My journey: A beginner gets Chess coaching.

Yes I agree with the self training approach but a Coach tells students what to avoid and what to grab . Since I am a Coach myself , I have seen people not using the training tools well , Having less control over emotions during a Game , and much more .

As a primary school music teacher, I'd be happy to debate the worth of teachers/coaches with you but please not here. I think most readers that click on a Forum Thread titled "My Journey: A beginner gets Chess Coaching" are more interested in exactly that, rather than getting sidetracked into a debate about the merits of coaching in general.

I'm very happy for you that you've achieved some success as an autodidact but I'd rather use this thread to share my experience as a beginner who DID get Chess coaching. 

I fully accept that this is neither necessary for everyone nor of interest to everyone but for those that are considering getting a coach, this thread hopefully shares my experience of what that journey might entail.

Yeah it is pretty obvious but when people are playing fast it's easy for them to make mistakes especially if they're not familiar with the concept. 1800+ often fall into the Englund gambit trap for example. And sometimes games just end in a nonsense way like this one I won

You caught your opponent but playing for traps works only at a certain level , and it has psychological side effects as well . I would like to advise you to Improve as a Whole . 

GMs fall for traps also.. not the scholars mate though ofc. At 1000 level the most important thing to learn is tactics. If my opponents would regularly fall for this kind of thing I'd play it all the time because it's just that hilarious

Cool 

My Journey No 5:

"I get knocked down..... but I get up again!"

HiGuys,

Just finished another great lesson with Kestony.  I was looking forward to the lesson right up until about Monday 4th of May when I had one of my worst days of playing in recent memory. 

It wasn't just that I managed to lose 4 games in a row and send my already weak rating crashing to the canvas like Tyson Fury in the 1st fight, it was the frustratingly familiar theme that ran through all 4 games.

As a bit of a preamble before I post one of the games, I'd been working with Kestony on trying to take a little more care and avoid the blunders that were costing me winning positions and turning them into crushing defeats. If you've been following my journey, you'll know that this is not a new problem for me and if you're also a beginner, you might be familiar with the idea yourself.

It goes somewhat like this:

1. Survives opening despite several inaccuracies and missed opportunities.

2. Comes up with a plan which whilst maybe not the best, is workable.

3. Gets fixated on plan and forgets that opponents ideas might mean has to adapt plan to changing circumstances.

4. Totally forgets that "Tactics trump Strategy" and becomes even more focused on plan and one tiny area of the board

5. Stops looking at whole board and opponents pieces and threats and blunders a piece.

6. Goes on tilt and starts giving away pieces like it's a "Closing Down Sale."

I'd been working on doing my tactics every day and remembering to "warm up" with tactics puzzles for 15 minutes or so before playing.

Unfortunately and I don't think I'm the first to discover this, a lot of how I play chess is habitual. A combination of some good habits and a lot of bad ones.

By this, I don't mean such things as "Chess Knowledge" or "Chess Skills," but rather the mindset, thinking process and methodology we bring to the chessboard in how we actually apply our knowledge and use what skill level we have available to us in the game situation.

For all my best intentions at the beginning of each game, there seems to be a point in the middlegame where I just find myself drifting into playing the first move that pops into my head, often without so much as a blunder check.

Here's a case in point:

The fact that my opponent, who was rated 150 points higher took 4 moves to notice my Rook was hanging and finally snatch it up, shows that being completely blind to what would seem to be so obvious is common at this level.

If presented with the position after my blunder 14.Rd3 in a set of tactics problems, even players at my level would pretty much instantly spot the Rook is hanging and play 14...exd3

The fact that my opponent didn't and that I didn't move my hanging Rook, tells us that there's something more going on than merely not seeing it or not concentrating.

I'm sure both my opponent and I could see that my Rook on d3 was hanging. I'm sure we were both concentrating. But for 4 moves, neither of us "saw it."

I talked this over with Kestony in our lesson and if I'm explaining it right, concentration is part of the problem. More specifically, how we concentrate. As a beginner, I tend to focus so acutely on my own ideas and plans and winning a piece or getting my Rook to d7 for example, that I develop an extreme "micro-focus" or "micro-vision." My concentration is actually so intense, that my board vision narrows down to sometimes just one or two squares, disregarding everything else on the board.

