Spassky Photo

I finally got around to framing my Spassky photos and autograph from the 2005 Western Open. I have been meaning to find a frame for some time and I envisioned three openings with the Fischer/Spassky photo on top, the autographed place card in the middle and the photo of Boris and I on the bottom. I found a four opening frame and therefore decided to put in both pictures from the event.



On the office wall

I'm pleased with the result. The Walmart frame was $5 and the prints were $.88. While the pre-formatted matting wasn't perfect (couldn't avoid catching some of the black outline around the place card) it certainly is more then sufficient for a quick and cheap DIY project. Considering I had put it off for over 6 years, it was about time to get 'er done.

The event was in October of 2005.

The bottom photo is the one I prefer, showing the two books that GM Spassky autographed for me at the event: "Spassky's 100 Best Games" and "Bobby Fischer Goes to War." Here's a closer look.

Me with the 10th World Chess Champion!

The Fischer-Spassky match in '72 marked the start of my interest in chess and has provided me with a very pleasant lifelong hobby. I really enjoyed the chance to meet GM Boris Spassky at the Reno event. The Q&A session was very nice and the autograph session was smoothly run.  Hopefully this momento will provide moments of happiness for years to come.

Village Elementary Simul

Starting Lecture

I was invited to perform a simul against 24 members of the Georgetown Village Elementary school chess club on April 30th. The club started just a few months ago and most of the players were new to chess. I started with a short talk describing how to enter your first USCF rated tournament and some upcoming scholastic events in the Austin area. The chess club members were eager to play and I believe everyone enjoyed the event. It took just about three hours to finish the simul with the final two boards lasting around 70 moves.

Always assume the person in the hat is a ringer!

Except for one player who had to leave early, almost all of the games ended in checkmate.

Concentration

There was a variety of skill levels and several games were interesting and close. I blundered a couple of times but was only down material unintentionally in one game but lucky for me my opponent allowed a bishop fork of his rook and king leaving me up a piece instead of down the exchange.


Last Players Standing

 The chess club presented me an wonderful photo of the club members as a thank you gift. I truly enjoyed the opportunity to visit the club and would look forward to any future events.

I'm Back, But Not Better Than Ever

It's been a long tough slog since my last post. I think I got to the point of a little burn-out regarding chess. I let several months of Chess Life issues stack up and didn't seem to do much more then show up at the club events often with dull dread.

The last six weeks have been a revival period however. I managed to catch up on about seven issues of Chess Life bringing me current on the March issue. I finished "Chess Secrets: The Giants of Chess Strategy" and feel the chess energy flowing back. I highly recommend this book to anyone under 2000. I feel like I was able to incorporate several of the themes discussed in a few of my recent wins. My rating has slumped from 1861 down to 1772 during the last six months but I feel better about my play going forward. I've had about 4 especially costly (i.e upset) losses during that time. A couple due to time or time pressure, a couple due to tactical mistakes. Although most recently I won one that I shouldn't have but we tend to remember the ones that got away.

I have great plans of chess activity for the coming spring and summer. I would like to try to play in slower time control events and plan to attend the US Senior Open in Houston in July. If possible using the Austin Chess Club Summer Open as a warm up for the Senior. I would also like to play more often in our local events but life often gets in the way. Hopefully the stars will align in my favor regarding availability for these events.

Still debating on the large events such as the Chicago Open, National Open or US Open. Unless I hit the lotto, that much time off isn't likely. As always, may you play well!

Illinois Class

I managed to finish "Win with the London System" over the 4th of July weekend and made it about a third of the way into "Play the London System" before leaving for Chicago to play in the Illinois Class July 15-17th.

I decided to play the 3 day schedule so that the time control for all games would be 40/2 Game/60. My first game Friday night was against another 1800 player and see sawed back and forth. In the waning seconds of the first time control I saw the win and mate (or his loss of queen) and as I reached out to play my move he called time. I should know better than to get into time trouble but seeing as how I had just won my previous Wednesday's club game from a losing postion due to my opponent's time trouble it's just another example of "chess fate."

