Creating Tactics Problem Sets From Your Games Using ChessBase Products

I’ve played a lot of blitz online.  A LOT of blitz.  It seemed to me that if these games could be mined for tactical errors, they would make an ideal set of simple tactics problems for drills.  Manually mining them for gold, however, would take forever.  I routinely store and analyze my blitz games, but have been negligent in saving positions into databases for tactics or blunders (a project I started but didn’t keep up with).

One day I thought: what if I take Rybka and tell it to analyze the games to a depth of 5 ply?  That should roughly correspond to a Chernev and Reinfeld-ish “Seeing Three Moves Ahead” or simpler level of tactics, and should be fairly quick.   I was familiar with the ChessBase interfaces for Rybka and Fritz and new that it could automatically generate “Training Annotations”: when you load the game or position, it jumps to a position and opens a window prompting you for the correct move.  I decided to test this idea with my 800 most recent Blitz games (about 10% of my total games on record).

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Shifting Focus

{Coincidentally, in an interesting example of parallel evolution, there seem to be many other bloggers that have recently taken self-improvement much more seriously as well. Check out Blunderprone's blog for more info on his ACIS (Adult Chess Improvement Seekers) movement.}

 For the last while I've been content to learn more about chess –endings, opening repertoire, reading some of the classic game collections such as Alekhine's NY 1924 and Nottingham 1936 tournament books, and Botvinnik's 100 Selected Games, etc. However, as I enter my 40^th year of existence, I look at the sidebar of this blog ("hopes to become a B-class player before senility sets in") and the subtitle ("Do as I Say, Not As I Do") and have decided to do more of what I say.

For me, I identified the following areas as needing the most improvement:

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Two Killer Apps for the iPod

Months ago I looked into chess applications for my iPod Touch and didn't find anything that grabbed me. I checked again this last weekend and found two I was quite pleased with. One is free, and one is ten bucks. Which is for you?

Glaurung is the free chess app. You can vary its playing strength on a scale from 0 to 100. You can play against it or analyze with it (best line only shown), and can set up positions. There are several different preset time controls, and you can tweak other options such as permanent brain, play style, and book variety. One advantage that Glaurung has is that it can save games or load them from a .pgn file. I have no idea where this .pgn file is located, or if it syncs to your computer, but it at least means you can save games.

Shredder has an app available for $10. What do you get for your money? First, you can vary the play strength from 850 to 2400 Elo (I can't independently verify the accuracy of its Elo scale, but I like it better than Glaurung's 0-100). It can also be set to automatically adjust its rating to your level as you play games. You can adjust its play style, and can turn on a coach feature. The one main drawback to Shredder is that, at least in the current version, you cannot save your game. However, you can email it.

One final edge that Shredder has is that it has a database of 1000 test positions built into it that you can solve. The points you get for each puzzle depends both on accuracy and speed of solving. I like this feature a lot, although for some of the positions it says "you have solved this puzzle" after getting the first few moves correct, when I would still like to see a few moves further into the solution. this isn't a big deal, though, because you can stop the quiz and select "play this position".

So far my conclusion is: Shredder has the advantage if you're looking for a program to play against. The Elo rating with a sliding scale and automatic adjustment to match your play level is a nice feature, and I really like the puzzle feature. However, if you want to be able to save your games (e.g. if you don't have email access and can't email the game to yourself), or if you're thrifty, Glaurung is really quite nice. Both look attractive, and both appear to be hideously strong (I'm worried about the consequences this technology will have on tournament play). If you're serious about chess, and can already afford an iPhone or iTouch, then I don't think you'll regret purchasing Shredder...but you can download Glaurung first and then decide if you really want or need more.

64-Bit Vaio Ships With 32-Bit Windows?

{Edit: although it seems from my googling that this has been an issue with some Vaios, it is not with mine...I received a 32-bit comp. Disregard, but thanks for all the input!}

It seems that my Sony SR should be able to run the 64-bit version of Visa, but ships with the 32-bit. Grr.

I'm only an average computer user, so it's not clear to me yet how easy it'll be to solve this problem. My understanding is that when installing a new OS you want to wipe the hard drive clean, but then I'd lose all the stuff that came pre-installed. It looks like I can get a physical copy of the 64-bit OS from Microsoft for a nominal fee, but I've read that installation on Vaios can be problematic because of the Sony drivers.

I'll be phoning various Sony and Microsoft tech help in the next few days to try and find a solution. Until then: if you're ordering a 64-bit computer and want the 64-bit OS, you should check and see which version comes pre-installed.