Chess for Beginners

Category: Training

  • 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.

  • 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)

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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#]

  • Playing Over Annotated Master Chess Games

    Purdy maintained that the best way to get better at chess was to play over annotated master chess games. Below is Purdy’s method for going over chess games:

    1. Take the side of the winner (or either side if the game was a draw).

    2. Cover the moves with an index card, and when it’s your turn to move select a move based on the position on the chess board.

    3. Uncover the move, and compare it to your move. Review the annotations and understand why the text move is better than the move you selected.

  • How Do You Learn Chess?

    I would like to take an informal poll as to how you learn chess. Some of the options would be:

    1. A good book. (feel free to write the book’s title if it has made a difference in your training.)

    2. Going over annotated games.

    3. Chess videos

    4. Chess teacher

    5. Anything else that works for you.

    Hopefully this will help beginners get ideas on resources to use for training.

  • Entering My First Tournament

    Anyone have any advice on how to go about training for a tournament? This would be my first tournament and it would be great to get tips on how to go about preparing for it. The tournament is 1 month away and this would be my first experience in tournament play.

    A couple of questions I have are:

    • As an unrated player should I enter the Open or U1400 class? (I estimate my playing strength to be approx. 1500 ELO)?
    • What should I focus on during my preparation?

    Any advice would be appreciated.

  • Update to the Generic Training Schedule

    After a few days using the Generic Training Schedule, I have a few minor modifications to adapt it to better fit the needs of the club level chess player. The original ChessOK article was geared towards 2000+ level players who have different needs than beginners. One major difference between experts and amateurs is the importance of opening preparation at the expert class, and this focus can be seen throughout the original GTS plan. Another feature of this new version of the schedule is that the play time is spaced in such a way as to allow you to try out new ideas and openings that were covered on previous days.

    In this new adaptation I have halved the opening study time and focused on endgame and tactical study time which will better address the needs of amateurs.

    The end result would look something like this:

    Day 1

    Study Openings 1U

    Solve Tactics 1U

    Study Endings 1U

    Study Strategy 1U

    Day 2

    Study Endings 1U

    Solve Tactics 1U

    Play 1U

    Study Strategy 1U

    Day 3

    Study Strategy 1U

    Solve Tactics 1U

    Solve Endings 1U

    Study Openings 1U

    Day 4

    Solve Tactics 1U

    Study Endings 1U

    Study Strategy 1U

    Play 1U