Temposchlucker

Day 9: points 6 After the blunder of yesterday I regained my spirit and beated a 1811 player in the last round. Except after one howler of a move yesterday I have never been in real danger this tournament. If it wasn't for that howler, it would have been the tournament of no losses in stead of no draws . My openingsplay is very strong and despite my gambits, very solid. I played 5 kings gambits, 3 scandinavian Marshall gambits and an English defense against c4. The latter was very stupid because I had prepared a new defense against c4 which I forgot to play. That was my dullest game. 4 wins, 1 loss and 4 draws against 30 points higher resistance at average. A TPR of 1845. So overall I'm very happy with the result, and the 55 euro's which I won compensated for Hansen's book. I haven't been in timetrouble at all. Day 8: points 5 After 4 hours of fighting I had my opponent finally stretched out on the rack. When I just had to finish him off, I made a terrible mistake,...

Today is a restday, so there is time to dump some thoughts in order to create room for new idea's. Consciousness vs repetition. There is a saying repetitio mater studiorum est. For the non latinists among us repetition is the mother of study . The circles are based on this idea. My findings are different though. I would replace the saying with consciousness is the mother of study . Only in the case you have trouble to focus your attention undivided, you need repetition. Since we are used to operate on the automatic pilot most of the day, this is usually the case. But repetition in itself invites us to use the automatic pilot, in which case we pass over our goal. Belief me, I know what repetition is and what it does by now. Essence, idea's and archetypes. Some time ago I posted about pattern recognition in clouds . The essence of that post is that we have an archetype of a rabbit in our brains which helps us to recognize rabbits everywhere in clouds, no matter how distorted th...

In the lower rated section of the tournament there is often a big discrepancy between the position on the board and the final outcome of the game. It is instructive to watch. Sometimes the winning move is quite obvious to me, while after a few minutes someone makes a move that gives the game away. More often than not, a move is made that I haven't even considered. If I extrapolate this, this means that the difference between a good player and a bad player is twofold: a bad player considers worse moves, and his evaluation is worse. The first is subconscious, the second is conscious, making use of the available knowledge. I have been thinking alot about how to improve my study. In order to get information to a subconscious level, the information must be processed in a conscious way first. Since the conscious processing of information is sequential and very time consuming, it is paramount to optimize this processing. I will give an example. I have taken alot of time in the past to bu...

Two days to go to the tournament in Dieren. My only preparation is the assimilation of a lot of endgame knowledge. I repeated everything 3 times plus I wrote an essay about it. I'm plateauing for 2 years now around 1730. Let's see if knowledge without skill can make a difference. It is important to renew my pledges: I will not take the consequenses of my actions for my rating into account. No matter what. I will abstain from complex middlegame play, which is the second flaw in my play anyway, in order to avoid time trouble at all costs. I will play simple chess instead. I will not offer a draw. I will not accept a draw offered before I have less than 15 minutes on my clock in the last period of the game. May Caissa help me to keep my word. Todo-list for the next two days: Review my new system against the Caro-Kan. Review the QID. Learn a new system against the French.

This is a post that will grow in the next few days. So please come back regularly and comment, because feedback helps me to think. Update 1 black Update 2 blue Update 3 green To keep matters simple I describe the strategic idea's from the position of an attacker (white) who plays against a defender (black). The strategy for the defender is the negative from the attacker. To improve readability I drastically cut down on information that is considered common knowledge. For instance that having 2 pawn islands is better than having 3 pawn islands etc.. This is no scientific paper or so thus there is no need to be complete . At the transition from the middlegame to the endgame the method to try to win changes for the attacker. In the middlegame you try to win a piece with a tactical shot, or to attack your opponents king. That crude methods don't work in the endgame. In the endgame there is only one method by which you can win: Queen a pawn . Ok, there can be an occasional matingnet...

