Chess for Beginners

Category: Improvement

  • Connecting the Dots in Chess

    I have made an observation while solving puzzles, that I feel will improve my tactical puzzle solving skills, and might have direct application during actual games.

    When solving a tactical puzzle of intermediate to advanced level I either:

    1. Have no clue how to go about solving it and get it wrong.

    2. Have multiple ideas that look promising, but after further analysis don’t win {usually end up playing one of the two and get the answer wrong}.

    3. Solve the puzzle correctly.

    This post is going to focus on solving the 2nd category above. I have found that you will get many more puzzles correct by combining ideas that arise by analyzing different candidate moves. Unfortunately, by not making a link between the two, or forgetting about your first idea when looking at the second, I mainly fail to connect the dots and only after reviewing the correct answer do I see that I had been on the right track and would have answered correctly  if I had combined my candidates.

    You might want to solve this puzzles on your own before reading the answers below taking into account your thought process while doing so and then see if you encountered the same issues as I did.

    Here’s the first position we will look at:


    White to move and win

    The first candidate that came to mind was 1.Bb6 attacking the Queen. I analyzed the response 1…Nxb6 2.axb6 Qxb6 which loses a pawn for White and the Black Queen lives on. So I abandoned this candidate and looked for a better move.

    I then found that Qh6 looked promising and I began to analyze 1.Bh5 with the idea of Bh8 and then getting my Queen to h6. But I soon found that 1.Bh5 was a slow since it allows 1…Kh7 and White is out of gas. What I missed, and where I think there is room for improvement, is if I would have combined both moves. Attacking the Black Queen with 1.Bb6 with the idea of freeing the diagonal for my Queen to get to h6 with mate was the winning combination and one I failed to see by not connecting the dots.

    Let’s look at another example, and one which occurred right after I had attempted to solve example #1 above.

    White to move and win

    In this position quickly saw that both the White rook and Queen were attacking the Black d8 rook, and that there might be a tactical opportunity if the Queen were deflected from its defense. The candidate that came to mind was 1. b4 but after further analysis I saw that the Queen could seek shelter by moving to 1…Qc7.  The other candidate that stood out was 1.Qf6+ but the King can easily get out of the way with 1…Kg8 and there aren’t enough White pieces in the vicinity to force the issue. The third candidate I analyzed was attacking the undefended bishop with 1.Qe7 but I found that the bishop can get out of harms way via 1…Bc8. If I would have combined the two ideas or even looked a few ply deeper  I would have found the answer 1.Qe7 attacking the bishop and preventing the Queen from seeking shelter at c7 after deflecting her with b4. 1…Bc8 2.b4! and Black resigned.

  • The Three Things That Have Improved My Chess

    1. Practising tactics – I cannot stress enough the importance of tactics at the sub 1800 level. If your time is limited, tactics training would be the one thing that would give you the greatest return on investment.

    2. Playing and reviewing my games – This allows you to learn from your mistakes, and to prevent you from repeating your mistakes over and over again. This important training tool provides you with the appropriate feedback loop, so that your chess training is focused on those areas that you need to improve the most.

    3. Revisiting my thought process – Learning more about how other chess players think, and then taking an inventory of my own chess thought process. I documented a process that made sense to me, and then reviewing it while going over positions and / or annotated games.

    Feel free to add a comment of your own list of things that have improved your game.

