I love strategy games, but my foray into chess was a strong wake up call : I was playing as if I had attention deficit disorder. Years of switching my attention from one thing to the other at work and I had lost all capacity for extended periods of focus. I saw this as a blessing and a curse, an opportunity to improve my overall focus ability. My first on-line rating stabilised at about 1100, I was leaving pieces en prise, pushing pawns in from of the castled kings for little reasons, weak strategy and tactics. I got a few books, improved the tactics, learnt some strategy, joined a club, had some lessons with a coach on openings, then for personal reasons I had to leave the team and stop the coaching, so far enjoying a progress to about 1400. From that point I though the next year would bring another 300 points improvement ... and that clearly did not happen. So to keep on improving I have to do the things that worked and drop the things that did not worked.
- Playing blitz games. Believe it or not it makes me a weaker player. No more blitz in 2012.
On the to-do list:
- Playing slow games (on the Internet or OTB)
- Exercise in tactics very regularly. Tactics must become the number one activity.
- Work on the existing opening variation I have from the lessons
- Analyse serious games
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