Improving your Chess

Anyone who plays chess desires to improve their chess. For us, who don’t have a coach or teacher, we must us whatever materials we can get our hands on. The other day I was looking at Boris Alterman’s Chess Lessons. He had a few items that I thought were really good. One was to annotate games just after you play them. I have started doing it. The key is doing all the games you play, not just the ones you want to enjoy the victory over. The post is on May 20, 2008 and can be found in his Coaching Tips. Another one of his Coaching tips is to stick to the classic openings. His list contains Ruy Lopez, Scotch, Sicilian with c3, Queen’s Gambit, Nimzo-Indian, French and Tarrasch Defence. I would add the Giuoco Piano as well to that list.

I have also realized that the length of my games is that of blitz length. I have decided to take much longer to play and force myself to look at more of the board and deeper. I believe I have gotten into a rut of seeing a few moves and then deciding. I am going to try and force myself to work through deeper combinations and see what I can do to slow my play down and consider more with each move. Blitz has its value in that it shows what you have ingrained in your chess play.

My overall strategy is

I. Stick with these openings for now.

1. Ruy Lopez

2. Caro-Kann

3. Queen’s Gambit

4. Tarrasch Defense

With the French, Sicilian with c3, Nimzo-Indian, Scotch, and Giuoco Piano as secondary study.

II. Annotate every game I play.

III. Play longer games and study 5 minutes minimum before I make a move. For me, taking 5 minutes for a move is a drastic increase in my move study time. Also, I will annotate EVERY game I play. I can’t annotate a game if I don’t have the moves.

I believe these changes will help in the long run. I understand about Michael de la Maza’s stuff. Not intimately, but I know about his recommendations. Right now I am studying the following books and I am starting to ‘grok’ chess at a deeper level. Rather than study tactics. I am working on ‘grokking’ more and thereby improve my chess because I understand how to play and a deeper level. I do study tactics, but I feel I need the deeper understanding of chess before I start speeding up my evaluation routine.

Feel free to leave your suggestions on how you are improving your game.

Chess: The ultimate player vs player game.

I have played many different kinds of games, from card games, boardgames and computer games. In particular online computer games boast of player vs player environment. After getting back into chess, I have realized that chess, not online computer games is the ultimate in player vs player environment. In chess it is truly one on one play. All you have to rely on is your wits and your preparation. You don’t need a guild of other people to raid a certain place to get some uber equipment. When you sit down across the board from another person to play chess, you have entered a truly amazing player vs player environment.

You can’t be out done by one person who has nothing to do buy play chess. The other player can’t have some extra pieces that make him invincible. You both start with the same pieces. The only difference is that white goes first. While one person may study more, we all know that blunders and blindness in playing chess is all too common of an occurrence. One player may know more openings or playing theory, but there are enough books and study aids that there is no secret uber moves. Most of the early mates in chess can be avoided by just knowing some basic opening theory.

I play mostly online chess now. Turned based rather than blitz or lightning chess. You see, I’d rather not increase the chances of me making a blunder or mistake. I’d rather take my time and learn more about chess and make myself look at the moves before I make them. Chess.com is a site I really enjoy. It is a new site that is still coming up with features.

The last challenge of chess is yourself. In order to grow as a chess player, you need to learn what weaknesses you have in your evaluation and learn to change how you evaluate you moves. This is imperative when it comes to analyzing your own games, which is important if you ever plan to learn and grow in your chess abilities.

1. e4

Since this blog is about chess. I figure that is a good title for my opening blog. There will be games, review of important chess events. Each chess game may start with one move, but what lies after, becomes very interesting.