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Chess for Beginners
Training Insights
Jul 27th
I have slightly modified my training in the last week to include a new way of training tactics and a method to focus my training time.
A New Way of Training Tactics
I came across a forum post by IM David Pruess where he gives excellent advice on truly learning patterns when training tactics. Below is his advice:
The original post is titled Chess Advice Most Chess Player’s Don’t Like to Hear and it’s a must read.
or when i give players in the 1000-1800 range advice on improving their tactics, viz: 10-15 min per day of solving simple tactical puzzles. the goal is to increase your store of basic patterns, not to work on your visualization, deep calculation. remember that is your goal. you are not trying to prove that you can solve every problem. if you don’t solve a problem within 1 minute, stop. it’s probably a new pattern or you would have gotten it by now. (with private students i’ll take the time to demonstrate this to them: show them through examples that they can find a 3-4 move problem in 10 seconds if they know the pattern, and that they can fail to find a mate in 2 for 10 minutes if they don’t know the pattern). look at the answer, and now go over the answer 3 more times in your head to help the pattern take hold. your brain can probably take on 2-3 new patterns between sleeping, so you should stop once you’ve been stumped by 2 or 3 problems (usually will take about 10-15 min). there is no point in doing more than that in one day. and any day you miss, you can’t make up for. a semi-random estimate on my part is that you need about 2000 of these patterns to become a master. so you need to do this for 2 years or more.
i would guess that less than 1 in 100 of the people i have given this advice to have followed it to the letter. if they enjoy it, they’ll waste their time doing it for 1.5 hours in a day, choosing to ignore that it’s not helping them [after 15 min]. or some with ego issues will insist on trying to solve every single position (if only they linked their ego to their self-discipline
).
- IM David Pruess
A Specific Curriculum
While I am disciplined in spending a minimum of 30 minutes per day doing chess studies, I am usually jumping from book to book and topic to topic which ends up losing valuable time. In the past I have tried to work from a training schedule, but the problem has been that the schedule has been too general. What I started doing is creating a specific training curriculum, where I create a schedule 2 weeks into the future, with the exact content I should cover everyday (an example can be seen here). The schedule is created on a Sunday, and it takes no more than 15 minutes to create.
Positional Evaluation Checklist
Jul 17th
I have created a PDF document that is based on Karpov and Mazukevich’s thought process guidelines, and includes Herman Grooten’s modifications. You can download it here. The idea is to use it when going over annotated games, or when performing Stokyo exercises. Hopefully, by using it during your training sessions, the questions will sink into our subconscious, and we will subliminally use ask these same questions during actual play.
Feel free to leave comments if you have any suggestions to improve the checklist.
Redoubling Efforts
Jul 8th
I am organizing my chess training, and trying to simplify the material that I will be using in my studies. One of the new changes I have made is to create a site dedicated to my training program, which is called chessnotebook.com. I will be using chessnotebook.com as my online chess training diary and there I will be posting resource and diagrams that will be helping me in my quest for chess improvement.
Five Preliminary Endgame Rules
Jul 7th
1. Before even beginning to think of making a passed pawn, put all your pieces into as good positions as possible.
Queen – Center of board
Rooks – seventh rank for White, second rank for Black. But if the enemy has two or more minor pieces the rook must be careful about leaving his own camp and must be content with commanding the open file.
Knights – Square in the center or in the enemy camp, supported by a pawn which is cannot be attacked by a pawn.
Bishops – Center diagonals; pawn support is not essential but desirable.
King – Central, provided that he is not dangerously exposed. If the enemy has a rook, the King is best posted at or adjacent to e2(e7) or d2(d7) – fairly near the center, but still preventing the enemy rook from seizing the second (seventh) or first (eight) rank.
2. Avoid pawn-moves while you are getting your pieces well positioned because pawn-moves create lasting weaknesses and thus make your task harder.
3. Try to free your position from weaknesses; and if possible, make it hard for the opponent to do likewise.
4. When trying to win, keep pawns on both wings. When trying to draw, play to eliminate all the pawns on one wing. With pawns on one wing only, a pawn plus is usually insufficient for a win.
5. If you are a pawn up or more, exchange pieces (not pawns) wherever you can do so without losing in position.
Exception: do not rush an exchange that will leave you with a single bishop running on the opposite color to the enemy’s single bishop. Also, refrain from exchanging if it will give your opponent two bishops against bishop and knight.
CJS Purdy
Connecting the Dots in Chess
Jun 6th
I have made an observation while solving puzzles, that I feel will improve my tactical puzzle solving skills, and might have direct application during actual games.
