Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Bragging Big Time

This is without doubt the peak in my chess life and all is downhill from here. I have been quoted in a chess book before but only as a happy customer. It does make a lot of sense since buying chess books is my main chess skill.

Check out Axel's interesting book: Sample Pages from "Pump up your rating"

Sunday, July 28, 2013

The Study Buddy Project

The previous Grob Challenge Project was a success and I have been thinking about starting some new project and here it is: The Study Buddy Project

 To call it a project is perhaps a little far fetched but I will give it a try. In My limited experience, the strongest notion of really learning and improving has been playing slow Games and discussing/analyzng the games with My opponent. However, it is not easy to find opponents interested in playing slow games and to have a go at analyzing the game. Enter the "Study Buddy Project"!

 The Study Buddy Project is simply me acting as a match maker for chess improvers. Drop me a note if you are interested. Please indicate your rating, preferred rating of opponent, preferred sites and time zone considerations. It would be really cool if you were willing share interesting annotated games and/or positions here at the blog. Short set of matches would be even cooler! I would very much like to play a few slow games myself. My OTB rating is undefined but I tend to plateau at around 1500 playing turn basen games. At the moment I have accounts at FICS and chess.com.

Sunday, July 21, 2013

In Search of a Chess Hero

I think Nigel Davies blog is a must read for anyone interested in chess and chess improvement. A few days ago Nigel posted a very interesting and to the point article on the topic of "Suitable Chess Role Model". Many Chess scholars have suggested that it is wise for improvers to pick a Chess Hero to study but Nigel takes it a few steps further and offers a few criteria for the choice of a Chess Hero. Here is a bullets from Nigels selection criterias:


  • Active between 1920 - 1970
  • Did not specialize in gambits or king fiachettos
  • At some time point among the Top 50 in the world
  • Improvers < 1500 should pick a player who played e4/d4 and who responded  "1. e4 e5" or "1. d4 d5"
My first choice for a chess hero (Bent Larsen) did not qualify and my second choice (Ulf Andersson) also missed the mark. Since I am semi-patriotic when it comes to chess, I am in search for a Scandinavian Chess Role Model. I might be forced to include the Baltic states in my search sphere. I encourage all my readers to aid me in my search. My top candidate as I write would be Gösta Stoltz who (at least in the pre-Andersson era) was considered to be Swedens best chess talent ever.

There is a book available occasionally in used book store with a collection of Gösta's finest games. Bonus points are awarded for a suggested chess hero who is available in one or more books.

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

To Play or not to Play Vanilla Chess Openings

A common piece of advice often heard is that improving players should play "sound tactical openings" in order to improve. Another statement is that "anything is playable below Master level". This is very interesting to me and at the same time very confusing. I really would like to gain a better understanding of the situation. 

If open tactical games is food for brain and a solid ground for Improvement, then why not play wild gambits?

If you you offer your opponent a substantial advantage, then you will have a difficult task winning. Still, I do not see how playing loosing positions will slow down your improvement process. It is a canonical advice to play stronger opponents in order to improve. Playing against a stronger opponent is a loosing position. 

If  you play a strange gambit with a name worthy of a middle earth dwarven prince lord, then you might have problems playing Magnus Carlsen but is it really the gambit to blame?

My home work for you, dear readers, is to come up with arguments for why it is benefitial for Chess Improvement to play vanilla Openings.

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Gambit not so Galore

My first flirt with the Gibbens-Weidenhagen gambit was like a Microsoft demo. Everything looks fine but it just doesn't work properly. After just a few moves I had a clear advantage against a decent player. For the price of a g-pawn I had the center, easy development and self-confidence. But then reality crushed in! After a few weak moves I just got outplayed.

Note to self: Openings never replace thinking.

  
My second and last try with the gambit started bad and then got worse. My opponent played daring active moves and soon I found myself on a position hated by Mr Houdini and with My king as exposed as the king in a well known H.C Andersen story.

