No Pain, No Gain: The Adult Beginner Diary - Year 2: Month 4
My last article was full of excuses. I was giving myself all kinds of sympathy and breaks because my ego was hurt. To be fair, I think I needed that kindness to rekindle the joy back into my chess life and I don’t regret going easy on myself to regain that. Having (mostly) detached my ego from my rating once more, I had to have a word with myself. I had to get back to good practices.
When you take a break or wind down, it can be difficult to get going again. The first part of this article is about how I jumpstarted my study again. It was a good chance to re-evaluate the way I have been doing things and how I intend to move forward. And I am glad to say I feel like this month I was operating at absolute maximum efficiency. It’s been a good one. I got my head down and I worked hard.
Play Chess Everyday
My decision outlined in my last article (to play only classical-length games) backfired quite quickly. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but I needed to admit that this decision was a bad one. My reasoning for only playing this time control was that I felt it was better for my chess, and to be clear I still think this is the case - I can calculate properly and think about the position in a way that isn’t possible at 15/10. My second reason for playing only classical games was that the heart attack inducing time scrambles I found myself in at some point in most rapid games was unenjoyable for me - but I’ll talk more on this issue later.
The main reason it didn't work out as planned, is that most evenings I didn’t have the time to manage a classical game. So most days I didn’t play chess - I studied chess. Frankly I felt the rust starting to build. I talk often about how essential practice is to accompany learning. And after this experience of not playing everyday, I am now convinced that for me the optimal ratio of study to play and practice should be closer to 50/50.
I mentioned last time how instrumental my study partner Andrew has been for my chess, and we had a great conversation at the start of this month that brought all this about. For our own reasons, we weren’t playing as often as we could. We both knew we could manage a rapid game per day, but were hiding from the potential pain of losing and general discomfort of the competition - it’s just nicer to study. We decided that the value of practice - even when we were tired, or stressed, or not up for it, even if it brought us discomfort, hurt, or lost points - was too important to skip. We both agreed that if we wanted to get better at chess, we couldn’t hide from playing, even on the days we didn’t want to for whatever reason. So we committed to sending each other “proof of game” each day - holding each other accountable, no excuses.
We started out just sending the game, but sometimes we ended up discussing key moments and bouncing ideas off of each other. In the end we started getting into a bit of a routine - one of us would send the game and the other person would ask questions about certain moves or decisions and the other person was left to explain their thought process. It wasn’t an in-depth analysis, but it was much better than no analysis at all. On top of that we were getting to learn from two games each day. I also had a couple of bad losing streaks this month and, by immediately sharing the game, it stopped me from descending into the existential crisis that chess seems to keep me constantly on the verge of. At this point poor Andrew has probably put in enough chess therapy hours with me to qualify as a fully licensed therapist. My partner (who actually did study psychology) also got to hear me moan about it all month - lucky her!
Get Fast
In direct contradiction to my last article where I wrote that fast chess made me stressed, wasn’t very enjoyable for me (win or lose), and wasn’t as good for my chess development as slower time controls, I have decided that I am going to have to get good at fast chess. So what changed? And what is changing? Do I just play bullet now?
Relax, I haven’t gone insane. I’m using the term fast chess a bit loosely here. I’m talking about the 15/10 games I played as a result of my pact with Andrew. And to clarify, I still think that longer time controls are better for my chess development. When I talk about ‘getting fast’ I am talking about two things:
1. Playing with more urgency and energy.
2. Playing better under time pressure.
I want to start by talking about what I am referring to when I speak of time management here, because I feel like my issue with it is completely separate from what is normally meant by that term.
