Monocle wrote on 05/12/18 at 19:37:24:


How far into the book are you, out of curiosity?  You might reserve your criticism until after you've finished it. From memory I do agree that it's pretty heavy on the calculation/tactical side of things, but otherwise I have no criticisms of the book and I do think that it evaluated my play perfectly (I've posted about it here in the past, including a breakdown of all of my strengths and weaknesses). 

The training plan that I put together for myself after working through it took me from ~2000 to 2200 USCF, and I had not improved for a few years.  YMMV and perhaps it was more the overall effort and fact that I put together SOME kind of training program to follow, but I still think very highly of the positions chosen to analyze in the book.  At the very least, it's good training to simply go through them all as a calculation/puzzle book.   

I share some of the same irritants regarding scoring for the book.  However, when I read it and followed the scoring guidelines, I really believe that it diagnosed my play perfectly.  So while I might complain about a particular position, I think that's missing the point. 

You need to look at the book as a whole, and realize that the scoring has been normalized with a fair amount of actual data from people who took the test.  As far as I'm aware, it's the only "test your chess" type of book that's done that.  Other similar books, such as Rate Your Endgame or one by a Spanish GM whose name escapes me, are pretty much just complete shots in the dark regarding how many points to award yourself.  And who cares, in the long run?  The point is to find where you need to improve, which I think the book does an excellent job with, not worry about how many points you think that you deserve in a particular exercise. 

@Monocle: Excellent criticism.

I saw ...Qc5+ ...Qf8, missed Rd4, and thought that 1...Nxb4 2.Ne4 would mate, overlooking Stockfish's defense 2...Rxd1 3.Rxd1 Qc8!, although white still gets a plus, according to the computer, with 4.h3 Nc6 5.Rd7.

How many points should I get?

The idea is presumably that the person who plays Qh6 in a live game, missing ..Qc5+ entirely, has another shot at seeing ..Rd4 then and playing it; winning the game.

IE in an actual game the same applies, that missing the apparent refutation (which actually doesn't work) to an idea entirely, can be superior to seeing half of it. "Undeserved wins" of this nature are very much a real thing that influences your Elo as well.
You could also make a point for the intuition of "White must be winning" being correct, even if you fail to see the concrete reason as to why.

There are sufficiently many puzzles in this book that someone who actually is notably worse at calculation than you are will end up scoring much lower, even if he gets 2 instead of 0 points now and then.

Your poor calculation point is according to my own conclusions. Disorganized thinking is partly right.

I give an example as feedback to your thoughts about both points in the hope of stimulating further thoughts.



This is a position with black to move of my last otb game last week. The position was new to me in a tournament game and I couldn't remember any examples about it.

First point is time control: 75 min./ + 30sec. per move for the first 40 moves. It's move #8 and the opponent had used 20 min. My clock showed 5 minutes less. Playing rarely otb-tournaments it is important to use the time in a way to avoid "Zeitnot" and on the other hand use it completely.

So was the first decision to spend up to ten minutes here. (8 min. were needed.)

Next I had in mind my intention to castle short in the background. The bishop must move. So the first candidate moves were BxN, Bh5, Bf5.

1. - BxN 2.BxB 0-0 3.d3 and I didn't like whites bishop pair and the plans with e4 or b4-b5. So BxN was rejected within a minute.

Now comes the disorganized part. 1... Bf5 somewhen Nh4 by white winning a tempo and I found neither a good home for the Bf5 on g6, e6 or d7 nor did I like whites possibility to attack with f4.

1... Bh5 didn't please me either because of white's later g4, Nh4 or Ne5 and f4 with attack against the king without seeing a plan for black.

This went five minutes. I cannot give an ordered report about my jumping from motives (f4 - Nh4 - Ne5 - Nh2 - g4) for white and short concrete move sequences. The result was a further candidate move - Nc8. In some lines the moves Qb3 and Rae1 had appeared and I thought about Bc8 covering the Pb7 - leaving the e-file open for later Ne4 and Re8 and covering f5 in case of Nh4 against the Knight.

Bc8 was played. (Btw did this move not occur in my CA 10 database and got a bad evaluation - .68 by Rybka 3 in the first moment, but lead to a 0.0 after a prolongation of the lines at about move 15. I think the move is not that bad compared to the other moves giving a -.22 till -.29.)

Personally I register: A lack of concrete thinking and a lack of preparation when confronted with a flank opening.

Here are my fresh results in this book given as an extrapolated rating estimation according to the tables in the book:

Overall - 1930 (maybe correct - only played two tournaments in the last two years with an rating of DWZ ~1880 and ~1850; normally Elo is a little higher than DWZ)
Attack - 1987
Counterattack - 1440 (shocking, but not totally surprising)
Defense - 1968
Opening - 2177 (hey - only once worked really on a opening for two month; but there are only 6 tasks in the test; so I don't overrate it)
Middlegame - 1826
Endgame - 2000
Tactics - 1700 (disappointing, but possible)
Strategy - 2076
Calculation - 1777 (this is a known weakness)
Standard Positions - 2283 (thirteen tasks; I feel overrated)
Recognizing Threads - 1810
Sacrifice - 1802

General comment: The absolute value of some estimations did surprise me, but never the sign in relation to the average/overall rating. I feel this test does fit to my strengths and weaknesses in chess. The big exception is openings. Relying mostly on principles and using a database in correspondence chess this should be at least 200 points over my real level.

This will have consequences to my training plans this year. The weakest point is counterattack and the 1st step is to reread carefully Khmelnitzki's training tips and recommendations.

At the same time I'd like to ask for the thoughts of the readers of this topic: What would you do with such a test profile?

The 2nd step will be forming a concrete plan and giving it in here for comments.

@Stigma,

What's the ideal schedule for spending time solving these puzzles?

I have about 2 hours of free time in weekdays, and 8 hours of free time in the weekends. Since I didn't know anything about the book perhaps your advice could be reliable and helpful.

Thanks!