The Bishop and Open Diagonals: In order to obtain its full working force, a Bishop must be provided with open diagonals; here its long-range power can be put to good effect. The following game shows how the opening of an attacking diagonal can lead to an immediate decision.
1. In the endgame the King is a fighting piece and it should be centralized and used actively. 2. Material advantage wins in the endgame. Hold on to your material! 3. Be wary of sacrificing pawns for development. Only in rook and pawn endgames is an active piece worth material. 4. Try to gain tempi…
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…
I am organizing my chess training, and trying to simplify the material that I will be using in my studies. One of the new changes I have made is to create a site dedicated to my training program, which is called chessnotebook.com. I will be using chessnotebook.com as my online chess training diary and there I will…
First entry of the new year, and it is time to review my Chess goals and resolutions. So far, I’m happy with my progress, and the new training program I am following is finally giving me guidance and improvement. This week was the 2nd and final week of the first cycle of Phase I of…
This is the first week where I trained using the Extreme Chess Training (ECT) program. I am still beta testing it and I should have more information available the first week of January. Monday – Performed 45 minutes of standard tactics at chesstempo.com Tuesday – Played an ICC standard game and reviewed it afterwards. Wednesday…
I am working on creating a Chessbase notebook (more on this in a much future post), and I am working out a way to effectively categorize my chess content. Below is a draft of the taxonomy I plan on using. For example pins would be categorized as Middlegame – Tactics – Pins, whereas King and pawn endgame…
Monday 12.07.09 Played G/15 game and drew against opponent rated 1826 in a winning position (I was up a minor piece), but opponent had counterplay and I was down to 4 1/2 minutes on the clock. Tuesday 12.08.09 Reviewed game. Confirmed that position was won. Opponent made a tactical mistake where he lost the exchange.…
Monday 11.30.09 Played G/20 20 game against opponent rated 1865. Played the Sicilian Grand Prix and lost in a rook endgame where I was a pawn down. Tuesday 12.01.09 Reviewed game. Made an interesting observation that I would not have picked up on if I had not reviewed game. I lost 2 pawns during the…
Started new program mid week, so entries will be from Wednesday through Sunday. Wednesday 11.26.09 Played G/15 5 game against an opponent rated 1687 on ICC (I am provisionally rated 1781 after this game). I plan on playing all of my standard games on ICC so that I can maintain continuity in tracking my ELO rating.…