National Masters Have Weaknesses, Too! | Road to FM

As many of you know, one of the most critical steps to chess improvement is identifying your weakness. After all, it makes no sense for a 2000 rated player to work on his openings if he can't spot a mate-in-1, right?  Therefore, today I will be analyzing 5 different aspects of my chess abilities and determining what I need to work on the most. For each part, I will be analyzing my ability in different ways, and coming up with a final score out of 10. The lowest score is my weakness! So without further ado, let's jump right into it!

Table of contents:

• Tactics/Pattern Recognition
• Openings
• Positional/Strategic Play
• Dynamic/Attacking Play
• Endgames
• Conclusion

Tactics/Pattern Recognition

To assess my tactical abilities, I did two things:

1. Analyzed my results from The Woodpecker Method, a tactics book.

2. Solved 25 puzzles on chess.com. 

So the first thing I did was review how I actually performed in my favorite tactics book, The Woodpecker Method by Axel Smith and Hans Tikkanen.

The main idea of this book is to solve a certain "set" of puzzles (maybe 200 puzzles in size, but you as the reader get to determine what works for you) for a certain amount of cycles (I did the full 7). After 7 cycles of solving the same sets, you should theoretically halve the amount of time it takes for you to solve them, while also improving your accuracy. The point is the repetition helps stick the problems in your brain, and while there are many different opinions on this book and its training method, I personally like it a lot. Here is a quick summary of how I did:

1. Overall, I started off with some relatively high accuracy: about 90% accuracy in the easy puzzles, 85% in the intermediate, and 75% in the advanced puzzles in the first cycle.

2. After the 2nd or 3rd cycle, my accuracy improved greatly in all sections, and I consistently halved the amount of time it took for me to solve these puzzles.

3. Starting at the 4th/5th cycle, my accuracy became more stagnant and my time definitely did NOT halve itself anymore (that's just not really possible). I was still slightly improving, though.

4. Overall, the last few cycles only really benefited me in the advanced section. In the easy and intermediate puzzles, I did not see any drastic improvement after the final few cycles.

I still felt like those puzzles improved my tactical ability a lot, and since I finished that book only a year or so ago, I don't feel like tactics are my main weakness. But in order to back up this claim, I also solved 25 puzzles on chess.com to see how I would perform!

Watch the video here:

In the end, I ended up solving 12/25 of the puzzles. My rating stayed about the same, and while my performance showed that I definitely have some room for improvement, I don't think there are any major gaps in my tactical abilities. 

Rating: 7.5/10

Openings

I can't possibly fully evaluate my openings openly, since that would simply reveal everything I play and stuff like that. However, I'll give you a couple of examples of what I did to come up with the final conclusion that my openings are actually quite solid. 

1. Example of how a game where I crushed in the opening

Rating: 8/10

Positional/Strategic Play

This is a relatively hard topic to analyze, so I won't be going into all of the details on how I came to this conclusion, but here are a couple of things you can do to analyze your positional/strategic play if you have no idea how to get started:

1. Take a strategic chess book and skim through all of the chapters. Some will naturally seem more "difficult" than others. Those are areas you are not as good at.

2. Analyze your own games! Try to notice patterns in your play. Where do you always go wrong? Is it piece trades? Pawn structure changes? 

Below I have gone through my favorite positional play book, How to Reassess Your Chess by Jeremy Silman.

I went through all of the chapters to get a better sense of where I'm at in terms of understanding. I gave myself a rating out of 10 for each part and then averaged my scores for all 9 parts of the book to get my final score.

Part 1: The Concept of Imbalances

The beginning of this chapter was quite elementary, but there were a couple of things that I could brush up on. I was particularly happy with my understanding of static vs dynamic advantages and taking advantage of greedy captures of material. Overall, I am quite solid here. Rating: 9/10

Part 2: Minor Pieces

Quite a few of the subtopics in these chapters were very interesting to me. It talked about various concepts regarding knights and bishops and the interactions between them. I haven't read this book in a long time, so it was a good refresher. I knew most of the topics covered here, though. Rating: 7.5/10

Part 3: Rooks

Rooks are extremely tough pieces to handle in the endgame, but here with some more basic concepts, I felt quite comfortable. Rating: 9/10

Part 4: Psychological Meanderings

This was a loooong chapter! Lots of the concepts introduced by Silman here I had understood before, just in different terms. However, I felt quite happy reviewing this part, and took away a couple of neat points I'd like to mention:

1. If you have a plan/move that you want to execute, and your opponent tries to stop it with a move, check to see if it works anyways! It's important to overcome the barrier of trusting your opponent's judgment - many times their move may seem like it stops your idea, but in reality, you can still play it successfully!

2. There's no need to allow your opponent unnecessary counterplay if you are winning anyway. This is something I understood before, but re-reading this chapter helped reinforce my understanding of this concept.

Rating: 7/10

Part 5: Target Consciousness

This chapter talked mostly about weaknesses and attacking them. I felt very comfortable here, and will go as far as to say I got a: Rating: 9.5/10!

