If you enjoy moving the pieces on a board while reading (I do too) I'd recommend getting a second board so that you can play through variations on it, while still having the starting position set up on the first board. I find this really helps keep the flow of the session smooth, and you aren't wasting mental energy rewinding to where you were. You also feel more inclined to play through moves again if they don't sink in first time, or explore and analyse other moves.
Tips for working through Annotated Games?
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This is the proper forum. Find the books you like on chessable.com and use their MoveTrainer teaching technique to go through the games or the puzzles. No physical board needed. Go through the variations then snap back to the mainline in a mouse click. Chess engine is immediately available to confirm your own variation.
Sep 12, 2021
0
#4
If you are using a physical board, another alternative to a second board is to take a picture before starting to play through the variations, so you can quickly get back to the position. It can also help to have a note somewhere of the last move that took place before the picture/position.
Not an advice but I just want to say you picked a great book - Understanding Chess Move by Move is a must read!
I have (and like) those two John Nunn books too, along with various other books I'm slowly working through as I try to gain a good grounding for further improvement...
for the first question, there is no normal amount of time since there is no way to tell if you are going to solve it in the first place. if you get either curious or fixated or even irritated that you cannot see the solution and you feel like you have to find it yourself even if you have to spend hours on one diagram, that's fine. but you should first set aside time to solve puzzles with the goal of solving 1 diagram say within 3 minutes and if you can't then you should look up the answer and remember the idea. you are trying to build a database of patterns in your head and you need a lot. so it won't help spending one hour on one diagram even if you get it right.
on the other hand i know how satisfying it is to solve something difficult, so i am not suggesting you drop it entirely. just manage your available time and prioritize getting more patterns over solving everything correctly no matter what.
on the second, here you should take as much time as you need. what matters is not how many games you go through but how much you learn from one game. when you get stronger, you will eventually go through games at a faster rate.
on the third, visualizing is not bad, but you should think about the goal you have for going through a game. if the goal is to absorb as many ideas as you can from a game, then you shouldn't combine that with also trying to visualize lines in your head as it requires a lot of brain power, which you need to actually understand and remember ideas. however, if you can do both for a long time and not get tired then you may do as you please. i personally can't.
when working on tactics, try to solve them as fast as you can, and set a limit on how much time you can spend on one diagram and if you hit that limit, look up the answer and move on. or if you want you can set that problem aside as a separate task, so that you can keep solving the ones you can solve relatively fast until you hit your daily goal or so, and then come back to it and try to solve it with as much time as you like. don't combine both.
Regarding tactics: just listen to FM Peter Giannatos on Perpetual Chess. According to him you should choose tactics level that takes you 10-15 min. to solve.
@Minblitz, that's the exact advice I was looking for. Thank you. If you think of any additional insights, please let me know. I'm always looking for ways to optimize my learning.
I'm generally a slow person though, so 3 minutes sounds blazingly fast! Is anywhere from 5-15 minutes ok, too?
@arendijus, I thought seirawan's tactics book might have fit the bill better for me if 10-15 minutes, but I didn't want to "waste" money on more easy books. I do puzzles on lichess and chess.com. But I wanted words and examples, too.
And thanks for the second board suggestions, guys. I do have a second vinyl board and pieces. Just need to find the space to set them up side by side. Working through games on the computer sounds easier, but I just love fondling my Baku pieces.
Sep 12, 2021
0
#10
I suggest reading Irving Chernev’s Logical Chess Move by Move before reading the Nunn book.
@Atomic_Checkmate, kindaspongey DM'd me and told me why Chernev's book is better at my level, so I'm gonna make the switch.
you can increase the time, but you will encounter fewer patterns. generally i take more time if i initially found the correct idea and the first move but cannot determine which one of the branches lead to the answer. if i cannot even find the first move after 3 minutes of thought i just assume the problem is way beyond my understanding and that it would be counterproductive to spend more time than that. of course i sometimes just marinade like you do, but i know the consequences of what i'm doing and i know it's not efficient. also i am talking about solutions that require maybe 3 to 5 moves with very few branches if any at all, and no hints at the beginning as to what you are looking for. anything more than that would require more time to solve.
take the survival mode of puzzle rush for example. you should be able to answer up to 20 fairly easily, maybe 5 seconds per diagram. if not, that should be your goal. don't be too hard on yourself. i don't mean it should be immediately obtainable. it took me a while to get there. a very long while. but if you work with it consistently and consciously trying to reduce your time, you should get there.
the drawback is you can't skip the hard part, although there is no time limit so unless your connection fails, you should be able to spend as much time as you prefer. having said that, there hasn't been anything mind boggling in diagrams 1 to 20. if you get stuck that likely means you haven't seen the pattern before.
seeing simple tactics should be almost intuitive. also these are the things you need a lot of, so that you can subconsciously recall the patterns during a game. you should make sure you can reproduce the solution in a few seconds. the goal is to get to a point where if you see a similar pattern, you don't have to figure out everything from scratch, and your brain will just check if the solution also works in this case, and will proceed to guide you to the right path.
it's fun to solve things but it's more efficient to automate the tactical pattern recognition as much as possible so that you don't have to solve something you already know the solution to subconsciously. after all simple tactics is just a part of what you try to do in a game.
bear in mind i am speaking mostly from personal experience. surely there are other ways, maybe better than mine.
Heavens to Betsy. A few seconds?
Right now, even on the easiest puzzles, it takes me at least a minute to assess the whole board. I guess it's something I'll have to work up to?
And I've never tried puzzle rush. Which mode do I select to try this 1-20 test? Survivor?
Thanks again for
you'll get there if you work consistently. i didn't do anything special and i also have no chess genes to help me with it. just hard work. so i know it's possible to get there with just effort. you need a lot of experience to build up an intuition that will tell you the answer without needing to spend so much time looking at the position. constantly going through puzzles will give you that experience.
survivor allows you to think since there is no time limit. when you get to a point where you can get all 20 diagrams correctly consistently you may now try the actual puzzle rush with a 5 minute limit and see how fast you can get to 20 without a mistake.
It's taken me a while to find chess books that seem to fit my current need (Seirawan's "Winning Chess" and Fischer's "Teaches Chess" were too easy...even at my 1000ish level), but I've settled on 2: John Nunn's "Learn Chess Tactics" and "Understanding Chess Move by Move". I tried reading Fischer's 60 memorable games, but I don't think I gained much, because I need more explanations for every single move.
So...I've got a few general questions about how best to work through these books:
Please, any other tips for how to best work through tactics and annotated games books would be appreciated!
Hope this was the right forum for this, but mods please move, if it's not!