Wednesday, March 22, 2006

...And then I let it slip through my hands!

Thus the name Blunder Prone! Tonight I had yet another "won" game in my clutches coming out of the opening ahead on the exchange ( in this case a Rook for a Knight) yet i managed to let it slip through my hands.

1) I tried to follow the rule of thumb that once I win material I should regroup my pieces and defend any threats. This only handed the initiative back to my opponent. He had so much play left that I had to be careful of him gaining material back and almost mating me!

and then....

2) I saw an opportunity to simplify and exchanged down. But a miscalculation left me with 2 disconnected rooks and a bishop versus an active queen and a Knight ( with 2 minutes left on the clock). I thought I had the knight too but ... oh well.

and matters made worse....

3) I tried to save an advanced central pawn ( which was blocked). This only led me to keep the rooks disconnected and pieces out of harmony. Yeah... I dropped a rook. The adventures of Blunder Prone strikes again. Yay varily.


Grrrr. I do this too often. Like the last tournament I went to. I come out of the opening strong and even some middle games ahead... only to chase some ficticious demon or stupid "rule" and not playing "real" chess. This does get frustrating....when will I learn?

Almost done with the circles.... must finish circles.... circles...nice circles ... I see them now...hmmm dizzy now.

synapses misfiring .... neural network error

2 comments:

Sancho Pawnza said...

D'oh I feel like an idiot!
Happy belated welcome to the Knights!
I found some very interesting entries
in your blog, good reading.

An answer to one of your earlier questions from your
Modified De La Maza post.
“My question to the Knights, can I become an honorary member given I have a modified circle?”
Absolutely!! Matter of fact I’m the original Knight of Modification. Way back when all
of this started with Randy (Man de la Maza) and myself it didn’t take long for us to take separate approaches to the path de la Maza.
He took what turned out to be the calculation muscle path and I took what is now known as the pattern recognition path.
Calculation Muscle Path= Follow the MDLM book exactly in order. Exercise 1 through End and repeat 7 times.
Pattern Recognition Path= Smaller blocks of patterns. 100 problems and repeat them. I used what I called the 2-2-2 plan.
http://sanchopawnza.blogspot.com
/2005/03/2-2-2.html#comments
I even went as far as changing the course material from CT-Art to a ChessBase CD called “1000X Checkmates” by Lubomir Ftacnik because CT-Art has numerous errors, and many less than accurate evaluations of several lines.

The concluding post about the pro’s and con’s of each method can be found here.
http://sanchopawnza.blogspot.com
/2005/03/thoughts-continued.html#comments

Regardless chess improvement exercises work best when they are directed at improving a players own deficiencies. A way to discover those is through review of one’s
own games and tailor your training from there. Did studying tactics hurt my game?
Absolutely not! Matter of fact it helped point out some my deficiencies in other areas
and taught me a lot about how my mind recognizes and retains information.
I look back on the experience as a stepping stone.
Besides I still do tactical exercises to this day, just to stay sharp.

After this long winded welcome you have to be asking yourself what did I do to deserve this. :)

PS You might want to turn on word-verification, it helps eliminate the spam bots.

BlunderProne said...

Thanks SP!
I agree that the tactics training has uncovered true weaknesses in my game... blindness is one ;)

I am finding I am stronger int eh opening but translating that to a strong middle game plan is my next phase.

End game is anther area I need to grow.. I keep review rook and pawn endings. I plan to reinvigorate my end game studying once I get through the maze.