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How to study games of the masters
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You are around 900 over the Internet, so no offense meant when I say this but you don't have the understanding necessary to study master games. To know a language you have to know the words and grammar before understanding a conversation. How can you understand a conversation between Karpov and Kasparov if you don't know their "words" or why they make their moves?
The three basics of chess are basic because all other chess skills are grounded in them. They are:
1.Positional elements.
2.Calculation
which equal:
3. Planning ^_^
An advice such as attack the opponent's weaknesses makes no sense if you can't identify them right? You need to note imbalances, formulate a plan based off these, then calculate concrete variations to ensure you aren't walking into tactics that lose material or make major positional concessions.
Endgames are important and require a special kind of thinking (e.g., capture away from the center generally in an endgame because of outside passed pawns whereas in the middlegame you usually capture towards the center), but still grounded in calculation and planning.
I don't karpov and kasparov, but old masters like tarrasch, rubinstein, morphy, chigorin, ecc
They were only examples. Even Greco and Philidor have a much deeper chess understanding than you. You need a book that spells out some of the moves like Chirnov's Logical Chess Move by Move or that Mensa beginner book that annotated the Morphy vs. Nobles game in the Philidor Defense. At 900 Internet standard or even FIDE you probably wouldn't know that Bxf3? is a bad move (exchanges seemingly equal pieces so why would it be obvious to a beginner?) unlesss someone told you and why.
Positional understanding first, then you could look at an unannotated game and say, "Here black or white have certain weaknesses and I have certain advantages, how can I use them?" Then you calculate.
Here is an example game I annotated. I studied it from Andersson's end:
I should make you notice that 900 is BLITZ rating, so it has no means, because I play very badly at blitz.
Most of the games are 3 minutes chess, sometimes I just make random moves, unsound sacrifices or drop free pieces, or lose on time. I don't take blitz seriosly, it's not chess.
ImLitAlter wrote:
Xeelfiar wrote:
I should make you notice that 900 is BLITZ rating, so it has no means, because I play very badly at blitz.
While there are certainly differences between blitz and standard...they are GENERALLY relative. Somebody who has a very high blitz rating is very likely to also have a solid standard rating. That said, the better you get at standard time control chess, the more developed your chess intuition, pattern recognition, etc becomes.
As with all things there are a cpl exceptions. For instance, maybe there are 'bulleteers' out there that have become to masters in the arts of smart move / premove (though correct me if im wrong, but i dont think chess.com even allows samrt move). But even in these cases, the rating is only likely to be inflated a cpl hundred ratings points at most.
There is also the significant learning disability factor. For example, I have been diagnosed wit adhd since i was 9 yrs old (fairly severe too i should add). Because of this, my game analysis's tend to drag a little bit slower than the avg. BUT..even still, my uscf standard rating is 1794..and my 'quick' is 1521. I will admit that is a fairly significant difference..but I think a lot of htat has to do with my lack of 'quick' games played. Since my quick rating is still provisional it's not an accurate representation of my rating anyway.
This post was not meant to call you out, or you prove you wrong. I'm just letting you know why the ppl reading this are drawing conclusions about your skill level. Your argument would hold more water if you were talking about bullet chess..but blitz is quite relative!
Have you ever noticed how the best blitz players in the world tend to be among the best standard chess players? EG carlson, nakamura, kaspy, fischer, etc etc :)
My USCF rating is about 650 points higher than my bullet, and 400 points higher than my blitz.
Maybe its because I am old, brain is slow. But under a quick time control I drop pieces like theres no tommorow.
Jan 17, 2014
0
#9
TheGreatOogieBoogie wrote:
They were only examples. Even Greco and Philidor have a much deeper chess understanding than you. You need a book that spells out some of the moves like Chirnov's Logical Chess Move by Move or that Mensa beginner book that annotated the Morphy vs. Nobles game in the Philidor Defense. At 900 Internet standard or even FIDE you probably wouldn't know that Bxf3? is a bad move (exchanges seemingly equal pieces so why would it be obvious to a beginner?) unlesss someone told you and why.
Positional understanding first, then you could look at an unannotated game and say, "Here black or white have certain weaknesses and I have certain advantages, how can I use them?" Then you calculate.
Here is an example game I annotated. I studied it from Andersson's end:
@TheGreatOogieBoogie: excellent example of an annotation to illustrate how much I have to learn! thanks for the lesson in humility!
Jan 17, 2014
0
#10
Ubik42 wrote:
ImLitAlter wrote:
Xeelfiar wrote:
I should make you notice that 900 is BLITZ rating, so it has no means, because I play very badly at blitz.
Is it just me or everyone else, but I can't see ImLitAlter's post?
I was wondering what's the correct way to study the games of the masters. Many say that a good way is to try to guess the move, then look at the notes, but this is rather time demanding and it could take hours for just a game. Other say just look at the notes and understand the strategical and tactical reason behind the move. I find the last one better for me, because it's less time demanding, and in the same amount of time I can study 2-3 games instead of just 1, learning strategical motifs and tactical patterns. Of course I don't make the exercize to guess the move, but I still learn a lot, then I can apply the new knowledge in my games.