Would this work?

I'm actually surprised I found anything

A good find -- I remember seeing this somewhere before too.  I'm sure a somewhat painful memory for Kramnik.

Was mostly making a reference to this thread.

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/if-you-know

Thanks for sharing the game. "The most incredible blunder in this tournament, and one of the most astonishing in Kramnik's adult career." I stopped reading here and tried to solve it myself. I wonder how much time did Anand take to solve the problem. A few seconds? 2 minutes? It took me about 15 minutes to see everything. Most of that time was wasted before noticing the two pieces were "forkable", as the annotation says.

 I also had Anand's latest win against Kramnik's petroff at wijk an zee 2010 in mind.

So we can see "learning" 50000 positions depends too much on the positions, and how learning is defined.

What does it mean strategically position?

A very good question my friend!  There has been much written on the subject, please follow the link

or perhaps PM borgqueen.  he/she seems to be the goto source for that one. 

Yeah I know. Just felt like trolling a little.

"Would strategically positioning work?" seems more appropriate for this thread

Wow, there's a bunch of comments on this topic. Orangehonda, what do you mean when you said 20 games is too much to absorb and that annotated games are too difficult? Isn't the point of annotated games supposed to increase your understanding of why a certain move was played. I'm going over annotated games in chess success: planning after the opening and I go through a game in about 30 minutes. Also, what do you mean fundamental? Do I have to read books like My System? What would you suggest for me to improve?

 Whether it is 50K or over a billion positions in the opening, middle or end game, not all are beneficial to becoming a better player. Only a computer can do something of this magnitude.

 Just keep it simple. Get the concepts down by studying exercises/tests centered around opening, mid- & end game tactics/strategies and build on that by actually playing stronger opponents. You could probably learn more by annotating you own games (win, lose or draw) to find out what you could do better. In time, you will be able to see the chess board in a different dimension.

~The Doctor

That sounds so cool. Or even better, the world around you will turn into a chessboard. Trippy.

that is exactly what it means... common does it ever take more then 125 days to become a master at anything?

I'm probably confusing playing over annotated games with the way I ideally try to play over an annotated game with the idea of really absorbing it's lessons.  For example the well known Zurich 1953 book is great for about any sub-master, the annotations aren't too in depth and the real word language in the annotations is straightforward and instructive.  Certainly a good book for me or you.

To really study a game though takes at least a week, but probably more... that's just one game.  To really extract all the personally meaningful lessons from a game like that isn't practical or maybe even possible for a beginner.

Trying to make a list of "fundamentals" would be messy.  What I mean when I say that though is the ability to warp your mind around the basics of a position without using any calculation.  In basic positions, at a glance you can form a rough idea of what each side's plans are (or at least what they aren't) and give a rough evaluation of who is better and specifically why they are better.

Many amateurs though attack a position with lots of calculation... almost random calculation (can I force something to happen here, or there, maybe over here) and eventually finding an end position that seems good they will play the first move of that calculated line.  They don't see a big picture or maybe they do but have no idea what to do with it.

So what you're saying tonydal is that these numbers aren't accurate because it really depends talent and other stuff. What would you suggest as a plan to reach national master?