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…
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…
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.
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…
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.
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…
Photo report of the Miami Chess Open held from September 28th through September 30th. Photography: William Mendez © 2007 Hikaru Nakamura wins the 2007 Miami Chess Open Photography: William Mendez © 2007 U.S Champion Alexander Shabalov Photography: William Mendez © 2007 IM David Pruess contemplates the position
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…
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…
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…