One of my challenges is just being a bit too chilled, especially at the start of a game. I feel like in the opening and middlegame I’m strolling about having lots of deep intellectual thoughts about the position - I am sipping tea, making thoughtful noises and stroking my moustache. I’m relaxing. And I’m wasting my time! It’s a bizarre realisation. But even in critical moments in sharp positions - when there is a lot of calculating to be done, I find myself doing some calculating and then giving my brain a little rest, looking away from the screen, taking a sip of tea, calculating some lines again. There is no sense of urgency for me in these moments. But you can be damn sure in about ten minutes, even in a totally won position, that I’ll be hunched over my laptop, eyes glued intently to the screen, finger shaking over the mouse pad, and sweat dripping onto the keyboard as I try not to blunder away the massive amounts of material I’m up. In that moment I’ll be berating myself for being so nonchalant on move eight and taking three minutes to determine whether I should develop my knight first or open a door for my bishop to get out. So that’s point one: I need to speed up in the sense that I need to start the game with a bit more urgency and energy when it comes to calculation and thought speed. I said last month that I like my chess with a cup of tea - and I do. But I might want to change that attitude and get a bit more amped up when I hit play - especially at 15/10. Moving forward, when I press play, there is no relaxing. It’s 100% focus, non-stop calculation and thinking. My turn or my opponent's turn. No more tea sips. No more gentle contemplation. Pure focus.
To help with this, one thing I have started doing is making a conscious effort to really push myself in my puzzle training. I’m pretty good at being disciplined with that anyway, but now I am really trying to melt my own brain during the five minutes I give myself for each puzzle. Even if I find the solution, I just continue to run variations through my head or move the pieces about mentally. I’ll even try closing my eyes and visualising the solution or I’ll just double- and triple-check my winning line.
Fast and Furious 2
When I say I want to ‘get fast’ I am also talking about my complete inability to play even reasonably well on the increment. I don’t play blitz - which feels like a lie because I end up playing on the increment a lot - and I guess that is what blitz feels like, just that it spans the entire game and not just the final stages.
I have decided I am going to need to learn to stay level-headed when the pressure is on - when I have only a couple of minutes left. That is what I mean about fast chess. I mean playing on the increment. Because at a certain point even slow chess becomes fast chess if you play enough moves.
Before I talk about my strategy to fix this second time-related issue, I want to talk about what made me think this was a skill I needed to develop.
I found myself in hospital for a week during this month. As much as I would like to say being in the hospital sucked and everyone should feel sorry for me, it was actually pretty great. I suddenly found myself with zero responsibilities in life, endless free time, and an in-bed catering service. Granted most of what I was eating was unidentifiable, but I didn’t have to cook it or do the dishes afterwards - so I wasn’t complaining. It was a bit of an emergency that landed me in the hospital in the first place, but once I was there and stable I didn’t have any health issues to worry about. I just needed to recover. So I embraced my endless free time without guilt and did what any other reasonable human being would do in my situation: study chess.
In my holiday sick bed I found time to get into Endgame Sensei, a show I had been wanting to watch for ages but never found the time. It’s The Chess Dojo’s endgame show where Jesse Kraai pits Kostya and David against each other in an interesting and sort of equal endgame position. Jesse gently rips their endgame play apart, whilst providing some incredible and instructive insights into the position. It’s entertaining but really valuable learning material too. Anyway, Jesse introduces a lot of these endgames with the same caveat: that modern chess is fast and a lot of the endgames you play in tournaments now are played on a thirty second increment. So I’m listening to this thinking I need to embrace the time scramble. That’s where this decision came from. Playing on the increment is a skill, and even if I never play a blitz game in my entire life, it’s still a skill I will need sometimes if I want to become a good classical chess player.
As mentioned, I end up in time trouble pretty much every game I play, so getting the practice in keeping a level head hasn’t been difficult. But I am still looking for a concrete method that could perhaps train me to stay more zen when Lichess starts firing off its alarm at me - which incidentally makes me feel like Jesse Kraai is standing next to me shouting “Pick a move Ono! Pick a move buddy! Don’t lose on time!” and I’m shouting back saying “I’m frozen Jesse! I’ve melted psychologically! I need help!”
Anyway, I hope to keep up with the Endgame Sensei series and find some ways to break my increment induced blunder panic.
Push It Real Good
As a teenager, I used to rock climb competitively in a sort of subsport of the sport called bouldering. It is basically short (as in not very high) intense or technical climbs. Anyway, I learned a lot about training and how to train during those years of my life. I was always looking to optimise my routine. I read about all of it: the diet, interval training, rest days, the psychology. And if you are a regular reader of this blog then you’ll know I like to do the same thing with chess, I am always tweaking this or that.
