Improving my chess game

[incognito]

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But, there's no doubt it worked incredibly well for Michael. His USCF rating did indeed jump quickly and he ended up winning either the U1800 or U2000 section of the World Open (probably in 2003).

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I'm not a regular tourney player, but I play almost every day on FICS. I think the real lesson of his system is that until you have tactical mastery (or at least tactical competency), anything else you study at chess isn't very useful in practice. It doesn't matter how well you understand positional concepts, or the ideas behind the openings if you repeatedly lose pieces to simple tactical tricks. This seems obvious in retrospect, but I just wasn't there until I read Michael's piece.

I admit I didn't have the patience for the entire program he laid out, but a condensed version over two months saw my blitz rating on FICS jump from ~1700 to ~2050. The ability to quickly recognize tactical patterns is obviously even more important in blitz, but I've definitely improved.