Build your own Workflow #1

Russell Sherwood  Saturday, September 4, 2021

In Tip of the Week #12 , I touched upon standard methods and was surprised when several (actually quite a lot) of players contacted me asking for details in general and of mine specifically. Rather than do that, this  will be the first of a series of articles about building your own workflow.

So why used a standard workflow? The simple reason is that is gives two main benefits:

(a) You don't missing anything out 

(b) You have a basis to improve your methods.

Without knowing it, the majority of us already use standardized methods. A simple example of this is related to anyone who has to get up in a morning against a fixed deadline (Starting Work, getting to school and so on). We all tend to do the same things in the same order , from the moment we wake up. These actions fitting together to get us to our destination on time (or not, in some cases).

So let's start to develop our model - we will start very simply. I did this one lunchtime and got to V14 in fairly short order, and then thought of other items I'd missed after that!

Why not tell you the finished item? People learn best when they need to think rather than being spoon-fed!

So let's start with our Version 1 Model - one matter to realize is that we are only looking at one move in one game - once we reach a certain point in development we will change that!

So V1

1. Get game with move to be played
2. Analyse move
3. Make Move

Simple at this point - you will notice no mention of Hardware/Software/Databases.......that is because early in development it is what that matters, not the How.

That's but somewhat lacking...let's move to V2

V2

1. Get move to be played

2. Analyse move 

2.1 Analyse move with Engine

3. Make Move

That's more realistic and shows us a convention - the step 2.1 is done at simultaneously with step 2.  A sad reality is that this is very similar (with probably one other step we will come to later) to what numerous modern CC players do - run SF14 for a while and then play its first choice. This is a major contributor to the increasing draw rates we all see.   If this step this is the case then the power of a player's hardware directly determines their rating.

This brings us to a side-discussion on how we improve our method - firstly we use critical thinking and secondly feedback from our games. If I were to look at V2 method, I can see two obvious improvements - the first sits between steps 2 and 3 and is a blunder check method. We can put all the effort in the world into the previous steps, but if we mess it up, then It's for nothing. The second improvement is that we are relying on our own and the engines' knowledge in Openings, so we move to V3

V3

1. Get move to be played

2. Consult Opening Materials

3. Analyse move

3.1 Analyse move with Engine

4. Blunder Check

5. Make Move

Now we are starting to make progress, although this process is still unlikely to generate "winning" moves at this point. Next time  we will continue this journey.

Just so I know I am not just simply screaming into the void, get in touch - let me know what you think is missing (and plenty of stuff is).

Till the next time