But in all my experience in that sport there is one thing that stood out to me the most - I trained in the same gym, with the same people everyday, and many of the people I trained alongside were in that gym for longer than I was. But my time there was maximised.
If you want to get fit - I mean if you really want to get fit - you have to train hard. Sounds like a cliche, but it is true. Going for a walk in the park isn’t going to increase your cardiovascular endurance. It might relax you a bit. Maybe you’ll have a story to tell people later about the ducks in the park. But in terms of your physical fitness you may as well watch a thriller on Netflix. If you want to get fit, you're going to have to run through that park. And if you want to get fitter and fitter and faster and faster, if you want to be better than you were the week before, then you can’t be jogging round the pond listening to the soothing sounds of Ben Johnson interviewing your favourite chess author either. You need to run until your lungs burn. The run needs to hurt. If you throw up at some point then you know you're pushing hard enough. There are certain songs I can’t listen to now because I used to have them on when I was training, and they bring back the pain to the point that the song just gives me anxiety. When Can’t Stop by The Chilli Peppers comes on at a party, my heart starts hammering and my body tenses in expectation of oxygen debt, lactic acid and general physical discomfort.
I don’t know if I am right or not. But I get the impression that chess and exercise are not so different, and that pushing your mind, stretching your limits and making yourself uncomfortable are essential to reaching the next level. So maybe you want to just be jogging through the park maintaining your current level of fitness - good for you. I want to get better at chess. I want to be better than I was last week. I want to feel the burn baby. So I am on the hunt for ways to hurt. I want the pain. I love it. Bring on the hard stuff.
Alright, now that I have publicly stoked my ego enough I want to get to my point. I don’t have a lot of time to study chess, and I know a lot of people reading this don’t either. What made this month so productive for me (on top of my week-long chess holiday at the hospital) was that my study and training techniques have become refined. I finally feel like all the tweaking and optimising and adjusting is paying dividends. I am getting a lot more done in a lot less time. And I feel like the stuff I am doing is valuable and difficult enough that it HAS to bring eventual improvement.
These are all short, intense, active and proven training methods. So if I happen upon thirty minutes of free time, I don’t find myself wondering what I will work on, or get tricked by the thought that there isn’t a point in starting with so little time available. Instead, I think: okay I’m early to pick the wee man up from preschool, I have 15 minutes - time for puzzles. I have 5 minutes? Time to drill one of my endgames for the day against Stockfish. Having a fixed structure and set of training exercises allows me to maximise my efficiency. I don’t think it’s particularly important to talk about exactly what these exercises are right now (although I’ll be getting into more of them in my Study Method of The Month Series). Rather, I think it is important for every chess player with limited time who is serious about improving to have a list of short chess-related activities you do everyday - whether it is 15 minutes of Chessable tactics, a video on a specific chess theme, or 1 puzzle from a difficult chess book. I think having a list of tasks on any given day is vital so that when you do find yourself with a bit of time, you know exactly how you are going to use it to get closer to your personal chess goals.
Take a Bow Jonathan Hawkins
Next, onto my endgame study. Things have changed a bit for me in this area and I want to talk about those changes.
But before diving in, I want to share with you the first bit of text I wrote for this section, unedited - to share the joy that compelled me to write it:
I am writing this section on the 8th of March at 20:48pm and let me tell you I am writing this with an unbelievable feeling. I’ve gone through three basic endgame theory books now and failed to understand several rook v rook and pawn endings. Stockfish has had me banging my head against the wall with some of these positions. What a feeling it is to finally understand something after not getting it for so long. I GET IT. What a massive sigh of relief. I am quite literally laughing with the joy of understanding as I write this! I love chess.
I’m going to send Jonathan Hawkins a handwritten letter of thanks for explaining HOW to win and draw these endings in real human words. Silman couldn’t do it. Yuri couldn’t find the language. Lev Albert didn’t even try. And they were all good books. But they weren’t good enough to explain it to this adult improver. But YES. I will crush Stockfish now. My mortal enemy will be defeated.
