snufflenose

I know. It looks like nothing has been going on, right? Wrong. I’m working on what I think are some really neat new features. To implement them, though, I have to do a lot of work to add some data to the problem database. I’m plugging away, though. In the past few weeks I’ve been testing some stuff on my machine at home that I really like. The features are close to release-ready, but I’m still fooling with them to get them to work in a nice and neat manner. Here’s a teaser:

Do we have a problem here?

I saw that some of the problems that I think are very instructive are getting very low marks for instructional value. That made me scratch my head. I think to myself, “What’s wrong with this problem?” Sometimes, I think maybe people don’t get the problem right off, so they don’t like it so they give it low marks. Whatever. That’s not what the voting for Instructional Value is for. It is to root out positions that are less than useful in learning how the pieces fit together. Anyhow… because of this, I’ve spent some time working out a way for folks to comment on the problems.

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On Weeding Out Bad Problems, davidr has been pointing out problems that are questionable. The problems that are clearly ambiguous are easy… they need to be changed or removed. But I need to fine tune how we share problems on the ATS.
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I realize that there are problems that I’m going to think are useful that other people think are useless, and vice-versa. Although I’ve added nearly a thousand problems to the database, I’m sure that there are some that are not worth having or that are ambiguous. To try to ensure the highest quality positions I can, I’ve implemented a scheme by which users can express their opinion as to the instructional merit of a position. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m a blitz chess addict. I play one game and I have to play ten more. I’m not very good at it, but there are a few things that I’ve noticed about how I play blitz that make some sense. If you are older than 10 years old or over say 1200 on any of the internet chess servers, feel free to add any useful, creative advice. These are my hints on playing blitz… a few ideas:
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Do you consider yourself a master of your native tongue? How many different words do you think you use in a given day? week? year? My son, who is not quite two years old as I write this, has perhaps 200 words. I haven’t counted them… that is just an estimate. Most of them are nouns: “Truck”,”Chooch” (train), “Tractor”, “Car”, etc. He has a few verbs, “Walk”, “Go”, etc. I wouldn’t say he fully expresses everything behind his eyes, but he can just about communicate with us. Certainly all his needs are met through his communication.
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I finally got around to locating the article that is the basis for this little nugget on abcnews. You can find it here, on Blackwell Synergy. You’ll have to pay $29 U. S. to read it. Science publishers suck. I’m going to have to go to the library to read that article. It looks pretty interesting. The premise from the abstract is that so called “fast mechanisms such as recognition” are basically 80% of chess. Read the rest of this entry »

Hello. My name is bulldoggy and I’m an addict. It all started 10 years ago when I first learned I could play chess on the internet. I found out very quickly all the games that were available and how many ready partners there were for quick games. I started spending more and more time playing chess. Eventually, I started playing blitz. A lot. Hours a day. I’d neglect responsibilities. I can remember putting off papers that I needed to write in order to play blitz for a while.

It would all start of innocently enough. . . Read the rest of this entry »

One of the features that only a few sites on the internet offer is the ability to share tactical problems with others. ATS has this feature. You too, can take advantage of it. Doing so, you will learn two things:
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The Adaptive Tactics Server, unlike some of the other sites and software that serve chess problems, is constantly evolving. Because it is a new concept in computerized chess training to attach metadata to problems so that performance in various categories can be measured and thus improved, the software is in flux. There are several, fairly simple to implement, improvements that I’ll be working on in the coming weeks months. Below is a short list.
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