Chess for Beginners

Author: beginchess

  • Virtual Chess Coach – Part I

    About the Virtual Chess Coach Program

    This program is geared for my improvement (a 35 year old 1278 USCF rated player), but I hope that others in a similar situation will be able to derive benefit from it as well.

    I will be modeling this program on the teaching’s of Dan Heisman. Dan Heisman is one of the best chess teacher’s in the United States and if you don’t already know this, then run to danheisman.com and check out his Novice Nook articles at Chess Cafe.

    Now not all of us can afford a chess coach, so we will be using books and information available on the web (Heisman’s Novice Nook Articles) to create a virtual chess coaching experience. If you can afford a coach, then there is no substitute for the hands on feedback that they can provide but I’m aiming to make this the second best thing.

    Things to know before we go on:

    • This program is aimed at the adult beginner / intermediate player (ELO 1200 – 1700)

    • Our chess philosophy will be based around Dan Heisman (with a sprinkle of Purdy and Silman for good measure)

    Absolute Beginners

    For complete beginner’s to chess Heisman recommends they start with The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Chess and then go to a basic chess tactics book like John Bain’s Chess Tactics for Students. After doing this you should be approximately 1200 ELO and then this guide will be more useful to you.

    The Assessment Phase

    We need to assess our strengths and weaknesses, yet we are in no position to do so (how can we assess what we do not know / understand). This is one of the weaknesses of not having the feedback mechanism a coach provides. But do not fret, there is a great book that helps you assess your strengths and weaknesses in chess, and that book is Igor Khmelnitsky’s Chess Exam and Training Guide. After going through Igor’s book, you will have an idea of which areas of your chess need to focus your improvement efforts.

    Assessing Your Games

    Another area where a coach can provide much needed feedback is in going over your games. Because we’ll be going at it on our own the following process is very important in order to get a close benefit to that of having a real coach.

    • Go over all of your losses.

    • Quickly re-play the game again making light annotations

    • Go over the game in detail, and this time make extensive annotations and analysis

    • Go over the game with a chess engine and compare your annotations with those of the engine

    Key things to look for when annotating your game

    You should jot these down as part of your annotations and include them in your chess notebook

    • See where you could have improved in the opening

    • Look for missed tactical opportunities (both defensive and offensive)

    • Look for missed positional opportunities

    • Look for missed opportunities in the endgame, if necessary refer to Mueller’s Fundamental Chess Endings

    • Look for moves that caused a shift in the game based on the engine’s evaluation. (any move with an evaluation change greater than .35) and find out the root cause behind the evaluation shift, then go back to your annotations and make sure you address this and don’t forget to add this to your chess notebook.

    The games you annotate and go over, should be standard time control games if possible. You should make an effort to play at least 1-2 standard games (>= G/30) per week. You can do this by either joining the Team 45 45 league, or playing ICC’s Standard Tourney or even playing at your local chess club. These games will give you more food for thought than quickly played blitz games, but if you do not have at least 1 standard game to go over, then do go over your well played blitz games (which is better than not going over your games at all).

    Thought Process Before Lessons

    There are certain bad habits that you should eliminate before you consider taking lessons, otherwise you would be throwing your money away. Most of these stem from careless play or hope chess .

    • Do not leave pieces en prise

    • Do not move quickly and without thought

    • Perform a blundercheck before playing your move

    Reference

    The following books and websites will be used for this program:

    Tactics

    Back to Basics Tactics

    Chess Tactics for Beginners (Convekta)

    Endgames

    Silman’s Complete Endgame Course

    Strategy

    The Art of Logical Chess Thinking

    Thought Process

    Everyone’s 2nd Chess Book

    Play

  • Faulty Thought Process: Missing the Obvious

    Why is it that beginners fail to choose simple plans that are right before their eyes? One answer may be that beginners do not evaluate the position before choosing a candidate move. Beginners briefly scan the board, choose a move they like and quickly analyze and play this move. The problem with this thought process is that 9 out of 10 times the move they have selected is not the best move, since it is not a move that follows a plan based on the needs of the position. This thought process error occurs during candidate move selection and is a very common mistake that beginner’s must overcome in order to reach the next level. The difference between a weak player and a strong player is that the strong player evaluates the position and they then choose a plan based on this evaluation.

