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…
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…
[Annotator: Bronstein, David] A weakness of the dark squares is also a weakness of the pieces and pawns on the light squares. Light-square weaknesses are also possible, resulting in a weakening of the enemy pieces on the dark squares. The point of an attack on the dark squares is that by placing my pawns and…
The purpose of the following list of chess errors, is to assist us to diagnose our weaknesses when we annotate our games. Opening Weaknesses Falling victim to an opening trap Ignoring the development of your pieces Waiting too long to castle Opening inaccuracy Moving the same piece more than once in the opening Calculation Weaknesses…
Favorite Chess Blogs 1. Chessvibes : News, tournament reports and endgames studies. 2. Chess for all Ages : A little bit about everything about chess. 3. Chess Training : Not a well known blog, but worth checking out. It is not frequently updated, but when it is the content is exactly what I’m looking for…
I have been going over My System for the past few weeks as part of the study strategy portion of my study schedule. I think the best way to go over the content of the book is to go over The Elements section going over each example carefully. Luckily I have a Chessbase file with…
The Road to Chess Improvement Ruke Vin Hansen in his amazing article Mind Games: Who is Doing the Playing? comes to the conclusion that the best way to improve chess skill is not through reading chess books or watching DVDs. He argues that reading more books only helps fill your short term memory whereas quality…
The diagram shows that White has the center and the d-file. In other respects positions are equal. White with the move will attempt operations on the d-file. This presents difficulties since the protected Black pawn at d6 represents a “granite block”. The key move in this position is 1.Nd5 and the knight placed here we…