Can you really become a class A player by studying tactics?

It's an absolute fact that you can get to class A on tactics (and endgames) alone.  TACTICS! (endgames!)

I sincerely wish Milliern a successful World Open! But writing about achieving a Class A level of chess before such a success is ... premature. 

Amen.

some class A players are assholes tbh.

on tuesday night, i lost a game in a dead drawn position. offering a draw move after move. Why?

because my opponent and i both had 9 seconds left on the clock and he refused to take the draw and just shuffled his pieces around.

gonna have to keep that in mind when i play him again, and just mate him because he cannot defend or attack.

even carlsen who likes to play on and on to grind a win would take a draw here.

What? Black has legitimate winning chances in that position. White's bishop is not good, and any exchange of the bishops favors black.

That position isn't a dead draw in blitz. I might play on too. White has the worse everything. Worse bishop, king, and black has a passed pawn.

Now after a few moves like Kf3 g4 and taking both kingside pawns, ok, I will agree to a draw, but if my opponent is weak I'm going to keep playing to see if he understands.

The position above is a draw with best play, but the mistakes are all there to be made. Let's pretend it's white to move. I could see white winning this quite easily in blitz. 

Oh yeah, h3 is weak so maybe white is the one with blitz winning chances

In a 65/G time control aith 9 seconds left on each players clock all white has to do is shuffle King back and forth to make sure black can't invade on f3 and if black tries to come in via queen side G4 and it's going to be a draw

I just put it into computer and played those ideas and it says draw

I guess all the tournaments I've played in have had at least a little delay or add-on.

If it's 65/0 and he's just racing you on the clock with random moves I agree that's not sporting of him.

I cannot dispute this.  

leiph18 wrote:

It had a delay but it wasn't significant enough

We danced around for like 45 moves until my flag fell

I guess all the tournaments I've played in have had at least a little delay or add-on.

If it's 65/0 and he's just racing you on the clock with random moves I agree that's not sporting of him.

@ Milliern

Hehe :)

I've also had long breaks from tournament play... never 5 years, more like between 1 and 3 years.

I definitely know what it's like to be underrated. But I still refuse to give my self estimate (even if others I play with at a club regularly agree with the estimate) because tournament play is different (also people tend to overrate themselves). Maybe all it takes is a few tournaments to prove it, but until then my rating is my rating.

Funnily enough this will match the topic... while rated ~1650 I had players tell me I was ~1800 strength. These are people I played 15/0 games with every week who were rated 1700-2000. But in spite of this and my scoring evenly against them they were WRONG. 15/0 and internet blitz was not G/90 and it took me 3-4 tournaments to get the hang of it.

That may not be true for you at all. But again, I agree with smyslovfan and others that your rating is your rating. You can mention for example "hey, I beat masters in club games" but you can't say "I'm rated 2200, let me tell you how to get there"

Check out de la Maza's book. You will find complete games with notes.

Or, you can wave your hands. I do hope others will bother to take a look at the links that you just waved off.

SmyslovFan: I've been busy but to return to your rather obnoxious style of interaction...

As I said before, aside from his two hilarious defeats before MDLM applied his "Rapid Chess Improvement" technique, there are only three complete MDLM games in the book -- on p. 63, p. 110, and p.120.

There are other complete games, but not by MDLM. Therefore they would not be useful for skeptics to inspect for evidence of computer cheating.

Of course I know that the USCF and any other number of chess bodies have codified programs for coaching chess. My point, again, is that those programs have not been tested in a scientific fashion.

Coaching opinions are valuable, especially when there is nothing else to go on and I don't wave them off entirely, but they have not been rigorously tested.

If you follow the development of any sport, you discover that coaching opinions vary -- some coaches say A while others say B, coaching opinions change over time -- 20 years ago coaches said C but today they say D, and when coaching opinions are subjected to scientific study, some opinions are shown to be flat wrong.

Rogue_King: Thanks very much for setting down your chess development. That's generous and useful. I'd love to see more such recapitulations from strong players.

The main thing that jumps out was how hard you worked, which I believe, barring unusual gifts, is the real key to chess development.

However, it's hard to say from your account that the moral is to forget openings and just focus on tactics and positions until one reaches 1800. You did study openings for a time and no doubt you used that knowledge as you honed your tactics, positions, and endgames.

It also doesn't answer the question of how you might have developed if you had spent, say, 5-10% of your time studying openings. Three of the guys I knew who made it to master did study openings steadily from the beginning.

It may be different strokes for different folks. Or it may be that it doesn't matter so much what you study in chess as how much you study or with how much focus.

In any case, MDLM is no coach.

When I started my chess blog, the blogosphere was full of folks following MDLM's program. Most of them have given up on chess, as did MDLM. The high rate of burnout says a lot about MDLM's seven circles of tactics, and exclusion of learning strategy. 

Ziryab: Well said.

MDLM cites the example of the Christopher Dingle who went from 1400 to 2100 in three years, but fails to mention that Dingle was coached by IM Igor Foygel, who had been coaching masters and grandmasters for over twenty years.

And you talk to me about my obnoxious style? Yes, I responded in kind.

And if you go through the book, you can find quite a few moves. Remember, the unit of measure isn't games, but moves when checking engine analysis.

Well, that quote was a mirror of your previous comment to me.

Again, I was speaking of complete games and now, since you have lost that point, you have the moved the goalposts to "moves."

Yes, MDLM includes all of eight positions with tactical solutions attached to them.

But if the goal is to inspect MDLM's games for computer cheating, you want complete games, not a handful of positions with tactical solutions.

I like your blog, by the way.  Good stuff.