Making it Difficult After several years of working on my chess improvement and from talking to both amateurs and masters it appears that adult amateurs tend to complicate their chess improvement by reading books and tackling concepts that are far too advanced for their level. So, here is my attempt to simplify my chess training…
Farbror the Guru has challenged the chess improvement community to come up with a list of chess goals for the coming year, so here are mine: Long Term Goals Increase USCF rating to 1400 (currently at 1283) Increase Chess Tempo standard tactics rating to 1850 (currently at 1700) Increase ICC standard rating (currently have a provisional…
Plateaus and You The brain needs time to assimilate and integrate new information as knowledge and to resolve conflicts with previously learned concepts and plateaus equate to slower progress while we assimilate new ideas. Not until we internalize these new ideas as knowledge are we able to move on to the next phase in our…
Tactics, Tactics and More Tactics My training for the past 2 months has consisted of doing tactics puzzles on Chess Tempo and working on my thought process. I spend an average of 30 mintues per day doing standard puzzles focusing on quality not quantity (yet). At the end of the week I create a problem set with…
Update: 10/17/2009 I modified the process based on conversations with FM Charles Galofre, I have merged the tactical and strategic scans into one. His point is that even if you find a strong tactical move, you should still look at the strategic aspects of the position since the game might be won with a quiet positional move which you…
I played in the U 1500 section of the Miami Open a few weeks ago, and it was not a good outing. I only won one of 5 games against a much lower rated opponent. While devastated, it has only made me work harder on my chess. The week following the Open, I immediately started…
White to move Highlight below for answer: 15.Rxf6 gxf6 16.Bh3+ Rd7 17.Bxd7+ Kxd7 18.Qg4+ Ke8 19.Nd5 Qd8 20.Qe6+ Kf8 21.Bh6#
It is very important that you have mastered exercises 1-7 before starting on this exercise. For exercises 1-7 visit the chess exercises page. Without looking at the board, tell all the squares controlled by: – a knight on c6 – a knight on f3 – a knight on b2 – a knight on c5 –…
(adapted by Herman Grooten) The following thought process which is recommended by Karpov and Mazukevich is used to detect the important features of an arbitrary position in order to devise a plan that conforms to the positional assessment derived by using this thought process. This thinking process is based on 7 criteria in which the…
It is very important that you have mastered exercises 1-6 before starting on this exercise. For exercises 1-6 visit the chess exercises page. Without looking at the board, tell all the squares controlled by: – a knight on c3 – a knight on e2 – a knight on f6 – a knight on d4