Back to basics!

As indicated in my previous post, I am starting a new training program. My long term goal is, as it has been, to get my playing strength above 2000. In the short term, I do not have a quantifiable goal of that kind. Rather, I will simply aim to work through a series of exercises.

The inspiration for my new training program comes from several different sources, which all suggest the same thing: 

This statement is based on what Dan Heisman calls 'the principle of tactical dominance', which basically says that tactical considerations are always more important than positional ones. And regardless of your positional prowess, if you cannot spot tactics and calculate correctly, your game will suffer significantly. In other words, if your tactics are lacking, your entire game will suffer. Even if you are an expert in both opening and positional play.

Michael de la Maza makes a point of this in his book Rapid chess improvement. He quite convincingly argues that there is a 'quick fix' for chess improvement that works at the class level (below ~2100). Since most games at this level are decided by tactics, tuning your tactical antenna will improve your chess ability considerably. Using a method based on this principle, de la Maza improved his own rating from about 1300 to 2000+ in just two years! His book also contains a number of accounts of other people that have improved dramatically by applying his method.

I also know from my own games that tactics decide a high proportion of the games. So I believe there is some truth to this line of reasoning. So how can I apply this in my training?

I have worked about halfway through the excellent book Test your chess IQ by August Livshitz. The tactics in this book are not very trivial, and require on average about 5 minutes to solve. Just to give you an indication of the level of difficulty, I have a tactics rating of about 2000 here on chess.com. Working with this book is demanding, and I do think it helps my focus and concentration. But it is not what I need right now.

What I am going to do now is to readjust my chess training to focus exclusively on tactics. That means, no blitz or bullet, and no books on openings or positional chess. I will begin with the absolute basics; pins, forks, skewers, discoveries etc. and make sure I master these completely. This is a recommendation from the one and only Dan Heisman.

Ok, so I am not just beginning studying chess, but I do have to improve my tactics. My study method is inspired by Neal Bruce, who seems to have have his aim set at doing all tactic puzzles known to man. Kidding aside, he creates flash cards from tactics books and solves the puzzles on the train to work. At first, I thought I would do the same, but then I figured that creating the cards will take me too long, so I'll just do the puzzles directly from the book.

The point is not just doing the tactics, but doing them repeatedly until they can be solved in just a few seconds. Both Neal Bruce and Michael de la Maza work according to this principle. In his book, de la Maza recommends 1000 puzzles. Neal is doing much more than that. Check out his Twitter feed to follow his progress. It's highly inspiring!

For basic tactics, have the excellent book Back to basics: Tactics by none other than Dan Heisman. I am already halfway through this book, and although I have not timed myself consistently, I estimate that I average about 30 seconds per problem. I will work through this book twice, and aim to get below 10 seconds.

After completing this book, I will turn to Learn Chess Tactics by John Nunn and do the same thing. Then I have two more books from Dan Heisman (can you tell I am a fan?); Looking for Trouble and Is Your Move Safe?.  Finishing off, I will turn to The Chess Training Pocket Book by Lev Alburt.

These books will provide about 1500 tactics puzzles to work through.

Back to basics: Tactics: ~400

Learn Chess Tactics: ~300

Looking for trouble: ~300

Is your move safe?: ~150

The Chess Training Pocket Book: 300

So how long will this take? As I said, the first book requires about 30 seconds per problem. I expect the next three to be somewhat more challenging, so I am expecting about a minute. Finally, Alburt's book is even more challenging, so I will approach it differently. Also, this book is not only tactics. In the book, there are four problems per page with solutions on the opposing page, which is perfect for the famous '15 minute drill'. I will allocate 15 minutes for each set and aim to get as many as possible correctly. For the second run, I will aim for half the time.

So with a little math, this means that it will require about 50 hours of study. I estimate that I should be able to allocate one hour each day, so that means it will take me about two months to complete this part of the program. After that, I will stop and reevaluate. I might actually try Neal's method with flash cards, but we'll see if I'll go down that road.

I'll keep you posted about my progress. If you read this, please leave an encouraging comment below. Thanks!

Edit: By recommendation from Dan Heisman and Neal Bruce, I have reconsidered my choice of books. I will continue to work through Heisman's Back to basics, and then throw in more basic tactics from the books Chess tactics for students, and Starting out: Chess tactics and checkmates. This will give me a total of approximately 1000 basic puzzles. After working through these three books, I will stop and evaluate my progress. If necessary I will add more books on basic tactics. Otherwise, I will move on to the intermediate books listed above.