k, i have to give my 2 cents into this discussion, soz to burst ur bubble but your guide sucks,fails, a disgrace, complete failiure and soz if i hurt ur feelings, but ya, lets be honest this guide fails, and worst of all you lie to the begginger by promising if they do this they will become a "top notch player"

 Should someone sub1100 be criticizing how someone elses rating(no mater how they got it)

This method brings in a LOT of work to eliminate the most obvious blunders and perhaps to find some of the material winning short-term tactical shots, but does little to improve players playing strength - the ability to understand different concepts of chess and forsee positional weaknesses and key ideas for each position. He can list up all possible moves but his evaluation of them will still be lacking.

I would be suprised if it had any noticable effect in ones game.

Ability to "match a master" seems like an exaggeration.

I think your system has some point and probably will work at some degree for a beginner. However, the problem I see here is how a beginner will learn how to create a plan? All moves might appear to be the same for a beginner.

Another problem is it is hard to imagine someone actually calculating all possible moves beyond  2 - 3 ply.

I looked at your method closer and it looks it is not bad method at all to learn how visualize and think without touching pieces.

Someone can start with this method and later when they learn new principles they can start eliminating "wrong moves".

For example, once you know that you should try to control center, 1. a3 will be out of question.

You seem to always defend your system no matter what. To ask someone to actually try this (meaning consider every move) would be insane even in correspondence chess. You tell the beginner to look at every single move and then you say you can cut back on what needs to be looked at eventually and you even admit that the beginner can't do this. But why then should he be considering every move not knowing how good one is? Now it's not easy to teach any beginner at chess but I think the key is simply to teach them tactics and all that good stuff like strategy and that's how they consider their moves but it's too tedious to make them look at every move and very gradually cut back on it. What's so special about that? I think everybody as they learn knows which moves to most consider; the ones that, after forming a plan (which is also learned from books) fit the needs of the position. In combinations, the ones that take advantage of a tactical theme like for example if you see you can take a pawn with your queen but then your opponent has possible discovered attacks on it attacking another piece, you only have to calculate those that discover the queen since that is the only way to punish the move. Then the player who took the pawn must find a way for the queen to do something very threatening like attack a piece or threaten mate etc. That's how you learn chess. It's not like using this method alone will help you cut back on moves since you have to read books to understand why some moves are bad and others are good so it's a waste of time to start from the beginning doing what a computer does but thousands of times slower. You say they can just analyze 1 or 2 ply, but first of all it will still take a long time if you're analyzing (blindly) everything and second it's necessary to look quite a bit deeper than that in almost all tactical situations! So I don't see what the point is in having a huge amount of moves to slowly cut back on than to not consider all those moves in the first place. Instead just work the other way around and base all your considerations on what move is good for your plan and don't consider anything else at all. That requires study, but I don't think there is any other way to become a serious player.

Well I never got a chess tutor but I just bought chess books on all stages of the game. Of course the best thing to do is research the best books on certain things (like many of silman's books were very helpful for me with strategy) so that you don't throw your money away, but like I said you need to do these things to get skills. I don't see how this method would help beginners anyways since listing tons of moves and calculating all of them is almost impossible and even if they did that still wouldn't help them out if they don't understand chess. They learn to cut down the moves from study of course, and unfortunately that's by far the best way to get better. I mean that's just the truth. Your dad probably won't be able to teach you much besisdes how to play unless he happens to be a strong player.

Telling a complete newcomer that controlling the center is good and going over opening principles and the most basic tactics will make him go from 400 (let's say this is the starting point) to like 700 in maybe an hour. Sure, he could have made this jump the hard way, but that would be painful and 700 is still very low. And that's just for finding the first move, and someone who played chess could just tell you "e4 and d4 are the best because they control the center". Wouldn't it be better to go by the basic principles than to look at every possibility and very slowly eliminate? And that's for the easiest jump. How is the beginner going to get to 1400 (out of beginner) doing that if it took him so long to get to 700?

(Bolding mine) You clearly don't realise how blatantly wrong and completely offensive you're being.