When solving a tactical puzzle of intermediate to advanced level I either:
1. Have no clue how to go about solving it and get it wrong.
2. Have multiple ideas that look promising, but after further analysis don’t win {usually end up playing one of the two and get the answer wrong}.
3. Solve the puzzle correctly.
This post is going to focus on solving the 2nd category above. I have found that you will get many more puzzles correct by combining ideas that arise by analyzing different candidate moves. Unfortunately, by not making a link between the two, or forgetting about your first idea when looking at the second, I mainly fail to connect the dots and only after reviewing the correct answer do I see that I had been on the right track and would have answered correctly if I had combined my candidates.
You might want to solve this puzzles on your own before reading the answers below taking into account your thought process while doing so and then see if you encountered the same issues as I did.
Here’s the first position we will look at:
White to move and win
The first candidate that came to mind was 1.Bb6 attacking the Queen. I analyzed the response 1…Nxb6 2.axb6 Qxb6 which loses a pawn for White and the Black Queen lives on. So I abandoned this candidate and looked for a better move.
I then found that Qh6 looked promising and I began to analyze 1.Bh5 with the idea of Bh8 and then getting my Queen to h6. But I soon found that 1.Bh5 was a slow since it allows 1…Kh7 and White is out of gas. What I missed, and where I think there is room for improvement, is if I would have combined both moves. Attacking the Black Queen with 1.Bb6 with the idea of freeing the diagonal for my Queen to get to h6 with mate was the winning combination and one I failed to see by not connecting the dots.
Let’s look at another example, and one which occurred right after I had attempted to solve example #1 above.
White to move and win
In this position quickly saw that both the White rook and Queen were attacking the Black d8 rook, and that there might be a tactical opportunity if the Queen were deflected from its defense. The candidate that came to mind was 1. b4 but after further analysis I saw that the Queen could seek shelter by moving to 1…Qc7. The other candidate that stood out was 1.Qf6+ but the King can easily get out of the way with 1…Kg8 and there aren’t enough White pieces in the vicinity to force the issue. The third candidate I analyzed was attacking the undefended bishop with 1.Qe7 but I found that the bishop can get out of harms way via 1…Bc8. If I would have combined the two ideas or even looked a few ply deeper I would have found the answer 1.Qe7 attacking the bishop and preventing the Queen from seeking shelter at c7 after deflecting her with b4. 1…Bc8 2.b4! and Black resigned.
Critical Moments in Chess
Jun 1st
GM Dorfman, has suggested that every game has 5 or 6 critical junctures “forks” at which important decisions need to be made. By understanding that the game has reached a critical moment, you can take extra time in analyzing and evaluating your moves. These critical moments are where games are won or lost, and identifying these milestones in a game are the key to improving your game. Critical moments are characterized by the presence of 2 to 4 different possibilities. Below is Dorfman’s list of critical moments:
Critical Moments (Dorfman)
- Positions where there are possible exchanges.
- Change in pawn structure (especially central pawns).
- At the end of a series of forced moves (combination).
- Transposition into an endgame.
Training Position #1
May 29th
White wins this position by creating a passed pawn on the Kingside.
Note that if the Black pawn would be on d3 instead of c3, the game would be a theoretical draw.
Copy the FEN position 4k3/1pp2ppp/p1p5/8/4P3/8/PPP2PPP/4K3 w – - 0 0 and play this position against an engine.
NOTE: There was an issue with the original post. There was a missing White pawn on d4. The diagram and the FEN diagram have been updated.
The Sixth Ply
May 9th
Before we get started let’s define what a ply is in chess:
A ply is a half move and a move is equivalent to 2 ply or a turn by each player. For example, 1. e4 is one ply and 1…e5 would be the 2nd ply, together these two plys make one move.
Getting close to the truth of a chess position requires the calculation of a minimum of 6 ply (3 moves). The higher your rating the higher the ply calculation requirement increases since your opponent will be delving more deeply into the position than you. If you calculate anything less than 3 ply you are playing hope chess, since you are not forseeing your opponent’s responses.
Below is an assessment of how calculation skill correlates to one’s chess rating:
0-1000 1 ply
1000-1200 2-3 ply
1200-1400 4 ply
1400-1600 6 ply
1600-1800 8 ply
1800-1900 10 ply
1900-2000 12 ply
Stopping your calculations too soon can prevent you from finding the winning move. Many times the winning move comes after a series of seemingly unfavorable moves, and stopping your calculation too soon will prevent you from finding the best move in the position. At the same time, not looking deeply enough into your opponent’s moves will cause you to miss defensive opportunities against your opponent’s threats. More >