Forum

 I am a genuine Internet Troll who have been playing turn-based chess for a little more than a year. My goal is to feel like a 1500ish OTB player by the end of the year (my New Year's Resolution is descibed elsewhere). The plan is to play weekly live games at the office. We have a handfull of wood pushers at the office who meet for a few friendly games. Also, I will try to squeece in a few slow live games at this site and to annotate the games. My daily routine is to solve a few tactics problem (CT-Art 3.0 and/or Tactics Trainer) every morning before the kids wake up. Favourite Openings: King's Gambit & Latvian Gambit

You might enjoy this article: http://www.chess.com/article/view/mentality-and-chess

Hello All, I have been remiss in my journal but will try to be better. I have been playing on and off all my life but have been trying to really improve lately. Today I met with FM Eric Schiller and tried to come up with a plan. I will be working on the opening principles. Different than what is usually considered the normal. 1. Control the Center. 2. Castle 3. Connect the Rooks 4. Aim the Rooks. We also discussed the openings of Tarrasch and Kings Indian and that I should stick with the Dragon as it seems to work for me. Tonight I will be doing some problems and tactics on the trainer.

Hi, I am new to this group and I have no idea what should be addressed in one's training regimen. In any case I don't have a training module per se. I just play chess..have been doing so for around 18 months or so. Almost everyone advises me to select openings etc. according to my style. But I am yet unsure of what my 'chess style' is and how does one go about determining it. Should I let it come through on it's own..or strive to have a particular style. I am not even sure if I already have a distinct style or so. I play chess the old school way - 'whatever works need not be fixed!' Having said that, I would appreciate if some members in here play online games with me and give me feedback on what I lack in my chess education - which I can then address later on making it the focal point of my training. Well good luck to all on your chess endeavors !

To review your own games is excellent training. I like to look back at old games to get a better understanding of my improvement. Recently, I started to create a “Top 5 list” of all my OTB (“Over-the-Board”) games. I think such a list might be useful as a measure of your improvement. How? Well, one idea is to set goals such as: “At least one of my next ten games should make it into my Top 5 List” Rating Improvement is of course a simply measure of improvement but the thing is that you can play the best chess of your life during a period without winning a single game! The Top 5 List does not necessarily consist of won games. Please note that making in into the Top 5 List is quite demanding if you have played a lot of games. A simple but crude estimate of the chance for a single game to make it into the list is “5/N”, where N = the total number of your games from where the Top 5 is created

About me. Well I'm 38. My dad taught me chess as a kid, that is, how each peice can moves. I never could find anyone to play against. This is before the internet ;-) Next chance I got was while doing my A levels at about 18 when a guy brought in a chess set. After I won a couple of games he wouldn't play anymore. The story of my life since then. So I never really had the opportunity to learn the game. I do tend to feel I'm too old to ever get good at it now. But that's OK. If I can learn to improve my game then I'll be happy. If I can get to a stage where I'm playing games that my opponents enjoy then that would be ideal.

From The End to The Beginning Read Reasasses your Chess up to page 52 then read the Amateur's Mind book then finish the Reassess Your chess. Read Best Lessons of A chess Coach My System Once these book are read and understand then I will start on endgames study Read Fundamental Chess ending up to page 57 that cover Pawns Ending at the same time I'll be reading (1.Pawn Power in Chess and then 2nd Undertanding Pawn Play in Chess.) Continue reading FCE and start on Silman's Endgame Course. Then I will read The Middlegame book 1 & 2 by Euwe and Kramer Then back to working on pawns Read Pawn Struture Chess by Soltis then The Ideas behind the Chess Opening by Fine. One a everyday basic I be solving tactical puzzles form The the Complete Chess Workout By Palliser. That goes well with this training because it doesn't give you a hint what to look for, however the book is categorized. What lead me to this training is quotation from to these Grand Masters and also NM Vince Berry will be helping on my progess. Winning Chess Endings by Yasser Seirawan (International Grand Master), page viii “Studying the endgame will teach you how to land those “won” positions and to avoid the bad ones. Although some middlegames or openings end in a decisive checkmate or perpetual check, most games come down to an ending in which the game is well balanced and ends in a draw, or one in which the stronger side tries to force the advantage and gain victory. You will have a decided advantage if you have a good grasp on ending strategies. Furthermore, your skills in all facets of the game will improve. By learning in advance all those positions that won or drawn, you’ll be better to steer your way through the middlegame. The more experience you have in the ending, the better your own middlegame play becomes. Then, as you get better in the middlegame, you learn to choose openings that suit your middlegame tastes. In short, improving your endgame improves your whole game.” A World Champion’s Guide to Chess by Susan Polgar (Grandmaster) “I highly recommend that beginners and intermediate players work mostly with tactics and endgames and solve tactical exercises every day. Tactics and endgames are the foundations of chess. Opening study is important only at much higher levels such as expert, master, and beyond. It is enough for beginner and intermediate players to understand only the basic principles of chess openings. . . . My father used to say: ‘Prepetition makes a master. Repetition makes you a better chess player.’ And he was right. Solving thousands of puzzles really helped me become the play that I am today. The point is not to memorize the actual positions but to remember the ideas, to recognize the patterns. Chess is largely a matter of pattern recognition. The more patterns you know, the better player you will be. It is said that an average grandmaster has a mental library of about 20,000 patterns, which includes tactical, strategic, and endgame patterns. The main aim of this book it help you build your own library of ideas.”

My blog entry is here. Two weeks until my big tournament!

