A new post

I have not used my blog in a long time. As you probably have guessed: I did not finish the de la Maza program. But I did serious tactics training for about 3 month. The result was an improvement from 1450 on chess tactics server to about 1670. Not to shabby for a guy in his thirties like me.
OK that was over two years ago. Since then I have read chess books from time to time and followed the top tournaments with some interest. My understanding of the game has defentively improved in the last three years. And with that understanding it ist much more fun to follow the game.  But being a good chess player is not only about understanding but also about skill. And in that reagard I am a little like a musician who enjoys listenig to music but does not play his instrument very often.
I gave it a try on the CTS the last days and still scored a 1620 rating. Thats a little rusty compared to previous results, but still way better than before my interest in chess was sparked again three years ago. I will update this blog  from time to time now. Maybe there will be some people who enjoy reading it.

How to measure my progress

In the last days I thought about the question how I can measure my progress.
After all the playchess rating is just a blitz rating. I do not have the time at the moment to play a lot of real tournaments so the progress is quite difficult to measure. So I decided to compare the improvement that I hopefully achieve measured by different methods.
My rating at playchess was 1538 when I started the program. My rating on the chess tactics server was 1450 and my Fritz rating was 1735 after 20 games (blitz).

First post

I learned chess long ago and was always interested in the game. But although I played a few years in a local chess club I did not really train to improve my game. So after two and a half years in the club I stopped playing chess for over a decade and had a rating of about 1550 at that time. I bought a lot of chess books since then to study and understand the game one day but I actually did not read the books. Two month ago I began playing at playchess and my rating there was about 1300 at first. That is just bad. So I started a program to improve my rating. First step in this program is tactical training. And instantly after starting that training I began getting better. I already have improved my rating at playchess to 1539 and when I played against Fritz yesterday I had no problems with the 1680 level that has always been really hard for me before. Instead of coming out with a fritz rating of about 1580 I won 4 of 6 and even in the two games I lost I had material advantage during the game and good winning chances. So I think I am already a stronger chess player than I have ever been. After the first successes I started to intensify my tactical training and now want to do a program a la Michael de la Maza. I already did the first two levels in the first circle. Keeping up this blog shall motivate me to really do the whole program till the end. And of course I hope to improve my chess considerably. Well, I still have to decide if I do the last two circles.
The success rates of the first levels are:
L10: 96 %
L20: 90 %