I Am a Statistic!!

Well, sort of. I decided about a month or so ago to sign up as a tester for IM Igor Khmelnitsky to help him to prepare future instructional materials/books. I think pretty much anybody can sign up.

What happens is he e-mails his testers on Thursday evenings with sets of problems to solve (when they sign up, they self-report their current chess rating so he has an idea of how strong a player they are). Then, they have until the next Thursday to submit their answers to the problems via a link he provides in his e-mail. When he sends them the next set of problems, he also provides an answer key to the set just submitted.

Occasionally, I imagine out of some gratitude for the free work done by his testers, he sends them an assessment for some of the sets they have submitted. In my case, I have received feedback on his first tactical set and his first endgame set. I scored in the range of 1400-1800 with the tactical set, and he actually gave me an endgame rating of 1311 (quite a bit lower than I would have thought). Now, if I recall correctly, that particular endgame set did not involve rook endings (where I believe my endgame knowledge is strongest), so I'm not too surprised that I scored that low.

At any rate, the experience is great. My chess thinking is stimulated by these very difficult problems, and I would encourage anyone interested in helping IM Khmelnitsky to complete this form and prepare to be challenged!