25 years old & learning chess - my practice blog

Honestly,you don't really need a more obvious way of getting your point across,why do you feel you need to do that when I understood it in the first place. The issue here is, and one that you may not want to accept is that I don't agree with it,I didn't agree with it then and I still don't agree with it now,despite you presenting it to me slightly differently. I want to make a note on calculation which you seem to be a firm believer of,I wouldn't disagree but I want to say something about that. Moving pieces around in one's mind in a wanton fashion may be considered calculation to you but I'd like to be a bit more sophisticated then that. I think if one is to calculate,one should be calculating TOWARDS something,this is where knowledge comes in,if you have little to no knowledge about chess then you have little to nothing to calculate to. However,before I go any further I want to clarify what I mean by "Chess knowledge".

 

Chess knowledge to me is any and everything that one has mentally gathered about Chess,basically what one learned out of a book,on the internet,watching a video or even learning from a coach. Basically all of the knowledge,for the sake of our argument,or my side of the argument,basically everything gathered about Chess externally from actually over the board play. So this is not limited to anything Chess related,be it strategy,tactics,postional knowledge,general rules and guidelines,the 3 phases of the game,it really could be anything pertaining to Chess. I just wanted to state that so we're clear in what I mean by "Chess knowledge".

 

Alright now back to my premise about calculation,calculation works best if one has something to calculate to,for example,how can you calculate a line that will leave your knight in a beautful outpost on f5,If you don't even know what an outpost is to begin with,is that not Chess knowledge? So you see,either way you slice it so to speak,you need Chess knowledge in order to play Chess well. The keyword there is "well",you don't need Chess knowledge per se to play Chess. I suppose one can teach you the rules of the game and off you go,do you honestly think that person will just "magically" get good one day by simply playing alot,assuming he or she is not a genius like Paul Morphy or Jose Raul Capablanca. I'm talking about the average player of average ability,certainly not!,he or she must be taught just like the rest of us had to be taught!. The start of the game is Chess knowledge,or shall we play in wanton fashion,why play e4 all the time? Why not play g4,come on man let's spice it up and add some variety to it,shall you take us back to the romantic era of Chess,where they just did whatever they wanted and kind of hoped for the best. Lol hmm or would you prefer we have another Wilheim Steinitz to come along and give you some positional guidance?

 

So I'll ask you again,why do you play e4 all the damn time ,and refute most other Chess moves....anything else is meh so so (with the exclusion of d4 and a few other moves),...or maybe you believe in Fischer's "best by test" but wasn't Fischer the man who studied this game MORE then any before him?, I think he had more then enough knowledge to take that "test" no?

 

Allow me to answer the question for you,your CHESS KNOWLEDGE is why you play e4 so boldly and without even thinking about it,because you know that it does a few things that most all other moves won't do. Allow me to take the role of Mr. Irving Chernev for a second,in my own words of course! 1.e4

 

A pawn that occupies the center where all the action will take place,controls the important d5 and f5 squares (remember my earlier premise about the knight outpost!),and facilitates the release of the Queen and the King's Bishop into the game.

 

That is Chess knowledge that one will not gain unless one either reads that or is taught that. I stand by what I said,in order to play GOOD CHESS,or play Chess well,you need knowledge,the more the better I say. Playing alone,will not do this for you because it's too much you're going to miss,even if you analyze your own games by yourself,you still need knowledge!

 

Your last paragraph was a bit contradictory because on one hand you're saying that young players just "play alot" and the old players cite game collections,which to me suggests study,so I'm not quite sure what you meant by that. I am guessing you mean just a little knowledge is all that is needed and the most of it comes from playing,in which case I still disagree with you!

<3. the same situation than u :'(

I don't have a clue what all 'that' was about....

Again...and for the last time (I've no intention of responding anymore), one SHOULD study...but not swim in the idea that there is always 'more knowledge' out there to be chased...and that this extra bit of knowledge is what someone really needs to be a better player.

BUT, then you should playplayplay - with an idea of putting that knowledge to the test - get and refine your thinking habits before you fall into mediocre habits you will have trouble escaping from later on. Learning from books/studies, can put the idea in your head....but USING your head to put those ideas into PRACTICE is what is going to make one a good player.

