We've been talking a lot about how to improve. A related question is: how to know you are improving? For most of us the major source positive feedback is our winning percentage and our rank. Playing games, counting wins, tracking rank ... it's easily available and stimulating. The problems are manifold: it can be very frustrating if it doesn't happen; more importantly, we forget using the games to practice what we're training; we become focused on winning a game with whatever we have, while we should be building our strength ... we become obsessed with rank and get stuck in the variations around our mean level.

There's something better: a teacher. Good teachers hand out a few things to concentrate on and will evaluate you on those things by running through your games, or they'll give you some exercises to solve.

Most people on L19 substitute the community for their teacher. They offer games for review. The problem here is that they do so without having a real focus. Reviewers like me then make random comments, which tend to be more negative than positive. I try to force myself into a few positive remarks as well. In the best of cases, I draw a theme from the game and zoom in on the moves related to the theme. I do not always have the discipline for that and neither do my fellow reviewers.

So we end up with random negative feedback instead of positive feedback. Most forum members will be able to deal with that, but I reckon that most will resolve anyhow to winning percentage when longing for positive feedback.

Hence my call to the reviewees and owners of study journals: while most of you will happily continue with posting games for review, some of you who seek positive feedback will get more of it if you mention what aspect of the game you are training for, and if you make your games part of a specific training series in the first place.

(Or get yourself a teacher)