Ok so last time I said that there would only be 4 chapters to part 1 but this had to be said, and well it was awkward putting it at the begining of part 2. BUT…
Before we get started I have to add some folks to the blogroll. In my last segment of Be the Next You DK-Transformation stated that he was adding me to his blogroll, so I will do the same. He’s definitely opinionated, but has the ability to disagree without being disagreeable, something I strive for everyday in real life, as I tend to be quite opinionated as well.
Next is Getting to 2000, who has added me to his blogroll and again I will do the same. I will also start going to his blog regularly now so that I can become more acquainted with him, he is also rated about 1800+ which makes him terribly cool.
Ok now on to the posting…
The next subject to tackle is what and how to study. These are the $64,000 questions. I don’t have the answers, otherwise I would be much higher rated than I am. On top of that people much higher rated than me disagree on the answers. What I can tell you about is what I do know, from my whole one year of experience.
First, there is no magical elixir. No one method of study that will jump your rating up hundreds of points and get you to Grandmaster status in 12 months and have chess groupies tossing undergarments at you. Chess is like any other field of study, you have to study and take time out to follow a plan and stick to it and then wash, rinse, repeat, until it starts taking hold. This seems to be the hardest thing for us (by us I mean improving adult players, especially those of us who blog) to come to grips with. I’m not quite sure why either. I could be wrong on this one but you are reading this so you sure as shit haven’t found the magic either have you?
There have been a couple of things happen lately that have shed some light on this. First I spoke to chessloser last week and we both admitted to playing too much blitz. Here’s the thing, we both know better. Blunderprone too has admitted to wasting many hours away playing blitz. This is quite simply not good and for the remainder of this year I will play no blitz. I mean it, zero, zilch, nada not one game below standard time controls on ICC. That would be anything below G15, which, by the way is still pretty fast. You can all feel free to look me up on ICC, my handle is wango. There that’s done.
Secondly some folks have posted interesting things lately. Robert posted this which references this article here at Jeremy Silman’s site. Now I alluded to not making the most of my chess “knowledge” back in chapter 4. I merely brushed it off as not really being able to play chess, and instead thinking that there was a gap between my knowledge and applying it to OTB games. Rashid Ziatdinov sort of agrees, although to him the problem is more basic. He believes I simply don’t know chess! OK for all both of you that regularly come and read my babbling this is hardly a surprise. Once again you’ve waded through my inane rambling to come to a, “No shit!!” type conclusion.
But this is a little different. What you and I and even some very strong players who have complimented me on my chess “knowledge” seem to be missing is that this knowledge is like chess theory. I have no intention to completely bastardize what Mr. Ziatdinov was saying in his most excellent article but theory and practice are two seperate things.
Theory in this case doesn’t refer to opening theory which in my mind is a misuse of the word theory, but it is the generalities of chess. Like “develop your pieces before starting an attack” , “rooks belong behind passed pawns”, and “open up the position if you are ahead in development”. Mr. Ziatdinov’s arguement is that the true language or in this case the true playing of chess is not the moving of the pieces but the actual calculation of variations. This encompasses what I’ve been feeling for a very long time. We can understand some complex stuff, but playing really comes down to calculating variations.
Here’s an example from one of my own recent stinkers.
I’m black. My opponent has lost the right to castle, his rooks aren’t connected and his pawn structure sucks. I am on the attack, so what should I do? Well first and foremost I will find a way to lose, I mean, come on, it’s what I do. But I should open this position, it will give my bishops, and especially my rooks a way to come into the game. Now for some reason I rejected exf3 not once, but twice over the next two moves. Why might you ask? Well because I knew that despite all of the bad stuff my opponent had going on, the material balance was even. So I didn’t want to do anything that would drop material. I didn’t like the look of 21)…exf3 22) gxf3, …. then 23) Rg2 threatening my bishop.
So for some reason I didn’t even bother calculating my 23rd move! Forget that, I didn’t even bother to see what my 22nd move was going to be. I merely looked at the position saw that he could threaten my bishop and I stopped calculating. Then I bullshitted myself (remember #4 from my list a few weeks back?) I told myself that by moving the K Rook over and getting my N into play was good chess and I was doing the right thing. I played 21)…Rfe8 22) a4,…and then…
Well I noticed after 21) …Rfe8, well let’s see if you all can see what I saw.
Notice that the Q, both R’s and the light squared bishop all sit on…that’s right kids the same color square! What red flag should immediately go up for you in this case? That’s right, a KNIGHT FORK! It’s ok, just shout them out when you know them. Once again I ignored the posibility of exf3 and instead lost the game in two more moves, yes his Knight on d4 came into the game and filled me with sadness.
See not only did my knowledge not help, it actually allowed me to bullshit myself and play lazy chess. I have never once in the past year have anyone say to me that chess can only be expressed by concrete variations! Once again if you haven’t read Mr. Ziatdinov’s article go to Jeremy Silman’s site and read it. It was quite the eye opener for me.
So now I hear the collective groan as everyone comes to the same conclusion, “This guy is just a Knight Errant in disguise! He’s going to tell me to do the circles and have a nice day. WHAT A DICK!” Well no, here’s the thing, this chess improvement thingy should be somewhat fun, and I honestly have not heard of anyone else that has had the kind of success that MDLM had with the circles, they all seem to experience a burnout after the circles. Granted most of them have shit like jobs that suck up their time so maybe that’s it (my understanding is that MDLM was doing nothing but chess during the circles) But the concrete variation thing can be developed many different ways.
