Ask Me Anything with CM Can Kabadayi!!

Good luck! I always loved chess classics and looking at players that play my openings. I also did guess-the-move training, by actively guessing the moves of the grandmaster playing my openings. Active testing instead of spoon-feeding the solutions. This helped me connect the opening to middlegame and endgame and simulated a real game environment. And most importantly, I enjoyed that training a lot! But it is also important to seek feedback on your mistakes and ask yourself why you could not guess certain moves. Then you target those specific weaknesses in your training. 

Chessable is great as they have a Spaced Repetition tool embedded (MoveTrainer). It tests you repeatedly on your opening moves, and more frequently for the ones you made mistakes. If your openings serve you well, perhaps you don’t need a change. Instead, you can deepen your middlegame knowledge in your openings and learn typical plans in those pawn structures.

 I answered a similar question above. You need to look at your losses and find that common and most important cause. My guess is blundering pieces and not seeing 1-move threats. That was the reason I created the Chessable course, The Chess Elevator. I looked at thousands of games between 600 and 1200 ELO while creating that course. You will focus on tasks that are relevant to your level so your working memory resources won’t get overwhelmed. Don’t forget to keep on playing while also studying. It is always a balance. 

According to my experience, at that level positional chess starts to improve so basic strategic drills become important, such as improving the feeling for the pieces and looking at weaknesses on the board. Tactics/calculation training is obviously still the most important. I made a YT video about reaching 1200 ELO on chesscom

My guess is the bottleneck is not the opening at that rating but basic tactics, safety, and blunder-check skills. Focus on simple tactics, and improve on seeing 1-move threats by your opponent. Improve your board vision and don’t hang pieces. That is why I created a Chessable course called “The Chess Elevator”. It trains those crucial skills at different levels, between 600 and 1200 ELO.

Capablanca, by a small margin.

 It depends on the level of the player. As you grow stronger, you start making more sense of engine feedback. Otherwise, you can risk getting the wrong information, or think things were much easier than they actually were once you see engine solutions. Honesty is very important here, and working with a coach can help as the coach can explain WHY a certain move was bad or good. You don’t get such epistemic feedback from the engine. It is good to use the engine as a calculator or verifier, i.e. you go to the engine with a particular question you thought about before and get its feedback.

It is a huge question with many aspects to it, including psychological support. Chess-wise, it is catching the student at the right time of your chess development and giving them good feedback and material suitable for their current level, so they don’t get overwhelmed. It is about teaching them crucial chess patterns and chunks while deeply explaining the reasons why they work. But also activating them instead of spoon-feeding them. It is about keeping track of their mistakes and how they evolve over time. Making them accountable and following up on previous lessons. It is about spreading my passion for the game to the students, so they find intrinsic motivation in studying the game instead of only chasing rating goals. It is about psychological support too, in how to deal with losses and frustrations, etc. 

Sure! Generating candidate moves is a huge part of the chess calculation process, instead of jumping on the first option and calculating in depth. So when I see some option in life, I often ask myself, “What Else Can I Do Here?” Another version of this is “When you see a good move, look for a better one.” Also since you cannot take the move back in chess, it teaches you the skill of self-control, which is crucial in life as well. Chess thinking can even make us better scientists, as the game requires us to challenge our own beliefs and test our hypothesis for potential falsification before playing the move.

I answered a similar question above. That is not impossible. It is about years of experience, grind, and quality training. And passion for the game. We need to learn hundreds of thousands of chess patterns and chunks to become a master, and that will take time. But long-term memory has no limits for humans (working memory is the bottleneck and thus the training should not overwhelm the working memory resources).

Start from training basic tactical patterns and don’t go deeper than 3-ply calculation (I created a Chessable course about it called “Fundamental Chess Calculation Skills”.) Focus on the core thought processes such as always seeing the threat after the opponent makes a move, and properly blunder-checking our move before playing it. Basic visualization drills also help to see how the board will change after 1-2 moves.

I created an Award-winning Chessable course about calculation:

https://www.chessable.com/fundamental-chess-calculation-skills/course/123333/ 

This will be a subjective one, but probably perfectionism and fear of failure/overanalyzing. The chess journey is a long-term grind and mistakes/losses are a big part of this journey. If you are scared of losing and making mistakes, then you stop grinding and trying and observing your misconceptions. Also, you should set realistic goals and know you can’t become a master in one year. Trusting the process, and challenging oneself by repeating the playing & analyzing & studying cycle, even though you don’t see immediate rating gains. Detaching the Ego part from the equation and understanding that you are not an inferior or stupid person if you lose games.

The Catalan Opening.

Yes, that is me! I no longer clap my hands though...

I answered this question above, thanks!

I like the ...Nc6 + ...a6 setup. I made a video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByHzEw6LzDI

Years of playing experience helps. Physical fitness is also very important. Being able to concentrate without distractions is a beautiful thing. That is what OTB tournaments give you.

Alrighty, if ur traveling at the speed of light in a spaceship & u turn on the headlights (yeah this spaceship has them), will u be able to see light from the headlights projecting forward?

We cannot guarantee a 600 ELO rating jump, it depends on many factors. When it comes to my courses, The Art of Exchange & Awakening Pieces will help your level. Then the Value of Pawns becomes important too, together with the Art of Multi Purpose Moves. You need to accompany those with calculation training. You also need to be looking at your weaknesses and working on those. Analysing your mistakes and working on them. You may also need a coach for this process.