Myth about improving

Noone tells the truth about improving that's why there are so many books about chess. If one told the ultimate truth, authors couldn't sell more books because everyone would just study the right way.

It can't be that extraordinary. It's probably disappointing, slow, painful and requires hardwork. However I still haven't came accross the path to chessmastery despite reading a lot of books.

Start by practicing the basic checkmate endgames (K+R v K, K+Q v K, K+2B v K, and K+B+N v K.)  Practice these until you can do them in your sleep.  In the process you will discover that all these basic checkmates employ the same endgame technique.  I call it the 'corraling method', you fence the enemy King in with your piece(s) and King, slowly you make the fenced in area smaller and smaller until you drive the enemy King into the corner, where you deliver checkmate.  Remember you have to practice them until you can do them in your sleep, which will take you about 3 months of daily practice.  Use the Nalimov endgame tablebases.  If you want to know more let me know. 

That's like saying there are too many math books, because surely there is 1 secret to math that makes you understand it all, and then they'd never make another math book again.

Yes, the secret is hard work by the way.

Maybe a better answer, is that chess isn't so simple, there are a lot of areas to work on as a player, so there are legitimately a lot of different books.  Also not everyone will find the same material useful to them, maybe just because of the authors writing style or presentation.

And lastly, the number of books isn't most accurately a function of how much truth they contain, but more of how many books people are willing to buy.  If chess players are willing to buy many books, then authors are willing to make money putting them out t here.

Try my free program, I have 7 lessons posted. See my blog site in my profile. It all comes down to how much time you have and focusing on what you need to know.  Lesson001 pretty much explains it, the subsequent lessons expand on it. My claim is, I can get anyone up to chess master if they will dedicate themselves to my methods. I have a group too, join that.

Beware! The whole world is conspiring against you so that you won't be the next Garry Kasparov.

I was just kidding in my earlier post. Don't take it seriously.

Can you learn how to swim by reading books alone? The same goes with chess. It's one thing to know them, and it's another thing to be able to apply them. Practice, practice, practice! Hardwork is required.

Btw, chess is that extraordinary. Even with today's computing power, chess is not yet solved. Computers still cannot explore all the possible variations in chess. Chess is that extraordinary and yes chess is that deep. A professional chess players typically spend so many hours a week just to keep them sharp.

Different people take a different approach in mastering chess. Those chess book authors wrote based on their own interpretation on how chess should be played. Hence, it is not fair to label them as being untruthful. 

I like the players who study nothing and practice nothing but who still win

Indiana Jones found the Holy Grail no problem 

I found that studying tactics like (Averbakh's Tactics for Advanced Players, Pongo's 2 volume series, and van Perlo's Endgame tactics) very useful.  That said, I set them up on the board and set a clock.  

My Blitz is horrible, but I regularly play with adults now (FM) at the local clubs and hold my own.  I do not get blitz, but I guess it is because I have no real talent.  I imagine you have to be above the Candidate Master Level before you can even begin to read all the other books about strategy, openings, etc...  

Tisdall's book, Improve your Chess  hard to find and Yermolinsky (sp?) seem like real life and are written by people who Walk-the-Talk and not Talk-the-Walk.

But if you want to improve OTB (NOT Blitz - I can hardly recommend something I am terrible at and have no clue about how to play) you have to set the positions up in 3-D and set the clock for seven minutes and then repeat repeat repeat.  There is NO secret to success, unless it is Hard Work and repeating Good Habits.  

I read once that Bobby Fischer was disciplined to never think about any one move for more than 15 minutes.  Perhaps not 100% true, but certainly a Good habit that forces you to be parsimonious with your time and to be tenacious about your choices.

I hope this was helpful.

Books are tools, not magic stones... The truth about improving is that it requires some (regular) work

The only truth about improving: talent and hard work. Reading a chess book is like reading a basketball book and pretending to be an NBA player.

I'm not a grandmaster yet, and I've half-heartedly read the first few chapters of at least four books!! 

To master anything you have to spend 10,000 hours on it. If you study chess for 10,000 hours no matter what kind of study it is you will master it. There are no shortcuts to hard work.

fgicon - I read something by Dr. Lasker (Common Sense in Chess / Manual) or somewhere else,...

He said, that Chess is the only game where by go thoughtfully over the games of masters you get actual return.  Your comment was also echo'd by Lasker, but he used Music saying you cannot become Mozart by Listening and going over the score of his work.  No matter how hard you try.  He did seem to recommend very much that this was the true way to improve.  I think the book was St. Petersburg, 1909 Olms.  Not sure.

10.000 hours,.... normal work day is 10 hours with lunch & getting there and back =:= 1.000 days which is about 3 years of constant studying 8 hours a day.  

I think I will go for a walk instead,...   

Nice Myth you got there.

None of the books actually tells you what to do. 90% of the books are just full of annotated games and the author says: "Check out this game, Capablanca plays like this if he has an isolated pawn, it's really easy isn't it? You only need to copy what a super grandmaster does. Piece of cake."

But none of the books state an exact method for improving like: "hey do you want to improve your positional knowledge? all you need to do is to run around your house while you're reading this book and  then stand 15 minutes on your head, this is how every grandmaster learned"

All the books give is just tools but they don't show you the way.

Tactics, Tactics, Tactics  -- at least you will have Fun  

Did you see my Lesson001 I mentioned earlier? I tell you exactly how to become a chess master and there are currrently 7 lessons posted with a new one coming at least every week.

Here is the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4uI5vSkaYU

You can find the rest easily enough from my profile.

aww-rats

The key of your first video seems to be that the key to improvement is knowing your strengths through the analysis of your own games. Which yes, seems good for time management. Why study X when you're losing games by virtue of Y?

One question I would have though: Without an understanding of principles, endgames, tactics etc, how do you know where you're going wrong? A PC can tell you you lost an advantage on move 34, but how will you know why? Seeing a better move in one position is useless, what is practical is knowing the features of the position and why X was a stronger move.

I guess what I'm asking is, do you have a set of guidelines for analysing a position or evaluating move choices? And, how do you go from analysing a series of mistakes to deciding on which areas of your game are lacking or identifying common themes?

If any of this is covered later, then let me know and I'll let it answer itself when I get there. Thanks.