![\"Screen](\"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Screen-shot-2014-10-09-at-2.57.05-PM.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nI don’t know which to be more ashamed of… the fact that I have played more than 200 games against Shredder (that’s a lot of time-wasting, and it’s just in the last three months!) or the fact that my rating against it is only 2021.<\/p>\n
Some comments: In my first game I lost to Shredder set at 2350 (I believe). In my second game I beat it at a rating of 2180. That explains the huge rating spike after two games, when my rating went over 2250. I should have stopped then!<\/p>\n
There was then a prolonged trough as Shredder took advantage of my tactical inaccuracies and pounded me again and again.<\/p>\n
My gradual rating improvement is probably not due to any actual improvement in my play. Even though Shredder varies its openings a LOT, there are still a few that I have learned to take advantage of. For example, after 1. b4 I get a pretty good game every time with 1. … a5 2. b5 c5. In general, when Shredder’s rating is set below 2200 it tends to play goofball openings like 1. b4 and 1. … g5 more often than is healthy.<\/p>\n
Another reason for the rating improvement is that more and more I have begun to ignore it when my flag falls. Shredder does not rate the game unless and until somebody resigns or is checkmated or a draw happens. So if my flag falls, I keep on playing. I’ve gotten many, many wins and draws that way. In one sense this is useful for training; one reason I started playing Shredder at “weakened” settings is that I wanted to practice winning superior positions. So instead of game in 10 minutes, the ground rules have been more like this. After 10 minutes I get either a won, lost, or drawn position. After that, I take my time and try to bring home the 1 point or\u00a0\u00bd point. If I’m lost and my flag is down, I just resign.<\/p>\n
By the way, Shredder also plays on after its flag falls. So it’s not as if I’m the only one.<\/p>\n
There is one obvious disadvantage to this “training technique” — when I play in a tournament I won’t have the same luxury of ignoring the flag. But hopefully I will be able to adjust my thinking accordingly. We’ll see!<\/p>\n
P.S. My wife saw the title and wondered, of course, what the shame was. When I told her it was that I had played 200 games against the computer, she understood perfectly. In fact, she added her own embellishment: “… When you should have been keeping up with cr** around the house!”<\/p>\n
(Two hundred chess games is a lot of dishes not washed…)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I just discovered that Shredder lets you see your “rating progress,” just as the USCF does. I don’t know which to be more ashamed of… the fact that I have played more than 200 games against Shredder (that’s a lot of time-wasting, and it’s just in the last three months!) or the fact that my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[235,25,171],"tags":[1869,2995,85,1245,1049],"class_list":["post-3189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-off-topic","category-people","category-ruminations","tag-computer-chess","tag-marital-advice","tag-ratings","tag-shredder","tag-training"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/80"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3189"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3194,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3189\/revisions\/3194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}