Chess for Beginners

Author: beginchess

  • Chess Tweets

    I haven’t had much time to devote to blogging, so I am trying a new method. I am posting my chess training notebook using Twitter. If the post requires more than the 140 character limit, then I will expand on the topic via the blog.

  • Chess Board Visualization Exercises

    Chess board visualization training is necessary in order to not miss tactics, see more combinations and to become a better overall chess player. Chess board visualization does not come naturally to all chess players. Chess visualization is something that must be trained, and should be part of a regular chess training regimen.

    Chess board visualization training will improve your ability to calculate long variations. Visualization training should take place 3-4 times per week in 5-10 minute sessions.

    Board Visualization Exercise #1

    Arrange the pieces on a board and look at the normal developing move for all the pieces. The White knights develop to c3 and f3, while the Black knights develop to c6 and f6. The light squared bishop develops to e2,d3,c4,b5, etc. Once you have studied the knights, bishops (regular and fianchetto positions) the castled King and rook and the four central squares (e4,d4,e5,d5) you remove all of the pieces and point and name out loud all of the normal developing squares for the pieces.

  • The New Begin(ning) Chess

    This post marks a new beginning for this blog. After a long hiatus from blogging and chess, I return reinvigorated and refreshed.

    The new purpose of this blog is exploring how adults learn (chess). It has become obvious to me after four years of my chess journey, that the adult learning experience is clumsy, slow and inefficient. This flaw in the way adults learn is at the root of why it takes us so long to improve and why we reach frequent and lengthy plateaus.

    While the blog will continue to focus on the “what” to learn, it will also address the “how” we learn aspects of learning chess. Perhaps by better understanding the learning process, we can better focus our time and energy and see true improvement as if we were eight years old again.

    Stay tuned…

  • On hiatus

    Other things have taken my attention away from chess, and I have neglected posting for several months now. One interesting observation, is that while I have not been training other than playing 1 G30 game a few times per week, my chess has not sufferred as much as I would have thought, and I think this has to do with not playing any blitz whatsoever.

    I do plan on returning to returning to chess within the next few weeks, hopefully refreshed and invigorated due to my chess break.

  • Calculating your Chess Rating and Knowledge

    Here’s a fun exercise to determine your estimated chess rating taking into account your existing chess skill and knowledge. While this is just for fun, it can prove helpful in determining how you should focus your chess training. If your knowledge rating is much higher than your skills rating, then you you need to focus your training towards skill building where if your skill rating is much higher than your knowledge rating, then you need to focus more on book learning. You should strive to have your knowledge and skill ratings at no more than 100 points apart.

    Here’s how this works.

    Formula: (Skill + Knowledge) / 2 = ELO

    You need to plug in two of the numbers, and the two best to plug in are ELO and Skill. Ideally, you would use your USCF rating, but if you don’t have one, you can use your ICC of FICS rating, just remember to subtract 150 from your ICC or FICS rating so that it approximates an official USCF rating.

    For your skills rating, I would use Igor Khmelnitsky’s Chess Exam and Training Guide to test your skills and get a rating approximation.

    Example:

    Skill rating: 1138 (based on Khelmenitsky’s book)
    USCF ELO: 1340
    Knowledge rating = K

    (S+K) / 2 = ELO

    (1138 + K) / 2 = 1340

    1138 / 2 + k/2 – 1340 = 0

    569 + K/2 – 1340 = 0

    k/2-781 = 0

    K=781 * 2

    K= 1562

    So my chess knowledge rating equals 1562, while my chess skill rating is approximately 1138 giving me an ELO of 1340. This means I have to focus on getting my skill rating to par with my knowledge rating in order to play at an estimated 1562 ELO rating.

    The goal should be get my skill rating within the same ballpark as my knowledge rating (+/- 100 elo points) before focusing on adding more chess knowledge.

    You should repeat this process every three months, but you will need to take the skill’s test again as well as play in a tournament in order to update your USCF rating and get an accurate reading.

    I would love to hear feedback on this, especially if you actually try it out.

    Related Chess Skill and Knowledge Articles

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  • Why Our Chess Does Not Improve

    Frustration

    Over the last few months while my knowledge of the game has increased my chess skill has not improved. If anything I have suffered a decrease in performance over the last few months. The frustrating part is that I have invested time into my chess improvement plan, and while I feel that both my tactical pattern recognition and strategic knowledge of the game has improved this new knowledge has not translated into increased chess playing strength.