If you are game collection guy, then going over GM games a la GM-RAM could definitely help, Mr. Ziatdinov is the author of the GM-RAM book, so I will assume that this works. Certainly going over Tactical puzzles will help with this as well. But this is why I like doing them from a book rather than a program. I always feel like I can cheat a bit when I use CT-ART. I just have to get the first move then the computer plays the responese, I don’t feel it’s the best for visualization. Writing down the moves forces me to see the resulting position in my head.
The next issue is the endgame. Drunknknite responded to Chessloser’s inquiry into Old-Timey chess here. The endgames are what Drunknknite think are important. Now him I really listen to him because he actually used to be a patzer and now he’s an expert and he’s board 1 for our T45 45 team. But c’mon most of my games don’t go to and endgame, so how’s this helping me? Well we can at least agree that the premise here is to get better at calculating variations and if you go with me on this one come take a look here.
So tough-guy, what’s the outcome with white to move? I’f you’re like me you think whit can win it. But can you express it as a concrete variation? I can’t, and to tell you the truth I might accept a draw in this situation if I was scared enough of my opponent. The answer is with best play, black can stretch this out to 9 moves which ends in checkmate. Anything else allows white to queen earlier. This is why the endgame helps. I know for a fact all of you have been in an endgame situation where you had no idea what to do. General rules pretty much suck then, you have to be able to work this out very clearly in your head. In case you were wondering the solution is 1)kf5, Kh6 2)e5, Kh7 3) Ke6, g5 4) Kf7, g4 5) e6, g3 6) e7, g2 7) e8=Q, g1=Q 8.) Qe4+, Kh6 9)Qh4# See concrete variation all the way to the end.
Ok now if I could calculate stuff like this over the board I’m guessing my rating would be looking a lot better than it does now. Don’t get me wrong in both of my feeble examples the general rules of positional ideas did indeed show the path, however without the concrete analysis it is almost useless to continue on, you can actually create a situation where its like you’re playing blindly. In my first example I ignored myself, shuffled pieces around for a few moves and lost. The second example I would accept a draw in a won position. This is not good.
So how do I do it. How does this former class E patzer now improved to class C patzer study? Well I’m in a different situation, we all are so adjust as necessary.
1st. Yep kids you are going to have to do tactical puzzles, I really can’t find a way around this. It helps your tactics, and it helps your visualization.
2nd Go over and annotate your games. Even the really painful ones. Now is a good time to go over a quote from Khalil Gibran
Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses
your understanding…Much of your pain is self-chosen.It is the bitter potion by which the physician within
you heals your sick self.Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy
in silence and tranquillity:
Ok so I ran across this quote awhile back and thought it was deep and I have been waiting for an appropriate time to use it. But damn if it’s not hard to work this one into a conversation. But I firmly believe that we shy away from annotating our games, especially painful losses, because, well they are painful. But I really started to show improvement when I did this religiously.
3rd Endgames, do puzzles and such, this really helps me visualize and understand what it is I should be doing. As an added bonus it also helps your endgames 
4th is my dessert. A book I work on part time that is just an extra something that I do for fun. RIght now it’s Silman’s How to Reasses Your Chess Workbook. I really enjoy this book and after I get done with it I’m going to hit Botvinnik’s 100 selected games.
What’s that? A schedule? Yeah but my situation…But…
Ok here it goes. FIrst there are two tournaments a month where I live, they are both G60 tourneys. I only go to one a month. I try to make sure there are 4 weeks between tourneys.
First week after the tournament. I do a 1/2hour of tactical puzzles a day followed by annotating one game from the last tourney a day. This is a Monday - Thursday thing. The tactical warmup will help me to see things in my game review. Typically it takes an hour to annotate my game. This is only 4 days of study which helps because I’m normally a little chessed out after a tourney.
Second week, no games I just study two hours a day M-F. An hour of tactical puzzles and an hour of endgame puzzles. The only deviation is when I have T45 45 league games going. I have to play these because my teammates are counting on me. The day of a game there is no studying, just playing and annotation will normally happen sometime over the weekend.
Third week I replace a day of study with a G60. This is what I play so it’s what I play online. It can take awhile to get a game so while I’m waiting I go over tactical problems. The day after I cut my study time to a half hour on each and save an hour for game annotation.
Fourth week. Three G60’s. M, W, Th. I then annotate the games the day after. I am now ready for the tourney.
On the weekends I will post, if I have something to say, or I will dip into my “dessert” book.
That’s the way it’s supposed to work anyway. This upcoming tournament will be the first time i’ve done it this way. Up until now I’ve just done tactical problems and played G30+5 with game annotation. I’ve added endgame study to my routine, added longer time control games, and I’m doing this chess thing for no more than 10 -12 hours a week. No I don’t watch much TV, only 4 hours a week at most. I am also now preparing for a tourney a bit more professionally. The bottom line is day to day may be less fun with less playing and no blitz, but hopefully the tournaments will be much more enjoyable, especially if I can win a couple of them 
Well my friends, if you’ve read this far, you must be so desperate to improve that you are willing to listen to me, or you are merely a glutton for punishment, or both. Whatever the reason I thank you for visiting my own little corner of the internets. Until next time 
Categories:
