Here's the best article I've found on the thought process. It's by Coach Dan Heisman. You could find other articles of interest on his website danheisman.com but this is in PDF and was something he wrote for Silman's website. Enjoy!
http://www.freewebs.com/camouflage_a/ch_instruction/thethinkingcap.pdf
Thank you for this article! I read through it and will read it carefully again tomorrow, but my question now (still) is how to find moves which I should consider, when I should look for tactical shots etc.
Coach has articles on everything in chess! Try this one on candidate moves:
http://www.chesscafe.com/text/heisman59.pdf
1.Improving Chess Thinker
2.Think Like a Grandmaster
3.Chess for Zebras
4.Inside the Chess Mind (optional but highly recommended)
1. My system
2. Before the second book I suggest you try to read and understand at least 10 % of the first one.
Hi, thank you for your advices.
Unfortunately, I do not have THAT much money that I am willing to spend on chess books.
Since "My System" and "The Amateur's Mind" are both books about positional play, which book should I get?
"Improving Chess Thinker" looks interesting.
I also found "FCO: Fundamental Chess Openings". Is this to be recommended or should I rather focus on middle/endgame play?
I also found "FCO: Fundamental Chess Openings". Is this to be recommended or should I rather focus on middle/endgame play?
With "My system" you will not regret your money (I don't know "The amateur's mind"), it's a classical one.
I suggest you focus on endgame and middlegame more than openings.
I have read some reviews on "My System" and I think that it is safe to conclude that my chess understanding is too weak to study this book well.
I think that I will get "The Amateur's Mind" and "Improving Chess Thinker". Do you have other suggestions?
I have "The Amateur's Mind" and can suggest it.
It uses a very interesting teaching method. He basically "bashes" the Amateurs for their bad habits and tells you why and so you get a feeling of "I know better than these guys!".
He also forces them to explain why they make which moves and what they think. Adapting this habit and "explaining" your moves to yourself also can be quite helpful.
It greatly helped me to find solid plans in situations where otherwise I wouldn't have known what to do.
It is a strategy-book so it doesn't really touch tactics but I think those are having to be practiced more than learnt by studying anyways.
X
I didn't care for the Amateurs mind too much. I did like Silmans complete endgame course, I thought that was very helpful.
The thing about the Amateurs mind is Silman concocts this thinking system, and it feels like stuff he is just making up to put in a book and sell it, I don't think GM's actually do what he says. I doubt if Silman even does.
My advice is to get a book on simple tactics and work them over and over until they get impressed in your memory as a pattern. This is Dan Heisman's suggestion. Whenever I do this I start to play better. (my problem is I tend to quit chess for years at a time, enough to forget everything I learned.) CT-ART by Convekta is a great program to do this. I also like Susan Polgar's book on tactics.
@Xilmi thank you for your comment on "The Amateur's Mind"; I think I will definitely get it.
@Yaroslavl ?
Is there some other advice you might give to me? :)
FCO is pretty much the new gold standard for opening encyclopedias because van der Sterren explains the ideas behind each opening (and its' major variations) rather than just give you lines to memorize. Whether you should study openings or not at this point in your career is up to you. You can certainly get by with basic opening principles for the moment but obviously to get good you're going to have to study theory at some time. FCO is a wonderful introduction to opening theory. In many ways it's the modern equivalent of Reuben Fine's The Ideas Behind The Chess Openings, a classic worth reading but showing its' age as theory has marched on. Of course to get serious about any particular opening you need to spend time with a database and perhaps invest in some specialized books on it. All of that can wait. So certainly Silman and Heisman wil keep you productively busy for a long time but adding FCO to your library is something to keep in mind.
@baddogno thank you for your input. :)
Obviously I don't have the goal to become a FM or something like that, I just like the game of chess. Nevertheless, I want to become a better player.
I will definitely get FCO at a later point in the future as I want to widen my opening repertoire. My opening repertoire now is:
As White the Ponziani Opening (1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. c3); I had very good experience as this openings is full of traps that Black often falls for, and even if not, I reach at least equal positions with me being ahead a lot of time. At our chess club, very few players know other moves than 1. ...e5 so I went only briefly over other lines.
As Black I play the Sicilian against 1. e4 (only knowing the very basic lines) but I think that the French is more positional so I will focus my study on that later. As I only went over some lines of the Slav, is there any recommendation on what opening is more positional and I can play against 1.d4?
@Ubik42 thank you for your feedback. I don't think that GMs think that way either, but I feel that this is like concrete stuff which I can study and this process will run subconsciously after having more experience.
janniktr wrote:
@Xilmi thank you for your comment on "The Amateur's Mind"; I think I will definitely get it.
@Yaroslavl ?
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Yes, a little later.
Is there some other advice you might give to me? :)
Hi! I am a chess player (15 yrs) with an unknown rating, but approximately ~1300. I've started playing chess when I was 6, but I almost always lost and that was not really motivating so I stopped. Last year, I became interested in chess again and joined a chess club where a friend of mine is.
Since then, I watched a lot of videos, studied some basic openings and I am going to read (and study) "The Amateur's Mind" by Silman. Somehow I think that I know more than my thinking procress can "use". Although I do not just blunder away pieces that easily and I don't miss one-move-threats, I do not often find the "killer move" (turning a winnig position into a drawn one). I miss opportunities or turn an equal position into a bad one without making obvious positional mistakes; I often have a plan but am not able to play it out.
Furthermore, I discovered that my thinking process is far from optimal. I don't know when to really calculate, look for tactics and so on and I sometimes just stop in the middle of calculating a line and just play the move that came to my mind first. I also don't know which moves I should consider - this ends in a loss when I am defending or I just miss the winning blow (even if it seems obvios after the game). As a consequence, I often play passively and blunder when I am defending.
Do you have some recommendations on what I could do to improve?