I didn't sleep well that night playing over the winning combination time and time again in my head. It never changed. I play Rf2 forcing his queen off the second rank. The queen has to retreat to the first rank to cover bank rank mate. I play h3xg2 check forcing his king on h1 to g1. I then play Rf1 double check from the Queen on d4 and rook on f1 forcing Kxg2 when RxQ leaves me a Queen up with mate to follow shortly.

My 2nd round game found me paired up against a 1940 player who had also lost in the first round. I played the London against his King's Indian and sacked a rook on h5 for knight and pawn. I threw another bishop into the fire for a dangerous attack down the h file. All my pieces were in play with his a8 rook sitting idle. However his defense held and I was just down material. Off to an 0-2 start. At that point being out of the running I signed up for byes in rounds 3 and 5 spending some quality time with my parents and friends. I played a 1700 player in round 4 Sunday morning and drew making me .5-2.5 for actual games played although this only cost me 27 rating points.

My third round opponent is halfway down the aisle in the orange shirt next to the standing man in the blue.

I hope to analyze my games from this event. I'm disappointed to have fared so poorly against like rated competition. I definitely want to play some more slower time control class events to see if I truly belong in the "A" ranks.

New Books Arrived!

I received Play the London and Chess Blueprints today. On first glance, I'm very pleased with these selections. As usual I've read and played through the introductions in both. Both authors claim to aim for the club player (1400-2000)although the author of Chess Blueprints perhaps has slightly unrealistic hopes that the club player will spend an hour a day per puzzle working out all the details before reviewing the solution.

I'm hoping to report back after the holiday weekend on my progress in these books.

Books, Books and a ratings bump.

Studying and playing has kept me away from posting. I have picked up a number of books lately including Win with the London System, Grandmaster Chess Strategy, Sacking the Citadel, Analyse your Chess, Scandinavian Defense: The Dynamic 3...Qd6, Judith Polgar The Princess of Chess, Calculate like a Grandmaster, The Modern Scandinavian, and currently winging their way to me now Play the London System and Chess Blueprints.

As usual, I've skimmed the first 10-15 pages of most of these and put them in the stack. A couple of exceptions are Win with the London System where I'm 100+ pages in, and Sacking the Citadel which I received most recently and I'm 45+ pages in.

I'm current on Chess Life magazine through the June issue.

I've managed to play in several one day events in addition to the club swisses and I've coaxed my rating up to 1856.

I'll try to go into more detail and make shorter, more frequent posts.

Book review: Improve Your Chess at any Age

Improve your Chess at any Age authored by Andres D. Hortillosa

I recently found this book at half-priced books for eight bucks and decided to give it a shot. The reviews on Amazon were split with either 5 stars or 1 star so it seems to be a love it or hate it type of book. I bought the book on February 17th and finished it on February 26th covering the 172 pages in 10 days which is fast for me. I found the author's style to be engaging and enjoyed the stories and the games. The major complaint in other reviews seemed to revolve around the fact that the author is merely a "club" player and that his system must not work because he himself has not shown significant ratings improvement over the last several years.

If I had bought the book based on the title and paid full price I might feel like it was a poor value especially if I expected a cure-all to my chess. Having plateaued at roughly 1700 give or take 100 points over the last 30 years I felt a certain sympatico for what the author was going through and trying to convey to the reader.  The system is nothing more then a multistep thought process (a reminder, if you will) to try to eliminate blunders and/or recognize opportunities. It really falls into the nothing new under the sun category for me with his steps laid out as follows:

1. Reconnaissance of the position to gather key data elements.
2. Search for specific threats.
3. Rank the severity of the threats.
4. Focus your responses against the threat with the highest degree of harm if ignored or not prevented.
5. Search for candidate moves.
6. Execute the move in your head.
7. Conduct a post reconnaissance of the position after the move is mentally executed.
8. If post-recon yields a problem repeat steps 5-7 until a safe/correct move is found.

He then covers a variety of his games or game fragements from recent events to call attention to specific examples of his system. I didn't necessarily find any of this convincing but enjoyed seeing someone who is a regular "Joe" discuss the day-to-day concerns of the amateur tournament player.

