Chess for Beginners

Tag: chess improvement

  • Training Insights

    Update: 8/7/2010:
    I have been following my own advice for the past two weeks, and I have to say that my training is more focused than ever, and I am beginning to see tangible improvements over the board. If you are interested, I am continuing to post my weekly training schedule at my Chess Notebook site.

    Original Post 7/27/2010

    I have slightly modified my training in the last week to include a new way of training tactics and a method to focus my training time.

    A New Way of Training Tactics

    I came across a forum post by IM David Pruess where he gives excellent advice on truly learning patterns when training tactics. Below is his advice:
    The original post is titled Chess Advice Most Chess Player’s Don’t Like to Hear and it’s a must read.

    or when i give players in the 1000-1800 range advice on improving their tactics, viz: 10-15 min per day of solving simple tactical puzzles. the goal is to increase your store of basic patterns, not to work on your visualization, deep calculation. remember that is your goal. you are not trying to prove that you can solve every problem. if you don’t solve a problem within 1 minute, stop. it’s probably a new pattern or you would have gotten it by now. (with private students i’ll take the time to demonstrate this to them: show them through examples that they can find a 3-4 move problem in 10 seconds if they know the pattern, and that they can fail to find a mate in 2 for 10 minutes if they don’t know the pattern). look at the answer, and now go over the answer 3 more times in your head to help the pattern take hold. your brain can probably take on 2-3 new patterns between sleeping, so you should stop once you’ve been stumped by 2 or 3 problems (usually will take about 10-15 min). there is no point in doing more than that in one day. and any day you miss, you can’t make up for. a semi-random estimate on my part is that you need about 2000 of these patterns to become a master. so you need to do this for 2 years or more.

    i would guess that less than 1 in 100 of the people i have given this advice to have followed it to the letter. if they enjoy it, they’ll waste their time doing it for 1.5 hours in a day, choosing to ignore that it’s not helping them [after 15 min]. or some with ego issues will insist on trying to solve every single position (if only they linked their ego to their self-discipline Tongue out).

    – IM David Pruess

    A Specific CurriculumWhile I am disciplined in spending a minimum of 30 minutes per day doing chess studies, I am usually jumping from book to book and topic to topic which ends up losing valuable time. In the past I have tried to work from a training schedule, but the problem has been that the schedule has been too general. What I started doing is creating a specific training curriculum, where I create a schedule 2 weeks into the future, with the exact content I should cover everyday (an example can be seen here).  The schedule is created on a Sunday, and it takes no more than 15 minutes to create.

  • 200 ELO Points in 6 Months

    USChess.org has a great article on how Christian Galwe  increased 200 rating points in 6 months!

    Here are a few of the recommendations from the article:

    * Study your own games with an instructor

    * Don’t study openings…study structures and plans instead.

    * If you play blitz, play with a 5 second increment and always try to find the best move

    * Review your blitz games just like if it were a standard game.

    * Do tactical exercises everyday for at least 30-40 minutes.

    * Keep physically fit.

    Read the full article at the USChess.org site.

  • 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.

  • Analyzing Your Games

    According to Mark Dvoretsky the analysis of one’s own games is the main means of self-improvement.  In Secrets of Chess Training Dvoretsky offers the following guidelines:

    1. Find the turning points – Decide where mistakes were made, where the evaluation of the position changed or an opportunity was missed.
    2. Seek the reasons for your own mistakes – The objective realization of your own weaknesses is a necessary first step in the work of correcting them.
    3. Seek new possibilities, which you did not notice during the game.
    4. Ponder over the opening stage – Approach the problems you faced during the opening to increase your knowledge and outline new plans.

  • 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.

  • 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

  • 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