[COMMENT DELETED]

I was once a decent chessplayer and had something like a "chess career" in the 80s and 90s. After that came work & kids (it's probably possible to combine an active chess-life with one of those, but not both!) and I haven't played a real tournament in almost 10 years. During that time I have more or less only played 3-10 games a year in the Swedish team competition. Lately, at the age of 43 I have felt the urge to play coming back strongly, especially after spending some time with old chess-friends who are still active. So now I'm starting to try to go forward towards a small comeback and hopefully play a couple of tournaments this year. If I can make it fit with family and work the first one is a round-robin happening in early June. To prepare for this I have set up a couple of targets until then: To rebuild an opening repertoire. I realize I can't play all the ultra-sharp variations (I used to play 8.Rb1 against the Grünfeld f ex) I used to when I had more time for preparation, but will have to go for more restrained positional lines. Still I have to have a decent idea of the main ideas in those lines. I should build a basic repertoire and use chessbase to familiarize myslef with the typical positions arising. I will keep a few openings from my past - the KID and Alekhines defence as black, but will play 1.Nf3 as white aiming for Réti or Catalan. I will make a small database of my openings and at least have a clear idea of what to do in most lines up until the middlegame starts. To play some turn-based games here on chess.com and a little blitz on ICC to get back some "feeling for the game". To try to solve some tactical problems in a structured manner with time-pressure. These excersizes must be scheduled since I know how lazy I can be if. To learn from my past chess history regarding my weaknesses and strengths. I know that in the past I enjoyed analyzing tactical tricks in my pet lines, but rarely made objective analyses of the resulting positions from a positional point of view. Learning by plyaing might work when you play a lot, but not under current circumstances. To annotate all serious games I play in order to judge them objectively and also present them here. To achieve this I will try to post here weakly regarding how I have fared. Appreciate any feedback!

Done with school for the summer, actually more like 6 weeks. Just enough time to get ready for a tournament. You can read about my plan here. Or here.

Hello all! I am back, although I was only on briefly before. I am trying again with a training regiment and here it goes. First- 20 tactics problems on chesstempo.com per day Second- Read through the book Understanding Technical Chess by Jacob Aargaard Third- Go over as many of my games as possible to scrutinize where I may need improvement in my game. (so far as I can tell, the middlegame, because I get to a point in a lot of my games where it seems to me the pos. is even, but I come up with the wrong plan) My long term goal for the year is to break the 1500 level by the end of the year. (am 1309 currently)

I've posted a new blog page about my training. It's here. My wordpress blog is here.

Ok folks for those of you who don't know me which should be about 67 of you, Farbor invited me. Our blogs link to one another. I have begun mirroring my posts here, and I have a new blog entry about last week. Please check it out as I'm not posting all of that stuff over again. Have a good week.

This summer i am going to 3 chess camps, and i will have the chance to study tactics and engdames more being off school =)

Hi all, I'm Steven, I'm thirty-five years old and live in Scotland.I started playing chess when I was eight, or nine. Up till the age of twelve I was fanatical, representing Scotland and playing chess all over the country. It was put to the side when I became a teenager, and I've barely played since.I had a brain haemorrhage at twenty-one. When I have played since I've noticed that I don't have the "capacity" to be complete in my thoughts when analysing a situation. I've completed a mathematics degree since, so I still have something to work with! To improve my game, I'd like to do two things:1. Hopefully get back to something near the standard I once played as a child.2. I'm a big fan of the Queen's Gambit, but I've never given it a thorough study. Hopefully on here, I can do both. Cheers Steven

Just trying to post in our forumss...

http://www.chessmasterschool.com/ This looks cool: like the "ultimate course" for structured people, who like to follow a clear path end to end, rather than jumping from topic to topic. Thoughts? Andrea

Introduction Journal #1 Ray's the name. I love chess, and have since the age of six when my dad taught me to play. Always I've had a healthy fascination for the game, but recently it has become an obsession. Currently I'm on our high school chess team, and on our team is one of the top six(!) junior - under eighteen - players from Oregon. His brother too, is on the team - and my best friend, but that's not quite exciting for a post of this scope. Through this team I met a FIDE master, to remain unnamed as of now - he may be titled, but that's no reason to give away an identity! He teaches our team regularly at meetings. It may not be free, but $75/hour for five kids is a steal - that's $15/student for those who didn't work out the math. That man has brought a lot of success in chess into my life in the month that we've been getting lessons from him. Mainly he has focused on: Endgame (theory) Opening theory Tactics Which really, there isn't much better to focus on than that for me. He relates all things he teaches us in one category - e.g. opening theory - to another category he might introduce - e.g. tactics in the middle game. Unfortunately I can't own up all my accomplishments in chess to our coach, it has come from playing with friends, family - a big thanks to my dad, who again I said brought me to this wonderful game - and opponents - the difference between friends and opponents to me is when a game is rated. A lot of my success has come from reading both from online sources and books. My chess library consists of: Weapons of Chess Bruce: An Omnibus of Chess Strategies Pandolfini Chess Openings: Traps and Zaps Bruce Pandolfini Starting Out: The Modern Nigel Davies Silman's Complete Endgame Course Jeremy Silman This repetoire of books I own currently satisfies me - especially the last title, which I believe I have and will get the most use out of in my entire chess career. Here is a game I played on live chess. I went into the game previously preparing myself for playing a Ponziani if the opponent responded with e5 to d4 and with Nc6 to Nf3. Instead, he moved a queen to f3(?).

I strongly believe that Richard Teichmann was right in saying that “chess is 99% tactics” – at least, this is 100% sure at “our” level. If I look at my recent games, all of them are won or lost because of a tactics. While looking for something to improve tactics in a structured way, I stumbled across this site It looks very well done to me: it is structured in 235 chapters, each of them focused on a particular theme, and it tries to give sound explanations in English (not just sequence of moves) of how to create the seeds of tactical destruction (as Dan Heisman call them) and how to frame tactics into a thought process. Give it a try, you may like it!