Chess for Beginners

Tag: ECT

  • Chess Training Notebook Week of 12/28/09

    First entry of the new year, and it is time to review my Chess goals and resolutions. So far, I’m happy with my progress, and the new training program I am following is finally giving me guidance and improvement.

    This week was the 2nd and final week of the first cycle of Phase I of the Extreme Chess Training Program which I began on 12/21/09.  Next week I start on Phase II, which focuses on the endgame. I am going to use the end of 1 full cycle of ECT, which is 45 days to play a tournament and do a progress report. I will also post more information on the program upon my completion of my first 45 day cycle.

    Monday 12/28 – Chess Trainer at chesstempo.com. Increased standard rating from 1717 to 1725 1hr and 81% accuracy which is much higher than my 57% average.

    Tuesday 12/29  – Played rated game on FICS & reviewed game afterwards.

    Wednesday 12/30  – 2 Stoyko Tactics puzzles from Imagination in Chess using Tactics Checklist . Spent 39 minutes on 1 puzzle! Total training time was 1hr.

    Thursday 12/31  – New years eve, sneaked in 15 minutes of unrated tactics at chesstempo.com.

    Friday 1/1  – Did Speed Tactics from Bain’s Tactics for Students.  Exercises 93 through 197 with 95% accurracy.  Also, to makeup for Thursday I played a standard game against Fritz 5.32 1 ply (Playing against engine due to Internet issues).

    Saturday 1/2  – Core Tactics from Chess Training Pocket Book. 76% accurracy.

    Sunday 1/3  – Open day – Solved Step 3 tests of Step Method scoring 80%, 70% and 72%. Also did 20 minutes of  Tactics Trainer using chesstempo improved rating slightly from 1725 to 1727. Total training time 1 hr.

  • Extreme Chess Training – Updated

    Update 12.25.09

    Here’s an update post on a quick overview of what I’m thinking and doing so far:

    The program is going to consist of 3 phases, each phase lasting 60 days. The first phase will focus on tactics and the following phases will be on endgame and strategy. At the end of each phase, I will participate in a tournament to help gauge my progress. I am compiling positions and content to go along with the program, but I have just recently started doing this and it will take a while.

    Right now I am on week 1 of the tactics phase, and things are going well. A draft of the schedule looks something like this:

    Monday

    Tactics Trainer – consists of doing 1 hour at chesstempo.com

    Tuesday

    Play a standard game and analyze it afterwards

    Wednesday

    Stoyko Tactics – consists of doing 1 hour of positions from Imagination in Chess. These are tough, so taking up to 15 minutes per position is not unusual. I am also using a tactics checklist based on Heisman’s ‘Seeds of Tactical Destruction’ Novice Nook.

    Thursday

    Play and analyze

    Friday

    Speed Tactics – Consists of doing 1 hour of easy tactics. I am using positions from Bain’s Chess Tactics for Students. The idea is to do as many as you can in 1 hour. I am averaging about 120 positions per hour from the Bain problem set.

    Saturday

    Core Tactics – consists of doing positions from the Alburt’s Chess Training Pocketbook.

    Sunday

    Open day – idea is to have fun, take a break or work on any one of the exercises above as extra credit.

    I plan on elaborating much more on this new program with much more to follow, and remember in the meantime to visit the chess.com ECT group.

    Original Post 12.21.09

    I’m currently brainstorming a new chess training program for adult beginners rated 1200-1600 USCF. I have created a group on chess.com for this purpose which you can visit here: http://www.chess.com/groups/home/extreme-chess-training.

    I’m still in the early stages of setting this up, but I will be posting more about it in the next few days.

    Stay Tuned…

  • Evaluating Tactics

    I have started to evaluate tactical positions a bit differently than quiet strategic ones. For this purpose, I am using a tactical checklist, which is based on Heisman’s seeds of tactical destruction. I assessed the position in the using the checklist, and my evaluation is below. You can download a copy of the check list here.

    igc23_bWhite to move

     The King and black rook are on the same diagonal. The only piece preventing the Queen fork is the Bishop, so if the Bishop could be attacked, the fork would work. 1.Rf3 is the logical candidate. After 1.Rf3 the black rook could move to safety, where it would not be victim to the fork…but after further analysis the rook has no safe squares to go where he would be free from the fork. The next option for Black is to defend the bishop with the Queen, but again the Queen has no squares which are not attacked by either the White knight or the White d5 pawn. 1.Rf3  1…Qb7 2.Rxf6 Qb5 3.Qc3 Qf1+ 4.Kg3 Qg1+ 5.Kh4 1-0