Month Three General Discussion

HELLO M3!

From a 1900 rated player's perspective and having read Silman's "How to Reassess Your Chess" about 20 times, Month 3 didn't help me much. I already knew about 95% of the material covered. I was able to breeze through the material in about a week (going through the games is why it took as long as it did). I did enjoy the calculation tips and look forward to using them in future games.

Now of course I write this before I begin taking the Month 4 tests, which I will begin tonight. So I guess I'll see how much I really know after I tackle those.

Good luck to all!

Tony

Just finished M3, actually I finished the material much earlier, which worked out well because I was able to start working on the d4 opening modules.
I am typically an e4 player,so the extra time gave me the chance to experiment with the Catalan (main weapon) at the chess club.

I will say that I had a great deal of success at the chess club with players under 1800 (they typically went for a tarrasch set-up or bogo) but I found it more difficult against players over 2000 (usually Slav or Catalan Open). (Of course I have the same problem with e4 in retrospect LOL) The main difference being that I would lose time trying to re-deploy my pieces to more aggressive positions which tends to happen naturally in e4 positions (in my style of play anyway) and stronger players took advantage while the weaker players would always allow some tactics with the Light Sq B.

Luckily there is a Master at the club that has played the Catalan for over 20 years and he has been extremely helpful in understanding the middlegame set-ups/plans and as we say Consequences of Blacks moves. -smile

I also spent a great deal of time focusing on games with piece play as the theme and studying those, ie. Bishop Pair, Bad Bishop, BvN, Q v Minors, QvRs, RvMinors etc. which helped me to solidify the theory.

I hope this helps the next ones thru...all the Best!

RT

The master at our club is really bad with English so we don't really get much out of him after he's finished smashing us!

BorgQueen wrote:The master at our club is really bad with English so we don't really get much out of him after he's finished smashing us!

LOL We actually have a few and they are all very helpful...plus they are not like some titled players FM,IM, GM's that always offer to give you advice/lessons...wait for it....for a small fortune! LOL

Currently 3 of them are working on the Najdorf and it is truly a pleasure to hear them skittle during and after a game, I was thinking about playing it myself, but all of those N and B sacs for a "positional advantage in the endgame" 20 moves later is beyond me...LOL! You can just throw that Qualitative value assessment (as the pieces stand) out the window, its all about calculating the position or Qualitative value of the pieces 10+moves down the line. I guess its back to the vision drills....LOL

Yeah, that kind of thinking will always be beyond me.

On the upside, I got a draw against our resident master last night! ICS must be starting to kick in!

BorgQueen wrote:Yeah, that kind of thinking will always be beyond me.

On the upside, I got a draw against our resident master last night! ICS must be starting to kick in!

Man you are on your way to a club championship! I can smell it...

That would be a dream come true!!

BorgQueen wrote:Yeah, that kind of thinking will always be beyond me.

On the upside, I got a draw against our resident master last night! ICS must be starting to kick in!

Fantastic!

I won the tournament where I got that draw! Someone else managed to defeat my nemesis and that left me half a point in front and I held on to win it!

Yaaaaay!!!

I told you this is the year of the Borg! Congrats!!!

Luck played a part though, but yeah, the Easter Cup is mine this year!

A nice collection of videos uploaded for Month 3 this weekend. 5 in all

Bilbo wrote:A nice collection of videos uploaded for Month 3 this weekend. 5 in all

Thanks for the heads up!

A-downloading-I-will-go...

Will receive month 3 in 7 hours. Hope this can save me---I soon have tournament (OTB) and need the QGA,QGD

I play more blunders now. Note my sig... BDK was right.

I manage to get nice positionally dominating situations now, but then I throw it away with some poor tactical calculations. I'm heading back to chesstempo for a while... sharpen up my tactics again... gotta find the balance!

BorgQueen wrote:I play more blunders now. Note my sig... BDK was right.

Me too, but I'm tired of CT-ART problems. I'm starting to like the FRITZ GUI Calculation Trainer, just load one of the ICS Games, the stop at some point and try to figure out some variations and let FRITZ score the results. At least I'll be looking at games in my playing repertoire.