I never did send Jonathan Hawkins a letter, and Stockfish and their entire family remain mortal enemies of mine. But I did recommend his book on Twitter. About half a dozen people claimed to buy it off the back of my recommendation, so I guess that counts as some sort of thank you.
Now how did I end up reading Amateur to IM anyway? It’s not purely an endgame theory book. It’s actually on my list of endgame strategy books and was never meant to be read until next year. Well, the answer is: rook endgames. I have seen the same positions over and over across the theory books I’ve read so far. And every time I played out certain positions, Stockfish beat me - some days after 10 moves, other days after 100. It didn’t matter how long I held. I didn’t understand the ending fully. So I was doomed. My memory of previous defeats and my guess as to what squares the pieces should stay on all eventually wore out.
So I made a decision to change the routine a bit, rather than just moving onto my next general endgame theory book (which would have been 100 Endgames You Must Know), I decided to spend as long as I needed on rook endgames. I’d study them until I ‘got it’.
I turned to every book on my list and began scanning with increasing desperation for something that might help me. It just so happened that in Jonathan Hawkins' book, I found it. And I was so impressed that out of curiosity I started the book from the beginning. A couple of days later, I found myself at the end of the book - I didn’t take notes or go through it as diligently as I have other books (hence the quick read), but I will definitely be circling back to this one next year for a re-read. I was simply blown away by the explanations and examples. Can’t recommend it highly enough. It completely changed my understanding of how the endgame should be played.
When it all finally clicked, it was amazing. The theory books I have read so far go over each of these rook v rook and pawn endings. But Hawkins was the only author who did not talk about the positions, but the underlying mechanisms that in each position made the defence or win possible. Granted, he only really explained one mechanism (effective checking distance), but he got something to snap in my mind.
The overwhelming diversity and number of these rook v rook and pawn positions all share the same small handful of underlying mechanisms. You don’t need to know 50-100 positions by heart. You don’t need to remember the moves when the pawn is on this file, or the rook is on that rank, if the king can’t reach f6 etc. All these specific positions and exceptions - each requiring their own unique checks and bizarre manoeuvres - are taught in most books in a manner that seems to suggest you must memorise lines in very specific positions, almost like opening theory. Furthermore, they insinuate that the underlying mechanisms are so incredibly obvious, that naming them or let alone explaining them, would be a complete waste of your and the author’s time.
And to make matters worse (with the exception of Lucena’s and Philidor’s Position), few of these endings actually have names. The ones that don’t, are like codes. Calling an ending: ‘5th rank pawn, king cut off one file, defending rook in front of pawn’ will not help me remember it. Names are powerful. As a side note, I’ll point out that I actually made up names for many of the rook endings that are ‘coded’ in such a way so as to help me remember them. I can’t wait to introduce the world to the Willydor Position and the Long Island Retreat, but I digress.
Back to my main point. The mechanism of checking distance is the reason half of these rook endings are either won or drawn. Either the threat of endless, unblockable, unstoppable checks or the inability to perform them successfully. Whether you ever get to deliver the checks or not is irrelevant. If the threat or possibility of them exists in the position, then it is that which is determining the moves played on the board. But the mechanism is often lurking beneath the surface. In a book you rarely see it named or explained, I think because often the author takes your understanding of the mechanism for granted. This can leave you feeling utterly lost if, like me, you don’t have that prior knowledge.
After I understood how this mechanism of effective checking distance worked,I began to see other mechanisms that were never actually mentioned or explained in the literature, but were hiding in the shadows. Encirclement is a term used by Karsten Muller in his endgame book. It is another mechanism. This time a winning one. It is the underlying mechanism or the reason that the passive defence only works with a knight or rook pawn. And yet, you seldom see the mechanism of encirclement in the endgame literature, because it is assumed that you already get it - consciously or unconsciously. And it is also assumed the defender won’t blunder into the position that allows you to perform it. So in the literature it is often written ‘And the black king goes to h8 because f8 loses’.