  • Secrets of Zen Chess

    Secrets of Zen Chess
    During my chess break, I ran into a friend of mine who loves chess and who had been in Japan doing a 4 week Seshin at a Japanese Zen Monestary.I asked him if he had time to practice his chess while at the monestary, and he told me that he had not, but that he had briefly spoken to a monk named Tezin, who also loved chess and was a pretty good player. He told me that Tezin had told him how his chess had improved in the last two years even though he did not practice as much as before he became a monk. Tezin told him that he attributed his chess improvement to what he called the ‘Secrets of Zen Chess’.
    I was very interested in hearing these so called secrets of chess improvement, and begged my friend to tell me what Tezin had relayed to him… so here goes:
    Less is More
    – Less focus on ratings and more focus on enjoyment & playing a beautiful game.
    – Less focus on reading books and more focus on practice.
    – Less focus on chess and more focus on solving the problems on the board.
    Impermanence
    – Because the position is always in flux, you need to adapt your plans and be flexible at all times.
    – Because of the fluidity of the position, the position needs to be reassessed every few moves.
    – Realize that dynamic advantages don’t last forever…take advantage of them while you have them.
    Practice
    – Practice for the sake of practice.
    – Practice for the beauty of the game.
    – Practice because you love to practice.
    Cause and effect
    – Consider the cause and effect of every move.
    – Consider how has the position changed after your opponent’s move
    – Consider how has the position changed after your move.
    – Consider if there are any tactical conditions on the board.
    Mindfulness
    – Be mindful of the game, you must become one with the board.
    – Be mindful of the harmony of your pieces.
    – Be mindful of the position, get to the marrow of board.
    – Be mindful of threats against you.
    – Be mindful of your threats against your opponent.
    – Be mindful of checks, captures and threats.
    Harmony
    – How can I improve the harmony of my pieces?
    – How can I disrupt the harmony of my opponent’s pieces?
    – How can I improve the weaknesses in my camp?
    – How can I create weaknesses in my opponent’s camp?
    Mastery lies in a convergence of skills that are already a part of you and not new knowledge derived from books. Mastery lies through practice that will lead you to uncover those things that are already inside you. Mastery lies in being mindful in life and at the board, so that you will know what your opponent’s plan is before your opponent realizes what his plan is. Mastery will be attained once you stop trying to attain mastery.
    These are the keys to mastery and these are the secrets of zen chess.

    During my most recent chess break, I ran into a friend of mine who loves chess and who had been in Japan doing a 4 week Seshin at a Japanese Zen Monestary.I asked him if he had time to practice his chess while at the monastery, and he told me that he had not, but that he had briefly spoken to a monk named Tezin, who also loved chess and was a pretty good player. He told me that Tezin had told him how his chess had improved in the last two years even though he did not practice as much as before he became a monk. Tezin told him that he attributed his chess improvement to what he called the ‘Secrets of Zen Chess’.

    I was very interested in hearing these so called secrets of chess improvement, and begged my friend to tell me what Tezin had relayed to him… so here goes:


    Less is More

    – Less focus on ratings and more focus on enjoyment & playing a beautiful game.

    – Less focus on reading books and more focus on practice.

    – Less focus on chess and more focus on solving the problems on the board.


    Impermanence

    – Because the position is always in flux, you need to adapt your plans and be flexible at all times.

    – Because of the fluidity of the position, the position needs to be reassessed every few moves.

    – Realize that dynamic advantages don’t last forever…take advantage of them while you have them.


    Practice

    – Practice for the sake of practice.

    – Practice for the beauty of the game.

    – Practice because you love to practice.


    Cause and effect

    – Consider the cause and effect of every move.

    – Consider how the position has changed after your opponent’s move

    – Consider how the position has changed after your move.

    – Consider if there are any tactical conditions on the board.


    Mindfulness
    – Be mindful of the game, you must become one with the board.

    – Be mindful of the harmony of your pieces.

    – Be mindful of the position, get to the marrow of the board.

    – Be mindful of threats against you.

    – Be mindful of your threats against your opponent.

    – Be mindful of checks, captures and threats.

    Harmony
    – How can I improve the harmony of my pieces?

    – How can I disrupt the harmony of my opponent’s pieces?

    – How can I improve the weaknesses in my camp?

    – How can I create weaknesses in my opponent’s camp?

    Mastery lies in a convergence of skills that are already a part of you and not new knowledge derived from books. Mastery lies through practice that will lead you to uncover those things that are already inside you. Mastery lies in being mindful in life and at the board, so that you will know what your opponent’s plan is before your opponent realizes what his plan is. Mastery will be attained once you stop trying to attain it.

    These are the keys to mastery and these are the secrets of Zen chess.

  • Simple Chess Training

    Making it Difficult

    After several years of working on my chess improvement and from talking to both amateurs and masters it appears that adult amateurs tend to complicate their chess improvement by reading books and tackling concepts that are far too advanced for their level.

    So, here is my attempt to simplify my chess training and bring it back to basics. This program is targeted for players under 1700 USCF.


    Study, Play, Review

    The study portion of the plan will consist of doing tactical puzzles at the Chess Tempo site every day for a minimum of 30 minutes. You will also spend a minimum of 1 hour studying  any areas dictated by reviews of our standard games which we will label focused study.

    Play will consist of a minimum of 2 standard games per week of either OTB play or on ICC / chess.com. The two take aways from this is that your rating will serve as a progress report, and that the games should be 15 minutes or longer (the longer the better). The content of these games will serve as the material for the focused study portion of the plan.

