I have mentioned before that I use my performance on the chess problems I created roughly 29 years ago as a proxy for measuring my current tactical strength. This is usually a good indicator.
I have been accused of simply memorizing the answers and not really challenging my brain. This is partly true. The challenge is to see how quickly I can get through them. My goal is to memorize the patterns rather than the problems themselves, although in reality I am doing some of both.
These problems form the foundation of my pattern recognition. My goal was always to be able to see simple tactics quickly—if not instantly. Most one-move problems are instantaneous for me. This is usually not true for the two- and three-move problems, but I would like it to be.
I have these goals because I play a great deal of speed chess and need to recognize tactical patterns very quickly.
After Christmas, I suddenly started doing worse on these problems. This led me to believe I was in a slump. There could be a variety of reasons for this, but my concern is that my skill might deteriorate as I get older.
At least for the moment, I seem to have worked my way out of the slump. In chess, hard work has always paid off for me, and I love the game so much that I enjoy the effort.