What the author really means is: and if the defending king goes to f8 the attacker wins due to encirclement, a winning mechanism which I have decided to not explain because I was shown it when I was five years old and to me it is inconceivable that anyone might not know this or be able to work it out for themselves. No disrespect intended, I am simply stating the obvious here - something I wish the brilliant authors of many endgame books would have done.
The second variety of author shows you encirclement like this: and if Ke8 then Rg2, e9 Ry8 Kr4, h4+ and voila. Giving me a variation instead of an explanation is like handing me a sundial when I asked you what time it was. If half of the people who read these books are anything like me, then they might go through the variations that ‘explain the mechanisms’ and never understand them. Because by giving the variations, you are only giving the reader the tools to understand, and that does not guarantee comprehension. In my case, I picked up those same tools three times from three different books and I still couldn’t work it out.
These books give you explanations like Ikea gives you furniture. In Amatuer to IM, Jonathan Hawkins delivered fully assembled. And I was really grateful for that. He showed me one mechanism and I saw the others on my own after that.
I do find it strange that these mechanisms are so poorly explained in some endgame themes and yet so well explained in others. Imagine trying to learn pawn endgames without understanding the mechanisms of opposition or shouldering. That’s what learning rook endgames is like if you don’t understand effective checking distance.
And at the same time, I totally get why the authors of these books have failed to explain the underlying concepts to me - to them, it seems too obvious to not understand! I imagine if someone from another planet asked me how to walk, I could easily explain the moves. Show the moves, know that they were the right moves. I could say put your left foot forward and your right foot forward - and that’s it. Then my extraterrestrial student would try it… and fall over because they don’t have any concept of balance. And I can’t explain balance to an alien, because I can’t remember a time when I couldn’t balance. I might even have forgotten that balance is something you need to know in order to be able to walk. Even if I did recognise that balance was vital to learning the skill of walking, it’s so second nature to me that I have zero idea of how I would go about teaching balance to anyone for whom the concept was foreign. So I have sympathy for the authors either neglecting or failing to explain these simple mechanisms that form the basis for understanding these groups of endings.
Regardless, I am glad I understand it myself now and I hope that anyone reading this who decides to take a swing at endgame theory will know to look for the mechanisms at work in groups of endings. I think the key for me is to recognise when I am memorising or making moves, but not knowing why I am making them. Usually, that is a sure sign I am missing the key concept or underlying mechanism that allows the ending to really be understood, not just learned.
The Endgame Study Must Change
So I have now read three general endgame theory books cover to cover: Silman’s Complete Endgame Course, Chess Endings Essential Knowledge, Just the Facts! Winning Chess Knowledge in One Volume (four if you count Amatuer to IM).
Through these books, I have gained a good general feel and understanding of how each type of ending works, the general motifs involved and a much greater appreciation for the functions and limitations of each piece. I also think just reading these books has vastly improved my calculation and visualisation abilities by going through the variations without a board whenever I can.
I’ve found the whole thing fascinating and I have totally fallen in love with the endgame phase. It has a special kind of magic to it that at times has made me giddy. A few favourites have been discovering the Saveedra position for the first time and the aforementioned relief of understanding effective checking distance.
So my general endgame theory study has been great. But I think if I were to pick up the next book on the list (which is 100 Endgames You Must Know), I might not be optimising my time. I really do feel like I have a general overview of most basic endings and although I am nowhere close to having my hand play these endings for me (they are not yet subconscious skill, but rather still conscious knowledge), I also don’t think that reading one more general theory book is going to help me much. At this stage, I feel like there are diminishing returns on each new general theory book I read. So I made a radical decision: I am going to spend the next nine months doing a deep dive into each ending by theme instead of continuing working my way through a list of general theory books. Here is my schedule for the rest of the year (the numbers are the week numbers):
15, 16, 17: Rook v Rook + 2 Pawns
18, 19, 20: Rook v Pawn
21, 22, 23: Rook + Pawns v Rook + Pawns
24, 25, 26: Queen Endings
27, 28, 29: Opposite Colour Bishop Endings
30, 31, 32: Same Colour Bishop Endings
33, 34, 35: Knight Endings
36, 37, 38: Bishop v Knight Endings
39, 40, 41: Pawn Endgames
42, 43, 44: Pawn Endgames
45, 46, 47: Pieces against Pawns
48, 49, 50: Pieces v Pieces (no pawns)
51, 52/all of 2022: Final draft of “Ono’s Endgame Increments'', my personal book on endgame theory as I have understood it from the books I have read. Will include hundreds of online flashcards and lessons to review in 2023 and beyond.
