Building a base continues

The last week has been devoted to:

1. Getting into a tournament with STC Bunch on FICS that will give me an excuse to actually play regularly


2. Sprucing up openings (first 5-6 moves) using BookUp to avoid surprises


3. Getting into the habit of doing tactics problems

While I haven't been as diligent as I would have like to be, I'm satisfied with my progress. It's a reasonable beginning. I need to keep this in balance or else my interest is likely to burn out too quickly.

I'm finding that even a small amount of tactical practice has a significant effect...at least on my performance on the Tactics Server. I can see things much more quickly that I could when I started. May be my imagination? I have my first STC tournament game tonight, so we'll see if it translates into a game situation as well. I'm going to focus on avoiding major tactical blunders.