Does it make sense to play gambits with long medival double names? Well, why do you play Chess? If your answer is "to have fun" or "to exercise the brain", then why not? The road less travelled will take you to uncharted territory fast where you and your opponent will have to play Chess. What about the first move advantage? I am convinced that experience from playing wild weird stuff will offer a practical advantage. And do not forget the fun factor.

 Post Scriptum: Check out what Frisco has to say: Frisco's Post

Thursday, July 4, 2013

The Cult of Blackmar-Diemer

Early in my chesshood I decided to give the Blackmar-Diemer gambit (BDG) a try. I had very little playing experience but I had solved quite a few tactics problems. I thought it was a wise thing to join the Cult of Blackmar-Diemer. My results were terrible or worse. It did not occur to me that playing a gambit is a lot more that using a bag of tricks.

After trying a whole range of openings (and buying books on most openings!), I am again tempted to give the weird world of gambits a try inspired by a handful of highly inspirational Facebook updates by talented chess book author Frisco Del Rosario.

A real gambit must have a Middle Earthesque double name! If you plan to play the BDG you must arm up with a few properly named gambits. Black will try 1. d4 Nf6 and then it might be worthwhile to introduce the wonderful Gibbins-Weidenhagen gambit (1. d4 Nf6 2. g4?!). So I did in my comeback game as a d4-player and it was a disaster (a topic for a later blog post). In my second game black was trying the dirty trick of trying a transposition into something French. Counter Measures! Enter the Diemer-Duhm gambit (1. d4 d5 2. e4 e6 3. c4?!). The Diemer-Duhm is presented in heartwarming fashion at Jyrki Heikkinen’s web site. I am especially impressed by his one page summary of the “duties” of all the pieces (for both sides!) in the opening (http://www.nic.funet.fi/pub/doc/games/chess/ddg/Texts/men.html). This is a great way to prepare for studying the nuances of the opening. I think all opening books aimed at improving players should include such a condensed introduction.




Tuesday, January 22, 2013

A Wild Idea!

My next idea is to decrease My number of corr games to 2-4 and treat every post opening move as a Stoyko exercise.

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Cannon Fodder

After being typecasted as cannon fodder on the ICCF Web Server for quite some time, I can finally brag about some success.

Here is the game with some notes:



And the companion game:

Thursday, January 10, 2013

FICS on iPad?

Is there a good app for playing at FICS using an iPad? Anyone up for a game in a euro friendly timeslot?

Monday, January 7, 2013

Silver Tape Treatment of 1. e4

I very much like the outline of the opening books from Chess Star Publishing and their "three step approach" which makes learning the appropriate amount of theory or ideas much easier.

Vladimir Barsky's "The Modern Philidor Defence" offer a few useful pieces of advice for the Silver Tape Repertoire. The tweet sized summary is to play "1. e4 d6" to reach the backbone structure of the Silver Tape repertoire (See previous post).

How about the typical Philidor endgame (1. e4 d6 2. d4 Nf6 3. Nc3 e5 4. dxe5 dxe5 5. Qxd8+ Kxd8)? According to Vladimir gets some initiative but it is still a chess game.


Sunday, January 6, 2013

A Silver Tape Repertoire

I might have found a cure for My Opening Phobia: A sturdy mix of Philidor and the Old Indian This is obviously not the most explosive mixture but I can see practical advantages such as surviving well into the middlegame and also find yourself in a somewhat familiar setting. With a cunning move order you will reach the following position quite often:



Is there any disadvantages? Well, it is often said that improvers should play open games in order to learn the most and to fine tune their skills but I beg to differ. There will be tactics sooner or later and I can see no harm in delaying the fire works for a while. I find comfort in the following quote by Lajos Portisch:

"Your only task in the opening is to reach a playable middlegame." 

