National Master: Ask Me Anything

Available for questions!

- Played casually as a kid

- 13 years old ~1000, practicing more seriously, 1-3 hrs/day plus tournaments (1000 --> 1700 1 yr)

- Serious practice as a teenager: ~100 chess books, 1,000-2,000+ hrs puzzles, etc

- Adjustment to slow chess, NM at 18: How I Became a National Master

How to not be cocky when you(I'm) have an advantage when playing chess?

1) What is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?

2) Which contains more heat energy, a cubic centimeter of your flesh at normal body-temperature, or a cubic centimeter of the Sun's photosphere?

1. Is it an African swallow, or an English swallow?

2. A cubic centimeter of the sun’s photosphere.

For USCF 1600, what is your best improvement advice?

1) Well... I don't know... Aaaaaaagh!!!

2) That turns out not to be the case. The Sun's photosphere is at a very high temperature, yes, but I asked about heat, not temperature. Heat is (temperature) x (number of particles), and there are millions of times more particles in one cubic centimeter of your body than there are in one cubic centimeter of the Sun's photosphere... which is quite rarified. Nearly a vacuum.

what are the fundamental differences between upper intermediates (I include myself in this but anyone from 1800-2000ish) and masters? How do we go about bridging the gap? Is it pawn structures? Endgames? Something else?

That's a lot of questions I can reply tomorrow morning

People can also ask more detailed questions in a trial lesson

bookme.name/chessknight/free-trial-lesson

You did, in correspondence.

Personally, I went through something like 70-90 chess books and solved ~500-1500 hours of puzzles, played thousands of blitz games and analyzed, did slow calculation training, played tournaments, analyzed the games, and basically dedicated myself to chess for something like 40-90+ hrs per week for some 2-3 years to make it from high club player to master. I might have made more progress than that though, given online fast chess metrics, and not necessarily enough slow tournaments to show further progress, or mainly be in form for slow chess maybe.

I personally really enjoyed classics in the Quality Chess series, as well as starting Aagaard's GM prep puzzle books, those really combined well for my chess improvement. Pretty much tactics plus principles to 2200 makes sense to me, although what "principles" means shorthand might be something more like understanding what's appropriate in the position, balancing initiative forcing moves with buildup, structures, and so forth. It's kind of tricky to give a shorthand answer to this.

Might depend on how much time you have for chess improvement and your age, although something like "solve lots of tactics" plus 'consider studying classic books' makes sense to me. Ambitious club players can consider starting Aagaard's books, or even some Dvoretsky. Chessable is very effective, and my brother Gus made a lot of progress there, 2200 chess.com blitz now!

These days I've been enjoying the ChessIMO and Chess King apps, which help tactics for club players, and help masters get faster.

Prophylaxis! Take the opponent's ideas seriously. Kotov discusses this "dizzy with success" thought process mistakes, where players are especially prone to 'falling asleep at the board' and letting their guard down. I've heard Russian players would really double down when winning, though that might have been something in a specific book rather than standard practice.

Immerse into tactics until 1,200. Analyze your games quickly to see if you can get feedback that you understand, specifically from the improvement on the 'blunder' moves the computer says. If you have extra time, browse around and study books/videos to get a sense of concepts, it really is about basic tactics when starting out, and solving a lot can help. There's the chess king apps -- there's lots of simple puzzles there, volume helps. Susan Polgar's series "Learn Chess the Right Way" is pretty systematic about showing the basic themes that you need to learn, tactically.

Guess you're right - if there was a "quick fix" then everyone would make the jump! thanks for the book recommendation, will check it out. Unfortunately, with a full time job 40+ hours of chess is a little unfeasible :/ so, i guess, natural follow-up: if you had only half an hour a day of time to dedicate to chess, how would you spend it?

I'd probably solve lots of puzzles on the 'Chess King'/ChessIMO apps, and/or play fast chess plus maybe quick analysis of the games. 1/0 to 3/0 time controls. This helps build pattern recognition.

Oh, and maybe enjoy this course, to practice attacking with the king!

https://www.chessable.com/40-spartan-kings/course/54648/

https://www.chess.com/blog/LogoCzar/the-king-postulate