Chess Stamina

Posted by GilaChess
September 6, 2006

Here’s a good measurement of chess stamina - Bullet Chess.

Last Sunday morning, I played online chess at WCN starting at 3am. I haven’t been playing online for about 2 and half weeks. Most of the games were bullet (1 minute chess) and I managed to break through the 1600 rating. However around 8am to 9am, I started losing more games than I won and my rating then dropped to 1400+.

I stopped playing at around 9am as I sensed I was becoming a mindless chess zombie.

WCN-Sept-Rating

Sure, bullet chess is not really serious chess. However, you still need to be alert enough to spot basic tactics like fork, skewers, pins, discovered attacks etc in order to do well in it. I was pretty happy as that means I managed to stay focus and alert for about 4 hours !!

After some thought, I changed my mind. That really is NOT very good considering that that is only half a day. In a full day tournament like the Stonemaster #2 and the coming CAS 3rd Quarter, my chess stamina will give out and performance will fall around Round 4 onwards.

So my next big Patzer question is how does one improve chess alertness and stamina?

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Chess, Online Chess

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Comments

rapid is not good actually. Endurance is more importance. try to vs comp every time every day..try to understand why does comp move here and there…you’ll surprise that you’ll eventually in real games do the same move as computer…

p/s: it’s works on me..

Comment by Queen_Fianchetto on September 6, 2006 @ 10:28 am

I was out of stamina in our last two rounds of our Merdeka Team. I believe it is lack of physical exercise these past months to build up our stamina.

“Your body has to be in top condition. Your chess deteriorates as your body does. You can’t separate body from mind.” ~ Bobby Fischer

Comment by Remis Aman on September 6, 2006 @ 7:28 pm

Yeah I suspected that. Physical fitness definitely helps. Guess I was looking for some other short-cuts :)
So 2 solutions to this :-

  • mental exercise

    • easier as I can just do more tactical drills in CT-Art, Pocket Middle-game with varying time constraints

  • physical exercise

    • This is always the hardest for lazy bums like me :) Guess I have to find a “sport” or stick to some regular program.

    Comment by GilaChess on September 7, 2006 @ 9:09 am
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