Yesterday, I came upon a discussion forum bashing the DLM plan. A litany of why it doesnt work was being rattled of one-by-one - "How can you do repeat solving the same set of exercises over and over again?", "Well I want to have a life too" and my personnal favorite "Tactics is not everything". I found it all to very funny. One would think I would get insulted since as one who implements the plan, I am also idirectly being bashed, but its kinda cute in a way. Particularly this comment:
"one's chess playing ability is defined more by one's deficiencies than by one's strengths"
I think the knights can see the irony here. All of us slogging away, religously doing problems everyday, because we "blindly" believe that tactics is the key to fame and fortune. And all the while there are all those posts describing in painful detail why the plan doesnt work. Sentences after eloquent sentences. Such wity comments. Some of these people can be salesmen I think. But all these long and tall words, [whispers] Are they trying to compensate for something? [/whispers] Hehe! sorry, coudnt resist saying that.
Books
There was a particular type of chess books that I was tying to collect. I wanted to be the first person to have all those "art of xxx" books:
In that way, I could say that "please signor, I am no ordinary chess player. Such vulgar words. I prefer to be called a chess artiste (spreads hand and turn sideways to show the art of xxx books)". But now, my current obssession are CD's. Its all I can do to stop my hand from typing my credit card numbers in convekta's website. Sometimes I think the evil hand is tying to bankrupt me.
Deadline
I think I am going to set a deadline afterall. I have been doing this exercise thing for three months now, and I am a little bit weary of it. In fact, starting the blog was a way of combating the tiredness of doing problems everyday. But to have no fixed end-date in sight is hard. If this was a real project, it would be overbudget and extremely late. And so I am setting 5 months as my deadline. That is to say, I am going to solve the problems for two more months and whatever I happened to cover within that span, that would be it. In software project terms, the deadline is not feature dependent but time dependent. Only in this way can I continue this for another two months. Which is why, I really coudnt fault all those forum bashing the DLM plan. It really is hard. The commitment that it entails is enormous. It really has a big impact on the personnal and professional lives of the undertaker. Which is why I liked it in the first place. For "That which we get too easily, we esteem too lightly. Heaven knows how to set its price".
But after 5 months, what am I gonna do then? Study chess of course, just not tactics as I want to allow my brain to refresh my "creative" batteries. Here it is, my grand patzer study plan.
One-year study plan
Jan-May: 7 Circles (Current)
May-Jul: Endgames / White opening repertoire creation
Aug-Oct: Strategy / Black opening Repertoire Creation
Nov-Dec: Mini 7 Circles (Continuation of problems unsolved)
But bear in mind that during the time that I will not be doing the seven circles (May-Oct), I still plan on solving about 600 problems. Just not in this concentrated way. Maybe about 2-3 times a week would be best I think. After that time, I hope that my hunger for tactical training comes back and I could do the second 7-circles with energy (It want to have tempo's vision too)
Status Report
I am gonna finish the circle 2 review today, and move on to the next chapter. I've already spent too much time on this chapter for me to do circle 3 on it right now
Have a nice weekend everybody!
It seems like most critics of the DLM plan have never actually tried it. They look at the amount of committment and just back off saying that's a waste of time. I think the core point behind the plan is that if you want to get better at chess you simply have to put in the time and the effort. It isn't going to come to you from thumbing through a book. You have to work for it.