I certainly didn't feel it was a waste of time and probably picked up a few hints and tips along the way. Overall it was an enjoyable way to spend an hour or so a day going through book and the games. The games themselves are annotated mainly in prose with breezy analysis that is easy to work through. You won't get lost in the tree of having to play through three branches and six sub-branches of detailed analysis after every move. It was also nice to be able to correctly "pick" the upcoming moves of the games (even the mistakes!?)versus some of the grandmaster games where I don't have a clue as to why the move was chosen. If you can find this book in the bargain bin give it a whirl!

January--the busiest chess month!

Lots of activity over the last few weeks. I have played 4 games in the GCC Swiss, 4 games (and a bye) in the Austin Chess Club Championship (Jan 7-9), 3 games at the Austin Kids tourney (Jan 15), and 3 games at the Temple Open (Jan 22). End result was a rating swing of a whopping 8 points starting the month at 1741 and ending at 1749.

I finished the December issue of Chess Life back in December and starting Jacob Aagaard's "Excelling at Chess" the ChessCafe.com 2002 book of the year. I had recently covered John Watson's Secrets of Modern Chess Strategy and loved the interplay involving GM Aagaard taking issue with some of the premises of Mr. Watson. I also enjoyed the general writing style, and while there were a lot of games to go through, there was also plenty of text to read through. I believe the reviews at Amazon cover it well but I would add that for strong club players between 1600-1900 this is an outstanding book.

Since the Temple Open was the newest tourney venue I've played at I thought I would cover it in some detail. A short 45 minute drive from Georgetown straight north on I35 made the travel easy and the venue easy to find. The Holiday Inn looked relatively new and the facilities were excellent. The tournament was held the same weekend as the Texas Team event up in Dallas but they still had a good turnout of 27 players. I hope they continue as planned with quarterly events as I plan to be a regular participant.

I caught the difficult end of the "Swiss" break getting paired up the first round against Matthew Liu who was rated 2055. I took a real hammering as black in a Caro Kann advance being dead lost after about 12 moves before going on a king walk and resigning on move 24 (9 of black's last 12 moves were with the king). Using very little of the Game\90 time control left me with about 2 1/2 hours till the next round. Matthew was kind enough to go over the game with me in the lobby. I feel I learned at least three good lessons from this debacle.

Matthew playing black in round two

The next round saw me paired down against John De Vries rated 1411 who perplexed me with the seldom seen (for me) Albin counter gambit. Even though I played right into the Albin player's dream trap with the move 4. e3 I was able to pull out win down the road. John and I were able to review this game and consider other options in the post mortem analysis.

Jonathan v. Khoa

The event certainly drew a lot of familiar players from the GCC with the Nguyen family there in force along with the Manions, Vincent, Jonathan, Nate, and myself all having played at the GCC in the past. Twelve of the 27 players had attended a GCC event in the past.

Vince playing white

Steve (upper right) and Dang (lower left)

Nam had a nice tournament picking up 76 rating points in the process.

Jonathan v. Nam

The last round ended with a draw between myself and Chris Chen rated 1690. Chris played 4. Qc2 in the Slav and I was quickly out of book and on my own. However after several exchanges the position was quiet and at the end of a long day we split the point.

Duy v Chris (foregound) Emily v. Nate (background)

Let me express my thanks to the sponsors Forrest Marler and Wayne Sampson for hosting such a wonderful event. I would love to see more players take advantage of playing in a Grand Prix event at such a nice site.

Magazine Month

November was a catch-up month for me and my last few issues of Chess Life. I played through every game and quiz in the July, August, September, October and November issues. It took about 5-6 days per issue and as usual I was able to make a little more progress on weekends than during the workweek. I eagerly await the Decmber issue and I'll try to tackle and finish that prior to mid-month.

