I have read the book. And surprise, in my next tournament my rating shoots up! The book revealed that I was weak in tactics and calculation. I did tons of tactics trainer, and it improved my playing considerably!
How Good Is the Chess Exam by Igor Khmelnitsky As A Guidance to Self-Improvement?
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Jul 29, 2018
0
#23
HolographWars wrote:
I have read the book. And surprise, in my next tournament my rating shoots up! The book revealed that I was weak in tactics and calculation. I did tons of tactics trainer, and it improved my playing considerably!
It’s great to hear that. Of course, I am a long way from the evaluations, but the book is a wonderful learning experience as you work through the questions.
You can get it from pdfdrive for free. No hidden catches although they do ask if you want the premium account and if you don’t you are still allowed to download stuff for free.
Results
Skill/elo
Overall 1020
Attack 1150
Counter attack 1100
Defence 980
Opening 1500
Middlegame 1050
Endgame 1000
Tactics 1374
Strategy 900
Calculation 1179
Standard patterns 1045
Recognising threats 960
Sacrifice 1300
The distant opposition question was straight out of Capablancas book so that helped me because it used the exact same example. I will take it again in the future after some basic strategy and endgame study.
I use to know Igor (for a short while) when I lived in Philadelphia. I didn't check his book out though. I'd kind of drifted away from studying chess.
Sep 22, 2022
0
#27
I used to have this book and have read and tried to solve the puzzles. It is a great puzzle book. It will help you improve on tactics and calculation. Calculation is one of my weakest points so it kind of helped me a bit by going over the exercises. By familiarizing myself with the positions, I am now able to apply it when I try to solve puzzles.
Sep 22, 2022
0
#28
It's a very good book. You have to have the motivation and will-power to finish it, and you will be a better player for it. I am currently about a third of the way through it, aiming to finish it by end of year or early 2023.
I definitely recommend it.
KevinOSh wrote:
It's a very good book. You have to have the motivation and will-power to finish it, and you will be a better player for it. I am currently about a third of the way through it, aiming to finish it by end of year or early 2023.
I definitely recommend it.
I would be interested in your results when you finish it.
heres mine in best to worst--
1.Tactics --- 44.57%
2.Opening---43.3%
3.Attack----40.95%
4.Sacrifice--- 40.83%
5.Calculation--38.8%
6.Overall-- --------- 34.2%
7.Middlegame 33.4%
8.Endgame--- 33%
9.Standard positions-- 32.3%
10.Counter attack--- 32.1%
11.Recognizing threats-- 31.4%
12.Defence--- 27.69%
13.Strategy-- 22.8%
Interesting quote---
""Most players (1200-2200 chess.com rating) are strong in tactics and openings, but their ratings don’t show it because their positional knowledge just isn’t up to par. In other words, they can never create the circumstances to execute those tactical knockouts. Everyone has it: that one part of their game where once they get a grip on it, everything clicks and their results improve dramatically. And for a lot of players, that area is positional play. """-Tijana Blagojevic
Finished the third section of Khmelnitsky and did the best yet: estimated ELO rating of 1951. The positions in this book are not easy. On the answer page for each one is a chart showing the percentage of players in each rating category who gave each of the answers. Even those in the 2400+ rating range did not all get every question right.
There are 7 more sets of 10 questions. It will be very interesting to see my final evaluations in the various areas. Meanwhile, I continue to learn a lot from this book.