Logic Applied to Improvment in Chess

Contemplating Progress in Chess

If you're reading my blog you most likely are here to see what I have to say about getting better in chess. I'd say everyone has their theories and ways of improving and even though I am a clear believer of all the basic rules for getting better, in this post I'll give you some ways of thinking that may change your way to look at your way to improvement in chess!

First Question!

What is your goal at this time.

1. To play better (win more) and thanks to that increase your rating?

2. To become a traditionally better player in all areas of the game even if that really doesn't help you win more and increase that much in rating?

You may think that these 2 questions are the same thing but keep reading and you'll understand why I see them as different and why I think there's a better (faster) way of getting better results without becoming a more complete and all rounded good chess player (this stage will come but later)

Startup Logic

My thoughts here will work best for new players all the way up to probably 1700+ in rating.

It may even help you a bit further but it depends on you and how you play chess.

Current Level of Play

Here's where my thoughts start of. What I is about to share is less dependent of your rating and more on your way of play.

Take a look at your games.

You know that the normal way of dividing a chess game is in three stages.

1. Opening
2. Middle game
3. End game

Here's my point.

A good, well rounded chess player studies, trains and improves in all three stages of a chess game. A number of chess openings is studied and trained to have flexibility. Strategy and tactics are trained to allow for good play in a huge number of positions to cover all possible upcoming scenarios arising from the different openings you use.

A shorter path to better results and increased rating, according to my new theory could be to apply logic to what has to bee done to optimize the learning and training route to your new level of play.

Where to start?

Here's an example taken from my journey.

After playing quite a bit for a number of months ending up and 1300-1400 in rating even though I was sure I had it in me to be better than that, I did an assessment of my games.

I quickly found that I used a huge number of openings I really did not know especially well (or even close to well enough compared to someone knowing even a little).

I almost never reached the end games. I most often didn't even get far into the middle game and finally I played bad or messed it up in the opening.

From this I formed my Study Plan

What could I do to get most bang for the buck (or time).

1. Avoid stupid, simple blunders.

2. Avoid openings I did not know (I decided to chose one for white and one for black)

3. More or less ignore the end game and to a huge extend middle game for the time being until my games at least started to reach the middle game.

This was what gave me at least over 100 Elo points in just weeks.

The Next Step

This made playing much more fun!

I also noted that now when most games reached the middle game I had to start checking the positions my openings took me to and see how they could be played. Adding more and more games with the same openings to my archive and analyzing all of them improved my game again quite rapidly.

I most often won or played even all that way into the end game.

Now some more end game training helped me there as well

And all the way keeping my eye on tactics as well as training tactics gave me a bunch of wins.

Current state

I've just had a huge dip in rating and fairly so as I went from more or less winning 2 our of three game to loosing like 3 out of 4. I got back a bit to making blunders again. A bit more complex blunders than 6 months ago but still blunders. I also have play against opponents that have played a bit strange formations and it has thrown me of.

DUring this last week Iäve come back a bit again but it does feels like I have to sharpen my focus a bit to get my mojo from a month ago back.