What makes a Class A - Expert Player?

You are a hero !

I train with a Class A player. All the above looks 100% correct, except for comfort zone. I've seen him play with so many different openings. It appears like he knows all of them to a certain degree and, I know from experience that he knows some of the openings from beginning to end.

"Know all basic tactics."

I made tactics priority number one for 2011. That means, if I only have time for one thing to do in chess on any given day, it will be tactics.

Here's a list of tactical motiffs found here: http://chesstempo.com/tactical-motifs.html

Each motiff has a diagram underneath, teaching each tactic with text and piece movement.

The tactical motiffs:  Advanced Pawn, Attraction, Back Rank Mate, Blocking, Capturing Defender, Clearance, Discovered Attack, Distraction, Exposed King, Fork/Double Attack, Hanging Piece, Interference, Overloading, Pin, Sacrifice, Simplification, Skewer, Smother, Trapped Piece, Weak Back Rank, X-Ray Attack, Zugzwang, Zwischenzug.

This level is fascinating to me because it seems like it is the level that a reasonably intelligent adult can aspire to with proper time and commitment. And yet so few players reach it.

I agree. This has become both a fascinating and helpful topic.

Which level do you think is possible? Class A or Expert?

In my previous post, talking a bit about my Class A trainer, I would be thrilled, especially at the age of 51, to one day hit Class A. That would be a major achievement.

I don't see Expert as a possibility for me, mainly because of age. For those beginning chess players age 40 and under, I say go for it. You have 11 years on me and I believe, have a very good chance of hitting Expert. 

Class A players are extremely good chess players. 

Expert players must be scary good.

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@ KyleJRM -  You were born the same year that I graduated from college.   

Why not shoot for Master?  If you are of good health, I really don't see anything stopping you, even if/when you have a wife and children. Under 30, anything is possible.  

It'd be a bit presumptuous of me to nail it down even further. I'd guess it's just a matter of when you hit Class A, how much drive and mental energy do you have left to try to go up yet another class. But obviously I don't know that firsthand. :)

The chess club in the nearest big city to me has a fascinating program called "Expert Factory."  They'll run a 3-round swiss for up to 10 Class A players, and the resident GM supervises and annotates each game between rounds with the players. The winner also receives one hour of private instruction.

"@ KyleJRM - You were born when I graduated from college.  

Why not shoot for Master?  If you are of good health, I really don't see anything stopping you, even if/when you have a wife and children. Under 30, anything is possible. "

I try really hard not to think that long-term. If I spend years studying chess and enjoy myself, that will be enough. I don't want to shoot too high and feel disappointed with myself. If I get to expert, then it's time to start thinking about master.

That GM is doing a very cool thing.

Yeah, but I definitely agree. Tactics are a huge part of winning games. Especially at the lower levels. But you need to be able to see them immediately...these experts and what not can probably do that, so that is why they are so good.

Everyone should check out http://www.kenilworthchessclub.org/. It's an amazing chess site as well as an inspiration for those who want to create or strengthen a chess club.

Being an elementary school music teacher, I'd like to start a scholastic chess club in the near future, but that will be a topic for another day. I'm still on vacation!

A lot of class A players think they are awesome. It's only when you get to expert that it dawns on you that you are still s--t

EDIT: I just re-read that and it came out a bit wrong. My real-life rating is around 2000, not the 2300 you will see here from my bullet games. So it certainly wasn't a case of a stuck-up master player sneering at lower rated players! Rather what I meant was, when you get to 2000 and play in stronger tournaments alongside really strong players, it makes you realise how much you still have to learn.

I imagine that's the case, because so many tournaments that are stratified by rating begin with U2000. Once you hit expert, you are stuck with the big boys.

To madhacker

I admire you eloquence.  It didn't come out wrong, and this is the part where most players lose it.  You and I both know how far we have to go just to be cannon fodder for GMs, but so many players don't reach where we are now.  She's an unforgiving mistress, isn't she, this chess?

Just came here to say: I liked it dashkee

And I'm with Estragon here, seeing post #20 (since I'm quoting I'm still on page 1; further reading doesn't seem necessary); I could be all philosophical and say at this level you really try to "feeel" the game or whatever, but really, that's not necessarily true at all! There are still some (many? ) people at this level who still play mostly for tactical tricks, and they work! Granted master level is generally too strong to work against, but below that you can often get away with it if you can see enough tactics. The only thing that can be known about this type of player is that they are more consistent on avoiding blunders or allowing less opportunities to get crushed. Most likely of course they are starting to learn advanced concepts a little better, but if their tactics are very strong, it's an open question on how well they can execute those "advanced concepts" if at all, because frankly they're not needed a whole lot yet.

Players at this level including myself may be intrigued by advanced positional ideas, but if you took a look at their games it's unlikely you'd actually find them losing to or winning directly with them; very often a long term strategy may go well for 5 moves or so, then completely turn around just because of one inaccruacy that just happened to allow the opponent a tactical way to make things unclear, with the ensuing play having no resemblance to the original strategy.

To Elubas

Your welcome.  I appreciate your chiming in with your view.  I always read your posts.

Really?

A lot of players in this level sell themselves short, I think. Even a mid-level expert is better than 80% of all tournament chess players and probably 95% of all players in the world.

You look around online, and so much of the advice, articles and coaching offers for beginning/intermediate players is written by masters. But these are people who learned chess at a very young age and showed a strong natural aptitude for it. What they know may not be directly useful to the adult patzers like me :)

Back in my day once you hit 1800 you graduated to the "big pond" and instead of being a big fish in the little pond you were demoted to little fish in the big pond !  I think  Open sections in most US tournies should still be for 1800 and above. 

