Temposchlucker

We just submitted for the Dutch Open Championship 2007 in Dieren . That runs from july 24 to august 2. Nine games 40/120,SD/60 swiss. Right now I'm pondering which trainingapproach would be best. I see 3 things I like to do: Blindfold/visualization. According to my own arguments blindfold chess will not improve my chess. Poor visualization skills can impede my reasoning though, so that I play below my level. Since my arguments are usually wrong, I might give it a try. Reasoning. Since my latest discovery of a technique to store patterns in LTM by conscious and painful effort, I'm pondering how that can help my reasoning. I don't know yet. I'm convinced it is possible, but I have no inspiration. Endgame strategy. Analysing my own games, I see that I have no standard endgame plans. I have done a lot at endgame technique, but I have no overview over the area. Simple plans like when I must try to trade off to an endgame with bishops of opposite color, or when must I not s

Conscious effort is unpleasant. My board visualisation exercises gave me a clear framework consisting of diagonals. The key of the exercises is that you make a conscious effort. The automatic pilot is tabu. Conscious imagining of the details will commit these details to LTM. You can easy test if something is committed to LTM: it shows immediately in the next exercise. Don't let the brain deceive you by its brilliant trick to reconstruct instaneously what you are looking at. The difference is simple: a reconstruction fades away easy while something stored in LTM doesn't. With conscious effort you can make great progress in little time. But it isn't pleasant to make a conscious effort. It is difficult to keep the focus of attention on the right spot. It is much easier to sit back and let the automatic pilot take over. The brain is very resistant against conscious efforts. Maybe I should say lazy . I hope that things will get easier after more exercise. Fill in the details. No

Today I thought I was a bishop I'm making a huge progress with board visualization. When I started with exercises a few days ago, I saw just one black sheet before the minds eye. While starting my exercises I saw only 10% light at the places where I imagined the lines. The image was very distorted, scattered and dark. Yesterday and today I added a new exercise. I imagine a bishop trotting over the diagonals. First from rim to rim, later criss-cross over the board. Now I see about 60% of the board, especially where the bishop is. The other edge of the board still remains in the dark. It begins to look just like an ordinary chessboard. Since I know exactly what I'm after, the exercises are much more effective. What can we make of all this? I'll try to give it a shot. The brains are very efficient. When it isn't absolutely necessary, images are not stored in the long term memory (LTM). From any subject only a few outlines are stored in the LTM. You can exactly see what is

Still developing a strategy for complex tactical positions. There are two problems here: The positions vastly differ Within a position the complexity is caused by the sheer amount of simple motifs together with their interference. The positions vastly differ. First of all an inventory must be made of the different kind of positions. Since I only research one position per 5 days or so that will take some time. Besides that I have no idea how many different kind of positions there are, so maybe it isn't even doable. But I don't worry about that, over time I will know the answer on this. Within a position. How do you "attack" a certain position? What should be your problemsolving strategy? What questions should you ask yourself to find your way in the maze? In a position I'm pretty fast "overwhelmed" by its complexity. When there are too many things to be stored in my short term memory (STM), I just tend to get paralyzed. So I try to develop a strategy how

Loomis said lately that he plays better blindfoldchess when looking at an empty board. I experience the same. So that's a plea for board visualization. I have done a lot of visualisation exercises at the website of Jan Matthies years ago and at a certain moment I got a chessboard with pieces before my minds eye which I could handle just like a physical set. It only lasted for a few minutes though. So I have a reasonable idea what is needed for perfect visualisation. I don't think that the system of Jan Matthies is very efficient, although it works in the end. Further I noticed a lot of methods around the web that break up the chessboard in quadrants, which you have to put together later on. If those methods work for you, good for you! But for me that looks way too complicated. There are 3 kinds of movements on a chessboard. Straight-, diagonal- and knightmovements. Straight movements are very easy to imagine before the mind's eye, since we are used to rows and columns sin

Today I played a blindfold game and after 40 moves I took a break during an hour. After that I continued. It proofed that I had forgotten the location of only one piece from the 16 left pieces. That was because I had not taken the last move into account. I remembered the piece at its previous location, which is some kind of interference. This means that with blindfoldchess I commit the location of the pieces in my long term memory! This reminds me of a story of GM Timman who refused to train a few young masters since they weren't able to remember their last played game without a score. I have adopted a trainings regimen for blindfold chess and board visualisation of one hour per day. I guess that the standard must be that there is no or little difference between playing with or without a board. At that moment the lack of visualization skills will no longer interfere with my chess and cost me points. Are there readers around who have experience with blindfold chess during a longer p

