Has anyone improved yet? (General)
I know I have improved. I do all the content here each month that I can without killing myself over the toughest of the puzzles, and I also spend a fair amount of time at chess.emrald.net (around 3 visits/week doing 25 to 50 puzzles each visit) doing their puzzles as well. I don't know the merits of it all, but I view the puzzles here as more difficult (certainly more depth/ply to the solutions) and more time to solve them. On the emrald site those puzzles are not usually more than a couple ply, but they need to be solved quickly to avoid losing rating points (the puzzles there have a rating, and you get a rating as you work puzzles, then get puzzles around your rating level).
Anyway, combining the quick tactics exercises over there with the more difficult ones here has proven to be very good for me. I don't actually play tournament chess since I live quite a ways from any city that holds such events, but I do play online and I play locally and there are people that 18 months or so ago I could not have dreamed of holding my own against, and now they seek me out for a challenging game.
I have a lot left to learn. Chess is definitely one of those things where the more you know, the more you realize you don't know. But, true to the mantra on the sales page here, if you exercise the chess muscle it will get better. Mine certainly has.
Complete thread:
- Has anyone improved yet? - malcolm, 2006-12-21, 22:01
(General)
- Has anyone improved yet? - Tony Kosten, 2006-12-21, 23:08
- Has anyone improved yet? - giorgio, 2006-12-24, 12:14
- Has anyone improved yet? - Don Lester, 2006-12-24, 23:17
- Has anyone improved yet? - Tony Kosten, 2006-12-21, 23:08