    Dan Heisman in a Novice Nook titled ‘Evaulation Criteria’, uses the following criteria to evaluate a position (in order of importance):

    1. Material
    2. King Safety
    3. Activity
    4. Pawn Structure

    Based on these evaulation criteria, not only will we know which side stands better, but why they stand better and what our plan should be. The candidate moves will show itself based on the plan we have selected.

    In order to improve we need to evaluate the position during critical junctures of the game (after the opening is over, after a series of exchanges, whenever the position changes substantially). We should get in the habit of re-evaluating the position every couple of moves to ensure that the needs of the position have not changed. We then need to choose a plan based on the evaluation and select candidate moves that help us meet the goals of our plan. We should then take a close and honest look at our candidate moves and keep looking for the best move that will improve our position on the board.

    Hope this helps, and I would love to hear your thought process for evaluating the position and selecting candidate moves.

  • Faulty Thought Process: Wishful Thinking

    A frequent issue confronted by amateurs is wishful thinking when calculating combinations. This propensity to fabricate beneficial scenarios in our analysis is very typical throughout an amateur’s game, but it is most dangerous when calculating combinations.

    You see a pretty combination worthy of Tal, and you analyze it over and over, after you have finished your analysis you are sure that the move is a winner. You make the move and you lose a piece, or it initiates a series of exchanges that cause you to lose your initiative and perhaps the game. Unfortunately, you have failed to see the refutation or you simply missed a defending piece that you have conveniently kept out of your analysis. This very common oversight causes you to lose material and / or the game.

    If only you had realized that there was a defending piece all you usually need to do is to combine that information along with the combinational theme to make the winning move. In most cases by adding the bothersome piece to your analysis you can easily spot a sacrifice or deflection that will get the piece out of the way and lead to a winning combination.

    Getting rid of this faulty thought process will lead to more accurate analysis and an improved ability to calculate. Here are a few ways you can improve by eliminating this error in your thinking process:

    • Play long games with a standard time control greater than 30 minutes
    • Pick interesting middlegame positions and spend > 15 minutes analyzing
    • Try to visualize the position before making your move
    • Double and triple check your analysis

  • Faulty Thought Process: Thinking Defensively

    Improving your Thought Process

    This is the first in a series of posts about faulty thought process tendencies by beginners. Unfortunately, I am the source of inspiration, but hopefully by writing about these errors my thought process will improve.

    The most important thing that a beginning to intermediate player can do to improve their chess is to improve their thought process. There is no point in reading positional books and learning new openings when you do not keep your pieces safe, or you fail to see that your opponents piece is not safe, this is the main reason preventing you from winning your games.

    Dealing with Aggressive Moves

    When a beginner is faced with an aggressive move by an opponent they tend to think defense first (sometimes exclusively), and as a result they fail to see that the aggressively posted piece is not safe. Both beginners tend to make this same mistake, the offensive player blindly plays the aggressive move thinking it is winning without further analysis and the defender assumes that the move is good and fails to see that it is a blunder which hangs the aggressively posted piece.

    Take your time when you are faced with an aggressive move or a difficult situation and always ask yourself Is your opponent’s move safe? as part of your thought process and you will win many more games as a result.

  • De La Maza for the Rest of Us

    Tactics Program

    This tactics training program should not take more than 30 minutes per session, and it is flexible enough where you can adjust the amount of puzzles and / or the amount of time spent per puzzle as well as the session time so that you can customize it to your needs and study time available.

    Week 1

    Day 1 = 10 puzzles @ 3 minutes per puzzle
    Day 2 = 10 new + 10 from day 1(d1) = 20 puzzles @ 1.5 min / puzzle
    Day 3 = 10 new + 10d1 + 10d2 = 30 puzzles @ 1 min / puzzle
    Day 4 = 10 new + 10d1 + 10d2 + 10d3 = 40 puzzles @ 45 sec / puzzle
    Day 5 = Review previous 40 questions @ 35 sec / puzzle

    Week 2

    Days 1-4 are the same as week 1
    Day 5 Repeat 40 questions from week + include 10 random questions from the previous week for a total of 50 questions @ 35 sec/ question.

    Resources

    Since we will be using a smaller pool of puzzles, it is very important that the puzzles selected provide the user with the most critical patterns so that you can get the most benefit out of your study time.

    While you can use any book or software that contains rich tactical / strategic positions, the following two books contain 900 critical positions that will assist you in getting the most out of your training time:

  • Chess Lessons in Miami

    If you live in the South Florida area, the Miami International Chess Academy is offering group lessons with IM Blas Lugo at reasonable rates . Check out their website for more info.

