I think it might just be practice, but I am curious to what will come up in this tread. To help myself improve I have recently:
a) turned off the time in tactics trainer so I actually calculate the moves, not guess.
b) study endgames without the assistance of a board, trying to play from the book out in my head.
I'm with you though, I need to improve this aspect of my game!
Glad to have someone else in the same boat with me! Let's wait and see what others will come up with! Yeah those might be good but you have the advantage being a diamond member haha!
Alexander Beliavsky and Jonathan Tisdall recommend blindfold practice of various sorts, either playing games blindfold, replaying old games in your mind's eye, or performing analysis on positions with no diagrams in books. Tisdall notes how strong calculators such as Shirov and Ivanchuk will often look off into space when calculating so as not to be distracted by the position on the board, and equates this with their strong blindfold skills. He likens blindfold practice to exercise of the muscles that you will need during a game.
Another of Tisdall's techniques involves what he calls the stepping stone method. You calculate a few moves deep, as far as you can while still retaining a picture of the position in your mind's eye, and then you stop, and focus on that position, fixing it in your mind, so that you will be able to calculate further, but still come back to the stepping stone position. He believes this process of fixing particular positions in your mind will allow you to calculate deeper than you otherwise would.
I found some good, free downloadable programmes on the internet that help with visualisation:
http://www.janmatthies.info/chess/cvt/cvt.htm
http://chesstraining.sourceforge.net/wordpress/
Hey guys! Could someone link some material from the web or explain their personal ways on improving visualisation and position analysis skills. Because this has been my weakness for quite a time and I personally can't find a way to improve it myself.
I have problems with visualisation, meaning I find it hard to calculate long variations in my head and I do make alot of mistakes and blunders because of that.
I have a good memory in my opinion and I can learn opening lines very quickly but when Im off the book I do make stupid positional blunders. So give me your best tips on analyzing a position, finding the disadvantages and advantages!
Thanks in advance!