This might seem crazy but I know it’s going to work, because I have already started it with great results. Weeks 12, 13, and 14 were spent on rook v rook and pawn. I wasn’t getting those endings. I was doing a lot of nodding. A lot of thinking I understood. But Stockfish was still tricking me, because I wasn’t fully understanding. So I intend to move forward with the above schedule from now on.
The Rook, The Rook, The Rook is on Fire
So I’ve now spent three whole weeks with rook v rook and pawn endings. I referenced the rook v rook and pawn chapters across all the books I own. And I don’t think I am done. Inspired by Neal Bruce during my recent interview with him, I have also begun writing my own endgame book to help solidify the things I am learning. The book was meant to be written theme to theme after I had concluded my study this year going book to book. But the process of focusing on just one ending theme has been so beneficial (and so engrossing) that I have decided to start writing it immediately.
My process for creating the book is as follows. To start the chapter on rook v rook and pawn I first made a list - a contents page for the chapter’ - of every rook v rook and pawn ending that I wanted to cover (all of them). Then everyday I would pick an ending off of that contents page and create an in-depth Lichess study for that ending. I’d start by reading every single chapter on that exact ending in every book I owned. Every single one. Some days, that meant referencing seven different books (which didn’t take as long as it sounds). And sometimes I would watch a couple of videos on that ending too. That gave me a solid feel for the ending, any and all tactics or tricks involved and so on. I would then add general notes on the mechanisms, motifs and ideas of the endings and put that along with several variations into the Lichess study.
Last but not least, I selected starting positions from that ending to put into a second Lichess study. I took great care in selecting these positions. I wanted to cover every exception, all the nuances. I even selected positions to win if the defender made common blunders - like if the king goes to the long side in the short side defences, I added that position as a winning drill for my short side defence drills. When I studied the Lucena position, I saw mirrors of the same position in different books and subtle differences that often don’t get the right attention, although I believe they can be instructive. For example, only the bridge building method is available to the attacker if the pawn is a knight's pawn, but in some books you’ll never see Lucena’s Position with a knight’s pawn. In other starting positions, the defender's rook is occupying the fourth rank (denying the bridge). The win is still easy, but was often not mentioned in some of the literature. I wanted to note all details and document all winning methods, because if you have played Stockfish as much as I have in the last four months, then you’ll know you are never safe, no matter how simple things might seem! Inspired by my android nemesis’ confounding tricks, I also created a “Defensive/Winning Tries'' chapter in the informational Lichess study for every ending. This chapter documents the many ways that Stockfish bamboozled and tricked me and shows the most common mistakes and how to capitalise on them. I figure this will be enormously beneficial for when I am playing a non-android opponent, so I can try and trick them too.
Finally, I consolidated these two Lichess studies and put them into a Google Doc that will make up my ‘book’, which I have lovingly titled Ono’s Endgame Increments. In the first chapter on rook and rook v pawn endings, each ending has a title - such as the short side defences. That title can be clicked and will link me straight to the first informational Lichess study where I can read my notes and go through all the variations. Then below that heading, there is a list of around 5-10 test positions. I can simply click these links and it will open a new game against Stockfish in a new tab. So I can just click them all and play through all my selected starting positions in that ending against my digital foe.
This diagram showcases not only the layout of my book, but also my incredible word paint skills.
I tried to fully idiot-proof the informational Lichess Study for myself. I felt like Jonathan Hawkins had dumbed down his explanation to my level in Amatuer to IM and I strove to emulate that. I take a lot of value from Jesse Kraai’s plus, minus, equals thing. And so I approached the writing of the book and accompanying informational Lichess Study as if I was teaching. The book became my student. My minus. I plan to make the book and studies available for Patreon supporters of this blog and will have the first chapter ready for next month's post. Ultimately, the book and the study has been created for my personal use, but I thought it would be a nice and hopefully useful study tool to put on there for everyone who helps support the blog.