The crucial next step for people at my level who keep playing otherwise OK games but keep falling prey to these lack of awareness and board vision oversights, seems to lie in practicing and developing a "macro-vision" or "macro-awareness" of the board.

The answer, for me, lies in actually breaking that intense focus or concentration deliberately in order to regularly "Zoom Out" and see the bigger picture, or the whole board as it were.

That day, May 4th 2020 I managed to play 4 games that pretty much followed a similar pattern as the one I just shared. I was shattered. I'd managed to lose 23 rating points, going from 967 down to 944 in one afternoon. Certainly there's little difference between the two to a player of 1700 level but at such a low rating level, where progress is often a painful process of one step forward, one step back, I felt the string of losses acutely. I was dreading having to face up to Kestony at lesson time. After all, what can a coach do if you keep throwing games away by blundering away Rooks?

I didn't have to wait that long. Kestony had seen my games and messaged me pointing out the errors and the "WHY" behind them. He didn't get angry our sound exasperated with my poor performance but just encouraged me to remember our process and step back and apply it before making my move.

REDEMPTION!

Vowing to myself to try to at least get one win on the board before our lesson on Friday evening, I sat down and prepared a "Pre-Move Checklist" that I was going to go through before each move.

I used the things Kestony had taught me as well as ideas from various other sources on the internet and it looked something like this:

PRE-MOVE CHECKLIST.

• Am I in Check?

• Can I checkmate him by a series of forced moves?

• Is his move safe (for him)?

• Are there any threats? Do I need to defend or can I counterattack which might be better.

• What are all the things his move does? (How does this move change the position? What can he do now that he could not do before? What are his threats for next move?)

• Perform a TACTICAL EVALUATION for both my position and my oppenent’s.

1. Undefended pieces

2. Weak back rank

3. Pinned or skewerable pieces

4. Overworked pieces

5. Forkable pieces

6. Exposed King

7. Lead in development

8. Restricted pieces

• If there are no tactics or threats, perform a POSITIONAL EVALUATION.

1. Material balance

2. King safety

3. pawn structure (space, lines, diagonals, centre control)

4. Piece activity

• What are my candidate moves? Choose 2-4

CALCULATE!!!

• Begin by calculating the most forcing moves. CHECKS, CAPTURES, THREATS.

• SANITY CHECK!!!

1. Is the moved piece safe?

2. Does the moved piece leave another piece en prise?

3. Does the move leave another piece or square unguarded?

4. Does the move open lines or diagonals for my opponent?

5. Does my opponent have a Killer “In-Between” move?

6. Am I giving up the initiative or giving my opponent counterplay?

• Evaluate the resulting position. Am I even? Better? Worse? (if worse look for another move?)

• Play the move.

It seemed like a good idea at the time (and going through the exercise probably was) but as we're about to see, it had it's drawbacks.

Armed with my "Pre-Move Checklist" and having warmed up with 30 minutes of tactics, I sat down to play.

My rating was 944. My opponent was rated 988 so pretty even.

On move 3 my opponent played 3...g5

Was it a trap? An anti London System idea that he had memorized? What was I walking into?

I started going through my checklist. Checking for threats, Making a step by step Tactical Evaluation, etc, etc, etc.

I briefly considered 4.Be5 but finally chickened out and played 4.Bg3 with the justification that White's Bishop often has to retreat to g3 anyway.

And so it went for a few moves. I kept going through my "Pre-Move Checklist" and developing my pieces, trying not to blunder. 

Only to glance at the clock after move 13 and find I was down to 1 munute 30 seconds!!!

I had to play the rest of the game in Blitz mode but managed a win.

Clearly my "Pre-Move Checlist" whilst good in theory, had some serious drawbacks. 

I played 4 games that afternoon, finishing about 15 minutes before my lesson with Kestony was due to begin.

I abandoned the step by step process of going through the checklist but tried to keep the essence of it in my head as I played. I made a conscious effort to STOP - LOOK AROUND - ZOOM OUT -CALCULATE and BLUNDER CHECK before making a move. All the other micro steps I just hoped were somewhere floating around in there.

