Older Players Playing at Top Level and Improving Older Players

I guess people learning as kids just develop better basic board vision (scope of pieces and interactions). Adult learners have to compensate for this in some way, but it's a chess skill that is rarely trained in isolation (admittedly, it's quite boring...)

Being 61yo and having. retired this week I will see if it's possible to continue improving. 2029 is the current FIDE Elo. As psychologist with empirical background and clinical experience there is good knowledge to do the right things. One important point for this discussion is the difference between active and passive knowledge. That's why playing otb is so important and analyzing the games played and making the mistakes to the basis of the training schedule is essential.

But surely you need to absorb some new, "passive" information? I can certainly see that otb and analysis might be central, but surely you also need to keep on learning from books and databases? Then you can, maybe, put the new "passive" information into action in your games. 

A very important distinction to bring to the fore.

Boris Gelfand is AMAZING.  I don't prefer his kind of style, yet I love his games.  

I really don't know what, in terms of cognitive science, distinguishes these, but there is very obviously a difference.  I am sure the brain operates differently between the two, for example, when one calculates and realizes a 5-move tactic, versus seeing the pattern immediately and passively.  I should probably go look for stuff published on this (unless someone else knows about this topic).

Surely there are "combined states" as well? For instance I read a section on "bishop sacrifice" and a few days later saw a pattern that was very similar to the book example - but I wasn't sure if I was remembering the pattern correctly, or if the pattern was an exact fit to this situation. No doubt a GM would know instantly. But I had to calculate to make sure. 

Also, to return to my "chess literature is trash" theme , the book didn't make the pattern really clear, I had to extract the gist from the unclear verbiage, naff diagrams, and algebraic fog. Then I was still only left with a vague notion. I can see why hiring three coaches might be necessary...

Hiring threee coaches can be good if you can't pay top dollar for a top coach on a weekly basis, but would like to have three two-hour sessions per week with proper, pedagogical sound guidance.

Why to you say "algebraic fog" is it because you are used to a different notation?

It's not the algebra that's foggy, but the state of my mind when I encounter it in the chess literature, or the state of the chess literature, or both.

To take a typical fog-inducing example, take the start of Game 3 in Nimzowitsch's "My System" (p.55, if you have the most recent translation, but it isn't needed...) I use this example because I'm playing through it at the moment. I could have produced an example from most pages.

He begins by stating that it's an example of play on an open file. The four opening moves of a strange opening are then put down without explanation. He then says it's "a reversed Stonewall, a very closed opening". But it looks at least partly open to me, with my beginners mind; white's B and Q are attacking down open diagonals. And what's a reversed Stonewall? What's a Stonewall? Fog...

Ok part of this is my lack of chess knowledge, but I think Nimzo should have provided more explanation and clarity. Maybe Milliern should write a supplement? Or is Nimzo really too outdated to bother with? (I think textbooks have a very short lifetime - look at the particle physics stuff in Feynman: that's *really* outdated, and you shouldn't expect a student to plough through that stuff, wondering which bits are old, and which bits still stand... it's great for historians of science but the hungry young physicist wants real meat, not old hat...)

Reading Nimzo is like reading Feynman's Lectures, one moment you have the secrets of the subject revealed to you as never before, with utmost clarity; next you are lost in the fog. I think characters like Feynman and Nimzo are geniuses in their subject, and genius teachers, but often can't be bothered to teach well.

Note - I've won top industry awards for teaching packages that I've produced, so I'm hypersensitive to people not doing the best job possible in the teaching of their subject.

GMs do the same than most other players : pattern recognition (aka. "intuition") to find candidate moves + calculation to see if that works in the current position. They may notice 'secondary patterns' that make the candidate viable or not, when we have to use only the 'primary patterns' ourselves. But they still calculate (even super GMs land in time trouble sometimes).

Your second observation is very interesting. I believe a lot of what we can get from books is pattern-related, and it seems not everybody processes those patterns the same way. I've observed that people I would label 'talented' (subjective view here) are able to process chess positions and extract/store this relevant information faster, for some reason (without taking account their prior experience). I agree that chess literature hasn't offered much to help with this process, though there are some exceptions (like the Step method or QC Understanding Chess Tactics book)

From a quick Google, I'm not motivated to part with cash. They're both quite expensive. The first is a set of workbooks for children. OK, many kids probably know more than me, but I'd prefer an "adult advanced beginners" stance. The second gets some very off-putting reviews on Amazon! My local public library has books that get better reviews. I'll plough through those first, if I can keep my motivation going. I'll keep on reading Nimzo for now, but just smile and read on when it gets foggy...

