There's a reason chess.com gave his show the boot.
It was the worst show on here. His Q&A's offer no substance whatsoever, and his advice is completely wrong.
Im 99% sure he's friends with the authors books that he reccommends. Chess Tactics for Students is the most basic book out there. And he reccommended it to a 1600 USCF player.
Just... no.
As an aside though, even though I'm not a fan of the Heisman easy-tactics approach, I will say that I do think his "Worlds most instructive Amateur Game book" collection is very useful for someone at my level (1200-1500 here on chess.com), and is filled with valuable advice that is hard to find in other books because most other game collections focus on GM/master level play so they don't highlight the type of common low-level errors that repeatedly occur at our level of play.
Contrary to what I'd expected, it was NOT just games of "and the 1200 level player missed the tactic and thus got checkmated or lost a piece, game over." The games are complicated and instructive, with tactics definitely taking a back seat (but not disappearing.) Just like most of the games I play now.
As an aside though, even though I'm not a fan of the Heisman easy-tactics approach, I will say that I do think his "Worlds most instructive Amateur Game book" collection is very useful for someone at my level (1200-1500 here on chess.com), and is filled with valuable advice that is hard to find in other books because most other game collections focus on GM/master level play so they don't highlight the type of common low-level errors that repeatedly occur at our level of play...
Careful, you're coming dangerously close to being labeled a Heisman sympathizer...
As an aside though, even though I'm not a fan of the Heisman easy-tactics approach, I will say that I do think his "Worlds most instructive Amateur Game book" collection is very useful for someone at my level (1200-1500 here on chess.com), and is filled with valuable advice that is hard to find in other books because most other game collections focus on GM/master level play so they don't highlight the type of common low-level errors that repeatedly occur at our level of play...
Careful, you're coming dangerously close to being labeled a Heisman sympathizer...
lol
I actually spent about 2 months trying Heisman's rec on 'easier' tactics where you can get 80% of them right, and fairly quickly. I acquired "Chess Tactics for Intermediate Players" by Convekta, and those seemed exactly the right level for what he was recommending. My score in those was pretty near what he recommended - 70-85% correct, and I repeated my erroneous problems.
It actually totally failed for me, dead honest. And I'm predominantly a blitz player, so I would have expected it to help! What ended up happening is that I started to calculate too superficially - if I couldn't find 'the win' in 20 seconds, my brain would give up. As expected, that's really bad, even in a 5-min blitz game!
Contrary to what he and other says, if I do study tactics and want them to help my play, complicated, longer calculational tactics do seem to help. Even if I don't find tactics that complicated in my games (ones of that caliber rarely crop up, as per Stockfish), it's seems to pull my 'easier' tactics vision up a lot, as well as my computational abilities.
I suspect that kind of tactical study would help my bullet play more than anything else, but for sure, I suffered a nearly 100 point sustained rating decrease after doing the Heisman tactics approach. Since then, I haven't ever opened that Intermediate Player Tactics program in fear it'll make me a worse player again!
As I've said on other posts though, studying tactics for me has been markedly inferior than studying full annotated games. Studying more tactics barely makes a dent in my rating, whereas studying (and trying to memorize) annotated games seems to ALWAYS help my play, regardless of speed (bullet/blitz/long.)
Blitz is basically speed tactics. So I would have guessed that annotated games would be the most beneficial to you.
Mixing blitz with speed tactics training seems redundant to me.
No, blitz is not basically speed tactics for decent players.
Sure, you have to calculate faster, but if you think you're going to win consistently past 1200 by ignoring openings, endgames, and middlegame imbalances and just look for tactics, it's almost certainly going to fail against not-even-that-strong opponents.
My worst blitz (and even bullet) rating streaks have been when I focused exclusively on tactical thinking in blitz. It's really hard to survive when your opponent puts a lot of positional pressure on you - in fact, it's often preferable in a fast blitz game to give up an entire piece than be tied down to a poor positional structure with poor piece mobility and poor attacking chances.
Blitz definitely requires all areas of expertise. But it seems to me that most of the strategy and technique is done by rote, and that the main muscle you're flexing in blitz is checking for simple tactics. You may be grinding out a superior endgame, but while you do so you can't blunder pieces or perpetuals.
Anyway, with a 1300-1400 blitz rating, I don't think Heisman was including you in his target audience for this exercise. I may be wrong though.
Agree with you that you get much LESS emphasis on strategy and endgames in blitz, and emphasis on tactics. But I stand by my claim (as you seem to agree with ) that you still need a wide variety of skills to succeed in blitz, even at lower levels.
I'm certain that I am EXACTLY the target audience that Heisman was talking about in terms of tactics study. (Not <900 rated players who should study tactics until they stop hanging stuff regularly.)
I see, ok.
Chess seems to be a difficult thing to teach. Not that teaching is easy, but chess in particular seems more difficult than other things.
I still feel like blitz has something to do with it. I think most coaches are giving advice with tournament play in mind. Not only that you play in tournaments after the training, but during the training as well.
In any case we've had similar experiences. I played blitz exclusively for years. What helped me improve were annotated games and doing long analysis of a single position, then checking the solution and notes afterwards. This sounds like what you were saying too.
