Chess Skills: Shifting Focus

For 34 consecutive days, I spent the first part of my day solving puzzles on chessdotcom. At some point during this time, it became a daily commitment. That commitment ended yesterday when I solved a single exercise from the book Improve Your Chess Tactics (2012) by Yakov Neishtadt. This book has sat idly on my bookcase for a year or more, but recently I started reading it. A few days ago, I solved the first five exercises after my chessdotcom session. Yesterday morning, I opted to start with the book.

Black to move

The position arose in Panno — Bravo Sedamanos, Fortaleza (1975). It took me a few minutes, but I found the correct moves. The idea was known before solving because Nieshtadt organizes the book by themes. Hence, solving primarily involved calculation to verify the implementation of the deflection idea and the correct sequence. Most of my effort was expended finding the best reply by White.

After writing my answer, I checked my answers to the first six exercises in the back of the book. I failed one.

White to move

The position is presented by Nieshtadt as from Belov — Ongemakh, Narva 1984. After seeing that I failed, I instantly saw the refutation of the move I had written.

Solving from books differs from solving for rating with online puzzles. Both methods have their benefits. I remain committed to doing both, but a daily commitment to one gets in the way of the other.

During my 34 day run from 18 May to 20 June, I attempted 599 puzzles, correctly solving 356. My rating started at 2993 and ended at 3051. It peaked at 3143 on 15 June and was as low as 2849 on 30 May.

I will return to the website and make a push to get the rating back above 3100 now that I’ve crossed that mark a couple of times. Also, I like to show my students that I solved more puzzles in the past year than the number of games I’ve played, although that number is considerable.

My focus has shifted towards books. Neishtadt, Improve Your Chess Tactics is one of the better tactics books available. Someone recommended it to me in a comment on this blog several years ago. It was a good recommendation for which I am grateful.