One year already! (News)

by hamish, Thursday, March 29, 2007, 09:04 (6837 days ago) @ Tony Kosten

Yes, there is a wealth of great material here and this subscriber is more than happy. A few observations, feedback rather than criticism:
this month's Kramnik tactics are a bit more difficult than usual, level for level, it seems to me - appropriately! quite deep
I can get a better score on the advanced than I do on intermediate, some months
the Glenn Flear exercises are what I possibly gain the most from, both the quality of the material and the ability to download and do anytime, and repeat - please keep these coming!
HGIYC is fun but I get a better score ( sometimes by 20 points) if I hide the annotations as I often get put off the correct move by a comment made about it earlier - but it's good to go back over it with the annotations.
I like the blindfold visual trainer, I do well for about 12-15 moves but I discover that I'm doing well as much by reconstructing the move order as by having a mental snapshot of the board, disappointingly. I wonder if I could improve further by having a sequence of, say, 10-15 moves with a critical hidden move at the end, like a checkmate, obvious tactical hit, or critical defensive move, that one has to find from the mental image. Or other exercises, possibly like the pin and fork exercises in the infamous M de la Maza book.
The new opening material looks promising.
Great work