Saturday, November 6, 2010

Practicing the move method and sparring with Fritz

I think my greatest weakness at this point is moving too fast and not sticking to my move selection method:

A. On opponent's clock: planning
  1. Assess imbalances
  2. Am I playing to win or draw?
  3. Revise my plan
  4. Detect opponent's plan
B. On my clock
  1. Absorb surprises
  2. Finish planning
    1. Anything undone?
    2. What does the last move threaten/allow?
    3. New imbalances
  3. Candidate moves
    1. counter threats
    2. further my plan
    3. hinder opponent's plan
  4. Evaluate candidates
  5. Final Blunder check
To practice this I am using Fritz's sparring mode. In this mode, Fritz keeps track of the amount of time used, so I know how I am a doing against a time control, but there is no sudden death.

Fritz moves very quickly in the difficulty mode I have selected, so I need to do the whole method on my clock. Once I am using the whole method on every move, I will then try to improve my speed, so I fit in a time control. Hopefully, I will still use most of my time on evaluating candidates.

Here is a position where I really blew it. I am to play, and black just moved b5.
I was so fixated on what I wanted to do, that I missed that my rook was under attack. Without thinking, I moved Be6?? which would have been a great move, except that my rook is under attack.

With a little thought, I could have maintained the pressure with Rc7, or gone into a winning endgame with the exchange of R+B for Q+P with Rxf7


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