I managed to win 4 games in a row (one dude abandoned the game) and gain back my lost rating points and a few more.

I even played a game that I was reasonably happy with:

I hope you're all well and not going too stir crazy with the lockdown. 

Until next time, 

Andrew

"I was shattered. I'd managed to lose 23 rating points, going from 967 down to 944 in one afternoon."

Just curious.  Does Coach Kestony tell you not to worry about rating points?  

Hi Nigel,

The games were Rapid 15/10

Yes he does... 

I still get worried about dropping rating points though. As much as I remind myself that this is the learning phase, I'd still like to get my rating up to something respectable.

Agreed. I play 5/5 Blitz for the same reason. I don't expect to play well but it gives me a chance to reinforce the few opening lines I know and tests my pattern recognition without me worrying about the result too much. 

Also, in a busy household with teenagers, 5/5 Blitz is all you can fit in here and there of an evening.

Hi Guys,

It's been a little while. Work has been crazy with all the kids back at school here but.... Music teaching is still a "no-go" so I've been teaching via Zoom with a crazy schedule. Still, lucky to have a job, so it's all good.

On the Chess front, I finally got my rating over 1000 in 15/10 Rapid.

Now I know 1000 is no big deal and probably nothing to write home (or here) about but it's been a sticking point for me. I seemed to win a few games and get close, only to lose a few games and be right back where I started. Lack of consistency and blunders were killing my progress. It's the same for all beginners I think.

Since my last lesson with Kestony, I've had to learn a few hard truths about making progress past the 1000 rating mark. Mainly, "You're only as good as your worst blunder!"

I was doing Tactics here, there, online, offline with CT-Art but nowhere near enough and nowhere near consistently enough. Nor was I taking the right approach to practicing my Tactics. I'd open the app, the position would pop up, White or Black to move and I'd start looking for moves.

"maybe if I go here...?"

"but then he goes there..."

"what about if I move here...?"

and so on until I found something that seemed reasonable and then I'd make the move and hope for the best.

Sadly, this approach to Tactics training carried over to my Chess games with often disastrous results, mitigated only by the fact that this sort of "hope for the best" approach, is endemic at the beginner level and my opponents were just as guilty as I was.

I found in my lessons with Kestony that when he would give me tactics puzzles to solve, I'd often get the more challenging ones and yet fail to spot the relatively "easy" ones.

Clearly, I had major holes in my basic Tactical Vision and ability to visualize and Calculate.

I'd been doing Tactics, just the wrong way. So I set myself a challenge over the last few weeks to fix it. The question was, HOW???

While almost everyone agrees that Tactics are a huge part of Chess ability, even a quick read around on the topic shows that there's less agreement when it comes to the most effective way to train it.

Some advocate doing a gazillion Tactics problems per day in an effort to brute force the brain into absorbing at least some of the patterns. The Woodpecker approach and the Michael de la Maza approach seem to fall into this broad group.

Others, such as IM David Pruess contend that our brains can only really absorb 3-4 patterns a day and advocate a more refined approach.

There's also the argument over Themed vs Random Tactics puzzles. Some advocate Is there any point in training puzzles where you are told beforehand to look for a pin or skewer? Should you insted train only puzzles where the motif is unknown?

It can all get quite confusing to a beginner and in reality I think there's no right or wrong answer to either question. I believe it all depends on where you're currently at with your Tactical Awareness and Pattern Recognition and Calculation ability.

For my part, I realised I was weak in all ares but I especially was lacking in a basic awareness of very simple Tactical Themes or Motifs.

I'm working to correct this by solving a LOT of theme based Tactics puzzles. I use CT-Art 4.0 (or the Chess King Elementary Tactics App) which is very good for this theme based practice.

I spend 30 minutes a day on one particular Theme such as "pawn forks" for example.

The idea here is to ingrain the pattern recognition by endless repetition until Pawn Forks in a position just jump out at you. Anyone who's used the Apps I mentioned above will remember doing 900 or so of these and you really do get to a point where you see them almosts instantly and each puzzle is a 2 second job.

