Day 200 / 165 to go

I started with some tactic puzzles using CT-ART 4.0 and elevated my rating to 2300. YES, yes - I am most likely not yet at 2100 in real chess, but at least I went from 2100 (this was the rating I gave myself when I bought CT-ART 4.0) all the way up to 2300.  So, althought the number itself is unreal, the increase as such is motivating...

I then worked with Lommer - did fail on two puzzles; still miles away from claiming "I am back!" But at least there was a somewhat re-occuring theme during the last days: promoting to minor pieces (instead of queen or at least a rook). Although this sort of "under-promoting" is pretty unlikely to help me to score in real-life games, it widens my horizon as such... Here´s what I am talking about (remember, it´s a Lommer - so it´s White to move):

Finally, I continued to work my way through Smith´s Pump Up Your Rating: Today was an interesting session on visualisation. As an exercise he proposes to name the colour of a square just by reading its coordinates and vice versa: it helps to get a good mental image of the chessboard. Actually, I know that I am somewhat weak at this (and I remember that I was pretty good at it some 25 years ago). Hence, I will include this sort of "warm-up" into my training sessions!   And just like I am using CT-ART 4.0 "on the road", I can conduct this sort of "warm-up", too...  8-)