Past Performance
I'm not in a chess club, and I'm not part of the USCF. In fact, I can't remember the last time that I actually played a person one-on-one in chess.
I think my dad was the last person that I played about 13+ years ago, he always beat me, and I used to bitch when he used a good tactic on me, like forking my queen and rook with his knight. I beat him once and I'll never forget it, but he was hammered and doesn't remember it at all, he'll swear up and down that it never happened. I used to play him about once a month for a couple of years, that was all that I played and I never got any better.
I have gotten much better since those days, in fact I got up to a 1400 ranking in standard games (over 15 minutes) on the Internet Chess Club. That was over 3-4 years ago, and just I played recently and now I'm about 800-1000. It's not like riding a bike, chess must be practiced often just like any other sport.
Take running for instance, if you train to finish a marathon (about 24 miles), you have to practice at least 3 days per week, 5 days per week is more realistic. The problem with the body is that if you go for more than 7-10 days with out practicing, the muscles in the legs lose their endurance that you worked so hard to build up.
Even if you were training for 10 years and finished 4 marathons per year, just 14 days of sitting on your ass will destroy all of your hard work. You will need to start from square one all over again and keep at it. The minimum is to run about 5-10 miles once per week.
Now chess has nothing to do with running or any physical activity whatsoever, it's completely a mental game, but it's interesting how after 3 years of not playing every week caused me to lose all of the progress that I made and now I have to start from square one all over again.
If I ever lose interest in chess again, and start to focus on something that seems more important at the time, I'll be prepared. I don't want to have to start from square one again. I want to make chess an integral part of my life.
One goal of my training is to find the 'bare minimum' set of exercises and games that I need to do every week to keep my progress. I'll try one SD/30 game, 30 minutes of exercises, and 30 minutes of reviewing my game - every week. Hopefully that works.
I think my dad was the last person that I played about 13+ years ago, he always beat me, and I used to bitch when he used a good tactic on me, like forking my queen and rook with his knight. I beat him once and I'll never forget it, but he was hammered and doesn't remember it at all, he'll swear up and down that it never happened. I used to play him about once a month for a couple of years, that was all that I played and I never got any better.
I have gotten much better since those days, in fact I got up to a 1400 ranking in standard games (over 15 minutes) on the Internet Chess Club. That was over 3-4 years ago, and just I played recently and now I'm about 800-1000. It's not like riding a bike, chess must be practiced often just like any other sport.
Take running for instance, if you train to finish a marathon (about 24 miles), you have to practice at least 3 days per week, 5 days per week is more realistic. The problem with the body is that if you go for more than 7-10 days with out practicing, the muscles in the legs lose their endurance that you worked so hard to build up.
Even if you were training for 10 years and finished 4 marathons per year, just 14 days of sitting on your ass will destroy all of your hard work. You will need to start from square one all over again and keep at it. The minimum is to run about 5-10 miles once per week.
Now chess has nothing to do with running or any physical activity whatsoever, it's completely a mental game, but it's interesting how after 3 years of not playing every week caused me to lose all of the progress that I made and now I have to start from square one all over again.
If I ever lose interest in chess again, and start to focus on something that seems more important at the time, I'll be prepared. I don't want to have to start from square one again. I want to make chess an integral part of my life.
One goal of my training is to find the 'bare minimum' set of exercises and games that I need to do every week to keep my progress. I'll try one SD/30 game, 30 minutes of exercises, and 30 minutes of reviewing my game - every week. Hopefully that works.
posted by DC at 7:54 PM
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