That takes care of basic elements but Tactics are also a matter of combining these elements when the end goal, and even the elements of the combination or Tactical sequence, are unknown. This aspect of Tactics training perhaps more closely resembles the real game situation where you have to CALCULATE.

Doing the previous Theme based work for me is a necessary pre-requisite to this sort of Tactical study. Until such things as Forks, Pins, Skewers, Back Rank Weaknesses, Removing the Guard, etc are second nature, more complex Tactical problems, the kind we encounter in our games, are simply impossible.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't start to practice them however. I t just means that our ability to spot them instantly won't be there for a good while yet. This is where CALCULATION comes in.

Rather than pick what seems to be a good move and then hoping for the best, Kestony has been encouraging me to do the rated Puzzles here on Chess.com for 15-30 minutes each day but to SLOW DOWN!

The idea is to slow right down and don't make a move until you've calculated and seen the whole winning variation. If you have to write down your calculations with pen and paper, that's fine. Just don't make a move until you've envisaged and calculated all the moves and possible replies you were considering.

When I do this, I typically get far fewer puzzles done in my 30 minute slot but I get WAAAAYYYY more puzzles correct. I think the benefit of this type of approach is that I'm building up my ability to visualize and calculate.

In the last couple of weeks trying this approach, my Puzzle rating here on Chess.com has gone from 994 up to 1215. It fluctuates a bit as with any rating but the improvement is noticeable.

Has it helped my actual Chess playing???

I think so. 

Like most beginners, I think I still worry way too much about STRATEGY and POSITIONAL stuff because those sorts of things are more interesting to study than grinding out TACTICS PUZZLES.

The big problem with this habit would seem to be that Chess ability seems to be partly Chess Knowledge but also Chess Skill.

All the positional books and strategic knowledge in the world wasn't doing me one bit of good because my Chess Skill, my ability to see and calculate Tactics, wasn't anywhere good enough to make use of it.

To paraphrase the movie "TOP GUN," My Chess Knowledge was writing cheques my Chess Skill couldn't cash.

Here's two of my recent games. The first I had Black and went into a Caro-Kann Hillbilly attack. I've been working on the Caro-Kann as a reply to 1.e4 for a while with Kestony. We don't spend any time specifically on studying openings at my level but we go over my games  and talk about the main ideas and plans and where I went wrong etc. 

If you haven't already, check out Kestony's Caro-Kann lesson on YouTube

Here's a game I had just today as White. I've recently decided to let go of the London System (mainly because everyone has a line against it) and start playing the Queen's Gambit with White. I haven't done a lot of study on it yet but I have gone over Kestony's videos on both the Queen's Gambit Accepted and the Queen's Gambit Declined and made a trainable study of the lines. That and playing through Queen's Gambit games from Irving Chernev's "Logical Chess Move by Move."

In the following Game, I got very lucky. The game went almost completely according to stuff I'd spent the whole morning studying and in the end my opponent made a few tactical errors and I got a win. I can't really claim any credit here, as I just followed Kestony's plans and the moves I was familiar with from studying this line all morning. 

I hope you're all well and if any other beginners are having trouble finding a workable way to improve their Tactics training and get their Chess Skill up to the level of their Chess Knowledge, feel free to message me and I'll share the apps etc that are working best for me.

Until next time.

Great points to put into practice. Congrats on the improvement 

Mr Campbell, have u entered real otb tournaments yet? If so, what's ur rating?

This was a fun thread to read. Thanks for taking the time to share your growth in the game, as well as provide a plug for Kestony. Good job on hitting 1,000.

Stick with the tactics, and use the chess.com engine to review your games. At 1000, the biggest mistake I see is hanging pieces and giving pieces (and pawns) away. Try to avoid it. The engine will point out when you leave a piece to be freely taken by your opponent, usually labeling it as a mistake or blunder.

Finally, don’t worry about rating (autocorrect changed that to eating, definitely worry about eating). Ratings are silly numbers. Instead, focus on being the best player you can be and the rating will come.

Kestony is a great coach. I highly recommend him! He has brought my game to a new level. I see the board completely different now. He has an amazing ability of understand my strengths and weaknesses as a player and from their has taught me how to improve my game. He is a great communicator and will improve your game too.