It is now more than two years ago that I started playing chess. Time for writing about my second-year progress, although I missed the exact date of my second "chess anniversary" by a couple of weeks. That is I believe I forgot it, although one might also argue that I tried to forget it because my progress hasn't been up to my expectations. My original goal was o become a "decent" chess player at the end of my second chess year, decent defined by becoming an average player. However, my standard rating at the Internet Chess Club hasn't changed much at all in 2007 and still hovers around 1350. I am aware that it is hard to get better at chess, particularly for adult beginners, but I would have expected some significant improvement with all the time I put into it.

But not everything is bad. My correspondence chess rating at ChessWorld is on the rise and my current rating is about 1850, at least 200 points more than one year ago, making me a better than average player there. It is hard to compare ratings at different servers and the differences between correspondence and live play make it close to impossible to make absolute comparisons of rating numbers. However, I clearly became a better correspondence chess player but not a better live or OTB chess player in 2007. What is the reason behind this and how can I improve my overall chess skills?

Why am I losing all these live chess games? Most of the time, I am simply making some kind of horrible blunder. The kind of blunder you would expect from somebody who is still learning how the pieces move. The reason for this is of course not that I don't know better - after all I am usually noticing the mishap right after I make the move - but simply that I am not careful enough. I still have to learn how to play "real chess".

Of course, intellectually I know all this. After all, I have been ranting abut these blunders in my posts since the very beginning of this blog. So what is different in my correspondence games, where the probability that I make super-stupid blunders is much lower? Firstly, I usually forget most of the positions in my correspondence games between the moves. This forces me to take a fresh look at the board before each and every move, making blunders less likely. Secondly, in correspondence chess it is allowed to analyze by moving your pieces. This requires much less board vision than over-the-board play, where you have to analyze without these visual clues. These things give a good explanation, but I still don't know how to make myself to be careful at every move, although I still hope that practice will help... a bit.... may be?!

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