tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7846266856681564818.post3200637602973649593..comments2024-02-21T22:46:50.252-08:00Comments on Empirical Rabbit: Coakley’s Winning Chess Exercises for KidsGeoff Fergussonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07677387413949625511noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7846266856681564818.post-63069083416681234442014-04-06T23:27:30.641-07:002014-04-06T23:27:30.641-07:00The tactics examples in Green Coakley are not the ...The tactics examples in Green Coakley are not the easiest. For difficulty, they are probably on a par with those in Pandolfini. Otherwise, your list looks right to me.<br /><br />It is not at all clear that my speed training improved my chess overall. Indeed it is possible that my speed improvement resulted from looking for simple tactics at the expense of looking for other things that are also important.<br /><br />The number of tactical patterns is extremely large. If you impose a limit on complexity, the number will be smaller. Nonetheless, to get a number as small as 2,000, I expect that you would have to restrict yourself to problems at the level of the easier ones in Bain.<br /><br />If tactical patterns are randomly selected and there are 2,000 of them, 3,100 selections will give you exposure to just under 80% of them,see:<br /><br />http://empiricalrabbit.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/distinct-random-selections.html<br /><br />The seven books are a start, but I do not believe that they get you far down the road. Coakley clearly believes that slow training is more effective than fast training.Geoff Fergussonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07677387413949625511noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7846266856681564818.post-74001885384994951642014-04-05T17:51:15.963-07:002014-04-05T17:51:15.963-07:00Based on another of your articles, I think you'...Based on another of your articles, I think you'd rate the order of difficulty of the tactics books this way:<br /><br />1) Green Coakley<br />2) Bain<br />3) Woolum<br />4) Pandolfini<br />5) Heisman<br />6) Polgar<br />7) Ivaschenko 1b<br />8) Blue Coakley<br /><br />Ivaschenko was the last time when you felt you had noticeable improvement and you even mention in this Coakley review that your speed training didn't do this book justice. Do you think that after Ivaschenko, your store of basic tactics patterns is "full" and the only speed training you need is continual revisions with the 1st 7 books? Or do you think there's another book that could take the place of Blue Coakley in progressive speed training?<br /><br />I guess we need to find someone else who did the same type of training with #8 to know for sure. I will start Polgar at the end of this month. It takes me a little under 2 months to do 6 repetitions if I break the problems into 6 sets. So it won't be until the end of October before I'd be scheduled to finish Blue Coakley.<br /><br />Between the first 7 books, there's ~3100 tactics problems to solve. I'd imagine by that point you should be close to getting those 2000 tactics patterns down.SilentKnighthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17050951919945684210noreply@blogger.com