Chess is a humbling game where the goal for me it to simply have my wins + draws > 51%...then the trend goes up and to the right. When you fall off the horse, get back on. Great article as always.
I find that when I categorize my mistakes, patterns emerge very quickly. To simplify it you could look at only your losses and focus on the single biggest reason you lost each game. Out of your last 10 or 20 losses, what was the most common cause?
A coach can also be very helpful here. A good coach is likely to instantly spot patterns you're unaware of.
I picked a selection of 10-20 games (admittedly they were blitz games so probably more errors), then started to categorise my errors on a table. So opponents down the left hand side and then as I played through my games I would note the type of error I was making at the top of each column. In the body of the table you then either make a note or a 1 for example if you make that error in a game. Pretty soon you see a revealing picture of your main recurring errors, Mine were making incorrect exchanges, calculation errors, failure to convert a better position and missing opponents moves.
Some of this stuff could be relevant to stock picking as well.
For sure. Really anything that has an element of chance, which is just about everything when you come right down to it.
Chess is a humbling game where the goal for me it to simply have my wins + draws > 51%...then the trend goes up and to the right. When you fall off the horse, get back on. Great article as always.
Interesting article. Any suggestions on a systematic way to implement nr 1? Detecting recurring patterns of mistakes is not necessarily easy...
I find that when I categorize my mistakes, patterns emerge very quickly. To simplify it you could look at only your losses and focus on the single biggest reason you lost each game. Out of your last 10 or 20 losses, what was the most common cause?
A coach can also be very helpful here. A good coach is likely to instantly spot patterns you're unaware of.
I picked a selection of 10-20 games (admittedly they were blitz games so probably more errors), then started to categorise my errors on a table. So opponents down the left hand side and then as I played through my games I would note the type of error I was making at the top of each column. In the body of the table you then either make a note or a 1 for example if you make that error in a game. Pretty soon you see a revealing picture of your main recurring errors, Mine were making incorrect exchanges, calculation errors, failure to convert a better position and missing opponents moves.