Consequences problem set--these are hard!!!

TBH, I don't think it was at all valuable to actually do these exercises.

It would have been much better for me to do one and then check the solution before doing the next. Perhaps then I might have caught on at least a little that way. The way I did it was 99% useless.

Any way you look at it, it is a poorly structure component and not the best way to finish off month 1 of the course.

I agree that people worried about not getting it should do a problem, then work through the solution before moving on to the next problem.

When you said "it expects you to calculate lines perfectly and then assess what the consequences are for lines" as if that is a problem, my reaction is, yes, that is exactly what you have to do in a real game! Calculate and assess. That's chess, after all.

Yes, but I didn't know that is what was required, I thought the goal of assessing CQS was on the position at hand, the nuances of the move itself, not the lines that result.

IE, the CQS of 1.e4 are:

Stakes a claim in the centre, attacks d5 and f5, relaxes defense of f3 and d3, opens a diagonal for Bf1, opens a diagonal for Qd1.

This is what I thought it was asking for. Hopefully I will be better prepared for next time.

I am really struggling with the change to the method of thinking. I have always, in the past, been a player who simply tries to play the best move at every point and never really looked too far ahead. I have always believed that thinking too deep is a waste of time since the opponent will vary from what you look at more often than not!

Looking forward to getting it all under control!

On how far to look ahead and such, see my link above.

Good luck.

Uh-oh! I haven't started the exercises yet, but started working through the annotated games to get a feel for what the authors are looking for in To Do Lists and CQS. (I haven't downloaded the solutions yet since I am a horrible cheater!) Are you suggesting that they are asking more than what they demonstrated in their own annotations?

I don't recall seeing a discussion on when to analyze, but assume that they are expecting that you calculate variations until the position is settled and can be assessed using the criteria they have provided and there are no further meaningful exchanges.

PawnCustodian wrote:Are you suggesting that they are asking more than what they demonstrated in their own annotations?

Yes. My advice is do one, then check the solution to it before doing the next. Repeat until complete.

PawnCustodian wrote:I haven't downloaded the solutions yet since I am a horrible cheater!

You will just have be strong and NOT look at the solutions for others... if you did you'd only be cheating yourself!
You would also not be impressing anyone by cheating, nobody will see your answers anyway so there should be zero motivation to cheat.

Thanks BorgQueen, I'll take that advice. There's certainly enough to do, and no time to waste with all the materiel they provide!

Yes, the content is certainly not "light on" !!

I'm only in month 2 but I am sure I have improved already :-)

PawnCustodian wrote:I don't recall seeing a discussion on when to analyze, but assume that they are expecting that you calculate variations until the position is settled and can be assessed using the criteria they have provided and there are no further meaningful exchanges.

Very good description, that's exactly right. (Basically do it like you would in a real game, and your description is very concise).

Basically do it like you would in a real game, and your description is very concise

But in a real game, you don't have to write your thoughts down. When I analyse a position in a game, I look at lines and discard them quite fast... compared to writing them down. I mean a complex move that might take say 12 minutes to analyse mentally would take up to 4 hours to document in a structured way.

On top of that, some of the mental processes simply cannot be put into words... when you reach the end of a mental line, how do you document the "value" of that position?? TBH, that is one of the main reasons I am here -- I have often looked at the end of line A and thought, yeah, looks ok, then looked at the end of line B and though, seems better, not sure. I then stare at the end positions mentally for a while and decide for line B and play it. After the game I find, with computer analysis, that line A was a LOT better, but of course, the computer cannot tell me why.

Yes, the writing is time-consuming and imposes a somewhat artificial structure that isn't usually there in real life. I agree one of the main points of the course is to help us improve at evaluating a position, determining the relative values of the end-points of our mental tree of variations...

I overall agree now more BorgQueen, that 'analyze consequences of move X' is much more narrow an order than 'use your normal thought process to select the best move'.

In the extreme! "Analyse consequences of move X" could be paraphrased into "write a technical paper on move X" ^^

I'm guilty about doing the problems very quickly; I still haven't checked the answers yet but I think I will do 2 or perhaps 3 a day before the end of the month.

In order to understand them better. Most of them are difficult, except for problem 12 where Blk plays Ne7-g8. I immediately saw the CQS of retreating the Knight. It felt very nice after sweating with the previous questions.