What about the white pieces? Anything is playable below master level and especially with the white pieces. Having the first move offers a distinct tiny temporal advantage. My perhaps naive guiding rule when choosing an opening as white is the "Fun Factor". I enjoy playing wild, theory dense and crazy stuff when I have the first move advantage. My opponent will have to "follow suit" until the slight first move initiative evaporates and hopefully the game by then has reached something middlegame-esque. Yes, I might fumble into a onesided theory battle but ignorance is a bliss and I might learn something.

Friday, January 4, 2013

Lost in Delay

My Chess Hero Dan Heisman says in a tweet:

"Playing openings that delay tactics not only does not avoid tactics, it delays your learning curve on chess' most important aspect"

I am not anywhere near a position from where I can question Dan's judgement but you cannot be a good student if you don't ask questions.

There must be some hidden assumptions behind the statement above which I fail to realize. I do not think that the amount of tactics lost due to the delay or that the time wasted (i.e. the delay) is significant.

Any thoughts?

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Silver Tape Chess

Silver Tape Chess


A few pieces of advice for an improving chess player

Draft 1.0




Why Chess?


I started playing some correspondence chess some years ago to have some fun and to give the old brain some work-out. Soon I realized that my passion for chess was far greater than my chess skills. Still, I wanted to learn a little more and to improve my chess skills. In this pamphlet I have tried to collect a few observations and experiences made during ongoing chess development.

Training


If you are interested in becoming a better runner, then you should do a lot of running. The same holds for chess. The best way to become a better player is to play a lot of slow games. Why slow games? Playing a slow paced game will offer the best chances to think deep about your moves. Furthermore, thinking deeply about your moves at reasonably pace will offer better chances to evaluate more possible moves and compare them instead of only playing “hunch based” moves in a blitz game. Always try to discuss your games with your opponent afterwards. Also, create a “database” with all your games and try to analyze them in your chess study chamber.

To find time for slow games might be a challenge but these is still hope! IM Andrew Martin made the claim that as little as 15 minutes per day of quality training would be enough for a steady improvement of, say, 1 ELO-point per week. So, what is “quality training”? If training should be effective then you have to make your training as close to the real thing as possible. Furthermore you need to push your limits.

The Top Candidate for daily training is of course tactics problems. There are plenty of resources to provide tactics problems for free or for a smallish membership fee. There are books, internet sites and smart phone apps. The nice thing about software solutions for tactics training is that the software will keep track of your development and offer problems at a suitable level.

Make sure to spend extra time on all problems you fail to solve (some web applications will automatically save all failed problems in a special database) in order to try to understand the solution and to figure out why you didn’t see the solution in the first place. By focusing on failed problems you will learn new patterns and improve your pattern recognition.

Most games between chess games up to decent hobby player level, say 1800 ELO, are decided by simple mistakes of a tactical nature. To sharpen your tactical eye and pattern recognition is the High Road to improved chess results. Make sure to use a tactics database based on problems from real games when studying tactics. Some training material offer selected problems which might lead to a disproportionate number of fancy Queen sacrifices which is a rare guest in real life games.

My favorite tactics drill is “three strikes and you are out”. I set a timer at 20 minutes. The goal for the tactics drill is to solve nine problems before I fail three problems. In my experience, the combination of the limited time and the limit to the number of failures makes me work a little harder. Also, three new patterns from failed problems is probably enough for the brain to digest for one day.

So, Tactics is the bread and butter but what is next in line? Openings or Endgames?

“Openings teach you openings. Endgames teach you chess” – Stephan Gerzadowicz

Endgame problems do have fewer pieces on the board and offer much better chances to learn how the pieces can work together in coordination. Solving endgame problems is a not too distant cousin to ordinary tactics problems. However, endgame problems offer challenges not to be seen in ordinary tactics problems (the use of zugzwang, for example). The argument for studying openings is that all games have an opening but not all games reach an endgame. This is very true of course but you can “survive” the opening phase of a chess games by using well established general guiding rules. To focus on understanding these general rules will save you a lot of chess hours which can be used more efficiently.

