I originally intended to take the final this past Sunday, but didn't feel like it. I probably should've broken it up into two days because it's a little exhausting to do 24 of his problems at once. It took me about 3 hours total. About half I was able to do from the book and the other half I setup on the board. And just like other times, I suddenly was able to see ideas instantly that I missed before. I scored 34/47 for a bronze, missing silver by 2 points.
Here's the breakdown of problems:
Tactics: 13/24
Endgame: 5/24
Strategy: 3/24
Calculating Variations: 2/24
Positional Play: 1/24
And here's my final scores for each theme:
Tactics: 18/24 - 75%
Endgame: 10/10 - 100%
Strategy: 3/6 - 50%
Calculating Variations: 1/5 - 20%
Positional Play: 2/2 - 100%
Overall, not too bad. Towards the end I was just happy to be done as I was getting a little worn out having done this after work. I did much better on strategy than I did in the modules and I was happy to have gotten my one positional play question correct. I would've liked a second question for that theme. I think I could've gotten the 3rd strategy question had I been a little fresher.
Five of the points I missed on tactics came from the chapter on pawn combinations. The three pointer was doable. I kept sniffing around the edges of the right solution, seeing some of the ideas but ultimately missed out. A nice problem that came from one of Yusupov's games.
And that's a wrap for Build Up Your Chess: The Fundamentals! I downloaded the Tarrasch book to my Kindle and I've been reading through the chapters. I skipped over the chapter on "The Elements" as it's very basic material on learning to play chess. Also skipped most of the endgame material as it was generally beginner level as well. I did stop on a few if the diagrams caught my eye.
I'm glad to finally be done with this. I'll take a short break before the next book as I try to work on the weaknesses that were revealed from doing the first book and to keep up with my other training. I also intend to ramp up my OTB play. Looking at my calendar, I should be able to get in a good 15-20 games by mid April. Perhaps a new milestone will be reached. Stay tuned!
Well done SK
ReplyDeleteConsidering the level of Yusupov books, your final results are very encouraging.
Good job silent knight.
ReplyDeletei have just finished this book too, and my result not as good as yours : 31/47.
i'm very impressed by your working capacity, it takes me 8 month to finish the first yusupov book.
Do you plan to work on the second one ?
Keep working and i'm pretty sure you will reach your goal.
Where can we see your rating progress?
ReplyDeleteAwesome blog, love it! Great work you're doing here and very helpful.
ReplyDeleteI'm also trying to get better at chess, could you give me 2 hints:
1) How can you export the times from ChessHero to a spreadsheet?
2) Are you setting up every position from the Yusupov on a real board? Or do you use ChessHero for this too? Or do you work through it in a completely different way?
Keep up the good work, SilentKnight!
1) I couldn't find a way to export the stats. I would just look at the stats for a set,, sort them by problem # and manually enter the times into a spreadsheet.
Delete2) With Yusupov, I generally go through the training examples on a board. With the problems, I go through and try to solve them from my head. If I can't after 5 minutes, I set the problem up on the board and give myself another 5-10 minutes. If I still can't come up with some solution (rare), I will move the pieces around. This is a slight variation on how he recommends you approach the problems. I don't want to waste the time setting it up on the board if I can see the answer right away from the diagram.
Thanks for the quick reply SilentKnight! This helps a lot, I really appreciate what you're doing here!
DeleteThe Book "Yusupov Fundamentals - Book 1" is titled "Tigersprung auf DWZ 1500", 1. Band" in the German original ( http://www.jussupow.de/22982.html ). Its supose to enable a 1300 DWZ rated player to improve to 1500 DWZ ( together with the other 2 books + play.... ) . But most player think that the level of these books is way above this rating . DWZ supose to be equivalent to Fide ELO but these 1500 DWZ are estimatingly something like 1600 Elo.
ReplyDeleteSo i wonder if this book did help you at your games in April?
Personaly i did not had the impression i did learn anything from them