Oh...and one studies the games of great players (game collections) to study 'how they put things into practice', exploit the weakness in the play of others. A good role model or 'hero' can spur one on.

I guess you're not interested in continuing the debate,you have no idea what that's about? Hmm alright then now that's just plain rude and even though I disagree with you,I wasn't rude to you,so yeah it's fine.  The bottomline is let's just agree to disagree,I'm not reading that if you can't take the time to read what I wrote,that is all. 

You guys have tons of time on your hands and I'm not reading any of it. Team up and write a book. 

Your tactics progress is amazing - how are you studying them exactly? I've done about a hundred hours and am struggling - though maybe I'm too erratic...

Who are you talking to? and if I may ask how are you studying tactics,I study alot of tactics myself,some times I feel I barely make progress as well,well as in seeing them in my games,but I gotta start playing again. 

Thanks! I think the issue is similar to what I wrote to you about playing longer time control games. I'm looking at the last 25 tactics puzzles you attempted, and it took you almost exactly 25 minutes. So you are on average trying to solve a puzzle in a minute. I spent over 50 minutes on my last 25 puzzles. So on average I'm spending at least 1 minute more on every puzzle than you are. Admittedly, the puzzles are longer the higher your tactics rating gets. Regardless, you have spent 35 hours less on tactics trainer than me, but attempted 500 puzzles more than me. So first step to improvement: Give yourself more time to solve a tactic. Even when you think you got the correct answer, re-check your line at least one more time than previously. You'll start to notice, that on your first calculation you are missing resources from the defender, that you'll notice only if you double check your answers.

I think another thing that has helped me in improving my tactical vision has been studying tactical motifs from books (like 1001 Chess Excercises for Beginners), chess.com lessons and drills. For example learning the simple king and pawn endgames helps a lot. From 6300 puzzles or so that I have attempted, at least 500 has been revolving around promoting a pawn. And talking about promotion, everytime these tactics allow you to promote, double and triple-check if it's queen that you want. As rare as underpromotion might be in real games, it's often the last trick on tactics puzzles.

So to sum it up: Give yourself more time, and if you get a tactic wrong, check what the answer was. If you think the answer doesn't make sense, use the analysis board option to see what the issue was with your line.

Slow and steady wins the race as the old saying goes,that usually applies to chess as mostly everything is slow.  If you are in a rush then maybe Chess isn't for you,so you're right it's best to just take your time and study Chess Tactics as opposed to just merely solving them,so you get more out of them which will help you understand them more and help the ideas stick in your mind more.  

It's just like the old saying goes,quality over quantity,so it's better to do a few of them slow and carefully then do alot of them really fast,without giving them any thought.  I know about all of that when it comes to solving for recognition,even still my premise applies to that as well,you'll recognize it faster if you take your time. 

 As the...ahem 'old saying goes'...sure looks like you have all the answers. Your stats certainly do seem to validate it. Thanks again!

PS:  Tongue in cheek...see the Free Advice chapter of Hendik's Move First, Think Later

but if you look at chesslover's stats, he played over 9k games.

Passed 2100 TT rating for the first time this morning! I really liked the puzzle that got me over the limit, so I figured I'd share you guys my thought process on how I solved it. Maybe it will help you in becoming a better tactics solver yourself! It took me 5 minutes to solve this one, so I'm not the fastest solver, but I'm not too worried about that.

Here is the tactic (TT tactic rating of 2493), you can attempt it yourself first if you want:

Step one: What is the motif of this puzzle? Looking at the placement of both kings, the first idea is that this is a mating puzzle. This is because the black king is very short on squares to move to, and I have knight and rook really close to mate him. The more I look at the puzzle and other possible options, the more certain I am that the objective is to mate the black king.

Step two: How to mate the black king? The first thing I notice is that the black king has only two available squares (g4 and f5). Combine that with the placement of my knight on d5, I can make a note of the importance of e3 square. E3 square covers both g4 and f5 squares from the king, and if I could move my knight to that square, it would be a checkmate. The issue? Black queen is patroling on the diagonal, controling the key square on e3. This leads me to a conclusion: If I can deflect the black queen from the diagonal, I am able to move my knight to e3 square for a checkmate.