Blue Devil put up this important question in his latest post. So read this as a comment on his post. Blue Devil's question was inspired by a scientific article of Gobet&Jansen 2005. Based on my latest research I belief it is possible to give a definite answer to this question. My conclusion has much in common with the article of Gobet, with one big difference though. In my latest research I found 3 different aspects of solving a position: Reasoning Seeing a series of moves in the mind's eye ("blindfold chess") Board visualization Being a patzer is for 99% caused by the fact that I suck at reasoning. I don't know how to "attack" a position. So if I want to get better at chess, this is the problem to tackle. If I can't solve a position while looking at a physical board, and allowing myself to move the pieces on a second analysis board, then I can certainly not solve it blindfolded. Because that only makes it more difficult and not less. On the

In order to see a sequential series of weathersatellite-images I removed lately the animation blocker that images prevent from moving, flashing etc.. All of a sudden the image of Blue Devil started to rotate again at his blog. Which reminded me that he found blogging a quite self-indulgent occupation. However I don't feel it the same way, sometimes I'm worried indeed when I count how ofen I use the word "I" in my posts. So when DK Transformation wrote a flattering post about me my first reaction was to write a post back without using the word "I" in order to do some penance for my vanity. But to my shame I soon realized that that would be impossible to me. So here it is, a post about DK, with my favorite blogger - as DG would put it -, me, included. The most eye catching of DK is, is that he is a warm person. Most people who are used to look in their own minds instead of looking around them, with me as an exponent, experience a lot of coldness in their ow

The whole process of analysing a tactical position can be divided in 3: The reasoning, seeing the moves, visualize the steppingstones. Today I tried to visualize the whole tree with 25 branches and 125 moves from the position of Kotov's book . I was pleasantly surprised that that was fairly easy. The start was somewhat difficult, but I began to feel stronger and stronger while progressing. After a few hours it wasn't a problem to reconstruct the whole tree complete with my eyes closed. So this makes it quite clear that the reasoning is the weakest link by far. I intend to exercise all 3 techniques apart. Since I'm so bad in reasoning, I intend to make use of ROS (TM) Reasoning Out Loud in stead of inner speech. Further I allow myself to move the pieces by hand to make it easier so I can concentrate on reasoning. After I solve all elements of the position and after checking it against the solution and the computer, I will close my eyes and visualise the whole tree. I really

Yesterday I picked up a second hand copy of Jonathan Tisdall's book "Improve your chess NOW". Hattip to Blue Devil. These are my first impressions. Alexander Kotov formulated for the first time a fundamental theory about chess improvement and especially about calculation improvement by means of the tree of analysis. He hardly can be enough honoured for that. At the same time, while reading his work I realized that his idea's had to undergo some modification to make them applicable in practice. This doesn't detriment his original idea's, but adapts them to practical use. While I was developing these thoughts, Blue Devil pointed on Tisdall's book. Tisdall has used the method of Kotov and developed it further by adapting it to practice. Two new idea's stand out in the first two chapters. First Tisdall describes a method of "internal speech". During analysing a position you talk to yourself like "f8 is the only way the black king can escape

The position below is a great exercise of Kotov's book "Think like a grandmaster. Diagram 1 Black to move, white to win. White threatens Qh6 which leads to mate or big material gain. Black has 5 reasonable defenses: 1. Kh8 (14) to defend h7 with the rook 2. f5 (19) to let the queen help in the defense 3. Bxd5 (45) to capture in important attacking piece 4. Rae8 (15) to defend f6 with a rook 5. Rfe8 (29) ditto The figures between parentheses are the amount of moves of which the main branch exists (usually split in different branches of a higher order). The idea is to analyse all logical lines until white wins. I suggest you try it for the first option of black: 24. . . . Kh8 which has only ca 14 moves. You can write down all the importants lines you find. Solution: [ 24. . . . Kh8 25. Bc5! Qe6 26. Be7!! Bxd5 (26. . . . Rg8 27. Bxf6+ Rg7 28.Qg5 Rag8 29. Ne7! Qe7 30. Bxg7+ wins the Queen while every other 29th move wins easy) 27. exd5 attacks the Queen and threatens mate at h7 ]

