The following is the first lesson from General Treatise on Chess by Roberto Grau (from now on referred to as GTC). Material Vs. Time Piece value is based on what the pieces are doing and not because the piece is on the board. The following example shows how an advantage in time can be superior…
Recently a Spanish language set of four chess books by the name of el Tratado General de Ajedrez by Argentinian Chess Master Roberto Grau was recommended to me. The book has been called the Bible of Latin American Chess, and it is highly regarded among Latin American chess players. Grau’s work which is composed of 4 volumes, is…
When reviewing master games, the expert annotator usually does not cover the last few moves of the game and attributes the remaining moves to “The rest is a matter of technique.” Well, I came across the following explanation by Mednis in his excellent endgame book Rate Your Endgame Play, on just what exactly is a…
One of the best ways of improving your game, is to review your chess games afterwards. You can then use your game as a springboard to additional learning by identifying your weaknesses and any missing concepts that caused you the game. One of the problems I have encountered, is that I haphazardly go over the…
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…
According to experts it takes approximately 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert in any field. So the following is my attempt to gauge my chess progress based on the 10,000 hour rule. Assumptions 10,000 hours of practice = expert A chess expert is a player with a 2000 USCF rating. Your starting chess…
I have finished the exercise I proposed in Pt. 1 of Finding the Master Within, and below are my results: 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…
There is no doubt that reviewing master games is one of the best methods to improve your chess. The question for me has always been which master’s games do I study first? There are schools of thought that answer this by stating that you should review master games starting in chronological order, since this maps…
The path to chess improvement lies in finding your weakest area of knowledge and placing all of your effort into converting it into a strength. My greatest weakness is an apprehension, bordering on fear, of delving into deep calculations and analysis. This analytical deficiency affects both my combinational and analysis in over the board play…
Update: 8/7/2010: I have been following my own advice for the past two weeks, and I have to say that my training is more focused than ever, and I am beginning to see tangible improvements over the board. If you are interested, I am continuing to post my weekly training schedule at my Chess Notebook…