  • King and Pawn Endings

    The following game illustrates (starting in move 49.) how to exploit an extra pawn in a King and pawn endgame with many pawns left on the board. This example comes from James Howell’s excellent book ‘Essential Chess Endings’.

    Things to remember:

    1. Activate the king.

    2. Create a passed pawn to tie down your opponent’s king.

    3. Cut out any of your opponent’s counterplay.

    4. Once your opponent has run out ouf pawn moves it should be easy to force his king back.

    5. Either penetrate with your king and pick off your opponent’s pawns while they are busy dealing with your passed pawn or advance your king and passed pawn to paralyze your opponent’s king and force him to make concessions with his remaining pawns.

    [Event “Germany”]
    [Site “Germany”]
    [Date “1992”]
    [White “Glienke, Manfred”]
    [Black “Jahn, Constanze”]
    [Result “0-1”]
    [ECO “A17”]
    [Annotator “Howell, James”]
    [PlyCount “134”]
    [EventDate “1992.??.??”]
    1. Nf3 Nf6 2. c4 e6 3. Nc3 Bb4 4. g3 b6 5. Bg2 Bb7 6. O-O O-O 7. d3 d5 8. cxd5
    Nxd5 9. Bd2 Be7 10. Re1 c5 11. Nxd5 Bxd5 12. Bc3 Nd7 13. Qa4 Qc7 14. Rac1 Qb7
    15. e4 Bc6 16. Qc2 Rac8 17. b3 Rfd8 18. Nd2 Bf6 19. Nc4 Bxc3 20. Qxc3 Nf6 21.
    h3 Ne8 22. a4 f6 23. h4 Qd7 24. Bh3 Nc7 25. Re3 Qd4 26. Qe1 Rb8 27. Ra1 e5 28.
    Ra2 Bd7 29. Bf1 Na6 30. Na3 Nb4 31. Nc2 Nxc2 32. Rxc2 Be6 33. Qc3 Qb4 34. Qxb4
    cxb4 35. Rb2 Rbc8 36. Re1 Rc3 37. Reb1 a5 38. Be2 Rdc8 39. f3 Rc1+ 40. Bd1 R8c3
    41. Kf2 Rxb1 42. Rxb1 Rxd3 43. Ke2 Rc3 44. Rb2 Kf7 45. Rc2 Bxb3 46. Rxc3 Bxd1+
    47. Kxd1 bxc3 48. Kc2 Ke6 49. Kxc3 {Exploiting the extra pawn here is not
    completely straightforward as White’s sole queenside pawn appears to be
    holding up Black’s a-and b-pawns.} Kd6 50. Kc4 Kc6 {Both players now turn
    their attention to the kingside, hoping to run the opponent out of pawn moves.}
    51. h5 g6 52. h6 g5 53. g4 {White has the opposition and it looks as though
    Black has lost the battle for tempi on the kingside. However, it turns out
    that Black does not have to move her king.} b5+ {
    It is now Black’s turn to move and he has lost the opposition.} 54. axb5+ Kb6
    55. Kd5 Kxb5 56. Ke6 a4 57. Kxf6 a3 58. Kg7 a2 59. Kxh7 a1=Q 60. Kg6 Qa8 61.
    Kxg5 Kc5 62. Kg6 Qf8 63. g5 Kd6 64. Kh5 Qxf3+ 65. Kg6 Qxe4+ 66. Kg7 Qb7+ 67.
    Kg8 Qc8+ 0-1

  • Opening Tree Search Online

    Chessok, has made available online an opening tree search. You can now receive detailed statistics on all opening moves carefully classified and stored in their opening database.

  • Advice from Nimzowitsch

    My game has suffered recently, but I am more determined than ever to improve…so the following quote should help me on my way: 

    Settle on your objective is the rule. Such an objective may be a pawn or a point. Which one, it matters not. But aimlessly drifting from one to another, this will expose you  to a strategical disgrace.

    Aaron Nimzowitsch

  • 1st Annual Miami Chess Open

    Photo report of the Miami Chess Open held from September 28th through September 30th.
    Hikaru Nakamura
    Photography: William Mendez © 2007
    Hikaru Nakamura wins the 2007 Miami
    Chess Open

    Alexander Shabalov
    Photography: William Mendez © 2007
    U.S Champion Alexander Shabalov

    David Pruess
    Photography: William Mendez © 2007
    IM David Pruess contemplates the position