As for your method, it's simply poor because of how much time it takes. Sure, if somebody had infinite time, it might be ok, but the big thing that you're missing is that for a TOTAL beginner, the elimination of any moves as blunders requires some of the more normal methods anyway - they have to understand not to give up mate, then not to hang pieces, not to hang pawns, what trades are equal material (the rough 9/5/3/3/1 thing), basic endgame principles, how to force a mate with way more material, place rooks on open files, basic pawn structure information, on and on and on. It's much much better for someone to first learn some of these basic principles and then to play practice games, then analyse these games, with the help of other, stronger players (in analysis) if possible. In your system, by the time white and black have each made two moves (from the start position) there are tens upon tens of thousands of possibilities. Even if there were only 10,800 possibilities, assuming that someone could type one of these possibilities per second (which is way faster than they actually could - copu/pasting only works for black's first move of the game), it would take three full hours just to list all these out. And when you're done, you haven't actually done squat; listing all posibilities only two moves in the future tells you very very little - you learn not to get fool's mated, and, say, not to drop a knight one of the very few ways you can that quickly. And it would take you several hours to do that! You can go much quicker by traditional methods, and you really aren't losing anything. Also, looking at the first few moves, you're liable to learn some WRONG lessons, like not to gambit pawns in a lot of lines where it's actually good to do so; for instance, you'd never play the QG as white, you'd always accept as black. Furthermore, using your method, you aren't going to learn endgames, and even if you did, do you realise how long it's going to take to learn something like how to mate with Q+K vs. K? I'm pretty confident that starting from scratch, after twenty years on your method I might, at best, be catching up to the first week of learning by normal methods. You will NEVER grow to be a good player the way youpropose to do it, if you are human. You can't process that fast, and you'll die too quickly

Elubas wrote:

Wouldn't it be better to go by the basic principles than to look at every possibility and very slowly eliminate?

It is better. As I wrote I found this method good for visualization training, not for improving chess technique.

Moreover, I think it is the best to learn endgames first. This is how I learned to play chess myself.

Sir. 

I take my hat off to you.

Oh yesh.  

Complete nutter!

Chess is 99 percent tactics and whoever that will play with memory is bound to lose sooner or later. The wrong convictions still prevailing and that make me sad everytime. When will you go beyond primary.?

SteveCollyer wrote:

Complete nutter!

I do not think insulting someone is a good way to handle discussions. Imagine if someone wrote you something like that, especially without understanding what you were saying.

It was meant light-heartedly as I think is clear.

Anyway, please leave me be.

I'm on Black's 4th move options using the above method & seem to have generated a 40Mb word document.

I must surely be doing something wrong...

So you're saying everybody is wrong because they haven't tried this that would take forever? Don't ask someone to do 50 hours of homework  just to see if it helps. It's obvious it would be a waste of time.

Ok - I'll rise to the bait although seriously, if a 2100 got to that standard from beginner stage by attempting the folly of typing hundreds of thousands of lines move-by-move in word pad then I'm Santa Claus.

To be constructive, the advice I'd give a beginner would be based around sound principles of play, such as:

Don't hang material!

Examine your opponents options before looking at your own at every single move.

and:

in the opening

don't make too many pawn moves, develop with threats, don't move the same piece twice, castle early and to the kingside if possible, try to gain control of the center.  Don't bring your queen out early and not beyond the 3rd rank.

in the middlegame

if you get ahead in material exchange pieces if possible, try to avoid backward, doubled or isolated pawns, place rooks on open or half-open files, and pieces in general on active squares where options aren't too limited.  All combinations are based essentially on a double attack - always look for and analyse checks, captures and threats for both you and your opponent.  Try to discover your opponents plan and find ways to negate it.

in the endgame

activate your king, push passed pawns with support.  Blockade enemy passed pawns with your king.  If your a pawn up, trade pieces but not pawns because the easiest endings to win are those with only pawns.  A bishop is more valuable than a knight in all but closed endgames.  Don't put pawns on the same colour squares as your bishop.

I may not be a 2100 (I'm actually just 1700 or so OTB) like the OP, but I bet the above advice is of far more value than the nonsense at the start of this thread.

Well for your information, everyone is critisizing for logical reasons. We are saying why this method is bad even for beginners but you won't accept. As a matter of fact the people critisizing are helping because it would slow the beginners growth by using this an nobody wants that. Why it stunts the beginners growth I, as many others, already explained. For people that can't afford resources, the truth is that there isn't really a way to improve much and this method would be just as useless. It's just a fact.

Whatever. And I'm not a beginner anyways. But I think I have some pretty great reasons to think it won't work which I already said. Maybe there is a 1% chance it works on beginners. I'll give another analogy about this: It's like saying that getting hit by a car will make you smarter. No matter what people think, they are not accpeted because "You haven't tried it so how should you know?" and if one of them is dumb enough to do it which I hope not they get 4 broken bones for nothing just so they could say "I told you it doesn't make you smarter". Obviously you can't expect people to try something if it's that crazy and that's what I think of it no offense. There are like 15 reasons not to use this.

And it must be pretty inflexible if you can only use it in correspondence! True strength lies in OTB play where there is pressure on you. Correspondence helps your deep analysis, but you want to translate that into OTB and how on earth could you do that with a method like this?

