Thursday 18 October 2007

Some other chess blogs I read

Some blogs have a massive blog roll down the side of their page, but I'm quite miserly with mine. At some point I will get around to updating it, but for the moment I'm happy to keep it simple.
That is not to say that they are the only chess blogs I read. There are a couple that I look into from time to time, just to keep up with what other bloggers are doing.
One blog that interests me is Down Under Knight run by Phil Willis. Although it is updated infrequently it is fun to see how Phil is going in his quest to become a chess master. Phil is currently using the 7 circles approach to chess improvement, a method that has mixed reviews in the chess world. Anyway, if you want to find out how he is going, just visit his blog.
The other blog I catch up with from time to time is the The Chess Nut blog, run by Trent Parker. Trent is particularly good at covering tournaments that he plays in. And has a very active player Trent provides good coverage of the NSW (mainly Sydney though) tournament scene.

3 comments:

Alana Chibnall said...

One question Shaun, what is the "7 Circles Approach"? I can't seem to find it anywhere...

Shaun Press said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Shaun Press said...

Phil actually describes it in detail on his blog, but it is a training technique described in the book Rapid Chess Improvement by Michael de la Maza.
You basically improve your tactical vision by solving 1000 tactical problems. The first circle involves solving 16 problems a day for 64 days, the second is 32 problems a day for 32 days and so until you solve 1000 problems in 1 day. My working through the same set over and over again you develop a recognition of a vast number of tactical ideas. Or so the theory goes.

(I discovered you can't edit comments, so I deleted the previous one and replaced it with this one)