I have been playing chess for my entire life, but I began playing seriously back in 1998 when I lived in Hawaii. I played in a few tournaments, with pretty pathetic results. Although I wanted to get better and avenge my honor (I managed to play some pretty bad chess…) I had to give it up because of time restraints, trying to juggle school and work simply left no time for chess.
I continued to play on-line at ICC and read a book from time to time, but no serious study. I came back to competitive over the board (OTB) chess in 2005. I played in a couple of tournaments and…well I still sucked. Don’t get me wrong, I did improve, but a rating jump from 897 to 1008 is not exactly the kind of thing you put in your blog…
I have since moved to Arizona and have been playing in local tournaments and have finally seen an improvement in not only my rating but my chess understanding as well. While my rating is still a paltry 1283 it is on the rise and I am not quite as feeble and pathetic as I once was. I remember to hit my clock after every move (seriously it took me 6 OTB games to master this) I have some semblance of a thought process, and even when some 10 year old spanks me so hard that it hurts my feelings, I can actually understand and see my entire position turning to shit in front of me. I still get thrashed, but at least I understand why and how it happened.
I decided to start this blog for several reasons
1. As therapy for my obsession, people who think it is just a game don’t get it!
2. To help other’s along, by witnessing my struggles maybe someone else will take heart in the fact that they are not alone.
3. Post book reviews. I’ve bought at least a hundred books and I have actually read 10 to 12 of them :) One of the problems with chess improvement is that there are hundreds of books out there. For someone starting out, it can be quite daunting. A book review from a fellow patzer might help you make a better buying decision.
Hopefully between me and the folks who post here we can all learn from one another and actually get better. And if not we can always just use it as big therapy session. So I will be getting things rolling here in the next few days. There are two books that I will review in the next few days Rapid Chess Improvement by Michael DeLaMaza, and Chess Exam and Training Guide by Igor Khmelnitsky.
Filed under: General
Welcome aboard. Critical reading along with the above is the Real Chess stuff by Dan Heisman.
Mastery is within us all. Doing it efficiently, is some of our’s call.
Oh lord, the books. They’re taking over my house.
At least, for the love of God, resist, resist as much as you can, buying loads of books on opening. At the very least, drop the money you’d otherwise spend on something like Chessbase first, and try to come up with your own opening repertoire. I’ve been doing this for a while now, and there’s a few big advantages:
-your repertoire consists of moves you’ve decided yourself that you’re happy with, not what some GM thinks is best. You can concentrate on moves that follow basic rules of development rather than more sophisticated moves that violate the rules.
-because you like these moves, memorization isnt’ as big an issue. Just realize where you _have_ to play something non-intuitive for concrete reasons.
-you can discover your own novelties or forgotten lines. I’ve already discovered a few of my own.
-if you’re consistently playing moves that you think are best, you’ll tend to be faithful to your openings and not be tempted to jump to a completely different system on a whim or after one bad experience.
If you use opening books sparingly, judiciously and skeptically, you can cobble together your own repertoire that you’ll be happier with and more successful with.
Thanks for the replies folks.
Yes Grandpatzer I am one of those that have spent tons of money on opening books and could have used your advice long ago. I finally have a repertoire that I am happy with so I figured I might as well tell others about some of the good and not so good bookd that I have purchased.
I like your recommendation, however it seems to me that it would take longer to get your repertoire together. I am looking into getting Chessbase 9, but I’m experiencing a bit of sticker shock right now. If I hadn’t spent all of that money on opening books…
What is the difference between the starter and the mega package? Is it worth the extra $200 for the mega package? Any insight you could provide would be welcome.
Wang, 300 bucks or so is definitely a thinker. Try these things first…
Online, chessgames.com, and chessbase.de
FOSS, SCID
Commercial, Chessbase Light V9, very good I understand and free.
20 Dollar Fritz. Go to my website, follow the link to incredibly cheap fritz at Amazon.
And finally, if you need it, than you need it. But I suspect you don’t need it yet.
I got the starter package. I think it was only $120 when I got it (wife got it for me for xmas, so I don’t recall exact price at that time). I see now it’s more like $180. Yowch.
You can go far with just Fritz, as far as keeping databases of your games, analyzing with a chess engine and whatnot. I started out over a decade ago with “Xtreme Chess”, which was a repackaged version of Fritz 4 I think, and even that is pretty good for a lot of people’s purposes.
However, I think Chessbase is far better use of money than buying seven $25 books on openings. You could try keeping track of each time you refrain from buying a chessbook you normally would, and when you hit $180 go for it
The most important things you can do for your game is to keep databases of your own games and annotate them, and a cheaper program can do that just as well. However, if you flip through Nunn’s updated edition of “Secrets of Practical Chess” and some of the stuff he does with Chessbase sounds useful to you, you may want to save your pennies and splurge at some point.
You can try out the new CB light that they just released, but it won’t have the most powerful feature: the ability to search a freakin’ huge database of games. My reference database is 3.3 million games and growing. I’m not sure what other features may be turned off in the light version, but I think most are supposed to work. So you could experiment with the light version and see if you like it. If you have a database of your own games, you can test search features out such as “find all my games that had an opposite-colored bishop endgame”, or make an opening tree out of all your games as white to see what lines you face the most and do best in.
If the repertoire database feature is turned on, you can play around with that as well, but building a repertoire database that’s actually useful is quite an endeavor. The idea is that you can get a database of new games (such as those from The Week In Chess) and have the computer search for lines that you yourself encounter. Not essential by any means, but pretty nifty.
What I use Chessbase for the most:
-openings: I keep a repertoire, and after I play a game I can find out where we departed from theory, and figure out what I’d play if I reached that position again. The mega opening database statistics show me how popular, and how successful, certain lines have been, and you can use analysis engines such as Fritz to check through lines.
-I enter books into databases for ease of replay, and to record my own notes (I like that better than writing in the margins of my books). This is something you could do with a cheaper program such as Fritz just as well. However, with the large database that comes with Chessbase, you can search and find the games and positions you’re interested in, rather than enter the whole thing from scratch. So, if you’re playing through “Alexander Alekhine’s Best Games” you can pretty easily find all the games and paste them into your own database for that book.
-I keep databases of my own games, plus databases of interesting positions from them. For example, I make databases of tactics and blunders from my blitz games. Again, you can do this with a cheaper program such as Fritz. With Chessbase you can make training annotations, so when you play through these collections you’ll be quizzed to find the best move. You can also do that with books of tactics or endgame problems. I can’t recall off the top of my head if you can do training annotations within Fritz…I know you can tell Fritz to analyze your games and come up with training annotations automatically, but I don’t know if you can manually do these annotations.
I guess the bottom line is: chessbase isn’t essential, but neither are books on openings. The former is FAR more useful than the latter, however. If you spend over $100 on openings books a year, save your money and get Chessbase instead would be my suggestion.
Thanks again Grandpatzer, with all of your good advice, I am begining to believe that your name is merely a clever ruse to confuse your potential opponents
I use Fritz already to keep a database of my long time control (20mins+) ICC games and a seperate database of OTB games. I analyze them but I really like the idea of gettting my blitz games into a database, and using them for tactics training. I will try to create training positions manually tomorrow; as I’m reviewing my greatest hits (and misses) for a local tournament on Friday.
Seriously, SIX games to master hitting the clock after each move? I would just like to take this opportunity to point out that I had mastered that particular skill long before my fifth birthday!
In conclusion, I want to extend warm and fuzzy positive thoughts for what will surely prove to be an unforgettable last four provisional games!
Pay no attention to the young lady behind the curtain…