    Every standard game has to be reviewed afterwards. Go over the game without the use of an engine, and annotate what you were thinking. After having reviewed it on your own, have the engine analyze the game and then compare your notes with the engines analysis. Take this opportunity to review the opening phase, and what you could have done to improve that phase of the game by consulting opening books if necessary. Take note of mistakes made and in which phase of the game they were made. You will then focus your next study day on reviewing any content that will help prevent the mistakes made.

    Here’s an example of what a week would look like when following the plan:

    Monday

    Play G/15 or >
    Study tactics 30m

    Tuesday

    Review Monday’s game (annotate and identify weaknesses in play)
    Study tactics 30m

    Wednesday

    Focus Study 1h (Study is based on weaknesses from reviewed game, for example K&P endgame review if game lost in the endgame, or extra tactics study if game was lost due to a tactical oversight)

    Thursday
    Play G/15 or >
    Study tactics 30m

    Friday

    Review Monday’s game (annotate and identify weaknesses in play)
    Study tactics 30m

    Saturday

    Focus Study 1h (Study is based on weaknesses from reviewed game, for example K&P endgame review if game lost in the endgame, or extra tactics study if game was lost due to a tactical oversight)

    Sunday

    Rest day or you can use this day to catch up on your studying, do extra tactics or play blitz games, etc.

  • Overcoming Chess Training Plateaus

    Plateaus and You

    Chess MenThe 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 learning. Plateaus are a normal phase of the learning process. The goal is to minimize the amount of time spent in a plateau, and to identify if our plateau is part of the normal learning curve or if it is a result of a deficiency in our learning process.

    Sometimes we plateau for reasons that fall outside the normal learning curve. You might plateau if you are missing fundamental knowledge which would have served as a building block to move on to the next level. Or perhaps the information you are learning is too advanced for your level, and you cannot internalize the concept.

    Another common cause for prolonged plateaus is overtraining. If you find that you do not look forward to practicing, or are finding less and less time to devote to chess, these are common symptoms of overtraining and a break from chess might be in order.

    Less, Different, Harder

    As we mentioned before plateaus are normal, and the slow and steady progress made during this phase is critical to a healthy learning process. The length of time spent in a plateau differs between people and even between learning curve phases. As a result, it is very difficult to diagnose if a plateau has overstayed its welcome. The only way around this, is to be proactive in your training program and to build it in such a way where you are constantly challenging yourself and feeding yourself the right amount of content at the right time in your development and you have the appropriate feedback mechanisms in place to detect weaknesses.  

    • Study your own games so you don’t make the same mistakes over and over again.
    • Have a coachevaluate your weaknesses, and focus your work on your weakest areas .
    • Are you overtraining? If so, it might be a good idea to take a 1-2 week break from chess. You will find that you will return refreshed and invigorated.
    • Change your training program periodically. This allows you to be a better rounded chess player, and by keeping your training sessions new and exciting it doubles as a cure to overtraining.
    • Don’t be discouraged by plateaus, remember you are still improving at a slow pace and that this is part of the normal learning process.
    • Increase the intensity of your training. A good method of increasing your training intensity is to cycle intense training session that last 1-2 weeks to help jar yourself free of a plateau. You need to be careful that you do not over train yourself during these intense study cycles. An example of cycling intense training cycles might go something like this: 2 weeks of intense training followed by 4 weeks of normal training activity.
    • Enjoy the practice, these things take time.

    By working hard and enjoying the practice improvement will come sooner or later (I hope so).

  • Chess Evolution

    I played in the U 1500 section of the Miami Open a few weeks ago, and it was not a good outing. I only won one of 5 games against a much lower rated opponent. While devastated, it has only made me work harder on my chess. The week following the Open, I immediately started taking face to face lessons with FM Charles Galofre.  I have decided to stop trying to find my path on my own, and to work with a strong player that can guide me in the right direction.  I have two lessons under my belt, and I have been very pleased with the direction my chess improvement process has been taking.

    I will begin posting more frequently in the coming days, but I wanted to document some of the things I have been doing differently in the last couple of weeks.