Training Schedules


I have tried them all and they all failed worse than the most recent diet sensation. We have all been there. Where is the trap and why do training schedules tend to fail? They are just too ambitious and sometimes too complex. In my humble opinion, the best way to start a new habit is to start with gentle steps. Going to the gym three times a week does not sound like much but to actually get there might be quite an obstacle. How about aiming for a five minute walk everyday and then a daily ten minute walk next week?

The same goes for chess training. A daily dose of 15-20 minutes of chess training might not sound like much but to make a habit out of it might be harder than you think. So, the key to forming a new habit is a gentle start and then slowly and steadily increasing the activity. How about starting with a single daily chess problem?
It takes time, perhaps as much as 3-4 weeks, to establish a new habit. A gentle start will be a success factor towards establishing a habit but you also need to keep track of your achievements. Try something as simple as a large “X-mark” in your calendar.

The Stoyko Exercise


The Stoyko Exercise or The Twenty Minute Exercise as Heisman calls it is interesting and useful. The idea is simply to deeply analyze any foggy middlegame position for twenty minutes. The goal is to calculate and evaluate as many lines from the position as possible within the twenty minutes. You need to document all your lines and your evaluation. For the best training result you should discuss your lines and evaluations with a stronger player but comparing to the evaluations from a chess engine is also pretty good.

My suggestion is to choose positions from canonical chess games which make it possible to compare your thoughts to the annotations from some chess book. Another idea is to use a few positions from your own set of openings. Thinking deeply about positions arising in your own openings will be well spent time. Bonus points for combining these ideas (i.e. using positions from canonical games by your chess hero playing your openings)

The inventor Stoyko himself claims to have gained 100 points every time he did the exercise. Should that be 10% true, then I am one happy patzer!

Replaying Master Games


Replaying Master Games is a great way to improve your chess skills. The best way to do it is in a “Guess-the-Move” fashion. It does not make much sense to try to guess the moves in the opening phase of the game unless you are replaying a game using an opening you are trying to understand or learn. The suggested procedure is to try to guess the moves of the winning player starting from, say, move 10. Cover up the list of moves and try to guess the moves of the winning player. To keep score of the number of correctly guessed moves after the opening phase can be a good thing. You can use the running median of number of the correctly guessed moves from the last 21 games as a crude way of measuring your development (an idea suggested by Purdy). Another good thing is to write down all the moves you guessed wrong and your reasoning behind the move you suggested.

An alternative approach to skipping the opening phase of the game is to see how the general guiding principles (revisit your favorite beginner’s chess book!) is applied by the players during the opening phase.

A fine guiding principle is to study master games in chronological order. The games of Paul Morphy are an excellent starting point.

A controversial approach is to try to memorize a few of your favorite chess games. You will soon realize that reciting Morphy’s Opera House game is not much of a party trick but there are maybe other benefits from trying to memorize games. In my experience, memorizing chess games will make me try a little harder to understand what is “going on” in the game. The goal to memorize a game could be used as an indirect motivational factor to gain a little deeper understanding of the game under study.

Correspondence Chess


Correspondence is a great way to get playing experience. Playing correspondence chess using a web site, smart phone app or email is convenient and access able. Some web sites offer a great feature which is to store private notes during the game. To document and review your own analysis and your own thought process is worthwhile.

