Today I had a great lesson with Attila.

Major points we discussed out of the Power of Habit book that apply to chess improvement:
1) Look at the power of visualization
2) Writing a long of chess activity like the dieters will show patterns and make the activity conscious. Dieters experienced twice as much loss success than dieters that didn't write things down.

Primary pattern to work on improving: Good strategy (good position) and avoid bad move (blunder). Usually a tactical mistake.

We discussed that sometimes during a game they will be a psychological blow that blocks (blockades) our thinking process.

Attila has been working with a study on reviewing How to chose a move, by Soltis.

Attila discussed how his chess learning and coaching when he was younger. It appears that they studied entire games holistically and systematically instead of emphasizing particular concepts and how they apply in game play.

Important: Need to understand how/why we win & lose games. This applied to longer games as well as blitz if we want to improve.

Losing can also be a habit.
We discussed the value in working with puzzles and writing many variations and selecting the best move. This process needs to be worked on. Write down a thinking process before making decision.

To work on:
1) Visualize yourself winning a game, the good feelings of a dominate position prior to playing a game.
2) Log chess study and activities on the blog
3) Analyze games after playing them to determine reasons why winning & losing.
4) Study and analyze positions (and puzzles). Identify (write down) several variations 3-5 moves long to evaluate. This applies to any position in the game, end games as well as puzzles.