Part 6: Statics vs Dynamics

Overall, I think I have a very strong grip on this concept. Static advantages are more long-term, and tend to be more "positional": some examples are pawn weaknesses and material. Dynamic advantages are short-term and are things that easily go away if the position is misplayed. This includes development advantages, the initiative, and king safety. Rating: 9/10

Part 7: Space

Space is one of those abstract concepts that just seems to elude me at times, and I know I'm not the only one . It can be hard to estimate the value of something intangible, unlike material advantages. I think I'm still pretty decent here though. Rating: 7.5/10

Part 8: Passed Pawns

This chapter had many topics that I'm very familiar with already, such as blockading passed pawns and useless passed pawns. Rating: 9/10

Part 9: Other Imbalances

This was a very short chapter, but it still contained some good information. I did not feel perfectly at home with some of these topics, such as imbalances in specific openings. Rating: 8/10

In the end, my scores for the 9 sections of How to Reassess Your Chess were:

9, 7.5, 9, 7, 9.5, 9, 7.5, 9, 8

Averaging these scores out, we get a final score of:

Final Rating: 8.39/10

Not bad!

Dynamic/Attacking Play

Like positional/strategic play, this is harder to analyze. Among other things, I focused on reviewing an attacking book that I quite like, Art of Attack in Chess by Vladimir Vukovic. 

There are 12 main chapters in this book, and like with How to Reassess Your Chess, I skimmed through each chapter to get a general understanding of my ability to play forceful, attacking chess. However, please note that my evaluations are also based on other means of self-analysis, as I will note down in my explanations

Chapter 1: The attack against the uncastled king

Overall, there are some main concepts here such as preventing the king from escaping, the attack on the f7/f2 square, and attacking along open files. I felt pretty solid here, so I will venture as far as to say I am a:

Rating: 9.5/10

Chapter 2: The attack on the king that has lost the right to castle

Overall, a lot of the topics covered here were familiar to me, but one thing I'd like to point out is that you don't have to rush to attack your opponent's king if he cannot castle anymore. This is because the idea of king safety is more of a static/long term advantage, versus what is normally a dynamic/short term advantage.

Rating: 9/10

Chapter 3: On castling and attacking the castled position in general

This chapter had a lot more text and focused more on different concepts that one could apply in their games. I thought it was quite interesting to me, and feel like revisiting this chapter.

Rating: 8/10

Chapter 4: Mating patterns

As the title states, this chapter was all about different mating patterns. There were many common mates, but I struggled with some less usual ones such as Pillsbury's Mate.

Chapter 5: Focal points

Focal points are important squares that can become the main point of an attack. These include g7, f7, h7, and their white counterparts. I did relatively well in this section, only getting confused when the author introduced complex focal points. Those are much more complex and harder to understand

Rating: 8/10

Chapter 6: The classic bishop sacrifice

This was, well, classic. There wasn't too much new material to me, so I felt very good about my understanding of this topic. It was a long chapter, though, and there were a couple of things in there that I did not know beforehand.

Rating: 9/10

Chapter 7: Ranks, files, and diagonals in the attack on the castled king

Oh, man! There were lots of topics that I did not anticipate in this "simple" chapter. I learned more about weaknesses on the second rank, formations with Rh1 and pawn on h4, and more! This was a very hearty chapter with a lot of new information. Unfortunately, that sinks my rating for this part to:

Rating: 6.5/10

Chapter 8: Pieces and pawns in the attack on the castled king

Overall, my use of pieces is pretty decent. However, I still have a lot to learn about the power of pawns! There's a book called Pawn Power in Chess by Hans Kmoch that has been on my wishlist for a while, and for good reason!

Rating: 7/10

Chapter 9: The attack on fianchettoed and queenside castling positions

As a beloved Kings Indian Defense player, I think I understand fianchettoed kingside positions quite well. This chapter went more smoothly than the two previous ones, that's for sure!

Rating: 8.5/10

Chapter 10: Defending against the attack on the castled king

Overall, a big part of defending is psychology: knowing to never give up on a seemingly lost position. I struggle with this a lot, and I know I'm not alone. This chapter helped me a bit, but I still have to work on this aspect of my game. After all, you can't always be in a better position!

Rating: 7.5/10

Chapter 11: The phases of the attack on the castled king

This was a very well-structured chapter. I had learned from the esteemed Jacob Aagaard and read many of his books on attacking, so I was pretty happy with my understanding of this chapter. 

Rating: 8.5/10

Chapter 12: The attack on the king as an integral part of chess

This was the last chapter, and noticeably shorter than some of the others (like chapter 10). It served as a nice summary of many of the topics covered in this thick book, so I'll give myself a relatively high score just for getting through it

Rating: 9/10

In the end, my scores for each chapter were:

9.5, 9, 8, 7.5, 8, 9, 6.5, 7, 8.5, 7.5, 8.5, 9

Averaging these out, I ended up with a decent score, very similar to my positional play score!

Final Rating: 8.17/10

Endgames

Last but not least, we have endgames. There are generally two types of endgames:

1. Theoretical endgames - endgames with theory/concrete variations

2. Practical endgames - endgames that are less "simple" and have not been fully analyzed. These occur more in your games, and can transition to theoretical endgames.

Recently, I attended an endgame camp that really revealed to me some of my flaws in understanding. For instance, here are some theoretical endgames that I probably should've known but didn't:

Rating: 7/10

Conclusion

My final personal evaluation scores were:

Tactics: 7.5/10

Openings: 8/10

Positional/Strategic Play: 8.39/10

Dynamic/Attacking Play: 8.17/10

Endgames: 7/10

In the end, my lowest rating was for endgames, and it was 7/10.

And there we have it! I will be trying to improve on my endgames more in the future since I have identified that as my main weakness in chess! I will also focus on some tactics since that was 2nd-to-last in my ratings. It's important to note that after you improve significantly in one area, you need to re-evaluate! Once I improve at endgames, that will no longer be my main weakness (hopefully), and I will have to figure out what to work on next.

Time to get back to work! Learn, improve, repeat! That's all chess is