Debut

I have arrived at long last in the blogosphere to foist my words upon the world. Please bear with my lack of blogging expertise, I'm sure as time goes on I will learn such elusive skills as 'linking' and whatnot.

You may call me Shallow Blue, as is my handle on Playchess, a title far more accurate than witty. I am a British Philosophy and English Lit student, and have just recently begun my summer. Whilst studying and exams and such were in full swing I had begun my chess adventure, but with little time to spare, decided to begin by studying some tactics to prepare for the summer when I would have to time to, heaven forbid, actually play the game. So it is with shame that I admit that I had been 'studying' chess for a good month before beginning to play it (although I did previously already know how to play to some extent - how the pieces moved).

My plan is a little hazy, compared to some of the systematic approaches I have read, but it is loosely based on the de la Maza 'circles' method of tactics, tactics, tactics.

The books I own are: Irving Chernev's Logical Chess: Move by Move, Jeremy Silman's The Complete Endgame Course, Yasser Seirawan's Winning Chess Tactics and Lev Alburt's Chess Openings for White Explained.

The software I own: Chess Mentor, Personal Chess Trainer, Chess Tactics for Beginners, Fritz 11, Chessbase 9 and Chess Position Trainer.

As you can see I have much more than I need, I have an unfortunate habit of buying things online whilst stressed. I begun by studying tactics with PCT, got about halfway through module 1, and began to find it was becoming too hard with 3 move tactics, and that I was continuing mostly by guessing and being given the answers, which I was able to memorise, but obviously it was not particularly productive, and frustrating as the material tactics do not begin until module 2, module 1 containing 50-something units. Because of this I have switched to CTB, with which I have been much more successful. I believe that skills in visualisation and calculation should develop on their own, and that pattern recognition of simple motifs, and then combining these into more complex combinations is the key to progress, and so have endeavoured to become obsessively familiar with the simple CTB tactics, through a method of concentric circles, completing about 100 exercise groups over and over, at least 6 times until able to each in under 10 secs and with 100% score. I have found this difficult as I tend to make at least one mistake in a large group merely by mis-clicking, and also that contrary to others' abilities it takes me several seconds to orient myself with the position, take it in, and even determine what colour I am and which king I am trying to mate; it has happened that I stare baffled at a problem, supposedly known to me, for over a minute before realising that I am the other colour. What also slows me down the most is determining which of the myriad similar positions I am in, where the moves are also very similar (I find this especially with the knight and two bishops type mate with double check, and with the tactics that involve 'checkmating' other pieces such as the queen, I call it trapping, but I assume there is a technical term for it).

I am currently nearing completion of the 3rd series of problems in CTB, and it is my goal to completely finish over this summer. I am also nearing the end of Logical Chess, which I also want to finish, and perhaps go back over (owing to some laziness on my part in following the variations). I originally planned to learn the first 5 moves of the Alburt book, but have to decided to shelve that idea, instead adopting a basic repertoire as suggested by Grandpatzer that aims to expose oneself to a wide variety of different pawn structures, tactics, and to use main openings that will have many master games and will be useful later on in one's chess career; basically I will learn theory by reviewing my games and determining where I left book.

This post has gone on far too long, and I would reproach my self-indulgence if it were not for the fact that I have little faith anyone will ever read this :)

I want to finally express my appreciation for all the chess bloggers whose blogs I have been devouring. My apologies to anyone unfortunate enough to have read all of this, my commiserations for your perseverance.