Thursday, November 02, 2006

Back in Business!

"I shall return," as that wild and crazy General MacArthur said. Next Thursday, after an 11-week hiatus, I'm back to tournament play at the Reno CC November swiss.

Taking stock

Eleven months ago when I started playing tournament chess again I stated that my goal was to go from my rating floor of 1600 to 1700 by the end of 2006. In brief, I'm still at 1600 as of now. And I don't have any more study time available than I have in the recent past.

I will do what I can in the training area, but my belief is that if I just use the understanding of chess I have right now I can rise to the 1800 range. I'll be posting my thougts and the results of my efforts on this aspect of tournament play in the future.

As my hero Tarrasch said, "It is not enough to be a good player, you must also play well." I'll be putting it all out there for readers to see.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Hi Robert, glad you're returning to chess. As you know, I often take leave-time myself to pursue other interests. One of those other interests is the sport of bowling. At some time in my life, I would like to become a Chess Master (I might be 80 when it happens!) and to become a Pro Bowler. Right now, I have a 145 average. But years ago, I had a 180 average (with the house ball!). I'm very accurate in picking up spares, but since I throw a straight ball, I don't often get the pin action to string my strikes together. This year, however, I have my own ball, fitted to my hand and designed to hook slightly towards the pocket when I throw over the second arrow. Sometimes dryness or excess oil affects the hook, in this case, I have to compensate and find my spot on the floor by making adjustments to the right or to the left, easily done since I have a 3-step approach. To be a pro bowler, you have to have an average of 200 and even then, like chess, only about 60 of the very many pro bowlers actually make a living throwing a bowling ball! But, it's a lot of fun and next year, I hope to play in both chess and bowling tournaments. I'm still writing my screenplay, it's coming along well, but slowly. Eric