Saturday, September 20, 2014

Ivaschenko 1b Tactics - Take 1 Complete

Another couple of months and a 593 problem tactics set from Ivaschenko 1b under my belt.  Peshka's software version of the book contains a few more problems than the book, so I included those in the set.   Peshka also has elo ratings for each problem, so my idea was to break the problems up by elo to see if it made a difference.

I broke the problems up into 6 sets of 85 and 1 set of 83.  I stuck by my promise to keep each group under 90 problems as anything more than that becomes tedious, especially the first few times through the set.

Set A: Elo 1050 - 1150
Set B: Elo  1150 - 1300
Set C: Elo 1300
Set D: Elo 1300 - 1400
Set E: Elo 1400
Set F: Elo 1400 - 1450
Set G: Elo 1450 - 1500

Here are the charts for my 1st pass through each group and problems completed in <15 seconds for the 1st pass:



The graphs might suggest that there were actually 3 levels of difficulty here:  A/B/C, D/E/F and G.  Some practice with A+B made me better at C and D+E made me better at F.  Or it could mean that their elo ratings for the problems aren't realistic, who knows.

Final chart of all 6 passes completed in < 15 seconds:


And of course I got better as I did the repetitions.   My final success rate was 89.54% which puts me about the same as Polgar and Heisman.  However I caught myself making a mistake.  My 6th pass was supposed to be 13 days after pass 5 and I was mistakenly doing it after 21 days for the first four sets.  Once I corrected this, my 6th pass stats generally ended up being close to my 5th pass.  That may have cost me a few percentage points, which suggests I might have been slightly better at this than Heisman and Polgar.  My retention for problems could be improving over time with practice.

Up next is the final book that Bright Knight used for his speed training: Jeff Coakley - Winning Chess Exercises for Kids.  900 problems and I've divided them into 10 groups.  If I stay on schedule, I should finish around the beginning of December... which will mark my 1 year anniversary of my chess training journey.  Kind of fitting.