    I have a tournament in 1 month and I am concerned about my plateau. I am nowhere near where I wanted to be 3 years into my chess improvement plan.

    My Downward Spiral

    • ICC standard rating at an all time low of 1330 from a peak of 1663
    • FICS rating temporarily increased to 1350, but over the last few weeks it is back down to 1225
    • ICC Blitz 5 0 dropped from 1250 to 970, it is now back up to 1170 and on the way up
    • USCF rating is the same (1278) I have not played any rated USCF tournaments in several months
    • OTB performance in friendly skittles games is the same as 6 months ago, I still ocassionally lose to players who do not take chess as seriously as me

    Why I am Not Improving in Chess

    • Playing too much blitz versus longer games.
    • Not analyzing (not learning from) my games
    • Theory based learning versus practical learning
    • Faulty thought process

    Getting to the bottom of it

    I selected several of my latest games and anlayzed them looking for the reason I lost the game, and guess what I found:

    Over 80% of the games I lose were because I blundered and not due to knowledge gaps.

    Modifications to the Plan

    • Focus more on my thought process while I am playing in order to eliminate senseless blunders.
    • Begin playing at least 1 non-blitz game every night, which I must analyze before playing any other games.
    • Focus my study time around tactics and topics that I need help on based on discoveries during game analysis.

    I need to strike a balance between blitz versus and standard games, and I must eliminate blitz play several weeks before playing in a tournament. While tactics will be a strong component of my training, I will be more flexible in my training schedule selecting areas of weakness that I uncover during my game analysis.

    The key is to focus on building skills over knowledge, and learning to apply the knowledge I already have. As Dan Heisman likes to say, we need to subtract negatives if we want to get better. I have made the mistake of thinking that studying and reading chess books (adding positives) will make me a better player, and while I am increasing my knowledge of chess this does not translate into improving my performance (because we need to subtract negatives).

    I hope that these modifications to my training plan, which will focus more on ‘skill building’ than ‘knowledge building’ will show improvements in my play. I’ll keep you posted…

  • Developing Chess Skill

    According to Johnathan Rowson in his book Chess for Zebras we can develop chess skill through a combination of playing combined with chess training, where ‘training’ means working things out by ourselves. The main skill a chess player needs is skill in making decisions so making decisions is what you need to do over and over when training (learning by doing).

    The best training is the kind that pushes you up against the edges of your comfort zone, where you force yourself to take responsibility for difficult decisions.

    – Johnathan Rowson in Chess for Zebras

    So here’s what you can do to put his advice into practice:

    • Playing and then analyzing your games afterwards
    • Solving complex chess problems
    • Trying to win won positions against strong analysis engines
    • Blitz games (comparing your first impression of positions with the way they actually developed)

  • Lucena Position

    Lucena Position Silman calls the Lucena Position “The Holy Grail of Rook Endings”. In this position Regardless of who’s turn it is to move, White wins.

    1.Rf2+ Forcing Black’s King to leave the scene of the battle.

    1…Kg7 [1…Kg6 2.Rf4 Kg5 3.Rd4 Kf6 4.Ke8 Re1+ 5.Kf8 Rf1 6.d8Q+ Ke5+ 7.Ke7 ]

    2.Rf4 Building a bridge.

    2…Kg6 3.Ke7 Only now should White leave the cover of his pawn. Since promotion is threatened Black must go into checking mode.

    3…Re1+ 4.Kd6 Rd1+ 5.Ke6 Re1+ 6.Kd5 Rd1+ 7.Rd4 Rxd4+ 8.Kxd4 Kf6 9.d8Q+ 1-0

  • Analysis Exercise #1


    Black to move (Stefanova – Shirov 2005)
    r3rq1k/8/p2p3p/P1pPnp1P/1p3Q2/5PNR/1PP2K2/R7 b – – 0 29
    Download game

    Evaluation
    The first thing I did was to evaluate this position, and I gave it the following evaluation: Material =, King Safety +/=, Activity =/+, Pawn Structure =. So the game in my opinon is even. (When I gave it to Fritz 10 he sees it as -+ (- 1.61 with Black winning) and Rybka sees it as -1.19).

