In the diagram White has an outpost on e5, but Ne5 can always be met by …Nxe5 and after recapturing with the pawn, White’s outpost is gone. White needs to bring another piece to bear on e5, so White to move would play 1.Bg5 and follow it up with Bh4 and Bg3. If on the other hand Black is on the move, he would seek to prevent this with 1…h6, or a more active solution 2…Qe8( so as to meet Bg5 with 2…Qh5! threatening Rxf3) or 1…Qb6. Either move gives Black a fine position.

If you are unable to cover your opponent’s outpost, then extremely active harassing tactics are needed.

The diagram is from Unzicker – Fischer, Varna 1962.  If you are unable to cover your opponent’s outpost, then extremely active harassing tactics are needed. In this position the White knight is at least four moves away from reaching d5, this gives Black some breathing room to prevent it, since after the White knight reaches d5 White is lost.

1… Ra4 Immobilizing the knight. 2. c3 Qa6 3. h3?  Rc8 4. Rfe1 h6 5. Kh2 Bg5 6. g3 Qa7 7. Kg2 Ra2 8. Kf1 Rxc3! White resigns, as after 9.Rxa2 (9.bxc3 Qf2#) Rf3+ 10.Ke2 Rf2+ 11.Kd1 Qxa2 his position is wrecked.

The lessons to be learned here is that structure alone is not quite everything. The pieces must be able to coordinate with the pawn structure.

From Stean’s Simple Chess

Assumptions

1. I played over 3 random games from each of the masters on the list.

2. I gave myself a 0 for needs work, 1 for average, 2 for good, 3 for very good and 4 for outstanding.

3. I averaged the scores for the three games, and gave myself an overall score.

4. I will now begin reviewing  in detail, the games of the master with which I have the most affinity.

In my case I scored an average of 2.67 when playing over Tarrasch’s games, and the second runner up was Karpov with a score of 2.0. I observed that I did better with the more positional / classical style players than with the more modern / dynamic styles.

I will continue to go over master games strictly focusing on Tarrasch’s games using Guess the Move, and then compare my annotations with his annotated games collection( Three Hundred Chess Games ).

What I am planning to do, is to review one or two games from a list of masters in chronological order so that I might find the master whose games I would like to delve deeper into. I will be looking for games where the play is clearest and the outcome is artistic.

Master list:

1. Paul Morphy
2. Wilhelm Steinitz
3. Tarrasch
4. Emanuel Lasker
5. Akiba Rubinstein
6. Jose Raul Capablanca
7. Alexander Alekhine
8. Mikhail Botvinnik
9. Mikhail Tal
10. Tigran Petrosian
11. Bobby Fischer
12. Anatoly Karpov
13. Garry Kasparov

I will chose games based on the following criteria:

1. Won games

2. Preferrably annotated

3. In chronological order

4. Plays my openings

Strengthening Your Weaknesses

Whatever your weaknesses may be, you must identify them and apply great effort and patient focus to turn them into strengths. Here are some ideas in converting your weaknesses into strengths:

• Focus – Give all of your attention to your training, and eliminate distractions when studying.
• Practice – Practice daily, but create a varied training schedule that provides you with a fresh perspective every time you train. Your practice should revolve around material that address your weakest area.
• Effortful Study –  Always give 100% during every training session, and do not hesitate to cross your comfort zone during each training session. Each session should build upon the last either in intensity or difficulty.
• Play – Playing allows you to transfer the knowledge and skills picked up in your training environment to real over the board play.
• Integrate thought process into your practice.

Discovering Your Weaknesses

If you are unsure as to which areas you need to work on the most the following tips might help you  to identify the weaknesses in your game:

• Review your games with a teacher or a stronger player.
• Perform the Khmelnitsky Chess Exam to find your weak areas.
• If you are unable to find a stronger player or a teacher, go over a minimum of 10 of your long games. Do a first pass of the game on your own, and then have a chess engine review it. Determine why you lost each of these games, and create a training plan to address the top 1-2 weaknesses you discover.

My Training Modifications

• Spend 80% of my study time working on analytical positions that require both analysis and calculation.
• Continue my tactics study program.
• Play long games that allow the time necessary to work on my thought process as well as the training of analysis and combinational skills.
• Play over annotated master games using “Guess the Move” method.
• Use a physical board for the majority of my training.

Original Post 7/27/2010

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 CurriculumWhile 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.

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.

 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.

Here’s a good example of a tactics puzzle where I did not find the correct answer because I stopped my calculations 1 ply too soon.

In this position I saw 1. Qxe5 and 1. Rd8+ as possible candidate moves. I then proceeded to analyze 1.Qxe5 Qxe5 2.Rd8+ which leads to the next position:

At this point I saw that the Black King seemed to be escaping via 2…Ke7 and he would also be attacking the undefended rook on d8. I stopped my calculations at this point and proceeded to analyze 1.Rd8 which also lead nowhere. If only I would have continued analyzing 1 ply deeper, I would have found 3.Re8# and White Wins. Here’s the winning position:

Consistently calculating at least 6 ply deep on most moves is one of the key improvements you can make in your thought process that will allow you to improve your chess skill.

Highlight for answer: 1.Qh6! Qxe1+ 2.Bf1 (2.Kg2? Ne3+), and Black must give away his Queen with 2. …Qe#+

During my most recent chess break, I ran into a friend of mine who loves chess and who had been in Japan doing a 4 week Seshin at a Japanese Zen Monestary.I asked him if he had time to practice his chess while at the monastery, and he told me that he had not, but that he had briefly spoken to a monk named Tezin, who also loved chess and was a pretty good player. He told me that Tezin had told him how his chess had improved in the last two years even though he did not practice as much as before he became a monk. Tezin told him that he attributed his chess improvement to what he called the ‘Secrets of Zen Chess’.

I was very interested in hearing these so called secrets of chess improvement, and begged my friend to tell me what Tezin had relayed to him… so here goes:

Less is More

- Less focus on ratings and more focus on enjoyment & playing a beautiful game.

- Less focus on reading books and more focus on practice.

- Less focus on chess and more focus on solving the problems on the board.

Impermanence

- Because the position is always in flux, you need to adapt your plans and be flexible at all times.

- Because of the fluidity of the position, the position needs to be reassessed every few moves.

- Realize that dynamic advantages don’t last forever…take advantage of them while you have them.

Practice

- Practice for the sake of practice.

- Practice for the beauty of the game.

- Practice because you love to practice.

Cause and effect

- Consider the cause and effect of every move.

- Consider how the position has changed after your opponent’s move

- Consider how the position has changed after your move.

- Consider if there are any tactical conditions on the board.

Mindfulness
- Be mindful of the game, you must become one with the board.

- Be mindful of the harmony of your pieces.

- Be mindful of the position, get to the marrow of the board.

- Be mindful of threats against you.

- Be mindful of your threats against your opponent.

- Be mindful of checks, captures and threats.

Harmony
- How can I improve the harmony of my pieces?

- How can I disrupt the harmony of my opponent’s pieces?

- How can I improve the weaknesses in my camp?

- How can I create weaknesses in my opponent’s camp?

Mastery lies in a convergence of skills that are already a part of you and not new knowledge derived from books. Mastery lies through practice that will lead you to uncover those things that are already inside you. Mastery lies in being mindful in life and at the board, so that you will know what your opponent’s plan is before your opponent realizes what his plan is. Mastery will be attained once you stop trying to attain it.

These are the keys to mastery and these are the secrets of Zen chess.