From my own experiences playing master level players (indeed, I believe I am well on my way towards reaching 2200) here are the observations:

1) They play uncompromisingly. That is, they don't make positional concessions, or make them with good reason.

2) They don't trade without concrete reason. Some of us lesser people will trade rather too easily, and eventually cannot do anything with our advantages.

3) They look at tactics, but in my opinion, they aren't necessarily great calculators. The important thing is to set up the position.

4) This holds particularly against lesser players (they might be different against their equals, I cannot say) since the lesser player lacks understanding and will go wrong somewhere.

5) Nothing too fancy - play sensible moves, and things will work out over the board.

As for the expert, I do not know. Personally, I think I have no difficulty beating sub 2000 level players, and recently, I've been outplaying nearly everyone, even super 2200 levels (sorry to harp on this hierarchy but it pertains to the question). Perhaps it has something to do with the way I play.

1) Take your time and concentrate. This is most important. I've been practicing on chesstempo, and it helps to improve concentration and you can get into the 'zone'. Doing tactics is not necessarily about finding brilliancies. It is to see the tactics quickly, and to discard, or choose them. More often than not, it is more about possibilities that you or your opponent discard rather than play.

2) Get out of the opening with a reasonable position - such that you don't lose. This is admittedly a difficult thing to quantify; how exactly do you get a 'reasonable' position? There is no answer to this, and you should try not to make an obvious mistake. As white, I play non-committal moves starting with 1. Nf3 which don't aim to win right away, but keeps the game going. Often times, people just get confused and walk into a cramped or positionally inferior position, after which it is a case of grinding.

I have never studied the opening with the intention of learning the lines, and I would advocate strongly against doing so. I have looked at games from various masters - Petrosian, Alekhine, Capablanca being my favorites - and tried to copy their openings. Most often, I just walk into a mainline with reams of theory without really learning it. As I've mentioned before, a move that looks good will be good. Furthermore, analyzing even one single game after playing it (together with your opponent) will almost certainly reveal all the intricacies, so much so that you just 'know' the opening and themes arising from it. This is not to say that opening study is not useful. Perhaps it has something to do with the person. The above approach works for me though.

Playing as black is a wholly different matter. People can either take the bull by its horns and play for advantage, such as in the sicilian, KID, or to accept that black is passive and put up with less space, solid structure and hope to ease the position slowly. This is my approach - I am only starting to improve. The problem is that you have to think about prevention and prophylaxis; watching out for every possibility. Point is that when you are cramped for space, the options are limited, and one should wait and watch for mistakes by the opponent, taking the opportunity to generate play at the appropriate moment. 

3) I like to think about positional nuances in a big way. This, I believe is why I am starting to do well even against master level opposition. Chess is not all about attack or defense. Direct attacking play seldom works against good opposition. I spend a lot of time during the game working out subtleties and minutiae - perhaps overly so, neglecting direct themes. And thus, I find it very comfortable in positionally complicated positions - note that I am not ruling out tactics at all; in fact tactics are interwoven with positional themes, which are key to prevention and prophylaxis. In particular, I like playing endgames.The issue with this nuance  based style is that one might end up taking too much time evaluating these nuances, and make mistakes in time trouble. Oftentimes, I get into an endgame with very little time. We need to find the right balance between complications and simplifications. It might be wise to trade off pieces (albeit with very little advantage, if any) in order to outplay the opponent later in the game. Trading well is an artform.

4) These are all particularities associated with a player's style. You can do well regardless of your style. This is reflected at GM level - we had Tal and we also had Petrosian, and they coexisted even. I think that while judging a position, we can choose different ideas and play them all, provided that they aren't tactically or positionally faulty immediately. If we can find justification in our themes, they are all playable. But one lesson that I am learning is that it is possible to put up with static advantage (superior pawn structure, rooks having lateral pawn targets later on). It takes fortitude and prescience to see how you can nullify (or reduce the intensity of) your opponent's so called initiative. Many players give preference to attack and initiative, and often neglect to consider that the opponent has ways of meeting them, and that you are not Tal. Nevertheless, if you play for static long term advantage, the opponent is nearly impelled to go for immediate initiative, and it is a very interesting tussle between these two forces.

So in summary, I would say: do not make mistakes, and try to find purpose in every move - which goes beyond shallow evaluations, such as 'the bishop is bad' (it is a lot better to say, the bishop is 'bad' but it will become excellent once I engineer a pawn break), or that 'I can go for a minority attack' (you have static endgame advantage, but have you taken adequate measures to meet your opponent's kingside initiative?).

speaking as a 2100 player US. class a, expert players have better ideas to improve their positions relative to lower ranked players.  lower rated players get more misguided notions.  or drop a pawn or two. or underestimate initiative.  theory is not so important at a sub-2200 level, best to find logical plans and make sure that every move leads to further threats and improvements.  everybody makes mistakes, every game, on the board, or in their conception of the position on a move-by-move basis, or how you spend your time. if you learn from your mistakes, then you improve.  at some point approaching master building a repertoire is important, to see how to play positions from the opening through the endgame.

I think as soon as you become 2000 expert, you should start building your opening repertoire.  You cannot become a master and remain there without an opening repertoire.

Of course, it has to be a good one.

I think it just varies from person to person. I'm not sure there is a 'typical' A-class player or 'typical' expert or 'typical' any kind of player except possibly typical beginner.

For me, I crossed from A to Expert basically when I stopped making stupid errors for no apparent reason. Which suggests that I was basically expert-level already, just with a tendency to self destruct. Once that tendency was ironed out the rating caught up.