I also managed to get through the roughly 268 pgaes of "How to Think Ahead in Chess" by Horowitz and Reinfeld. I bought it off a clearance rack in half price books for a buck and never really thought I'd actually read it. At heart it's a basic repetoire book based on the Stonewall Attack, the Sicilian Dragon and the Lasker variation of the QGD. For a book originally published 59 years ago in 1951, the surprise is that the Lasker is relatively the same. The Sicilian Dragon is somewhat recognizable. I hadn't seen anything on the Stonewall Attack since high school but I've been dabbling with the Dutch Stonewall with roughly identical themes. Under the eveything old is new again theory, I rolled out my attempt at the Stonewall Attack in my first game at the Austin Kids tourney today and managed to win in spite of it. I won my first two games against a 1365 and 1799 before losing in the final round to a 1950 player.

I'm making my New Year's plan for chess in 2011 and hope to finish roughly 18 books along with the 12 monthly issues of Chess Life next year. Right now I'm prepping for the Austin Club Championship on Jan 7-9th and the Temple Tourney on Jan 22nd. Happy Holidays to all!

US Game/60 Tournament

I had a little success this weekend in the US Game/60 Tourney scoring 3/4 to tie for third in the Reserve section (U1800). It's always nice to get a check at the end of a tournament. I went up to Illinois to visit the family and decided to spend a day playing. As a bonus I ran into a group of guys my age who spent some time reminiscing about all the old clubs and chess haunts of our youth. The tourney facilities were okay. I'm at that age where good lighting is getting more important. Right after the start of the 2nd round the folks in the banquet room next door to the tournament room started their "Tribute to Barry White" with a booming bass line. Perhaps the hotel personnel need a future reminder that chess tournaments and music festivals don't mix well. Best of all I picked up just enough rating points to sneak back over 1700 to 1701.

The Saturday before last I had played in the Austin Kids Tourney and flamed out badly. I dropped almost 40 points to 1690. Hopefully just an off day but they seem to be occurring more frequently as of late. Last year around this time I had just punched through the 1800 barrier and was sitting on 1803. My goal for 2011 is to play much more often, preferably in slower time control events and regain the 1800+ level.

I'm back to skipping between about half a dozen books and magazines instead of concentrating on my list. Time to buckle down and prepare for 2011.

Book Review: "Studying Chess Made Easy"

I finished "Studying Chess Made Easy" by Andrew Soltis covering the last 70 pages over the last four-five days. I really like the ideas communicated to the reader in this book. For the most part I had heard the advice on improving before in many different sources and many different forms. Here it was especially digestable.

• Chapter 1: Chess Isn't School
• Chapter 2: Cultivating Your Chess Sense
• Chapter 3: The biggest Study myth
• Chapter 4: The Right Way to Study Openings
• Chapter 5: Two-an-a-half-move Chess
• Chapter 6: Overcoming Endgame Phobia
• Chapter 7: Learning to Live with TMI
• Chapter 8: How to Learn More from a Master Game

The last chapter on "How to learn more from a master game" took advice I had heard--play over the game at least three times--and broke it down into the whys and wherefores. Play through the first time quickly (just the raw game score) to get a feel for the game (ebb and flow, crucial points, themes). Play through the second time looking at note commentary for ideas, look for points where you would have chosen a different move or didn't understand why a move was chosen. Play through the third time for detailed examination of the analysis notes and variations, do your own analysis sans computer to gain further understanding.

Soltis is also a believer of the every diagram is a lesson program. He talks about good authors of chess material choosing to use diagrams at critical/interesting/learning opportunity moments of the games they annotate. He expresses that improving players should have fun while studying. Although he knows that some areas of study will be hard and brutal work for the player that really wishes to achieve a high level he notes that choosing exciting games, practicing and analyzing with friends, and learning openings/endgames in  increments can be done without draining all the fun out of chess.

I really like several of the reviews on Amazon regarding this book and feel those reviewers are spot on with their key points. This is a strong candidate for "Book of the Year."

In addition, the working through the book, since my last  post I have finished the May and June issues of Chess Life leaving me July, August and September to work through. I have been playing on-line with some success and reviewing tactics diagrams daily. I just seem to lack the time for slow chess tournaments and weekend events. I will try to focus more on that over the next six months.

