Short-term and Long-term plans....

I am obviously still not ready to write an article about improvement in chess which will explain how to work on the endgames and partly it can be because of my laziness but I should not jump so quickly to the conclusions.
As the majority of the readers of this blog noticed I didn´t played many tournaments during the Autumn, but this part of the year is usually reserved for the training in my plans.
It will be changed next year, but right now I will talk a little about what I did with my chess in the last period.
Well, as I thought shortly after the Manhem GM tournament in late August I should already be finished with all my articles about improvement in chess but today, the very first day of November 2012 I am still not ready to write about how to train an endgames and I am sure that some of the readers are waiting to see what is the philosophy behind my approach in the openings.
As I already explained earlier on many occasions on this blog (and in the real life) I can be considered as lazy by nature.
This time when I am thinking twice about why am I so late with these articles the conclusions are quite an opposite.
I worked to much!
An idea that I should make a huge job with my chess, without trying to fix things which doesn´t works at the moment and move on, appeared to me during the long walks to the playing hall in Politiken Cup.
My plan was to play in Gothenburg and Borup and then to take a pause in the rest of 2012.
The games in Elitserien were an exception. (as I can do nothing about dates of these games).
The basic plan was to work on my own games as I played quite a lot of them and against quite a strong opposition, and to work on some chess books which should be carefully sorted among many.

I modified my plan during the last two months and as I am now in the middle of training period I can underline some work and draw some conclusions.
My plan was to change some bad habits in my thinking process which (as I believe) stops me to perform on my maximum level during the games.
The first thing which I did was to detect if there are some deeper reasons for my mistakes in good positions in 2012 or it is just bad focus.
It seems that it is the combination of both but I should highlight that there are something which I don´t understand in chess strategy which deprives me of the many victories.
I tried to to fix that by working on Jacob Aaggard book Attacking Manual 1 and I succeeded to finish this book by the end of September ( I remained you that I played in Borup during the two weekends in the middle of September).
There are about 140 exercises in this book.
I think that the best way to work on own games is to first analyse it with somebody else, and then to write down the whole analyse and at the end to check it with the computer engines.
I did exactly that with one part of my games which puzzled me the most, and I looked at them with Nils Grandelius and Stellan Brynell.
We already developed a tradition to look at the games together, even if this tradition is somehow interrupted when our playing schedules are different.
I often look at my games with a man from the little island in the middle of Mediterranean sea, which will write an article about chess on that island and he just moved from planing and conceptual phase to the sub-conceptual phase.
In the beginning of October I installed an app for chess tactics on my smart phone which contains about 20 000 exercises (which are considerably easier than the puzzles in the chess books like Calculation by Aagaard or Imagination in Chess by Gaprindashvilli).
I succeeded to solve about 80-100 position per day, which means that I solved between 2000 and 3000 positions.
It will hopefully help me to notice the easy tactics much quicker in my calculations during the games.

This positions can be compared with Istvan Pongo´s books Tactical Targets in Chess 1 and  Tactical Targets in Chess 2 and I can say that the hardest examples on the app are on the same level as middle level of these books.
This is very useful tool as I can solve one position per minute in average when sitting on the train from Eslöv to Malmö which takes 40 minutes in both directions.
It means 40 more positions every travel to Malmö.
The second and by far more serious part of my October training was my work on my Calculation of variations and what can be the better book than Calculation by Jacob Aagaard from his series Grandmaster Preparation.
In the whole book there are 388 positions, and I solved about 140 (In the next couple of days I´ll be in the middle).
That is not all, as I analysed (and improved) one important part of my opening repertoire, together with Michael de Verdier.
We shall see who will be the first one who will launch our novelties. I bet on him!
There are still two months to 2013 when I will start my new season, even if nothing is decided what will be my next tournament (It will be January, and Michael de Verdier and famous Cristopher Krantz will probably play too).
My plan is to finish Calculation book , finish all my not analysed games and work further on my opening repertoire (During that time I will solve about 5000 positions on my phone app).

I suppose that this post will be not so interesting to read, but this is what is all training about, hard work and not a lot of fun.
I´ll use this opportunity to deny all the wrong information in the media about my participation in some tournaments in Mostar.
It will not be any tournaments ( Elitserien is probably an exception) from my part in the rest of 2012!

Very soon....
Improvement in chess - The Endgames 
and
Improvement in chess - The openings