About the Virtual Chess Coach Program This program is geared for my improvement (a 35 year old 1278 USCF rated player), but I hope that others in a similar situation will be able to derive benefit from it as well. I will be modeling this program on the teaching’s of Dan Heisman. Dan Heisman is…
Why is it that beginners fail to choose simple plans that are right before their eyes? One answer may be that beginners do not evaluate the position before choosing a candidate move. Beginners briefly scan the board, choose a move they like and quickly analyze and play this move. The problem with this thought process…
A frequent issue confronted by amateurs is wishful thinking when calculating combinations. This propensity to fabricate beneficial scenarios in our analysis is very typical throughout an amateur’s game, but it is most dangerous when calculating combinations. You see a pretty combination worthy of Tal, and you analyze it over and over, after you have finished…
Improving your Thought Process This is the first in a series of posts about faulty thought process tendencies by beginners. Unfortunately, I am the source of inspiration, but hopefully by writing about these errors my thought process will improve. The most important thing that a beginning to intermediate player can do to improve their chess…
Tactics Program This tactics training program should not take more than 30 minutes per session, and it is flexible enough where you can adjust the amount of puzzles and / or the amount of time spent per puzzle as well as the session time so that you can customize it to your needs and study…
If you live in the South Florida area, the Miami International Chess Academy is offering group lessons with IM Blas Lugo at reasonable rates . Check out their website for more info.
The following game illustrates (starting in move 49.) how to exploit an extra pawn in a King and pawn endgame with many pawns left on the board. This example comes from James Howell’s excellent book ‘Essential Chess Endings’. Things to remember: 1. Activate the king. 2. Create a passed pawn to tie down your opponent’s…
Chessok, has made available online an opening tree search. You can now receive detailed statistics on all opening moves carefully classified and stored in their opening database.
My game has suffered recently, but I am more determined than ever to improve…so the following quote should help me on my way: Settle on your objective is the rule. Such an objective may be a pawn or a point. Which one, it matters not. But aimlessly drifting from one to another, this will expose…
Photo report of the Miami Chess Open held from September 28th through September 30th. Photography: William Mendez © 2007 Hikaru Nakamura wins the 2007 Miami Chess Open Photography: William Mendez © 2007 U.S Champion Alexander Shabalov Photography: William Mendez © 2007 IM David Pruess contemplates the position