Some Crazy Ideas I've been thinking this morning

1. Tournament - Of course I dont think this will happen, but woudn't it be great if at the some point, we can setup a tournament for the knights? A double-round-robin, all-play-all tournament for the knights of dela maza? Sort of like the great St. Petersburg Tournament 1912.

In karate kid2, before meeting with his old rival, Mr. Miyagi settled his estate.He knows that he could be defeated because "We had the same teacher". Isnt a tournament between knights the same. We have the same teacher. The same philosophy. Now all we need to do is find out who is first student Mr. Pattern among us.

This will also answer a question of mine - Since a chess game is largely determined in part by pattern recognition, if two person having the same exact set of patterns play - what will happen? Ideally, if two knights trained from CTART, and memorized the patterns of the same problems - what will enable one of them to win against another? Or will it end in a draw. Of course perfect pattern match between two persons does not exists, but this is as close as it gets to having such a state.

Then after the tournament, each players will annotate the game. I'd give a pretty penny to know my fellow knights thoughts during a game. Who knows, maybe Don will compile the annotations and create the great Knight DelaMaza Tournament 2005.

Maybe the 2105 DLM students will read the tournament book and tell everybody all about us. =>

2. Book - If I were a little less lazy, and if I have the credentials, I'd make a book out of us knights I mean, tell me this isn't a great environment for laboratory-like experimentation. We have here a group of people all working towards the same goal, using roughly the same training method. I can't think of a better environment in which to monitor a group of player's chess progress.

First we'll group the subjects according to the training method used like so -
Group 1: 7Circles: Don, Sancho, etc..
Group 2: 10Cricles: PMD, GK, etc...

Then carefully plot the development of the knights. A ton of graphs will be produced here. Using those graphs, We can at the end, determine who showed the most relative improvement. Logically those who showed the most improvement would have had used the most efficient traning method. All kinds of analysis can made here. The most stunning conclusions can be achieved. Also, most accepted chess-related topics can be objectively discussed. You name it, thought process's, pattern recognitions, calculating ability..

Heck, we can even add interviews of the knights. Maybe even include a chapter on the knights being shown a position and explaining what they think of. Sort of like Mr. Groot experiment and Mr. Silmans "The Amateurs Mind". But with one big difference, the book can show the thought process of a player before and after the training.

Interested already? C'mon now, you know you are...

We can then pay a GM, and a some PHD guy with a foreign sounding name, and publish the book under them:

"The Secret of Chess Improvement:
A Scientific Approach to gain 400 points in 400 days
By GM Nikolai Tsikivlisht and Dr. Marc Groening P.H.D."

I could almost see now the praise being lavished -

"Wonderful, I can feel my rating increasing already",

"A book that history will not forget. Lots of thanks to Dr. Groening and GM
Tsikivlisht for opening the doors of chess improvement".

"No other book before or since has so captivated me",

"Very hard to put down. Choke full of practical help",

"Now this is what I call real chess"

We'll expect the usual unwashed critics of course -

"How can you 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"

But I mean, I'm serious. Who woudnt want to buy this book? For a book like this, we can charge $30 per copy. We can then watch the money come-in, retire in hawai, and spend the rest of the day sipping juice from glasses with little red cherries and green umbrellas.

Ahhhh... yes..

Status Report
Chapter 9: Blockade - 3 Circles completed
Chapter 10: Demolition of Pawn structure - Starting