Silman's Math?

You're comparing apples and oranges LePontMirabeau.  No one is saying study amateur games with lots of mistakes  very rapidly and ingrain the patterns.  You have explained why bullet is so bad for anything but titled players.  You just end up repeating your mistakes until they become ingrained habits.  The idea of watching master games rapidly is just the opposite: watch master level patterns of play and absorb them.  I'll use that method if I'm trying to learn a new opening for instance by filtering games from a database and just watching them play out.  Of course I study the theory as well, but there's a place for this rapid training in any chess player's curriculum.

Some quotes :

Botvinnik : “Yes, I have played a blitz game once. It was on a train, in 1929.”

Fischer : "Blitz chess kills your ideas."

Short : "I play way too much blitz chess. It rots the brain just as surely as alcohol."

Dvoretsky : "In this book (Analytical Manual), (..)you will be asked to solve a series of consequent tasks (...) This is a training method I worked hard and began using successfully many years ago. Set yourself a certain time control (1 hour, for example) and try to find one move after another(...).

Open any Dvoretsky's or Kotov's book and you will see they always applies system 2.

About the opening I do the same when I work a new opening, but this is just 10 % of the opening work. The real work, if you really want to master an opening, is a deep work, many hours with one game (even for openings).

Yes, you're right. But blitz is not system 1, as blitz won't feed you with quality patterns.

What is not clear for me is if these teachers advise to use system 2 instead of system 1 or on top of it, as they cater to a rather strong audience in the first place.

System 1 training recommended by Heisman, Silman, Pruess.

They don't think spending 50 hrs on one GM game will be as beneficial as running through 500 games in the same time.

I can't see any reason to disagree with their expert opinions, especially as an amateur.

hicetnunc wrote:

Yes, you're right. But blitz is not system 1, as blitz won't feed you with quality patterns.

What is not clear for me is if these teachers advise to use system 2 instead of system 1 or on top of it, as they cater to a rather strong audience in the first place.

Absolutely, amateur blitz or bullet is not teaching material.

I think silman's point in the original article was that you need a balance of training rather than just system 1 training, and especially at the start. You won't learn thinking process or time management from just reading master games, for example.

Botvinnik, Dvoretsky, Kotov and many others recommand system 2. They are world champion or well known top trainer or top GM (Heisman, Silman, Pruess are not). None of them think running through 500 games in 50 hrs will be as beneficial as spending the same time on one GM game.

LePont,

Kotov died in 1981 and Botvinnik died in 1995. With due respect to both of them, I'm sure neither would consider themselves experts on modern educationalist theory.

I'd be interested in any references for your claim that Dvoretsky thinks what you claim he thinks.

As mentioned by another poster above, I think you are little confused as to what is actually being discussed. Rapid reading through of master games is the topic. No-one has suggested that playing mostly blitz games was a good way to learn chess. The two topics are comletely different.

I'm very happy for you that you find your method of learning benificial. Different methods work for different people. The thread relates to Silman's review of Boffo's book.

"modern educationalist theory" has not at all made his proof, and seems pretty ridiculous to say the truth. The most modern and serious school (if there is one) is the 'soviet school'. 

Every Dvoretsky's book is a reference for what I claim, especially 'Analytical manual' where 20 or 50 hours (or even more) of study per game is a normal time. 

And who is the target audience for Dvoretsky's book? Amateur players? Or masters trying to reach GM level? I've seen quite a few reviews of his books talk about "don't buy this until you're at least a 2000 level player".

In the mean time, Dan Heisman, whose career revolves around helping beginners reach high amateur levels (1800-2000 OTB) talks about pattern recognition all the time. He recommends choosing tactical puzzle sets that were intentionally chosen for their instructive value (rather than web sites that give you random puzzles) and go through them several times until you can spot the solutions quickly. He also talks about reading through well annotated (in text, not variations) master games at a rate of about one game every 30 minutes. I think he says that it takes about 700-800 games studied this way to start to get a "feel" for high level chess.

As I said in my last post in this thread, there are a couple of ways to study games, depending on what you want to get out of them. Spending hours on a single game may allow you to understand and remember every nuance of that game, but that's time that's not spend broadening your understanding of overall trends.

For us amateur's, it's best to get a balanced approach - some time spent on detailed analysis, and other time spent on quickly going through lots of material for pattern recognition.

I think that a better method would be an in-between: study a game not so fast but neither so slow that you take 5 hours to study just one game. Instead, study it carefully enough reading and understanding notes and the plans of the master, then stop at the "critical" position (like a sharp tactical variation or a technically difficult endgame) and study it more in depth

What do you call a 'feel for high chess' ? 1800 OTB ?

To become 2000 OTB you just need to play some serious OTB tournament and a (very) little work at home. You don't need 400 hours of such a stupid 30-minutes-per-game-work. With OTB tournaments + a correct 400 hours training plan (200 endings to know, some tactics - technique and combination, general and endgame strategie, 5 or 10 good GM games, and a little of opening) anyone could become 2000/2200. I was 2000 FIDE OTB at 15 with almost no work at all, no book read carefully, I've just played 4 or 5 serious OTB tournaments and get 2000.

If after 4-5 games you were 2000 now you should be WC not posting crap here.

I said 4-5 tournaments. That's 40-50 games. And WC is 2800, not 2000.

LePont,

You are clearly a very special and talented chess player. Getting to 2000 FIDE (meaning you are were in the top 0.2% of all chess players) after just playing a few tournaments is quite an achievement.

I think it is important for you to appreciate, however, that being such a natural talent means that you are in a very elite group. The rest of us (that is, the 99.99% of people who do not share your natural talent) require to work very hard to reach that level.

Robbie

LePontMirabeau wrote:

I said 4-5 tournaments. That's 40-50 games. And WC is 2800, not 2000.

I wrote game instead of tournaments, but it's the same, if you are so talented why aren't you competing for the WC. STOP POSTING CRAP HERE!

Uhh guys, I suck at chess and even in 10k hours, I dunno if I will be a GM.

But I don't think it's the fault of the 10k hour rule. I just have other priorities in life and other hobbies/goals that I prefer over chess.

I'm not 'special' or 'talented' or 'in an very elite group' at all. I just played a lot of OTB long games with players stronger than me, that makes me progress, I was very involved in the game. If you love the game and play OTB, you quickly reach 1800/2000.

      Kuroko1; Don't let these guys get to you, they can smell a newbie.

I'm not talented, I've just got the luck that some chess teachers said to me to play strong OTB tournaments to progress (and not 'study 100 000 games' or other stupid things).