    1. Started taking chess lessons

    2. Narrowed the focus of my chess study (50% of study time is on tactics)

    3. Focusing on my thought process

    4. FM Galofre recommended that I start playing open game as White

    5. Taking every game as an opportunity to learn (annotating and reviewing afterwards)

    Failure is not getting knocked down, it’s not getting up again

    – Vince Lombardi

  • Anatomy of a Chess Player : Chess Ratings From Beginner to Expert

    How A Chess Player Improves from a 1000 Beginner Rating to a 2000 Expert Rating

    Chess LevelsBelow are the knowledge and skills a beginning chess player must acquire to improve their chess rating to improve from a chess beginner to an expert level chess player. The idea is to show the estimated chess rating, the required knowledge and skill, and the time it would take them to attain a specific ELO rating and chess level.  Find out in which category you fall to determine the knowledge and chess skills you need to move on to the to the next chess level.

    I would love to get feedback from more knowledgeable players and coaches, since I think this might be helpful to chess players that are just starting out all the way to an approximate 1700 rating. The idea is for players to focus on those areas that they need to work on in order to reach the next level.

     

    Chess Rating Improvement Breakdown from Chess Beginner to Chess Expert

    0-1000 (0-3 months of experience) The realm of the beginning chess player. At this stage the player has just learned the game, they constantly leave pieces en prise, and make many blunders. Player has no tactical, endgame, or positional knowledge. Player does not know about chess strategy and has no evaluation or analysis skills.

    1000-1100 (3-6 months of experience) Beginning player now has several games under their belt. They have very basic tactical knowledge and they continue to make blunders and to leave pieces en prise. Plays without a plan.

    1100-1200 (1-2 years of experience) Beginning player continues to make many blunders. At this level they have learned basic tactics. Occasionally leaves pieces en prise, but this is not a common occurrence. Sometimes plays with a plan, but the plan is usually incorrect. At this point the player sees many offensive tactics but they miss most defensive tactics.

    1200-1300 (2-3 years of experience) Player begins to understand that chess is a two player game, and begins to ask what the opponent’s last move is threatening. Blunders still occur but less frequently. One major reason for their rating increase, is that player stops leaving pieces en prise. Player has intermediate tactical skills but still misses many defensive tactical shots. Starts to build an opening repertoire, which gets them into the middlegame with a better position. Very limited endgame and positional skills. Starts making better plans due to limited endgame and positional knowledge.

    1300-1400 (3-4 years of experience) Advanced beginner. Players at this level have reached an intermediate thought process. player Looks for Checks, Captures and threats after opponents moves. Does not leave pieces en prise. Very good with offensive tactics and improving on the defensive tactics side, but still misses some. Still building opening repertoire. Starts learning basic endgame and middlegame strategy, but knowledge is still very basic. This level is an important milestone for the beginning chess player because they are on the verge of being an intermediate player. 1400-1500 (5-6 years of experience) Intermediate level player. Good thought process, does not leave pieces en prise. Advanced tactically, both on offense and defense (might occasionally miss a defensive tactic). Has an opening repertoire and plays pet openings. Has intermediate endgame, positional and analysis skills. One of the reasons for low rating is players poor positional evaluation abilities. Will probably need a chess coach to improve further. 1500-1700 (6-7 years of experience) Advanced intermediate player. Advanced tactical skills and thought process. Player has Intermediate endgame and positional skills at this stage. Intermediate positional evaluation and analysis skills. Should have a chess trainer, and play against strong opposition in order to improve as well as a strong focus on the endgame, positional and evaluation skills. 1700-1900 (7-8 years of experience) Near expert level player. Advanced tactical skills and thought process. Very strong endgame and positional skills. Intermediate evaluation skills. Very good analyst. Player needs to continue focusing on evaluation and analysis skills. Opening theory knowledge becomes an important component for further improvement. Player has a good database of structures that that can help them when they reach unfamiliar positions in OTB play. Player should reach expert level in approximately 2 more years, which falls in line with expert theory which claims that it takes 10 years to become an expert in any field. Update 2/6/15 This post has been the most popular on this site for a very long time. Thank you for taking the time to add your opinions and feedback. I plan on doing a follow up post in the future, with all of the things I have learned from all of you. It is still not too late to comment, all of your feedback on how you have improved in chess levels is very valuable. [feather_share]

  • Kotov's Method for Chess Improvement

    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 moves are a result of the subconscious processes which are not affected by the “conscious” short term memory.

    thinklikgm

    Hansen asserts that the best way to improve playing strength, improve judgement and to combat blunder tendencies is to follow a similar approach as that found in Kotov’s Think Like a Grandmaster.

    Here is the process described by Hansen:

    No matter what position you choose to analyse, opening, middle game or end game, complex or simple; find annotated games and play through them till you to come to the point with the greatest number of variations.

