Hello everybody, Had a nice vacation. I did circle two of the annihilation of pawn strukture chapter. I only got six more problems to go before finishing it. But.. I may have to go back and redo some of the problems. It is my second time, and still some problems seems beyond me. I would stare at it and stare at it and stare at it, and not get the solution. I have encountered the same problem as some of the knights. Some of the solutions did not seem forcing enough. But it should be easier now because I was supposed to have memorized them by now. But that just isnt the case.

I also found something. I was thinking of buying the theory and practice of endgame by convekta. But I was playing around with chessmaster10 the other day, and lo and behold. I found an endgame course by josh waitzkin. I mean, I saw it already before of course, but not actually played thru it. But now, when I was watching the games, I realized that this might be as good a training module for basic endgames as there is. Concepts like queen vs pawns, two pieces versus rooks, rook vs rooks.. etc.. lots of essential endgame stuff. I want to setup the positions and play against my favorite programs. Only when I win against best play will I be able to say that I get it. But when I tried playing one of the positions against the computer, I got creamed. I will probably take a lot of time before I finish that course. So, I'll probably just finish that first before I try to buy any other endgame CD.

I also played two OTB games yesterday. In both cases I won because of traps. But with the best defense I should have lost. I am quite dissatisfied with my play. Here are some of the cracks in my game:

1. Only looking 3 plies ahead - This is not deep enough. But to think that I would just suddenly start looking ahead 10ply deep every move is wishful thinking. So I am going to set the modest goal of looking 4ply ahead every move. This is also not deep enough true, but easy does it. If can do this, I'll target seven (7) plies ahead next.

2. Tendency to not inspect non-threathening moves by my opponent -
I inspect threatening moves of course, but if my opponent makes an innocent pawn push here, or a quiet knight maneuver there, I tend to shrug it off and immediately go look for my own forcing maneuvers. But, sometimes a quiet move can have the deadliest effects.

These two are my greatest concern right now. I have other weaknesses of course, like opening, endgame, srategy, positional play, etc.. You name it, I got it. But these things can be overcome by book study. Those two above can only be overcome by effort and discipline.

Another thing I noticed:

I used to try and play positionaly. I would close lines and try to stick a knight somewhere. But lately, this have been missing from my game. Open lines and forcing manuevers have become the norm. Not to mention traps. I have not forgotten the positional ideas I've studied. But, when I look at a board, I do not see anymore outposts, the seventh rank, etc. What I see are diagonals, files, pins and forks. We trully are what we study. I bet that if I had studied endgames, I would have found ways to immediately swap pieces. Perhaps there is a way to merge my previous positional play with tactics?