I Finished the Circles
HUZZAH!!!! I am finally a graduate of the U of MDLM (BA in Tactics). Say goodbye to the rotating head at the top of the page. He can finally rest from his endless circling. The picture below shows Buddy and I celebrating my graduation. I'm the one on the left.
Thanks to everyone for the encouragement when I struggled with this quite taxing program of study. First, my wife Julia! Also, without the Knights Errant, I would not have finished this Quixotic quest. No freaking way. Especially helpful was the the first wave of Knights that came before me, their patience and willingness to engage with topics was unique. It was a small town back then, but the chess blogosphere has become Los Angeles. I'm a small-town kinda guy. So special thanks to Tempo, Tak, J'adoube, Pale MD, Celtic Death, King of the Spill (the first Knight's blog I ever saw), Nezha, Sancho, Man de la Maza, Chris Kilgore, for bearing with me as I took my first steps with chess and with blogging.
I'd like to thank some others. DK Transform has been a constant source of inspiration and befuddlement. Patrick (chess for blood) helped me see a broader view of chess and keep a sense of humor. Then there is Zenchess, DG, Michael Goeller, chessloser, and .... Hey, wait, don't start the music yet, I'm not done thanking people. Sorry they are telling me to get off the stage...if I didn't mention you sorry I wanted to but they are music-ing me off. Thank you blog readers!
The final table:
A total of 59 minicircles and over 15000 problems solved before I knew all the solutions by hand. It took me over a year but feels great.
P.S. My new banner includes pictures of the amazing sculpture, The Confessional.
P.P.S. New Secretary Knight will be announced Monday.
Thanks to everyone for the encouragement when I struggled with this quite taxing program of study. First, my wife Julia! Also, without the Knights Errant, I would not have finished this Quixotic quest. No freaking way. Especially helpful was the the first wave of Knights that came before me, their patience and willingness to engage with topics was unique. It was a small town back then, but the chess blogosphere has become Los Angeles. I'm a small-town kinda guy. So special thanks to Tempo, Tak, J'adoube, Pale MD, Celtic Death, King of the Spill (the first Knight's blog I ever saw), Nezha, Sancho, Man de la Maza, Chris Kilgore, for bearing with me as I took my first steps with chess and with blogging.
I'd like to thank some others. DK Transform has been a constant source of inspiration and befuddlement. Patrick (chess for blood) helped me see a broader view of chess and keep a sense of humor. Then there is Zenchess, DG, Michael Goeller, chessloser, and .... Hey, wait, don't start the music yet, I'm not done thanking people. Sorry they are telling me to get off the stage...if I didn't mention you sorry I wanted to but they are music-ing me off. Thank you blog readers!
The final table:
| # Circles | Percent Correct | |
| Problem Set 1 | 14 | 98-99-100-100-100-100-100 100-100-100-99-100-99-98 |
| Problem Set 2 | 15 | 90-93-96-99-99-99-99-99 99-99-99-99-99-99-100 |
| Problem Set 3 | 8 | 85-93-97-99-99-99-99-100 |
| Problem Set 4 | 13 | 73-87-93-96-98-99-99 99-99-99-99-99-100 |
| Problem Set 5 | 9 | 69-92-96-99-99-99-99-99-100 |
NOTE: Circles undertaken with CTB.
A total of 59 minicircles and over 15000 problems solved before I knew all the solutions by hand. It took me over a year but feels great.
P.S. My new banner includes pictures of the amazing sculpture, The Confessional.
P.P.S. New Secretary Knight will be announced Monday.
posted by Blue Devil Knight at 10/11/2007 12:35:00 PM
30 Comments:
Congrats. Maybe one day I will be graduated. I am sure it was a long tough journey. Must be nice to have support from your family for you endeavors.
CONGRATULATIONS!!!
Congrats!
Strong work!
HOT DAMN! Way to go!
But don't give up practicing tactics now or you'll give up all the ground you've gained.
Thanks guys. Rocky: I plan to review them pretty much daily. But not today. Today is free day. I do whats I wants today!
Congratulations!!
