1001: A Tactics Odyssey

I completed every tactics problem in 1001 Chess Exercises for Beginners in one day. I got 953 problems correct (95.2% accuracy) and it took me 8 hours 1 minute (cry). That's an average of 28.8 sec/problem.

(See this previous post about my methods)


Notes on the final day of solving

I started at 9am and finished around 8:30pm. So that's 11.5 hours on the clock. It's a full day commitment.

Going through a physical book (well, PDF) is slow. If this was an app or on a website, I'd surely be able to go a bit faster. It'd be a luxury to see a single puzzle, play my move, have my accuracy tracked, and have the next problem present itself automatically. The way I did it required looking at the puzzle, getting the solution, then checking the solutions page in another window, finding the problem number and verifying my answer. It was a slog to wade through the material in this manner but I knew what I was getting into so whatever! This method helps me take my time and limit guessing. I'm aware this book is on chessable but....uh.....this is how I did it, haha.

It was pretty helpful to keep a list of problems to come back to so I wouldn't get bogged down staring at one for long periods of time. When I finished, I had a list of about twenty problems that I circled back to and most of them were much easier when I had a "fresh" set of eyes on them.

"Fresh" isn't the best word to use there actually. I was definitely exhausted towards the end, which was a blur to be honest. I had a few beers afterwards to unwind but even then, I remember having a hard time going to sleep. Chess positions were cascading through my brain.

For my own records, here are those problems I got wrong on the final attempt: 99 234 260 291 292 295 316 339 354 357 389 396 398 424 428 451 526 546 548 554 559 569 576 588 615 649 650 707 719 739 740 741 742 746 749 771 796 810 832 849 864 882 900 933 940 952 967 968

I noticed that I missed quite a bit from the second half of the book which was not what I was expecting since I thought those would have been fresher in my memory. Although the first half of the book is the easier half because they're categorized by motif so that must have really helped me. Additionally, my speed increased as I was approaching 1001 (and 9pm!) and I missed a few I normally wouldn't have because of it. Of the first 492, I only missed 16 problems. Of the second half 509, I doubled my incorrect number to 32.

I tried my best to never use the hints under each puzzle. I was much more diligent in the morning but as the day went on, I'd guess maybe a hundred times my eyes wandered to see the hint.

In retrospect, it's very cool that I had some memory of basically every single position. I didn't get them all right but every one was familiar to me. It's amazing that you can log in 1001 chess positions in your brain. Can I re-create all of them on a board without looking at the book? Of course not. I certainly do have the patterns and ideas in my head though and different things would get triggered each time I saw the next problem. I think these "triggers" are one of the takeaway lessons. For example, I might have seen a problem and immediately thought, "Okay this is a fork that's possible because of the pinned f7-pawn." Or "Yep this is that one that ends in a king-queen skewer but we need to trade minor pieces first so remember move-order carefully!" Any given tactical chess position might have many themes going on but it's up to us to find the relevant ones that actually accomplish something in the position. I successfully trained my brain to automatically trigger certain themes after seeing these positions so many times and through the course of cycling through them, I could automate the filtering process to see the relevant themes pretty quickly. We'll have to see how it carries over to real chess games!

How did this affect my chess?

To be determined. I need to get a larger sample of games. (Edited Feb 2021) Classical games will be the best gauge since I'll play my best chess in that time control. At the end of June 2020, I had played 248 classical games on lichess. I wanted to get a sample size of 100 games to see the changes and as of early February 2021, I made it! I've always said that I don't play that many games! 

Here is where my classical record and rating stood on June 29, 2020 when I was in the middle of working through 1001 Chess Exercises for Beginners:

CLASSICAL +32 win differential
1726 Rating
132 wins (53%)
16 draws
100 losses
248 total games

And NOW, I've finally played 101 (whoops) classical games and I have some ratings changes to show! Here are my numbers as of February 2, 2021.

CLASSICAL +56 win differential
1864 Rating
191 wins (56%)
23 draws
135 losses
349 total games

Across those 101 games: 

CHANGES
+138 Rating
59 wins
7 draws
35 losses

There ya go. That's what everybody came here for. I should note that I will NOT claim my tactics work I describe in this post is the sole reason for the ratings gain. I'll never tell anyone, "Hey, just do this 1001 Chess Exercises book and you'll gain 138 points!" I don't think I was plateau'd at my 1726 rating and so I don't think doing the tactics training got me out of a funk or anything. I believe I was still trending upward anyway so these changes could have been part of the natural trend of things. Additionally, I've done more master game analysis lately and I changed my opening some, so those are factors. However, I'm certain this training I began last summer and continue today (I began working through 1001 Chess Exercises for Club Players in September) has made me more tactically aware so I don't play so many tactical blunders and my sense of criticality has increased.