So on Tuesday afternoon I'm playing hooky to catch a $TEAM_A afternoon baseball game and then a $TEAM_B evening game. It'll be cold and miserable, but I'm not paying for the tickets, so, whatevs.

I got 86% on the ten-question chess test on CT Art I took last night, which made me feel pretty good, because it was at a level I was performing at around 70% on (level 40, for those keeping score at home). The "performance rating" was listed as 2504, which is abject nonsense, but it's good fun to think of. The most important take-away from this, besides the added tactical practice, is that taking one's time really does make a huge difference.

Current percentage correct by level, since nobody seems to web-log about that (note: 10, 20, and 30 have been completely done and I'm working on 30, I've gone back over the "erroneous" for 10 and most of it for 20):

10. 99% (note: after going back, initially 93%)
20. 93% (note: after going back, initially 86%)
30. 76%
40. 71%

50 and up: haven't done enough.
Overall: 79%
"Performance rating": 2157 (abject nonsense, don't trust it)

I have some bad habits in using the program, which I should wean myself of, since all that ends up doing is cheating me, like those people who cheat while doing pushups or something. I should look at the Encyclopedia of Middlegames software and Strategy 2.0 that came with it and think about the ideal way to use them.

Of course, the two things that will help most besides this tactical training is regularly playing games against difficult opposition at a slow time control and regularly going over annotated master games.

The $CITY Open is in May, I'm wondering about playing. I'm currently horribly underrated, so I have a chance at winning a class prize¹, but it's out in the far suburbs and, even if I had a car, it would be annoying to drive out to every day and exorbitant to get a hotel room. I may just do it. There are a couple other small tournaments around that I could try, also awkwardly-situated, where I could make a run for the class prizes before the next rating supplement comes out.

1: Because of the wide variation in chess abilities, there's the "real" section (Open) and then a few sections based on ratings (ie, for patzers), since, otherwise, there'd be no way amateurs could play in any tournament and still have fun. For a variety of reasons (one being that I haven't played in a tournament in over six years), if I were to play in a tournament, I could play in the U1300 category, which is basically the second-lowest section. The only lower section is intended for rank beginners and schoolchildren. I don't intentionally keep my rating that low, since sandbagging is immoral.