Well done! *applaud*
Congratulations,
15000 problems. OMG. That's really a good idea as far as tactics are concerned! Respect.
kind regards,
svensp
Nicely done sir.
dearest BDK, thank you for all that you have done for us, and done it well. there can be no doubt as to the fartherest reaches that you have yet to attain. so smart, so kind, so blunt even on occassion... such a good moderator if not leader. you also show us great craft in your exeCution on top of your chess only exploration.
mabye do some 'rooms' (mushrooms) or drink yuka or petote then play 0/4) then fly to amsterdam for a dram of Belgian beer with tempo... over cigars. :)
seriously, enjoy this moment and god bless you.
:)
and, as i like to say, 'warmest', dk
Congratulations! This is quite an accomplishment.
Thanks all, and DK. I am definitely going to take a day or two off from chess. Let the motivation build back up a bit.
Cool picture of you and the dog and the sigar. That's a big one right there! Congrats on finishing the circles.
Congratulations! Good to see you finally smoking that cigar! Now you are free to do what you like. Keep blogging.
FELICITATION... BDK and thank you for all that you have done for us...15000 problems wow !
Dude! Way to fight the good fight! I too saw the KOTS (don't call him that) as the first chess blog. It was a small town then.
Interesting as to how you will see the results play out in tourney play.keep us posted.
Jim
Thanks Temp, DD, KOTS, Tak, Magic. It will be very interesting to see how this influences my games over the next couple of months. Right now I'm a wee bit hung over from the beer, whiskey, and cigar I had last night to celebrate.
Go Sox!
Congratulations! A real triumph of dedication and persistence. It will be interesting to see where you go from here.
So now that you've finished the circles does that mean your period of servitude to de la Maza has finished? Or are you still bound to guide neophytes in the faith? I need to know whether to congratulate you or not.
Incidentally, I will miss the spinning head. Shamefully, I was never clever enough to notice "spinning head" and "circles" were intended to be linked as some sort of pun.
Loomis: thanks. I plan on just focusing on playing, maintaining by doing a few problems a day from the problem set, and really focusing on getting my thought process working on every move rather than 60% of my moves.
We'll see, though. For now I don't want to look at a chessboard for a few days.
Liquid EP: I'll be around, but will be passing on all my duties as Secretary soon. I'll post on that Monday. I already changed the FAQ: now we won't have to change the link to the FAQ every time a new secretary king is appointed.
I've been under a rock... Just catching up... HUZZZZZZAH!
congrats. have fun with Art of Chekmate. the real fun begins now.
Thanks Katar. I'm just looking forward to playing and not training for a little while! I can sure see why the "real" Circlers got burnt out: I'm feeling it a little bit and I did the wimpy mini-circles.
I noticed your web site disappeared, the one hosted the same place as your ChessDB photo.
STRONG!!!!!!!!!!!
Sorry for the delay here, but congratulations, congratulations, congratulations my man. Well done. I'd like to say it seems like yesterday the rotating head was a part of the blogosphere, but well, it seems more like a few years. LOL. Way to stick with it, and congratulations again.
Well done! :)
But one thing i don't understand about you guys: You all seem to see the 7circles as a method to struggle through once, and that's it...
I'm in my 5th serious Circles now (every time it's like 1500 tactical problems, or endgames)
I believe this goes on and on. You can keep doing circles forever! (and you should)
Do it once, and feel 'graduated' seems so weird to me....
You can keep improving at tactics, imo!
But well done anyway! ;-)
Cheers!!
Phyle from Belgium
BP: Thanks! (I think I responded at my next post to your comment here :)).
PMD: thanks a lot. It was hard. Not as hard as what you guys did (none of this mini-circle crap!), but nonetheless a long-distance event that was sometimes very tiring.
Anon phyle: I can't imagine doing them over and over. More power to ya'. I want to focus more on other things, like actually playing. Then, if I plateau with that I'll work through master games, maybe get a coach again.
Luckily, the Circles aren't the only way to improve at, or maintain a level of, tactical vision.
BDK, my belated congratulations! I'm looking forward to reading about your progress post intensive tactics training.
BTW, great hat!
Thanks Chesstyro and Jeff.
Jeff: thanks for noticing the hat. I love that hat! It is a filter for me: if someone understands that hat, then I know they didn't just become a Pats fan when they started winning Super Bowls.
Go Sox! Let's hope the Pats don't get cocky and lose this weekend. That would likely be one of the biggest upsets in league history. I hope they aren't so focused on Indianapolis that they forget to prepare for Miami. I know that isn't Belicheck's style: he is always good at focusing only on the next game. But even he is probably thinking the next game should be easy.
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