The first week of pure focus on rook v rook and pawn was a bit messy. All the different names across all the different books, all of the same endings with different starting positions left me a little overwhelmed and confused. But as I started to get my head around it all, I began to really enjoy myself. To the point that I just couldn’t stop. I became obsessed with them. And I loved it. And I’m really enjoying doing things this way. So my endgame theory year will conclude with me writing this book - topic to topic, chapter to chapter, month to month - until I have covered all the major endings. I find I’m holding the knowledge much better this way.
To be clear, this idea isn’t new. I wrote about the idea of going ending to ending rather than book to book in a previous article and discussed it in my interview with Neal Bruce. I initially acknowledged this was (in my opinion) the most effective way to study and the way the information was most likely to stick. But I dismissed it on the grounds I would be bored to death. The opposite has in fact happened. I have become enamoured by these endings as I focus on them individually. The subtleties in a single position are endlessly interesting and I am just totally absorbed in the beauty of it all. With that in mind I see no reason to not do things this way.
The Schizophrenic Rook Ending
Quick rant that might have saved me a huge amount of time - something I can hopefully pass on to you!
Rook endings are fun at parties, but I know this one rook ending that is known to one group of friends as Karstedt’s Draw, at school he’s called the Kling and Horwitz Technique. He was even once known as Philidor’s Defence Method Two. It wasn’t that no one liked him. It was just that they were confused by him. They spent a lot of time trying to understand the subtleties and differences between all three individuals, only to realise one day that they were all, in fact, the same person. And they needn’t have gone to so much effort.
If you can’t reach the Philidor Position and the pawn is on the fifth, then transferring your rook behind the pawn is the correct defensive technique. Call it what you want, just realise that there is no consensus in the chess world as to what to call it. Helpfully, all endgame authors have decided to pick their own unique name. However, allow me to reassure you: they are all the same defensive method.
The Game Ending One Move Blunder
A penultimate random section for you now: despite all my progress and study this year so far, I have maintained my ability to throw away a +64 position in a single move. Although experience is teaching me that these blunders are becoming less and less frequent through consistent practice and careful consideration of the thought process malfunction that leads to those types of game-ending blunders.
With that in mind, I want to echo something I heard on The Perpetual Chess Podcast this month. In his interview with Ben Johnson, guest Cody Smith talked about analysing games and the tendency to not look at the game you lost to a one-move (sometimes literally) game-finishing blunder - the game you hung your queen, mate in 1, or missed a golden opportunity. You brush it off as a stupid error and think there is no point in reviewing it. Nothing to learn there, right?
I strongly disagree with this sentiment. If you blunder as much as I do, then eliminating half of those would result in a significant improvement in your play.
I want to throw my process for analysing these games out there, because it has helped me to reduce these types of blunders quite significantly (which is not to say that I don’t make these types of blunders anymore, obviously). Quick side note that the game up until that point is still worthy of review, but I would argue that if you look at only one thing from that game, it should be the blunder. With that in mind, when you do look at that moment, it shouldn’t be about the position or the move at all. I think that has almost nothing to do with this type of error. No one has real long-range piece blindness. These errors don’t happen because the board was ‘busy’ or because you hadn’t seen that opening line before. It is about your mind.
To tell of my own experience, I often find myself stuck in a position. I calculate a few lines, I try and think of a short- or long-term plan. But there is nothing. My mind is blank. And the clock is ticking. I start to feel this pressure to move. That is precisely the moment I now consciously recognise more often. And just when I am about to move, something in my own mind slaps me and my brain says “Hey! Don’t even think about it! If you blunder now it doesn’t matter how much time you have left on the clock! You’ll lose anyway!”. And then I’ll thank my brain for intervening and I’ll take a few extra minutes to find a move that at least has some semblance of logic behind it.