The question. In my previous post I formulated my question. Without a question you can't get an answer. So defining the question is all-important. Today I started to look for answers in Kotov's "Think like a grandmaster", a book that I only had glanced thru once. I did some testpositions and the results were pretty revealing. Especially if I take the position into account too on which I worked for 7 seven days lately. The misconception. I used to think that the difference in calculation skills between amateurs and grandmasters wasn't that great. That the real difference was made by the amount of patterns each could recognize. In fact that was what prof. Adriaan de Groot stated somewhere in his scientific work. But now I found out that that is not true. If the problems of Polgars book and Kotov's book are the standard, then grandmasters can calculate much better than me. What is more, my latest experiments with deep calculation convinced me from the fact that I

For the unlikely case that you missed the cohesion in my posts the past months, I have summarized a few issues. Classic MDLM. The results of 100k+ tactical exercises in "traditional" MDLM style have convinced me of the fact that there is something MDLM didn't tell us. Because he didn't know, or didn't know that it was important. If I look at the ratingprogress of the Knights , and I distract the ones who started with a rating that was either provisional or below 1400, and the ones that weren't adults at the time of exercising, than no one has come close to the results of MDLM. I do belief that if you are rated 1500 that the circles or other intensive tactical training can help you to gain 250 points. As it did to me. If your rating is below 1400 and/or you aren't adult, your ratingprogress can be greater than 250, maybe even until 500. And that if you start with a 1800 rating that it can help you to add another 150. But the fruits are finite. I assume DK

I'm still drudging in the mist with the same position . 5 days for 1 position is not exactly blitz , but I just saw the outlines of Monroi so this must be another limbo.

Still working on the same position . I'm now researching the very effect of every move. The effects of a single move can be divided in two parts. First the effects of leaving an empty square behind, second the effects of occupying a new square. King of the Spill has an elaborate post about this subject here . His idea's have to be simplified though to make them suitable for practical use. That's what I'm trying to accomplish now. What is the effect of a single move on the potential invasion squares where your pieces converge? As it is now, when I play a game, the subsequent positions happen to me. To a certain degree, every position is new to me. Just as this neuroscientific research showed as being the difference between a patzer and a grandmaster: the patzer sees everything as new . When seeds of tactical destruction arise, I have no idea where they come from. For me, they come out of the blue. I can only hope that when such seeds do arise, no matter on which si

Today I spent another few hours at the same position as I showed you yesterday . I asked myself, or Rybka to be precise, what if I make this minor adjustment to the position? What if I remove this pawn? What if I take back with Nc6 in stead of Nd7 etc.? The answers of Rybka showed me a whole lot of details which influence the evaluation of the position. It's hard to believe the amount of motifs that I missed! Now I understand why someone who does see all these details can crush me time and again. For instance I totally missed the importance of e6, which gives white extra mating possibilities under certain circumstances. With the aid of Rybka I could find out what the bishop sac on h7 actually accomplishes. It's main effect is to prevent h6, which would shut off the white queen from h7. With such semi-total chess blindness, it is evident where the focus of the study must be. So 4 hours of study for such "simple" positions as this is way too little, as DK already p

When I listened to music in past times, I used to hear a blur of noise. I liked The Doors, Pink floyd, Kraftwerk, Iron Butterfly, Led Zeppelin, Deep purple, Black Sabbath, Big Band etc.. Basically that was because I was a musical barbarian. Since 4 years I sing as bass in the choir which is conducted by my wife Margriet . We sing a cappella 4-9 voiced works from the Renaissance mainly. When I started I had no musical background at all. One of the first things I noticed is that I wasn't able to listen to . . . , well to anything actually. I even didn't know how to listen to my own voice. You can only learn something, if you know that there is something to learn. If you don't know there is something to learn and nobody tells you, you can't possibly learn something. Even if you are potentially capable of learning. Even getting help from somebody who has already learned it is problematic. Since they have often learned it as a kid, they are not AWARE from the fact that other

Those chessvideo's are great! You can learn a new opening in 2 days and play it with confidence. Today I played against the clubchampion (2140). I played a new system against the Caro Kan, which he always uses with black. I had spent only two evenings at this new opening. I was better in the opening, in the middlegame and in the endgame. My tactical meditation seems to bear fruits. He admitted that I should have won this game, but in mutual time trouble I blundered an important pawn away and lost. You can find the game here . The point is, I have done a lot of endgame exercises, but I don't have standard plans. While learning endgames I focussed on the details but I have no overview. Endgames are almost always played in time trouble. So there is no time to develop plans, I must have standard plans. So the study activity for the coming months are evident: Next to meditation on Polgars brick I will try to develop standard endgame plans.

