This has been out for a while, but I just got a chance to view it and it has a lot of interesting references to expertise and talent pertaining to chess. Highly recommended.
Tag: learning
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Overcoming Chess Training Plateaus
Plateaus and You
The 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).
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Chess is More a Game of Skill than Knowledge
“If you want to get better at chess you need to place much less emphasis on ‘study’ whereby you increase your knowledge of positions, and place more emphasis on ‘training,’ whereby you try to solve problems, play practice games, or perhaps try to beat a strong computer program from an advantageous position.” (p.25).
“Chess skill emerges from chess playing combined with chess training, where ‘training’ means working things out by yourself. The main skill a chess-player needs is skill in making decisions, so that’s what you need to do and do repeatedly. If you want to become a better player, you need better habits, and you cultivate better habits through training. 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. It is so much easier to read books that give strategic guidelines, hints and tips, etc., but what you need is ‘know how’ and that means learning by doing.” (p.29)
“…The main function of chess trainers should be to guide the training of their students, rather than to teach them directly. The best thing you can do for a student is to select interesting positions for them and analyse them carefully so you can see the kinds of things that the student is missing. The trouble with this approach is prosaic, but real. Chess tutors are normally paid by the hour, and this tends to make you think that you should be showing the students certain things, imparting knowledge, giving hints and tips, etc. This is understandable, but much more useful, I think, is to give the student difficult positions to solve, to be there in a supportive role as they solve them, and then carefully consider what the student missed and why.” (p.66)Johnathan Rowson in Chess for Zebras -
Kotov's Method for Chess Improvement
The Road to Chess Improvement
Ruke Vin Hansen in his amazing article Mind Games: Who is Doing the Playing? comes to the conclusion that the best way to improve chess skill is not through reading chess books or watching DVDs. He argues that reading more books only helps fill your short term memory whereas quality moves are a result of the subconscious processes which are not affected by the “conscious” short term memory.
Hansen asserts that the best way to improve playing strength, improve judgement and to combat blunder tendencies is to follow a similar approach as that found in Kotov’s Think Like a Grandmaster.Here is the process described by Hansen:
No matter what position you choose to analyse, opening, middle game or end game, complex or simple; find annotated games and play through them till you to come to the point with the greatest number of variations.
Cover up the annotations with a sheet of paper and, without moving the pieces, analyze the position from 30 minutes to an hour. If the variations are extremely complex, you might write down your analyzes while analyzing.
When time is out, stop analyzing and uncover the annotations in the book or magazine, and compare your notes with the annotator’s. (This is crucial since this trains and disciplines the brain’s ability to perceive positions correctly)
Strictly speaking, this, and not his highly criticized graphic presentation of tree-analyzes, is the Kotov-method. This was the method catapulting Kotov to super GM strength and even if Kotov was unable to, we can partly explain why it works, and in short, it can be put as TWT or “Targeted Wiring Training”. As long as thinking is subconscious, we have no idea what the mind looks like when pondering or producing chess moves or analysing positions. This method simultaneously teaches a whole array of different chess skills even if not targeted individually or specifically.
When starting out, there might be a great discrepancy between your analysis and the annotators’ but with time, you learn to delineate relevant moves and variations as this training and final comparison will exercise and target the mind’s ability to perceive chess positions and produce high quality moves. Initially, this system of training may appear time consuming and even monotonous, but patience and diligence will return generous rewards since you will:
* Achieve total mastery of a new and important position
* Broaden your opening repertoire and theoretical knowledge.
* Become better acquainted with positions of similar pawn structures or themes (note; not “pattern”)
* Absorb motifs which you can also apply to other positions.
* Dramatically improve combinative skill.
* Improve both long and short range planning.
* Analyze more deeply, accurately and efficiently.
* Increase concentration and attention span.
* Sharpen board visualization.
* Develop patience and perseverance
* control impulsive tendencies.
For the full article please go to: http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=5055
For those of you who follow Dan Heisman, this training technique is very similar to Stoyko Exercises.
Stoyko Exercises
from Dan Heisman’s Exercises pageA summary of Stoyko exercise:
1) Find a fairly complicated position
2) Get out a pen/pencil and paper
3) You have unlimited time
4) Write down every (pertinent) line for as deep as you can see, making sure to include an evaluation at the end of the line. This will likely include dozens of lines and several first ply candidate moves. Evaluations can be any type you like:
a) Computer (in pawns, like +.3)
b) MCO/Informant (=, +/=, etc.)
c) English (“White is a little better”)5) At the end state which move you would play and it’s “best play for both sides” line becomes the PV
6) When you are done, go over each line and its evaluation with a strong player and/or a computer. Look for:
a) Lines/moves you should have analyzed but missed
b) Any errors in visualization (retained images, etc.)
c) Any lines where you stopped analyzing too soon, thus causing a big error in evaluation (quiescence errors)
d) Any large errors in evaluation of any line
e) Whether the above caused you to chose the wrong move
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These Things Take Time : The Challenges Adults Face When Learning Chess
(first in a series of adult learning posts)
“These things take time.” the grand master explained to his young pupil. Ten years and nearly one thousand rating points later, the student now finally realized the truth in the words of his teacher. One must realize that there is no quick fix to becoming an expert in any field, you need to pay your dues and in time you will reach one of many “a-ha” moments as your skills improve.
Cognitive psychologists Chase & Simon in 1973 studied chess experts and found that they had often spent as many as 50,000 hours practicing chess. That means that a 35 year old master who has spent 50,000 hours playing chess must have spent 4-5 hours everyday for thirty years on the chessboard starting at the age of 5.
Good heuristics on the time it takes to improve and reach certain milestones in your chess development could go like this (Note that results may vary based on the amount of time you spend, and the intensity of your training sessions):
- The average adult will need to invest approximately 5 years of practice to become a decent player (ELO 1600)
- The average adult will need to invest approximately 10 years to become an expert (ELO 1900-2000).
- Because time is against them, the average adult learner will have an extraordinarily difficulty time in surpassing the 2000 ELO rating.
- Measureable progress comes in 6-12 month periods.
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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 ZebrasSo 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)