    Threats and Opportunities
    I then looked for threats and opportunities in this position, and I found that White was threatening to win Black’s f5 pawn with Qxf5.

    Candidate Move Selection
    After performing the threat analysis I looked for candidate moves, and this is the order in which I found my 4 candidates: 1…Re7, 1…Kh7, 1…b3, 1…Ng4+. The first two candidates are defensive, trying to deal with the potential threat of Qxf5, and the last two are aggressive candidates.

    Analysis
    I then began analyzing the most aggressive candidate based on CCT (checks, captures and threats), in this case …Ng4 would be the most aggressive since it starts with check, below is my analysis:

    Candidate 1 …Ng4+

    29…Ng4+ 30.fxg4 30…fxg4 31.Qxf8+ Rxf8+ 32.Kg2 gxh3+ 33.Kxh3 This line is good for black since he wins the exchange, so taking with 2.cxb3 is not good for White so I analyzed another line in which White does not take to see if …Ng4+ stands up. [30.Kg2 Not taking keeps White in the game. 30…Ne5 coming back to the same position is not good for Black, since White’s King is now safer on g2. At this point I figured that if White didn’t take I would wind up in this position, and I stoped analyzing this line, and I jumped to the …b3 line which was the 2nd most aggressive candidate I had selected. The problem is that 30…Ne3+ should have been considered as a mainline, and I did not see this knight check, with the rook defending it. (30…Ne3+ I did not analyze this subvariation, but it was much better than 30…Ne5 which I did analyze and caused me to jump to another line. 31.Kh1 Nxc2 32.Rc1 Nd4 Black wins a pawn, and defends g5.) ; Rybka 2.3.1 32-bit : 30.Kg1 Ne3 31.Re1 Nxd5 32.Rxe8 Nxf4 33.Rxf8+ Rxf8 34.Rh2 d5 35.Kf2 Kg7 -0.91/12 ]

    Candidate # 2 …b3

    [29…b3 This is the second line I analyzed. 30.Qxf5 So, I analyzed another line other than 30. cxb3, the problem is that this line is not the best line for White. (30.cxb3 Nd3+ Taking my b3 pawn is bad because of this fork.) 30…Qxf5 31.Nxf5 bxc2 32.Rc1 (32.Ne3 Nd3+ At this point I decided to chose this line.) 32…Nd3+ ; Rybka 2.3.1 32-bit : 29…b3 30.Qd2 bxc2 31.Qxc2 Ng4+ 32.Kg1 Ne3 33.Qd2 f4 34.Ne4 Re5 -1.27/11 ]

    Lessons Learned
    My evaluation was off by a pawn, Rybka and Fritz think that Black is at least ahead one pawn, while I thought the position was even, so I need to work on my evaluation skills. I was happy with my candidate move selection, and the order in which I began analyzing (the most aggressive moves first). Out of the 4 candidates I only had to analyze 2 and both were the best moves. In the analysis department, I am missing the best response when I calculate variations or I am not analyzing all possible oppnent candidate moves. I need to use the same candidate move criteria fwhen looking for or my opponent responses, but I have a feeling it also has to do with board visualization. Even though I picked an appropriate candidate, the logic for selecting it was flawed and incomplete. The analysis for …b3 did not take into account White’s best responses and much was left to chance by selecting it. I need to be more thorough when analyzing and I also have to attempt to evaluate the position at the end of the my analysis (which I did not do). The line played in the game was …Ng4+!, while Fritz 10 and Rybka prefer …b3.

  • Virtual Chess Coach Part II : Study Schedule

    Study Schedule

    Day Topic 1 (30m) Topic 2 (1hr)
    Monday Solve Tactics Study Endings
    Tuesday Play Annotate game *
    Wednesday Solve Endings Study Strategy **
    Thursday Solve Tactics Solve Strategy ***
    Friday Solve Tactics Study Openings
    Saturday Solve Tactics Solve Strategy
    Sunday Play Annotate game *

    Legend:

    * If you run out of time during daily session, you can finish annotating your game during the study openings session

    ** Study strategy by going over annotated master games

    *** Use Stoyko Exercises format


    Virtual Chess Coach Pt I