Mounting a Comeback

Last night I finished the book "Chess Duels: My Games with the World Champions" by Yasser Seirawan. I bought and started the book over the Memorial Day weekend and now 2 1/2 months later I have digested its 432 pages (414 prior to index). It is a tremedous book for any chess lover and highly recommended! Yasser takes you through some wonderful chess adventures both in the games and in the stories about the players and the chess world in general. This book has received some wonderful accolades in the reviews on Amazon I agree with the bulk of them. I have seen Yasser Seirawan twice in person, most recently at a National Open in Vegas about 10 years back where he was giving a lecture and almost 30 years ago in the '80-'81 time frame when I played in a local tournament in California. The details are fuzzy due to the time lapsed but I believe it was somewhere in or near Van Nuys. Yasser was already a chess celebrity having won the World Junior Championship in 1979. I believe there was one master at the tourney and a bunch of class players. In between rounds I walked out of the high school where this tourney was being held and playing basketball on the outdoor courts was Yasser. I had the impression he was "beyond" playing in a local tourney but loved to be around the game and chess players.

It's been awhile since I last posted, time flys, life goes on, and blogs always seem like we'll get to it someday soon. I finished DCS on April 23rd and I finished SOMCS on June 6th. I haven't been playing as much as I would like, often giving up my spot in the club tourney if there is a odd number of entrants. Therefore my rating has been somewhat steady in the 1725-1750 range. I have managed to add a number of books to the chess library, way more than I can possibly get to this year but nice for the collection. During the trip to Chicago over Memorial Day I also picked up several volumes of the Yuri Averbach endgame series in hardcover at half price books. I have acquired several other bargains at half price books during trips to Dallas and just recently placed an Amazon order for "Mastering the Chess Openings, Volume 4" to complete that set, along with "Play the Caro Kann" and "Studying Chess Made Easy" by Soltis. The book currently on the side of the chess table is "Starting Out: The Scandanavian" and I've been focusing on the 3.... Qd6 chapters.

Still playing some on-line blitz at playchess.com but not as much as I once was. I haven't been keeping up with games in Chess Life currently being about four issues behind. I'll try to rectify that the remainder of this month. I feel that if I could just improve a couple of hundred points to the high "A" low expert range my enjoyment of playing through the chess library would be greatly enhanced but I can't seem to spend the time I know is necessary to study tactics, tactics, and more tactics nor focus sufficiently at the board when wearing the dual player/TD hats.

For the immediate future I'll set the smaller goal of just trying to update this blog more frequently. To any and all readers out there play well and enjoy the game.

Plodding Along

Life does get in the way of chess study. But overall things are progressing abet slowly. I've moved the bookmark in DCS up to page 116 for a gain of 24 pages over the last month. In SOMCS I've advanced to page 118 for an additional 42 pages covered. I've progressed through several games in the April issue of Chess Life. I have played in the March Club Swiss finishing tied for first with a score of 3.5/4.0 including a .5 bye. Boosted my regular rating from 1718 to 1754 and QC rating from 1732 to 1760. Then played in the March 31 Quick Chess Quads and finished 1st with a 3.0/3.0 and added 25 more points to 1785 Quick. The Club Swiss for April is off and running but due to an odd number of entrants I took a 1st round .5 point bye. I turned 50 on April 3rd and my presents included "Knight Endings" by Averbach, GrandMaster Repertoire 1. d4 by Boris Avrukh, and an Amazon order including "The Improving Chess Thinker" by Heisman, "Forcing Chess Moves" by Hertan and "Starting Out: The Scandinavian" by Houska. My cup runneth over! I have played some on-line blitz over the last 30 days but less frequently than the prior month. I'll really have to work at carving out study blocks for chess in the future.

Depressing Update

The improvement program would be rated highly successful by government standards. My rating has fallen from 1806 on 11/4 to 1795 on 12/16 to 1714 today. The government official explaining this rating drop would say that by increasing my knowledge in a wider varitey of chess positions than I am normally accustomed to playing I'm increasing my overall chess knowledge and in the future this should begin to show a steady increase in rating which always lags the accumulation of knowledge. In addition, once I become acclimated to the wider variety of chess positions my intrinsic value as a chess player shall increase.

