Chess for Beginners

Category: Notebook

  • Chess Resolutions

    Farbror the Guru has challenged the chess improvement community to come up with a list of chess goals for the coming year, so here are mine:

    Long Term Goals

    • Increase USCF rating to 1400 (currently at 1283)
    • Increase Chess Tempo standard tactics rating to 1850 (currently at 1700)
    • Increase ICC standard rating (currently have a provisional rating of 1750) will set appropriate ELO goals within the next 3 months once I get out of provisional status. update 01.03.10 Out of provisional rating after having played 26 standard games. Benchmark rating is 1781 goal is to reach an ICC rating of 1825 by the end of the year.
    • Play in 4 tournaments within the next 12 months
    • Play a minimum of 2 standard games G/15 or > per week
    • Have a minimum of 6 training sessions in the next 12 months with FM Charles Galofre

    Short Term Goals (goals for the next 90 days)

    • Dedicate 1 hour per day to chess training
    • Review all of my standard games
    • Play in an OTB tournament before the end of February ’10
    • Have a chess lesson before the end of February ’10
    • Simplify my chess training, focus more on the practical side of chess
    • Increase Chess Tempo rating to 1750 by the end of February ’10

  • 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.

  • 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

  • King and Pawn Endgame with Pawns on Both Wings

    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

    pawns_1.jpg

    1…Ke7 2.Ke2 Kd6 3.Kd3 Kd5 2)Mobilization of the majority. 4.b4

    pawns_2.jpg

    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+

    pawns_3.jpg

    9…Kb7 10.Kc5 Kc7 11.b6+ axb6+ 12.axb6+ Kb7

    pawns_4.jpg

    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+-  .

  • Annotated Game: Chessbuzz vs Lordofthedance

    Round 1 game of the September Standard Tourney on ICC.

  • Training Notebook 08.16.2007

    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:

    • Material
    • Safety
    • Freedom

    Based on those ideas when selecting candidate moves 5 good questions to ask are:

    1. Who is ahead in material?
    2. Is either King unsafe?
    3. Who has more freedom?
    4. What would you play if it was your opponent’s turn?
    5. What do you play that takes advantage of the three keys to strategy?

    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.

  • Training Notebook 8.13.07

    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.
    Opposition

    Questions to ask in a K+P vs. K endgame:

    • Is the pawn a rook pawn? (then more than likely the game will be drawn)
    • Is the stronger side’s King one square or two squares in front of it’s pawn? (One square and it depends on who has the opposition, two squares is a win for the stronger side.)
    • Who possess the opposition?

    Endgame Puzzle

    Endgame Puzzle 1
    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.

    CTB 440

    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#]

  • Study Schedule

    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 and Chess Strategy for Kids

    Endgame:Silman’s Complete Endgame Course and Pandolfini’s Endgame Course

    Tactics: Convekta’s Chess Tactics for Beginners

  • Rating Benchmark: 08.11.2007

    As part of my benchmarking before I begin my new training on Monday August 13th, my ICC rating is as follows:  

    ICC Rating 8/11/2007

  • Chess Notebook Revisited

    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.