The first step...let's get a rating

I spent a little time last night on the Chess Tactics Server (CTS). What a great site! I can't believe I've never come across it before. I think I've been overly focused on openings for a long time. My list of links to opening sites is pretty long, but no tactical sites. Perhaps that's a clue?

Anyway, I was captured by the ratings game on the site and stayed much longer than I had planned. (That's a good thing.) After the initial shock of going from 1500 to 1100 in four problems (!) I settled in to the "flow" of forced rapid evaluation with the penalty on error. A good mix I think. My rating settled down around 1200 after 150 problems or so. I'm happy with that for now. Even in this short exercise I can see how improvement would come from spending a lot of time solving these problems. Maybe there's something to this after all!

The other thing that struck me is the power of community in increasing the probability of success in a quest like this one. Several of the Knights offered comments and advice on yesterday's post. Knowing others are watching and supporting makes it harder to quit.

Here's the short term plan:

0. Post my stats on the blog (done)
1. Get in the game -- Play 2x a week at 30 0 to get a rating (FICS first)
2. Tactics -- Do 200 problems 3x a week on CTS (target 90%)
3. Buy MDLM's book & read it
4. Evaluate then purchase either CT-Art or CPT
5. Make a better plan based on the circles
6. Become "Pendrax the Persistent"