In reality, I have meandered through a few more pages in DCS up to page 82 and SOMCS up to page 76 which represents about 24 total pages in 8 days since the last update. I did play in one 3-SS Game/45 tournament on Saturday winning two games but losing to a 1672 player. The areas of book study included the discussion of playing Isolated Queen Pawn (IQP) positions which I normally don't get in my opening systems. However, after reviewing that section I had the chance to enter one in the tournament and didn't shy away from it. It's interesting to sit at the board thinking "The book says this is how I should play the position and that is how my opponent should play the position" and then watch somewhat helplessly as he achieves his aims while I barely hang on and eventually slip off.

Much less time for on-line blitz in this time period although I played a few sessions. My goal for the next week is to average at least 6 pages a day, spent less time on the computer and more time studying and, perhaps, not just playing through the moves.

Update

Too long between updates, I know, but here's where I'm at now. In "Dynamic Chess Strategy" I'm on page 72 and in "SOMCS" I'm on page 62. I have played some blitz on playchess.com almost every day and the regular Wednesday G/60 club contests. Also played through Game 24 in "Why Lasker Matters" (pp. 82-86).

Taught the kids class on Friday afternoons, last week's main lesson was Queen and King mate v. lone King. Tomorrow will be two Rooks vs. lone King and if successfully King and Rook v. lone King. I hope it's going well. Had several returning attendees and a few new ones.

Got hammered in the Club February Swiss sinking from 1757 to 1724. I will try to remain optimistic about the March Swiss starting next week. Good luck to all you chess players seeking to improve!

Progress Report

Four days in and here's what's happened so far. On Monday, I played about an hour of 3m3s blitz games on Playchess.com (GarGus). I received an ebay purchase of "The Black Knights Tango" read through the first 6 pages--bookmark inserted. I also managed to progress from page 34 to page 38 in SOMCS covering passed pawn and blockade info. Played through one game out of "Why Lasker Matters."

On Tuesday, perhaps 30-45 minutes of on-line 3m3s blitz games. A couple of pages in SOMCS and restarted "Dynamic Chess Strategy" covering the first two games of the introduction.

Wednesday, some more blitz at lunch (my default seek is 3m3s) then the club night OTB game at G/60. I was better out of the opening (white side of KID Samisch), soon up a piece for two pawns, added an exchange to boot, and then lost on time in a losing position having let my opponent advance the passed pawns and win back a pawn and piece in a time scramble. I had an easy draw in time trouble but wanted more and got less.

Thursday, I managed to progress to page 45 in SOMCS and page 17 in DCS..

The new plan

Within the last week I have finished two books I had been working through since December. On January 31st I finished "Dutch Stonewall" by Jacob Aagaard and on February 4th I finished "Tal Botvinnik 1960" by Mikhail Tal. However, my wandering path to these books tells more of the story of why I am where I am as a player and speaks as to my  meandering study habits.. The months prior to starting these books I had finished "Starting Out: The Dutch Defense" by Neil McDonald had gotten excited about the Stonewall Dutch. I won a couple of games even playing up and decided I would pursue this addition to my opening repertoire. I ordered "Win with the Stonewall Dutch" by Sverre Johnsen and eagerly awaited it's arrival. While waiting for it to arrive I started going through the Aagaard book which I already had in my library and even after the "fresher" new book arrived I decided I would finish the Aagaard book before preceding. So now I have played through the 77 illustrative games and many additional games and game fragments in the notes while the newer book languishes on the shelf. I did have some additional wins with the Dutch Stonewall in the meantime and will continue to pursue it subject to the plan below.