Step three: How to remove the black queen from protecting the e3 square? This is where the puzzle gets tricky. I notice that I can directly attack the queen with my rook from both a4 and b7 squares, to force it to move. Of course the queen can't capture the rook, because it would move away from the key diagonal, and abandon the protection of e3 square. The issue? It doesn't matter which way I attack the queen with the rook, it can always duck to c5 or d5 squares, getting away from the attack while maintaining watchful eye over the e3 square.

Step four: To draw or not to draw? We've come to the conclusion, that we can force a draw by repetition, if we keep attacking the queen with our rook, while it patrols between a7, c5 and d5 squares. If black captures the rook, knight checkmates on e3. If black captures the knight, we win the queen with the rook. So black has no other choice but to repeat moves. So we can get a draw, should we take it? Generally speaking, black has material advantage, and we can't seem to be able to force a checkmate. Taking a draw sounds like a good result, right?

Step five: Heureka. The best moment in solving puzzles. That short moment of clarity when it all makes sense. The thing I overlooked at first was the fact, that if we attack the queen with our rook on b7 square, the queen can't duck the attack. If the queen moves to c5 or d4 square, we're able to check the king from above with our rook on g7 square. The king has only one move f5, after which our rook would deliver a beautiful mate with Rg5 (thanks to our knight protecting all the escape squares from the king).

Step six: The solution. The queen is overloaded. It can't protect against both of the threats on e3 and g7. Therefor the only option for black after Rb7 is to sack the queen and take the knight with bishop. This is the only way to avoid getting mated, leading to an endgame where white is up the exchange and a pawn. Obviously easily winning. Double-check your calculation, be certain that the answer is correct, and complete the puzzle.

Thanks for explaining your process here - it's really helpful. 

I think you're right that taking more time would increase my tactics rating. However, what you also have demonstrated is that I should probably be "studying" them as well - motifs, etc. so that I see them. Sometimes after a couple of minutes I just can't see anything so reviewing the patterns would help. 

Congrats. But do remember to check back in with this thread in say 6 mo or a year. Why? Because "Becoming a better tactics solver" is not playing a game of chess. I would certainly agree that it is very important...but then lots of things are important in actually 'playing' good games of chess consistently. That is the goal after all, isn't it?

 

I might add that if you to encounter this position in an actual game, odds are you would not have the time to go thru all those steps. To me, you just need to notice that the Black king is in a box with one escape square, so you want to play 1. Ne3++...so you have to divert the Queen. The first move is then simple...then Black really only has two options. 1. Qd4 (he must control e3 or in a different world, h6) when the rook is free to give Rg7 and Rg5 mate. Simple calculation So, 2: 1...Bd5 is forced...and you just have to know the ending is won.|

Perhaps your 6 steps is just being overly elaborate to get your point across and that is fine.

But I ask that you check back in at a later time because a game of chess is not really a series of puzzles....it is stringing one move after another together with some degree of competence with no one to tap you on the shoulder at say move 13 or 27 and whisper "you have a puzzle here with a solution!". No, in a game of chess you are constantly moving the game along into uncertainty. No hints! Also, most positions that look like they might have a tactical solution...really don't. So, while being able to 'solve' tactical positions that 'might' arise is a good thing to practice....the other 90%+ of the game where you are simply inching your way thru varying degrees of uncertainty against an opponent who gets to play too (!) is what is going to make you an actually good chess 'player'. 

Good luck!

Cornfed, I do understand your point. However, being able to spot tactical motifs in the puzzles helps to spot them in real games too.

Here is an example of a game I played today: 

After move 28 I spent over 2 minutes calculating move Qe3+. I was almost certain that the move is good and there is some forced way to walk the king towards the my side of board. But somehow somewhere in the middle of all my calculations the king always slipped away just on the critical moment. Or I would've had to sacrifice more and more material to keep drawing the king to his doom. Eventually I figured that I have to play a move, and not having gotten to a conclusion of Qe3+ I played the simple move Qxb4. I thought that I have a good position, I can win his most dangerous pawns, keep my coordination intact, without giving him any real counter-play. I went on to win the game fairly easily with my 2 pawn advantage, his weakened king position and my better coordination. After the game I wanted to see if my intuition was correct regarding Qe3+ (that it was a good move, even though I couldn't quite get through the line to a forcing end) and computer analysis shows that Qe3+ was indeed a forced mate in 9.