    Cover up the annotations with a sheet of paper and, without moving the pieces, analyze the position from 30 minutes to an hour. If the variations are extremely complex, you might write down your analyzes while analyzing.

    When time is out, stop analyzing and uncover the annotations in the book or magazine, and compare your notes with the annotator’s. (This is crucial since this trains and disciplines the brain’s ability to perceive positions correctly)

    Strictly speaking, this, and not his highly criticized graphic presentation of tree-analyzes, is the Kotov-method. This was the method catapulting Kotov to super GM strength and even if Kotov was unable to, we can partly explain why it works, and in short, it can be put as TWT or “Targeted Wiring Training”. As long as thinking is subconscious, we have no idea what the mind looks like when pondering or producing chess moves or analysing positions. This method simultaneously teaches a whole array of different chess skills even if not targeted individually or specifically.

    When starting out, there might be a great discrepancy between your analysis and the annotators’ but with time, you learn to delineate relevant moves and variations as this training and final comparison will exercise and target the mind’s ability to perceive chess positions and produce high quality moves. Initially, this system of training may appear time consuming and even monotonous, but patience and diligence will return generous rewards since you will:

    * Achieve total mastery of a new and important position

    * Broaden your opening repertoire and theoretical knowledge.

    * Become better acquainted with positions of similar pawn structures or themes (note; not “pattern”)

    * Absorb motifs which you can also apply to other positions.

    * Dramatically improve combinative skill.

    * Improve both long and short range planning.

    * Analyze more deeply, accurately and efficiently.

    * Increase concentration and attention span.

    * Sharpen board visualization.

    * Develop patience and perseverance

    * control impulsive tendencies.

    For the full article please go to: http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=5055

    For those of you who follow Dan Heisman, this training technique is very similar to Stoyko Exercises.

    Stoyko Exercises
    from Dan Heisman’s Exercises page

    A summary of Stoyko exercise:

    1) Find a fairly complicated position

    2) Get out a pen/pencil and paper

    3) You have unlimited time

    4) Write down every (pertinent) line for as deep as you can see, making sure to include an evaluation at the end of the line. This will likely include dozens of lines and several first ply candidate moves. Evaluations can be any type you like:

    a) Computer (in pawns, like +.3)
    b) MCO/Informant (=, +/=, etc.)
    c) English (“White is a little better”)

    5) At the end state which move you would play and it’s “best play for both sides” line becomes the PV

    6) When you are done, go over each line and its evaluation with a strong player and/or a computer. Look for:

    a) Lines/moves you should have analyzed but missed
    b) Any errors in visualization (retained images, etc.)
    c) Any lines where you stopped analyzing too soon, thus causing a big error in evaluation (quiescence errors)
    d) Any large errors in evaluation of any line
    e) Whether the above caused you to chose the wrong move
    etc.

  • The Step Method in Chess

    The Step Method in Chess is a chess improvement system that takes a player from beginner to a expert level.

    About the Steps Method in Chess

    The Step Method in ChessThe step-by-step method (or the Steps Method in Chess) has been developed by Rob Brunia and Cor van Wijgerden to teach children a Step-by-Step Chess Method to learn how to play chess for beginners. A large number of schools and chess clubs in the Netherlands and Belgium use this method for their chess lessons. The Step Method is intended to take students from the basics all the way to the chess level of an ELO rating of 1900 after the student has mastered step 5. The program can take a student up to a 2100 ELO rating once they master the self-directed 6th step.

    This steps method consists of six steps.

     

     

     

    Step 1

    Rules of the game and basic skills are covered in step 1.

    15 lessons:

    1: Board and pieces
    2: Moves of the pieces
    3: Attacking and capturing
    4: The pawn
    5: Defending
    6: Check and + getting out of check
    7: Mate
    8: Mate
    9: Castling
    10: Profitable exchange
    11: Twofold attack
    12: Draw
    13: Mating with the queen
    14: Taking ‘en passant’
    15: The notation
    (more…)

  • Chess Training Schedule

    Day 1
    Study endings (1hr)
    Solve tactics (30min)

    Day 2
    Study strategy (1hr)
    Solve endings (30min)

    Day 3
    Play long game (1hr)
    Solve tactics (30min)

    Day 4
    Solve strategy (1hr)
    Solve tactics (30min)

    Day 5
    Study openings (1hr)
    Solve endings (30min)

    Day 6
    Play long game (1hr)
    Solve tactics (30min)

    Day 7
    Off day