Beware of game overload poisoning. Try to be patient and keep the number of ongoing games fairly low. It is much better to play a handful of games highly focused than to play a massive number of games without much thought. Play with your friends and/or Study Buddies. Avoid players with unbeaten win records. They are just too strong or engine users.
Chess Books

My chess skills have improved but not as fast as expected. However, when it comes to chess books consumption, then I am of super grandmaster caliber. Please note that to consumption and reading is to vastly different things. The bookshelves are filled with books that are almost unread beyond the introduction. The typical case of an unread chess book would be a random opening monograph. Opening books are the honey trap for chess improvers and from a practical perspective a scam aimed at almost all book buying chess players. I am not saying that there is something wrong with the material in the opening books. Most of the well established chess authors produce top class information presented in crystal clear fashion. There are pages after pages of detailed and exact information on optimal play in some opening variation. Can you see where I am heading? Well, your average opponent will not play optimal chess. No matter how many books you have studied and maybe even learned on your favorite opening, you opponent will play something out-of-the-book which is totally neglected by the authors. You are on your own.

And another thing: at the very end of some lengthy variation, the author will claim that white has a tiny edge, “+=” or so, and then leave you on your own to prove it. Again, you are on your own. But Hey! Didn’t white start with a tiny edge?

There are a few books that I have read and re-read. All of them tend to be books by passionate authors who make me eager to just play!

FM Dan Heisman teased the chess community with the following thought experiment; “Suppose an average chess enthusiast learned every single line from some one volume chess opening encyclopedia. How much stronger would that player become?” Dan’s guess is about 50 ELO points!

The best books for improving chess players are collections with annotated games where the annotations are written for improving chess players. “My 60 Memorable Games” by Bobby Fischer is a few years down the road.

Study Buddies and a Chess Hero


“Improvement” is basically to do things better. It is either adding strengths or removing weaknesses. A Study Buddy is a golden resource. To study chess together with a friend makes it more sociable but also a greater learning experience. Different players have different strengths and weaknesses. Discussing and exchanging ideas will help you both to identify weak areas in your chess knowledge and thereby offer a better chance improve in those areas. Working on the strong aspects of your chess skills is very tempting but it is easy to reach a state of diminishing returns. If you are strong at middlegames and stink at endgames, then working another hour on middlegames would be inefficient compared to working for an hour on your endgame skills.
It is not exactly a pleasure (a bit of rhino skin helps!) but a Study Buddy can help you to a more objective view of your strengths and weaknesses as a chess player.

To pick a Chess Hero and then to learn more about your hero can be a great way to learn more about chess in general and to pick up a few ideas about your chess opening repertoire.

Openings


“Your only task in the opening is to reach a playable middlegame” – Lajos Portisch

Searching for the optimal Chess Opening and the Optimal Training Schedule has wasted many of my chess hours. Read the Portisch quote again and relax. Some authorities on chess development claim that playing opening that suits your “style” will slow down your improvement. Think of it as a special case of the Law of diminishing returns. Other Chess Philosophers claim that the concept of style is neither applicable to improvers nor to strong players. So, if style is out of the window then I think there is a solid case for playing stodgy openings. Playing something solid and perhaps slightly passive, especially as black, will be your helping hand into a playable middlegame.

Playing something like the Old Indian (ECO: A53-A55) versus all non-e4 openings fits the bill. Adding another “old-timer” such as the Philidor Defence (ECO: C41) and you have all ground covered. The Scandinavian Defence (or Center Counter Defence, ECO: B01) is another solid alternative.

My Silver Tape Chess repertoire is inspired by Bird’s Opening (ECO: A02) as white and Old Indian/Scandinavian as black. Why Bird’s Opening? It is slightly under the radar end something played a handful of times by my own Chess Hero Bent Larsen. You will find a data dump of games where Larsen is using my repertoire in the appendix.

The London system or the Colle system might be the top candidates for a stodgy alternative as white but I have not enjoyed playing any of these openings (The Fun Factor).

Internet Resources


Yes, it is all there! Just about everything you need on your own Quest for Chess Enlightenment can be found on the Internet legal and free of charge: Chess Engines, Database Software, Chess Games and Tactics problems just to name a few. There are quite a few quality chess blogs devoted to chess improvement.


Appendix: Model games for the Silver Tape repertoire (pdf) and the same games as a pgn-file