So, what was the point I'm trying to bring across? Practicing tactics has improved my ability to spot moments in games, where there could be possible tactics available. Like here I intuitionally knew that the placement of my pieces, and his weak king, there would be some sort of tactic available. I just couldn't find it and played the safe move. I know that there is no one going to tap my shoulder and say "you have a puzzle here", but the more puzzles I've solved, the better my intuition is at doing it instead. My inner dialogue would go something like this: "The way the pieces are aligned looks like there could be a tactic available, pause for a moment to think and look for tactical variations, instead of just playing the simple move."

Yeah I don't always find them, but I do find good tactics a lot better than few months and 4000 tactic problems ago...

 

I don't need to see anything from you,you was rude to me and now you want to insult me by judging me by what you see here based on my rating huh? Now is that not being rude,hmm,why even call me out,you lost the first debate with me by giving up and don't say you didn't since you refused to respond.  Don't quote me on anything if you can't be civil about it,that's all.  I don't mind debating with you but if you wanna respond out of anger because you didn't like what I said or you disagree with me then you're kind of immature and we don't need to be debating at all if that's the case.  As I told you a while back,I wish to debate with you not argue with you but after you was rude with me with our previous debate,I'm wondering why you're quoting me for anything now?  I mean for us to go back and forth and then you go "duh I ......what's that about,I wish not to respond",and then to top it off you STILL try and push your opinion on me so that's kind of like a hypocrite if you ask me.  

It's like the old saying goes "if you don't like me then BITE ME!".  In other words,just leave me be,what are you quoting me for??? 

P.S ...I hope this doesn't provoke a "what's that all about" response from you and while you judge me based on what you see here,the sad part is,I may know more about the game then you do.  Mr. Play all day and hardly study.  So yo,just watch your mouth kk?  

Thanks,well to be fair,most of those games were blitz games,I don't take my games here too seriously since most don't really want to play over a half an hour,which is simply not enough time to get a pretty good game going and to top it off some are rude and rush you when you take a while and THINK,that's the key word,about your moves.  I recall playing a 30 minute game with one fellow and we were up to like move 12 or something and he hadn't even lost a minute on his clock,I was down to 23 minutes or so.    Any way that's not even what this is about,this guy tries to take a subliminal shot at me because he doesn't agree with me on something,typical immature bull**** I see all the time on social media.  I don't know I thought I was dealing with grown men here,mature fellows,I guess with some I was wrong. 

 

yeah. but you also played many rapid games. i am just supporting your argument. playing many games is not sufficient for improvement.

I ran this...I think it's a 15 min/5 sec delay game thru Chessbase's 'Tactical Analysis' feature...gives  White a 22% accuracy rating and Black 1%.  I say this because I just finished running my games from an OTB tourney this weekend - G/25, 3 sec delay and my average 'accuracy' rating was just 44%. Quick games are riddled with inaccuracies. In a game you often play move that are not objectively best, but simply more comfortable to play...keeping you with 2 results, not allowing (your opponent!) a third. I won with 4 1/2 out of 5 so that was really all that mattered.

 

I ran a few of your recent games thru it as well. 15 min and slower and you have to admit, though your 'tactical rating' is 2100, you do miss rather a lot of tactics. Right?

But...look at the poorish judgement you show in some of those games.  The game with ctrout20 (1314) for example...you play 33. Re8? You are behind and really need to play something like 33. Rg3...then 36. Bh4?! allowing him to trade down further...39 Be7? should have lead to a trade of rooks and a totally lost game for you. 

 

So, 4000+ tactics and you play this way? Does that not give you pause?

I do hope you take all this as constructive criticism. That is how it is meant.  I just hate to see people chasing a chimera. Do you do other studying?  Remember, solving tactics is somewhat 'artificial'...you KNOW there is a solution. During a game (look at those you play...run them thru chess.com's computers, which you probably have) you are analyzing into darkness...never sure what is ahead...and most of what awaits you in an actual game is not what tactical training is going to help you with. It's good to have when it does...but it should be obvious that in playing a good game of chess...most of a game requires you to be better at other things.

 

I know you was supporting my side of the argument and I appreciate that.  As I said for me I believe that study is more efficient then playing to slowly improve at Chess.  Also,as I said alot of those games I played were blitz games.