Was that with a coach? I should seriously consider getting one. I have tons of books and reading one with a coach sounds like it'd be the most benefit or however I could shore up my biggest weaknesses. Even at $20 an hour it sounds expensive but I could probably benefit if I sock away $80 just for four hours of coaching. Should be good as long as it's not one of those push a certain opening line on you type that I keep hearing about.
Stokyo Exercises
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Jan 3, 2014
0
#23
roi_g11 wrote:
quite possibly the most sobering and instructive series of posts I have ever seen in chess. Dumb question spoiler: so you print out the position on graph paper? You stick graph paper in your printer? and where do you get these positions from and how do you print thm out? I had been looking to get a rubber stamp chess kit to print out positions like this, but gave up because I posted in so many forums and never found a set. Until the 1990s USCF sold a rubber stamp set for making chess positions for postal players. How do you print these out, onto graph paper. Awesome. A picture is worth ten thousand words. Your pics of your stoyko exericses are awesome. thank you very very much. I am studying your pics tonight!
Jan 3, 2014
0
#24
the numbers you put besides moves blunders, are those the sum total of moves available on the board? what about the numbers of blunders? What do those numbers refer to.
roi_g11 wrote:
Validior wrote:
I can think of a way to make the Stoyko even better. Do it on opening positions THAT YOU PLAY.
This is a bit different because you don't have the analysis of a GM to compare yours against. You should be analyzing your own games afterwards, together with your opponent, at home by yourself (there are many sites -- i like the "hardcore guide" myself), and with stronger players. But the point there is to learn about your own game and it is very important.
Stoyko is more about improving your thought process in general.
if you subscribe to a site like chesspublishing.com you will have annotated games in most any position unless its super obscure/bad
for example the Nimzo-Indian position I named earlier, I just checked and there are 20 annotated games from that position
roi_g11 wrote:
Validior wrote:
roi_g11 wrote:
Validior wrote:
I can think of a way to make the Stoyko even better. Do it on opening positions THAT YOU PLAY.
This is a bit different because you don't have the analysis of a GM to compare yours against. You should be analyzing your own games afterwards, together with your opponent, at home by yourself (there are many sites -- i like the "hardcore guide" myself), and with stronger players. But the point there is to learn about your own game and it is very important.
Stoyko is more about improving your thought process in general.
if you subscribe to a site like chesspublishing.com you will have annotated games in most any position unless its super obscure/bad
for example the Nimzo-Indian position I named earlier, I just checked and there are 20 annotated games from that position
I actually misread your post and thought you said "your games" instead of "your openings".
I think it would be very tough to do this with openings unless you were using positions with traps. The point being that Stoyko exercises are intended to practice calculation skills (where there is a series of forced moves), but most opening moves are not forced/forcing and thus no need to calculate. Yes, you still need to find the "best" move in the opening, but most decisions are based on what type of game you want to play (eg, open, semi-closed, etc). You do need to know how to calculate to make sure you're not just blundering away pawns/pieces in the opening, but in general openings rely on a totally different skill set.
yeah, I meant after you reach a decent middlegame position. In any case id think youd get additional specific benefit besides the general chess knowledge.
Its common sense, if you deeply analyze 50 games from YOUR opening you are seeing the plans that match the pawn structure and the piece placement etc. Then when you play OTB you arent making it up from scratch
Jan 3, 2014
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#28
roi_g11 wrote:
Somebodysson wrote:
the numbers you put besides moves blunders, are those the sum total of moves available on the board? what about the numbers of blunders? What do those numbers refer to.
they are just a count of the total number of legal moves on the board. While counting them, I also kept track of how many where complete blunders. I stopped doing that after a while, but it is fun to sometimes look at positions in totally new ways (eg, "what is the worst possible move I could make here?")
thank you. I have been encouraged by some good people on chess.com to look wider for candidate moves, and counting all the possible moves as per your method will do much for getting me to look wider. I believe that at my beginner level I need to look much wider...eventually I will be able to look narrower, but for now I need to widen things out. thank you for posting this awesome material.
Jan 3, 2014
0
#30
wow, I hadn't read that one on finding threats. Fantastic material. thank you.
Jan 3, 2014
0
#31
just want to say that you repeating the instruction calculate lines to quiescence is sooooo important. I discard moves because they look like bad moves judged by the next move available to the opponent, but if I calculated them to quiescence I'd be able to consider many more good moves.
I did a similar exercise about a year ago, I have it in a notebook somewhere. I was just going thru oldschool games and I found one and went to a nice middlegame position in it and started looking for variations etc.
Come to find out it was one of the most complicated games ever lol. It was widely annotated but I dont remember who it was.
I can think of a way to make the Stoyko even better. Do it on opening positions THAT YOU PLAY.
for instance, say I play the Nimzo as black. Obviously I am going to see the Qc2 variation and I decide I am going to castle after Qc2. White has several popular moves after that. A3, Bd2, Nf3, e4 etc.
I could pick a line, lets say after 5.e4 I go 5...d5 6.e5 Ne4 7.Bd3 c5 8.Nge2 cxd4 9.Nxd4 Nd7 10.Bf4 Ndc5 11.0-0 Bxc3
I could find games from that position and do the Stoyko on those.
In the course of a year, if you did 10 Stoykos on each main line you faced, dont you think youd know those typical middlegame positions better?
the more I think about it, the more I think stoyko exercises are the holy grail.