Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Finally Got the Monkey Off My Back

I'm looking forward to not writing about the opening for a good long while.

I've been slacking since my move, and not doing much besides throwaway, unanalyzed blitz on ICC. Naughty, naughty. At least most of the chess books are now unpacked.

Back to practicing what I preach. Besides playing over master games and working on tactics, I'm going to try and force myself to play against a dumbed-down Fritz and work on my thinking technique. If any of you have favorite settings for Fritz as a "tough, but not impossible" opponent, feel free to share. I'm going to experiment with simply tweaking the ply depth so I can consistently perform at a certain level.

4 comments:

Blue Devil Knight said...

Let us know what you come up with for Fritz. I haven't found a good level (one that doesn't make crazy blunders, but that also doesn't just school me every game).

Anonymous said...

Steve Lopez has some good articles on this in the Chess Cafe archives.
What I've done, because of my pitiful rating, is use the comet B50 engine and then select patzer from the Handicapped and Fun menu. I then set the rating down low for starters.

Steve suggests playing a 6-game match and then bump it up 50 if you win the match or down 50 if you lose. Keep the settings the same if you tie. He also explains all the other slider settings on the Handicapped and Fun Screen.

Anonymous said...

P.S.
For game analysis, I switch back to the Fritz 10 engine.

Hope this helps.

transformation said...

forgive my inclusion off topic, but time to time, i have big posts, as you do, and this one today aught not to disappoint. warmly, dk