If you use 4 hours per problem, it almost approaches meditation. The seeds of tactical destruction as Dan Heisman calls it are already well incorporated in my thoughtprocess. That is to say, I can't avoid to look at these issues in a position. I'm pondering about more seeds of destruction for more complex positions. So far I have found two new seeds: Squares where piece activity converges. Overworked pieces that defend those focal points. More on this after more meditation.

Kotov popularized the so called tree of analysis in his book Think like a grandmaster . Other authors, like Nunn in Secrets of practical chess , revisited this idea a little further. The tree of analysis is a method of forward thinking. The downside of forward thinking is, in a complex position, that the amount of branches grows sky high before you know it. With many branches and many moves, a short term-memory overload error is inevitable. And that is time and again what I experience when solving complex positions from Polgars middlegame brick when I use the method of trial and error. A better method would be to think backwards . That you recognize the endposition, and try to find moves that lead to that position. In a sense, Dan Heisman's seeds of tactical destruction is a method to think backwards. This works much better, because the load of the short term memory is diminished. But the "seeds of tactical destruction" is a rather limited system, and insufficient to s

So far I have been investigating 12 problems from Polgars middlegame brick. I wasn't able to solve a single problem without aid. When I read the solution, I often had still no "aha"-experience. Only after 4 hours messing around with Arena, I got the feeling that I began to grasp the essentials of the position. From the 12 solutions, 6 were busted by Rybka. Which means that even grandmasters are often wrong in complex tactical positions. Hisbestfriend posted about the same phenomenon in Euwe's book. It is time to draw a few conclusions, in order to direct my future study. After an impressive detour I'm back again at complex tactical situations. I used to have the idea that if I do enough simple problems, that would be the road to learn to do the complex problems. After solving 100k+ problems it is proven that this idea is wrong. I couldn't even solve a single problem from Polgar's book! (since I restarted a week ago) The coming time I will focus on comp

Loomis asked me: I'm very interested to see an example or two of problems that you spend 4 hours on. I have a feeling that I don't have the discipline that you do to spend that much time on a problem. :-). diagram 1 White to move. diagram 2 White to move. I don't look at this as actual problemsolving. I see it as an investigation. The main question is: how can I solve a position as this OTB in 3 minutes (the average time per move). I use a few minutes in an attempt to solve it. Then I go to the solution and work out all variations with the aid of Arena. Then I try to find out why I missed what I missed. Then I try to found out what the specific characteristics are of what I missed. What is needed to recognize all important elements of the position within 3 minutes? What happens in my mind? What kind of exercise would I need to train this? So it isn't a matter of discipline to look for so long at one position. It is a matter of curiosity. Since the questions I ask my

Still busy with Polgars middlegame problems in order to find out why these are so difficult. 4 hours per problem is de facto the average time I need to investigate all ins and outs with the aid of the solution and the computer! Every problem has a certain amount of basic tactical motifs. It is doable to find these. The complexity stems from the interference between motifs. Say, you fork a bishop and a knight with a pawn. Simple and winning. But if the bishop can participate in a counterattack, this interference makes it complex. And so I'm trying at each problem to chart all basic motifs and all interferences.

For the first time, the investigation of 8 problems from Polgars middlegamebook took me 2 hours per problem. In these two hours I made myself familiar with all variations of the solution, with the aid of a computer. Now I'm revising the same problems again, which takes another 2 hours per problem. The investigation narrows down to the following: how kan I translate a series of subsequent moves IN TIME into a geometrical pattern IN SPACE? In order to train patterns, you must first have a pattern, right? And a pattern is geometrical, right? The transformation of subsequent moves in time into a geometrical pattern doesn't happen automatic. A conscious effort is necessary. Update: I got a comment from a guy named Mocca on my previous post about pesky weeds . He feeds the suggestion that he is somehow related to Monroi. I answered him.