DGT board has arrived

Last Thursday my DGT electronic chessboard finally arrived. (I was starting to get a bit worried, as the DHL tracking hadn't been updated since the package arrived in the states 10 days before). It's gorgeous. I'll post a picture or three tonight. 

This is a board that makes you want to make good moves. Anything else would be a shame. 

Tomorrow night, I'm joining the Tuesday night STTourney on ICC - time control is G/60. About as slow as it gets on ICC. Another thing I want to do tonight is get one of my games from the PCC tourney a week ago annotated and posted. So, things could be busy on here in a few hours.

I've been a bit lax in my tactics training, but I've at least been studying. What I need to be doing more, though, is playing. And playing against my kids doesn't count.

Maybe tonight I'll forego the blog posting, and get some blitz games in for opening training. I'm still lacking a little confidence in my openings.

Recent book acquisitions include Build up your Chess with Artur Yusupov: The Fundamentals, and an old, beat-up copy of Chess: 5334 Problems, Combinations, and Games. That's a really big book. Probably something to use when starting to help my daughter with tactics. Right now, she's about 2/3 through the first Fritz and Chesster volume. Her play is improving, but she still doesn't pay much attention to what her opponent does. That'll come.

(I just finished reading a copy of Dan Heisman's Everyone's Second Chess Book that I got from the Central Library in Portland. My daughter's firmly in step 4 of chess vision. She gets what she can do with her pieces, but doesn't take her time to see what can be done to her. Frequently, while we play, she'll say "Dad! You ruined my plan!" The fact she even has a plan is encouraging. That's beyond where I was even back in college.)

So, my training plan now consists of the following:

Opening: periodically working through my current repertoire lines. (I've shifted to London as White, Scandinavian/Gruenfeld as Black. Goal is to eventually shift to The Kaufman Repertoire for Black and White as I have time to study it.)

Middlegame: Tactics, tactics, tactics... Keep working through the CT-ART problems, begin weekly lessons with the Yusupov book. (24 lessons per book, 9 books in the series... yeah, that'll last me a while.)

Endgame: I didn't put any attention on the endgame before my first tournament, because I figured I'd be lucky to get there. However, three of my four games hit the endgame, and I turned a draw into a loss in one because I didn't grok the position. I'm looking at the Karsten Mueller endgame ChessBase trainers for this. I need to start with the basics. (I know the rule of the square, how to mate with a lone Queen or Rook, and that's about it. I'd be a bit hard-pressed mating with two bishops.)

And play. I've got an OTB tourney per month planned out through the summer (about all I can really get away with given family commitments), culminating with the US Open in my back yard. I'd LOVE to see my rating over 1400 by that point (it's currently 1253). That's the goal. To get there, I need to play more, and play better. But I'll need to play a lot more than just a handful of games per month. So, I'll be on ICC and Playchess more frequently.

That's the plan. 1400 by the end of the US Open is the goal.