It's a pleasure to accept Patrik's invitation to join this group. I'm here because I appear to be a hopeless "B" player and I'd really like to break through to the next level before I get too old and senile. I'd like to think I qualify for the 'Grumpy Geezer' subsection of the group, since I'm certainly a geezer (58) and my poor play does often make me grumpy
My current rating on this site is very misleading, since I have found that if you are careful and don't blunder you can pick up an awful lot of free points against lower rated players here, but against good players I flounder usually somewhere late in the opening and either lose or deserve to lose. Lately I've been making it a point to try to get games with better players and as a result I'm getting hammered, of course, but I think I'm learning a few things as well. To wit --
1. The deeper you are in the opening the less you can trust books and databases. I'm starting to learn to spend more time looking at opening moves as if they were middlegame moves, i.e. trying to find the best move all on my own, and only as a last resort consulting 'the book'. I adore books of all kinds and over the years I've probably trusted too much in them and not enough in my own analysis.
2. In tactical situations look at EVERY legal move. Grandmasters may be able to see the correct candidate moves at a glance, but I've noticed that I only have the ILLUSION of seeing the correct candidate moves a glance, usually with disastrous results.
3. In the late middlegame make sure you actually know how to play an endgame before you head for one I have more than once forced a simplification to what turned out to be a lost endgame!
4. I have reduced my chess library from 500+ books to only about 50 but among the volumes I treasure are the works of CJS Purdy, absolutely the best chess writer you've probably never heard of! (Well, Farbror has head of him, I know, but for everybody else, check him out!)
Greetings everyone.
It's a pleasure to accept Patrik's invitation to join this group. I'm here because I appear to be a hopeless "B" player and I'd really like to break through to the next level before I get too old and senile. I'd like to think I qualify for the 'Grumpy Geezer' subsection of the group, since I'm certainly a geezer (58) and my poor play does often make me grumpy
My current rating on this site is very misleading, since I have found that if you are careful and don't blunder you can pick up an awful lot of free points against lower rated players here, but against good players I flounder usually somewhere late in the opening and either lose or deserve to lose. Lately I've been making it a point to try to get games with better players and as a result I'm getting hammered, of course, but I think I'm learning a few things as well. To wit --
1. The deeper you are in the opening the less you can trust books and databases. I'm starting to learn to spend more time looking at opening moves as if they were middlegame moves, i.e. trying to find the best move all on my own, and only as a last resort consulting 'the book'. I adore books of all kinds and over the years I've probably trusted too much in them and not enough in my own analysis.
2. In tactical situations look at EVERY legal move. Grandmasters may be able to see the correct candidate moves at a glance, but I've noticed that I only have the ILLUSION of seeing the correct candidate moves a glance, usually with disastrous results.
3. In the late middlegame make sure you actually know how to play an endgame before you head for one
I have more than once forced a simplification to what turned out to be a lost endgame!
4. I have reduced my chess library from 500+ books to only about 50 but among the volumes I treasure are the works of CJS Purdy, absolutely the best chess writer you've probably never heard of! (Well, Farbror has head of him, I know, but for everybody else, check him out!)
I look forward to learning a lot here!