Dan Heisman sympathizer here, for the record. Let's remember that the main point of tactics training, and the reason training tactics makes you better, is not that you're going to capitalize better on complicated tactical opportunities. Rather, the value of recognizing simple tactics quickly and even unconsciously is that you won't make a move that will fall subject to them. You need to have this stuff internalized so you won't walk into a skewer, for instance. Most of the time strong players are using their tactical brains, it's to do this. This is the most important function of tactical awareness.
Also, 1600s are exactly the folks who need to hear this sort of advice. I'm around that level, and I can tell you that most of my lost games are lost to relatively simple tactics. Many (maybe most) 1600 players don't want to hear that, because they'd rather work on openings or some deep strategic ideas. The point is, people want what they think will make them better, not necessarily what will actually make them better, especially when the advice that does that seems insulting to them. "I already know about pins and forks and x-rays!" But they haven't internalized them. Heisman's own books are full of stories of students who simply refuse this advice and never get better.
Heisman is a for profit coach.
Your improvement isnt what he cares about, all that matters to him is that he gets $80/hr out of you.
My current coach is Chessexplained and hes charging much less than that, not to mention that he's a much more accomplished player..
this makes no sense hes trying to sell his book cant u see hes like a scamer
The last thing anyone wants to be labeled as is a scamer. Amen.
No one must buy any of his books or hire him as coach. One can easily ignore him and all he has to say.
What i like about him is his great experience in teaching various students with different strenghts. For me, my weaknesses and my training he had some really good advice for free in his chesscafe-column. Some of the articles are of course more important than other ones. Sometimes he just remembers about things one should know well. And of course, sometimes there was no need for me to need some of his articles.
With the link http://web.archive.org/web/20140208020013/http://www.chesscafe.com/archives/archives.htm#Novice Nook you still can access the old PDF articles up to december 2012.
For the record again, the original post was from IM David Pruess in the thread http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/chess-advice-most-chess-players-dont-like-to-hear?page=2 :
"or when i give players in the 1000-1800 range advice on improving their tactics, viz: 10-15 min per day of solving simple tactical puzzles. the goal is to increase your store of basic patterns, not to work on your visualization, deep calculation. remember that is your goal. you are not trying to prove that you can solve every problem. if you don't solve a problem within 1 minute, stop. it's probably a new pattern or you would have gotten it by now. (with private students i'll take the time to demonstrate this to them: show them through examples that they can find a 3-4 move problem in 10 seconds if they know the pattern, and that they can fail to find a mate in 2 for 10 minutes if they don't know the pattern). look at the answer, and now go over the answer 3 more times in your head to help the pattern take hold. your brain can probably take on 2-3 new patterns between sleeping, so you should stop once you've been stumped by 2 or 3 problems (usually will take about 10-15 min). there is no point in doing more than that in one day. and any day you miss, you can't make up for. a semi-random estimate on my part is that you need about 2000 of these patterns to become a master. so you need to do this for 2 years or more."
What do the Russian and German pros think of Dan Heisman?
On german websites i can't find anything. Only some talking about him by Elo 2200 and less players in forums and some book reviews by also not that strong players.
On german websites i can't find anything. Only some talking about him by Elo 2200 and less players in forums and some book reviews by also not that strong players.
Yes, I have yet to see any of his material in the Chessbase library of videos, articles, etc.
Heisman had a regular show on ICC ten years ago when that was the main place that players could go for live broadcasts. He has been publishing books and teaching students for decades. In the late 1990s, I lost a postal game to one of his teenage students. I bought his Elements of Positional Evaluation about 2001. It had a major impact on my skills development and on my own teaching of young players.
Heisman had a regular show on ICC ten years ago when that was the main place that players could go for live broadcasts. He has been publishing books and teaching students for decades. In the late 1990s, I lost a postal game to one of his teenage students. I bought his Elements of Positional Evaluation about 2001. It had a major impact on my skills development and on my own teaching of young players.
For the record, I do watch his videos that come out regularly on ICC these days. Some of what he's said has helped me, too.
I actually spent about 2 months trying Heisman's rec on 'easier' tactics where you can get 80% of them right, and fairly quickly. I acquired "Chess Tactics for Intermediate Players" by Convekta, and those seemed exactly the right level for what he was recommending. My score in those was pretty near what he recommended - 70-85% correct, and I repeated my erroneous problems.
It actually totally failed for me, dead honest. And I'm predominantly a blitz player, so I would have expected it to help! What ended up happening is that I started to calculate too superficially - if I couldn't find 'the win' in 20 seconds, my brain would give up. As expected, that's really bad, even in a 5-min blitz game!
Contrary to what he and other says, if I do study tactics and want them to help my play, complicated, longer calculational tactics do seem to help. Even if I don't find tactics that complicated in my games (ones of that caliber rarely crop up, as per Stockfish), it's seems to pull my 'easier' tactics vision up a lot, as well as my computational abilities.
I suspect that kind of tactical study would help my bullet play more than anything else, but for sure, I suffered a nearly 100 point sustained rating decrease after doing the Heisman tactics approach. Since then, I haven't ever opened that Intermediate Player Tactics program in fear it'll make me a worse player again!
As I've said on other posts though, studying tactics for me has been markedly inferior than studying full annotated games. Studying more tactics barely makes a dent in my rating, whereas studying (and trying to memorize) annotated games seems to ALWAYS help my play, regardless of speed (bullet/blitz/long.)