I had also in those prior months finished "Starting Out: The Caro-Kann" by Joe Gallagher for the only reason that I had been beaten twice in a short period by C-K players, first in the classic main line 4... Bf5 and then with the Bronstein-Larsen Variation 4 ... Nf6 5. Nxf6 gf6 and I thought a refresher of C-K lines would be in order. While reading the Gallagher book he mentions how playing through the Tal-Botvinnik matches is excellent material for studying the C-K and since I had always wanted to get through TB1960 there was no time like the present (although I had purchased the book 4-5 years earlier and it too had just been sitting on the shelf in the interim). Regarding the Tal book, I had read his Life & Games book back in the '70s and enjoyed it immensely, both works by Tal are deservedly classics of chess literature and highly recommended.

Of course after finishing the Tal book I was tempted to jump into "My Great Predecessors, Volume 2" and compare the match/game annotations. This is precisely the disorganized jumping around , way-leads-onto-way study that I have pursued throughout my chess career. As an aside, I have over 600 volumes in my chess library--more than I'll read in my lifetime. I average maybe 8-10 books a year in a good year. I try to buy the classics and book-of-the-year winners and those with high marks from reviewers on Silman's site or ChessCafe or Amazon but also have a lot of "junk food of chess" type books as well (miniatures collections, openings I have no real intention of ever playing in a tournament game--"Play the ...", outdated opening books that I just like to have to complete a set--the "Winning with" series and Chess Digest/Contemporary Chess Openings  hardbacks from the '70s. All too often, I'll buy a book or books, come home and read the introductory pages and maybe play through a game or two then stick a bookmark into it and up on the shelf it goes. I would wager most of those 600+ volumes have a bookmark somewhere within the first 20 pages.

Of course I try to play through all the games in Chess Life each month as well, which has become a lot easier to do now that they are only averaging 15-20 games per issue versus the 45-50 games we were seeing as little as four or five years ago. I recently upgraded from Fritz 6 to Fritz 12 which included the Playchess membership so I've been playing blitz at Playchess on-line and in the game/60 tournament at the club weekly and maybe an outside tournament every other month or so.

Now for the Plan. I have been meaning to work my way through all those book-of-the-year winners and always seem to get sidetracked. I picked up and started "Secrets of Modern Chess Strategy" probably half a dozen times (when I checked today the bookmark was on page 34). So my path to chess improvement over the remainder of 2010 is as follows:

I will finish SOMCS and "Chess Strategy in Action" by John Watson, I will also squeeze in "Dynamic Chess Strategy" by Suba and "Aron Nimzowitsch: A Reappraisal" by Keene. I will follow those with "Chess Strategy for Club Players" by Herman Grooten. This should keep me busy for the next 4-6 months or so. If I am able to complete these by August I will move on to "The Road to Chess Improvement" by Alex Yermolinsky, "Understanding your Chess" by James Rizzitano, The Seven Deadly Chess Sins by Jonathan Rowson and "Instructive Modern Chess Mastepieces" by Igor Stohl. During this entire period I will occasionally play through a game or two weekly out of "Why Lasker Matters" by Andrew Soltis and perhaps tackle some endgame work using "Silman's Complete Endgame Course" by Jeremy Silman. Even as I write this it seems overly ambitious and lacking at the same time. I will need to throw in some work on tactics and pattern recognition perhaps with CT-Art 3.0 and a tactics book or two such as "Understanding Chess Tactics" by Martin Weteschnik or "How to Calculate Chess Tactics" by Valeri Beim.

I plan to update often regarding my progress.  
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I learned to play chess at the age of 12 during the summer of ‘72 against the background of the Fischer Spassky World Championship Match. I joined the USCF in late ‘76 and played in my first rated tournament in January of ‘77 achieving an initial rating of 1243. In 1985 I achieved my peak rating of 1913. During the ensuing twenty-five years I have drifted up and down within roughly 100 points of 1700. Regardless of method, amount or subject of my chess studies, my journey towards improvement in this enjoyable hobby leaves me feeling like the Wayfaring Fool of Chess.

I will turn 50 later this year and would like, even at this later stage of life, to achieve a new peak rating and preferably one that starts with a 2. To that end I intend to outline a program of study, practice and tournament play that will allow me to realistically pursue that aim.