY and think about the solution. IMHO anybody who wants to put in the effort and studies in the right way can break 2200. There is much on the way than can prevent good study. ICS helps but don't put too much pressure on yourself. The very fact that you are working on your game like this is good for you. Brainache is inevitable. Enjoy the process and don't think about right or wrong when doing the excercises. More - I will try to apply what I have learned. Why is solution different to my idea? What did I miss? Stay happy and just continue to believe in yourself. NEVER stop believing in yourself. Overtime what you miss will become less and less. There is no easy road to mastery. Chess IS insanely hard. I myself wouldn't have it any other way.

thanks bobby. there is some comfort knowing at my level the test are hard and it's not just me.

Chess? wrote:thanks bobby. there is some comfort knowing at my level the test are hard and it's not just me.

"Hi Chess?"
I am also finding the tests extremely difficult. In fact they are stopping me from studying through frustration & my overall game is sufferuing. When I fiish a test I play quick play to relax - as you know that is not helping my game either. Did you work on them till you solved them or give up after a while? In either case when you found weaknewsses what was the process to fix them?

after a the time was up i only reviewed the answerthen moved on. the test was reeping havoc with my motovation. bottom line is the out come didn't teach me anything i didnt all ready know... i need help with my game. the test for me was a waste of time.

Guys,

Month 5 is about pawn structures and Month 6 is all questions for the material covered in month 5. Similar structure to Month 3 and 4.

What I've found is that after you really go over the theory couple of times or more and let it sink in - you will be able to answer the questions, at least most of them!

Having said that, I haven't answered most of the questions in Month 4 and I'm going to go back and review the material and solve them in the near future.

I'm half way thorugh Part 1 of the exercises. After reading the theory, I find that I'm getting the basic ideas right, but my calculation and imagination is not yet strong enough to see most of the lines. Most of the questions are difficult, but I'm enjoying testing myself and over time this can only improve my game. If you're getting the ideas right then that's a sign of progress in understanding and evaluation.

One idea I propose to implement is to create a database of positions in Chessbase. This is based on Wetzell's card index of positions, and Dvoretsky/Yusupov's positional sketches. I'll do this mainly for positions where I was off base with the answers or where there was an interesting solution. This can also be done with some of the examples in the theory instruction provided by ICS. Then you have a body of positions on different themes that can be reviewed regularly to reinforce what has been learned from the course. I've started this already, with themes like restriction of pieces, lead in development, exchanging pieces. While it is quite a bit of extra work, it can be a useful summary of key ideas from the course to look through afterwards.

karpyan wrote:I'm half way thorugh Part 1 of the exercises. After reading the theory, I find that I'm getting the basic ideas right, but my calculation and imagination is not yet strong enough to see most of the lines.

I'm only just starting, still in month one. Are your finding that the "board" training that begins in month two any help?

The board/vizualisation training has been pretty helpful. I started that early and have now gone through the first two months - month one is quite easy; month two really stretched my mind; just about to begin the third and final month, when it starts to get difficult.

Just played in the British Championships (U160 ECF and PM Open) and noticed that visualisation had improved a reasonable amount. Two observations after those tournaments though, playing regularly is important for calculation/visualisation skills - after the games I could play through some of them by heart, which I could never do before, and also go through them blindfold up to a certain point. Recently, I was also able to fix in my mind some of the positions from ICS exercises and consider them blindfold before going to sleep (what an exciting life ...)

And secondly, finding all the consequences of moves on each move (your opponent's and your own) is really important for calculation. A couple of major errors I made resulted from missing some consequences of a specific move (e.g. that a bishop on a new diagonal could give an important check, or that a new diagonal was opened up for a queen). These types of observations are vital for avoiding errors and noticing possibilities. The main focus when playing for me right now is to notice all of the consequences of every move, but it takes time to implement (and uses time on the clock when you are trying to do it consciously), and I probably only did about 25% of the time. Still, it's better than 5%.

I just finished 3 games on the Chessbase server won 2 - lost 1. The loosing game was a simple "forgot the consequences of my move". The other two games were far from perfect, but my errors were minimal.

I am working on month 3... again, 3rd time? The Calculation section just before Board visualization - exercises II, hell i don't even remember exercise I.

I am still enjoying it

What time controls do you play there?

karpyan wrote: Recently, I was also able to fix in my mind some of the positions from ICS exercises and consider them blindfold before going to sleep (what an exciting life ...)

Hmmm.. My wife won't know that I'm wasting my time playing chess again!

I'm lookiing forward to see how this board training turns out.

I'm lookiing forward to see how this board training turns out.

Me too!

most of my games are 20+1. It's far to short for "real chess" as I call it, but I find I really don't have much time for longer games.

BorgQueen wrote:What time controls do you play there?

Let me restate that! NOT lighter, month four is crazy with material.

Chess? wrote:thanks for the encouragement guys.
Thankfully month 4 material is lighter!

How is month 4 ... again working for you Borg?

BorgQueen wrote:

I'm lookiing forward to see how this board training turns out.

Me too!

I am still working on month 3 visualisation content, but have started the month 4 content. Zero theory but yeah, I think there's 2 months of work to do in month 4 alone.

BorgQueen wrote:I am still working on month 3 visualisation content, but have started the month 4 content. Zero theory but yeah, I think there's 2 months of work to do in month 4 alone.

Plenty of problems I hope. I'm kind of hungry with no exercises to solve in month three!