Lack of mastery in chess or pedagogy is not a sufficient excuse, and I suspect is not your real reason for not doing it.

But please, if you can, have a crack at supplementing Nimzo, I (at least) will read your offering.

Just with my "Game 3 from Nimzo" example you could start digging and find out what a Stonewall is, what a reverse Stonewall is, what he means by "open" and "closed" in the (seemingly) contradictory ways he uses these terms. If you can't find information then ask in the forums, some master will answer. Then you could create a blog entry explaining all these things.

But I'm guessing you will not do it.  And your real excuse is probably, "that's a lot of hard work for little return in money or prestige, and I could be doing more fun things..." And so it will not get done, Nimzo will remain an enigma...

The Step method was designed for children, that's true, but it has the advantage of breaking down a lot of complex elements in small parts and cover them one by one. It works very well for kids, and I was wondering if it could help adults as well with everything 'board vision' related.

I still believe board vision is an obstacle most adult beginners have to overcome, and at the moment, I think the common learning strategies on offer don't help them that much in that department :

- study classic educational texts (amateur's mind, my system) : this is a rather "conceptual" approach, which is interesting, but more the icing on the cake ; it's a bit like learning the best strategies to avoid traffic-jams when you're not able to assess distances correctly just yet

- go for tons of tactics : this one is okay, provided you can go over tactics in a structured way at first (one theme, one move long, same theme, 2-moves etc.) which is not the basic option on most servers

- go over classical game collections : this is okay too, but you need to go over them in an active way for maximum benefit

- play long games - most useful, but you need human analysis to get the most out of them (ie. strong player)

- get a chess coach : very good advice, but it's not easy to find a good one who can adapt to your needs, and of course, not everybody can afford it

Working on your board vision is a bit like using glasses because you may need them, while other players don't. You can go on studying a lot of chess, and still get stuck because of some board myopia. My point is simply that this very simple fact is overlooked by a lot of good teachers, probably because they never had this problem themselves, and because kids they teach can adapt pretty fast.

My system tells stories and is far from exact science. There are some exceptions in the book. Compare chess to a language and a game to a short story. Maybe this helps. Pattern recognition is a more scientific metapher. The first three books from Jussupow, the"easier" ones of the nine book seried, give an excellent foundation to become an average club player. What's about aging - kids are better in learning 'meaningless' material. Adults must give structure to it. Older means more repetition. This explains why masters in their domain learn new stuff often faster than non-masters. They have build a good structure over the content and the actions.

Hmmm, even a bit above average club player, I'd say... I'm not sure I'd recommend this material as the starting point for an adult beginner though - might be a bit disheartening.

I'm afraid your point about older needing more repetitions might be true (at least on average).

Just had a look at the Van Vliet-Znosko Borovsky game in Nimzovich's book mentioned earlier. I understand your frustration, but you can also overlook the introductory notes and focus on the part where Nimzo is showing how to use the open file (from 8...Nb4 to 24...Rb3) and how it puts white on the defensive, as he has to take care of all his pawns.

Now, if it helps, stonewall structure is c3-d4-e3-f4 (and the mirror c6-d5-e6-f5 for Black in the Dutch defence). It's considered 'closed' because it's difficult to get rid of the pawns in the center of the board and open lines there : d4 and d5 are here to stay. For example, if Black plays ...c5 to challenge d4 and trades, white can replace this pawn with c3 or e3. As for e6-e5, it's almost impossible to play because of white's control of the e5 square.

In those cases, the play shifts towards the queenside and the kingside, like it happened in the game.

However, this is the kind of things that may be better explained in a visual way, ie. by moving pieces on the chessboard, or with some arrows.

I'm very wary of buying any chess books, so I'm going to read the ones in my public library first. Good to see that hicetnunc's recommendation "Chess Tactics from Scratch : Understanding Chess Tactics Weteschnik, Martin" is in there! I'll try that next after finishing Nimzo. Jussupow's books do sound interesting, I might spend money on the first one after I've read a few library books.

Thanks, that helps a lot with my understanding of "stonewall" and "closed". But why does Nimzo call it a "*reversed* stonewall"?

Is this opening used much by white today? I always play KID against d4 so I tend to get demotivated when I see an opening I never play - a general problem with "classic games" I feel. It may be a classic, but if I never play the opening, what use is it to me?