Fritz: Tactical, but positionally sound. Well rounded.
Hiarcs: Positional and human-like play. Good in unbalanced positions.
Junior: Very tactical, sacrificial style play.
Rybka: Strongest chess engine. Excellent positional understanding and human-like play. Excellent evaluation of dynamic positions. Great for analysis.
Shredder: Very positional and solid. Excellent endgame play.
Zappa: Human-like play, aggressive. Very strong, catching up to Rybka.
Fruit: Well balanced positional play.
The following endgame example illustrates how to turn a one pawn advantage into a win:
The conversion of an extra pawn falls into three phases: 1) the King is activated. 1.Kf1
1…Ke7 2.Ke2 Kd6 3.Kd3 Kd5 2)Mobilization of the majority. 4.b4
Mobilize by moving the “candidate”, which is the unopposed pawn.4…Kc6 5.Kc4 h5 6.a4 h4 7.b5+ Kb6 8.Kb4 g5 9.a5+
9…Kb7 10.Kc5 Kc7 11.b6+ axb6+ 12.axb6+ Kb7
3) The King goes to the Kingside to gobble up the Black pawns (transformation of one advantage to another):13.Kd6 Kxb6 14.Ke7 f5 15.Kf6+- .
I need help in trying to compile which attributes chess players need in order to master an existing class level (from Class E to Expert+)based on their rating.
For example Irina Mikhailova has cataloged these attributes and states that a player rated ~2100 should know the following:
At this stage a chess player must have a successfully tested opening repertoire which includes 2 openings as White and 2 openings with the black pieces. The chess player must master tactics (60-70 per cent of a success rate solving problems of an intermediate difficulty), acquire a firm knowledge of the basics of chess strategy, ie. How a position’s evaluation is developed and what are its components, familiarize with about 15-25 common plans from the chess classic examples, know typical chess endings: evaluation, plan of play and standard tactical methods for approximately 250 endgame positions. It is necessary to acquire the skills of working with a computer and with chess software.
Knowing what knowledge is critical at each class level, can help improving chess players focus on those elements of chess knowledge that will bring the most benefit.
Round 1 game of the September Standard Tourney on ICC.
In a previous post I had promised to compile and post the most instructive games in ChessBase format. I haven’t been able to get around to compiling all of the games, so I am posting a PDF file containing a list of these Educational Chess Games based broken down by themes.
08.15.2007
Play Standard Game
Played and analyzed my G/60 ICC ST Tourney game
08.16.2007
Study Strategy
Reviewed through page 24 of Chess Strategy for Kids don’t mind the title…the book is highly recommended by Dan Heisman, and it ensures that you have all your chess fundamentals in place.
Key Points
Everything in chess can be explained in terms of three basic ideas:
Based on those ideas when selecting candidate moves 5 good questions to ask are:
Solve Endings
Did Endgame module 1 of Personal Chess Trainer’s endgame module (40 exercises). I had not planned on using PCT, but it has a good amount of endgame puzzles, and it uses pattern recognition as a teaching tool which is a positive.
Today is the first entry of my online training notebook, I’m still trying to figure out how I will work this out, but I plan on adding an entry with the salient topics that I covered as well as personal progress and benchmark data.
I also plan on adding a downloadable ChessBase file which will contain additional positions, games and notes.
Study Endgames
Reviewed pages 57-88 in Silman’s Endgame Course. This chapter dealt with distant opposition as well as basic K+P vs. K endings.
Below are a few keypoints from the chapter:
Opposition without a direct connection
In the diagram below notice that the corners of the rectangle have the same colored squares, in this case White has the opposition, since he is 5 (odd number) of squares away from the Black King. You can determine the opposition of two King’s without a direct connection by creating an imaginary rectangle with intersecting same colored squares.
Questions to ask in a K+P vs. K endgame:
Endgame Puzzle
White to move. Is White lost?
Study Tactics
Did questions from the 3rd stage of studies (Queen Checkmates) #419 -442 (23) for 30 minutes with an 84% success rate.
This is a simple puzzle, but I notice that tactics that involve pinned pawns give me difficulty. Highlight for answer [1.Qh6+ Bh7 2.Qxg7#]
Monday
Study Endings (30 min)
Solve Tactics (30 min)
Tuesday
Play (ST Tourney on ICC G/60) (up to 2 hrs)
Wednesday
Analyze my game (1 hr)
Study Openings (part of game analysis)
Thursday
Study Strategy (30 min)
Solve Endings (30 min)
Friday
Solve Strategy (annotated master game review with Stoyko exercise at critical points) (1hr)
Solve Tactics (30 min)
Saturday
Play G/30 (up to 1 hr)
Analyze game (30 min)
Sunday
Solve Tactics (optional) (30 min)
Resources
Strategy: Logical Chess Move by Move
Endgame:Silman’s Complete Endgame Course and Pandolfini’s Endgame Course
As part of my benchmarking before I begin my new training on Monday August 13th, my ICC rating is as follows:
In an earlier post about creating a chess notebook, I overlooked the obvious: using this blog as my online chess improvement notebook.
I can post my daily training regimen, as well as benchmark my progress as I go along. Hopefully, this will help others get ideas as well as help me in maintaining a log of my training activities as well as to get feedback via comments.