Now that trigger and subsequent response was developed (painfully slowly) by me writing down exactly what I was thinking before each of my game-ending one-move disasters and seeing a pattern. Over and over again, I blundered because I made a planless move - a move for the sake of moving - and justified it to myself saying: I’m taking too long here, I’ll just do this…
And the next thing you know - my eyes go wide, I suck in some air and hold my breath, waiting for the inevitable sound of my hanging piece being captured.
Anyway. Once I became aware of the thought process leading up to many of my one-move specials, I was slowly able to stop myself. It wasn’t immediate and I’m still occasionally fallible - okay, maybe more than occasionally judging by my recent rating dip. But I very, very rarely make these planless, pointless moves in imagined time pressure anymore. I don’t do blunder checks, I never have. But this process of analysing my thoughts and learning to recognise the bad ones before it is too late has helped. It’s like I am about to step off a cliff and something in my mind grabs me and pulls me back. It’s really cool how this trigger has just developed almost as a pain response to the devastation these blunders burn into your very soul. I imagine it might be a bit like how electroshock therapy works, only slightly more painful.
This month I’ve had an unusually high amount of one-move spectaculars, and what do you know? Another pattern emerged. Example: I calculated that I could trade minor pieces, take a pawn (which was defended) with my knight and then if my opponent grabbed the knight I had a royal fork - so I am winning a pawn. I play move one, we exchange pieces. I play move two, I take the pawn. And then my opponent takes the knight. Haha, idiot, I secretly think to myself, smirking. I win your queen now, you fool. I play the move, planting my knight confidently on the royal forking square. And as soon as I do, I realise that the forking square is covered, I just sacked a knight and blundered a second - game over. Who’s the idiot now..? And yes, for those of you who’ve read my previous blog about respecting your opponent - I am clearly a work in progress…
Another game: I see the king and queen on the same diagonal. I take a defended pawn with my knight, simultaneously opening up my bishop and threatening the skewer. My opponent takes the knight. I am overcome with the same feeling as in the example above: total elation. YES! I win! I plant my bishop down with check and prepare to capture the queen behind it. And then my opponent blocks the check with a pawn. And I think to myself: oh right, pawns can move forward. That’s cool.
So it was a blunderful month for me. Point is, these blunders are always worth considering. Sometimes they are the most important thing worth considering in a game. I’ve discovered a pattern in my thought process that needs work. And I hope that the next time I see a win, my brain slaps me and tells me to slow down, the same way I’ve trained it to do when I am about to make a planless move.
I Do Lessons Now
I had a conversation with a titled player this month about my desire to start teaching chess. I explained that I had this sort of imposter syndrome - who am I to teach anyone at my current rating level? But they helpfully pointed out that sometimes the best person to teach you is the person that is six months to a year ahead of where you are now. They helped me see that I might actually be at an advantage as a teacher over coaches who are more advanced players, due to my ability to remember, understand and relate to where my students are now - having been there myself not so long ago. With that in mind, I have decided to just go for it. So if any adult improvers out there are looking for instruction, I am taking on students rated under 1000 chess.com rapid (or equivalent rating). I’ll post the details about my coaching offer as a separate blog post that you can read here if you are interested.
Conclusion
I have definitely stepped up my chess this year so far. I averaged about an hour a day in my first year of chess, but without the farm project this year, I’ve been able to double that and sometimes grab a bit more time, too. On top of that, I’ve taken major steps to optimise my training this year and made sure that it hurts!
‘No pain, no gain’ might be the title of this article, but the truth is, there has been only pain for me recently - the gain is something I am still waiting for. I feel like it’s coming, like I’m on the verge of a jump. Oddly enough, I have been feeling like I am playing the best chess of my life and yet my recent results are the worst they have ever been - I’m on a winless nose dive. But that’s okay, I am trusting my process as the right long-term strategy. I’m curious as to how this perceived performance increase and simultaneous dip in results will pan out, and it’s something I hope I have an answer to next month. Thanks for reading, as always, and I’ll see you then.
Oh and if anything I just wrote about in the conclusion feels familiar to you - if you know how my best-chess losing streak will end - then please reach out to me on Twitter. I love talking chess with anyone and everyone over there.
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