What the OP is recommending is something that I typically do when I'm serious about the game, and when the position warrants it. The type of position I'm talking about is where I have several (3-5) candidate moves, and 2 or 3 of my candidate moves each have several candidate responses from my opponent.

I don't make the entire tree - I'm not entirely sure that this is a good strategy, seems more like a lot of busywork with no gain. Also note that this strategy, of actually writing down the moves and lines, has it's pros and cons. I think everybody should try it on at least a couple of games. Don't use the "oh it's going to ruin my board vision, I don't want to develop a crutch!" -- nothing bad like that will happen if you do this for just a couple of games. But the general message is that you don't want to get good exclusively from writing down your moves in the notes section of the game.

Use it wisely. Use it sparingly. It will help you organize the tree of variations during OTB play, it will give your thoughts clarity.

Here is an example game of mine where I used this technique. The game link is http://www.chess.com/echess/game.html?id=13199253. The (unedited) notes section follows. A note on format: It's reverse chronological, because the top of the notes section is always what displays. When I want to "wipe the slate clean" I write --------. There are no move numbers, just because during the game it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to do that, right? So I leave it up to someone else to decipher what I wrote, but if you take the game in a separate window, I'm sure someone can do it. :-)  Part of the deciphering process will include what move in the game applies to each comment.

Here is the notes section:

Rg5 Rf2 Bxc7 Kxc7

1: Kc4 Rf3 Kb5

1.1: Rxc3 Rg7+ Kd6 Kxb6 Rxh3 Kxa5 =

1.2: Rxh3 Rg7+ Kd6 Kxb6 Rxc3 Kxa5 =

2: Re5 Rf3+ Re3 Rxe3+ Kxe3 = Kc6 Kd4 b5 axb5+ Kxb5 c4+ Kc6 = (Kd5? a4 c4+ Ka6 c5 a3 c6 a2 c7 Kb7)

--------

2: Rg5 Rf2

2.1: Rg8+ Kb7F Bxc7 Kxc7

2.1.1: Kc4 =

2.1.2: Re8 Rf3+ Re3 Rg3 (Rxe3+ =) c4 Rxe3+ Kxe3 Kc6 Kd4 Kd6 Kd3 =

2.2: Bxc7 Kxc7

2.2.1: Kc4 Rf3 Kb5 =

2.2.2: Re5 Rf3+ Re3 Rxe3+ Kxe3 = Kc6 Kd4 b5 axb5+ Kxb5 c4+ Kc6 = (Kd5? a4 c4+ Ka6 c5 a3 c6 a2 c7 Kb7)

2.3: Be5

2.3.1: Bd8 Rg8 Kd7 Ke3

2.3.2: Bxe5 Rxe5 Rf3+ Re3 Rg3 c4 Rg2 Re4 Ra2 Rxh4 Rxa4 Rh7 = probably

--------

1: Be5? Rg5! Kd4 Bxe5+ Rxe5 Rxe5 Kxe5 b5! Kd4 bxa4 Kd3 Kc7 Kc2 Kc6 Kb2 Kc5! -+

2: Rg5 Rf2

2.1: Rg8+ Kb7F Bxc7 Kxc7

2.1.1: Kc4

2.1.2: Re8

2.2: Bxc7 Kxc7

2.2.1: Kc4 Rf3 Kb5 

2.2.2: Re5 Rf3+ Re3 Rxe3+ Kxe3 Kc6 Kd4 b5 axb5+ Kxb5 c4+ Kc6 = (Kd5? a4 c4+ Ka6 c5 a3 c6 a2 c7 Kb7)

2.3: Be5

2.3.1: Bd8 Rg8 Kd7 Ke3

2.3.2: Bxe5 Rxe5 Rf3+ Re3 Rg3 c4 Rg2 Re4 Ra2 Rxh4 Rxa4 Rh7 = probably

3: Bxc7 Kxc7 Kc4

Rg5 Rf2 (Rg8+ Kb7 *) Bxc7 Kxc7 Kc4

--------

exf5 gxf5 d5

exf5 exf5 Rd5 Bf6

--------

Ra1 Ke8 exf5 exf5 Rd5 (threat Re1+)

--------

Rab3 Bd8 e4 dxe4 fxe4 Rc4

Rab3 Rc4 Rxb6

--------

http://www.chess.com/explorer/index.html?id=1135470&ply=23&black=0

1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.Nc3 g6 5.e3 Bg7 6.Be2 O-O 7.O-O a6 8.a4 a5 9.Qb3 Na6 10.cxd5 cxd5 11.Bd2 Nb4 12.Ne5