I have collected about 96 quotes from annotated master endgames. I will put that together with my 47 endgame maxims and Takchess' braindump in a percolator to see if I can brew some endgame strategy. Expect that it drools from trivialism ("queen a pawn" or so:) Maybe you can still remember what I came up with after 3 months study of middlegame strategy? [ PIECE ACTIVITY!! ]

During a few days I was sidetracked by corresponding squares. I found an interesting article about the book "Opposition and Sister Squares are Reconciled" from Marcel Duchamp and Halberstadt. If I understand it right, they developed a method to cut the board in pieces and to shift them along each other. The effect is that you can find the right move by keeping the heterodox virtual opposition . The result is that calculation isn't needed any longer to find the right king move. You just treat it as the normal virtual opposition, played on a changed board. Besides this, there seems to be an essay about corresponding squares divided in 11 subsystems from the endgame composer Zinar in Averbakh's book about pawnendings. I haven't read that. These theoretical approaches are very interesting yet impractical. If you are willing to invest half a year in the method of Duchamp you will become a corresponding square monster which can solve problems whitout calculating w...

I'm making a little progress in the understanding of yesterday's position of Grigoriev . According to SOPE of Müller and Lamprecht this is the definition of a key square: A square is described as a key square when its occupation by the king secures the win, no matter who is to move. Since the Nalimov database reports a mate in 28 when white to move and a mate in 22 when it is black to move, the king on d2 is already on a keysquare according to this definition. Which proves that this definition is useless for practical situations. Besides that, it makes the choice of the keysquares (d4, e3, e2) by the authors of SOPE when they treat this position rather arbitrary. I already suspected so. I have not thought about a better definition of a key square yet. In this position I would like to call d4 and e3 the key squares where white wants to invade. In stead of working with numbers I found it much more clear when I work with colors. In order to decide which color a square must have, ...

In every endgame book you will find the same positions over and over again. Especially the studies of Grigoriev are very popular. That is actually very weird. Since Gregoriev was always looking for unique positions, the one in a 100,000 kind of stuff. A study book is supposed to treat the common idea's, not the exceptions only. Take for instance this position of Grigoriev about triangulation. White to move and win. I have posted about this position earlier here. The idea how to play it is clear, I can win it from any chess engine. So that is not the problem. But for me both the keysquares as the corresponding squares are coming out of the blue. I can't formulate a systematic reasoning how you can always construct the right keysquares, corresponding squares and moves. For instance, when the following is played 1.Kc2 Kf4 2.Kb2 Kf5 then the best move is 3.Kc1! I can't stand it that I can't find a sytematic reasoning that even my mother would understand. I guess that the b...

Most endings are for 95% practical and for 5% theoretical. For the practical part of the endgame it suffices to acquire the general ideas by studying how the masters did it. You have to have a database with how a position will look like after you make a decision. Take for instance the following diagram: diagram 1 Black to move. White has just played Rb5. If you haven't seen this kind of positions before, it is very tempting to play the logical move Ra8 in order to prevent white from taking on a5 and getting an outside passer. Only when you have seen the masters play this you will know that black will probably be killed in bed if he does so. Black defends the weakness a5, white starts to push his kingside in order to create a second weakness. Whites rook will play a role in attacking both weaknesses, while blacks rook defends only one. So black must play active and bring his rook behind the a-pawn. To a1 or a2 for instance. In that way he defends against the outside passer while he ...

The past few days I have learned more from the endgame than in the previous 6 months with exercises of near-theoretical endings. At least that's how it feels. By playing thru the annoted mastergames I get the hang of most common endgames like B vs B, B vs N, N vs N en R vs R. It makes so much difference if you have an idea what to head for. The idea's how to play the common practical endgames are so much more important than those theoretical endings without a clue what you are doing. And dare I say it, now I have finally a beginning I wouldn't even be too surprised if I'm going to be good at this part of the game. That is not going to happen any time soon, but I'm starting to like the endgame. It is a part of the game where logical thinking prevails over brilliancy. Logic is more of my liking. Besides that my brilliancy in chess is still somewhat limited:) 12 days to go to the tournament. I want to consolidate my new acquired knowledge and to get some practice. If ...

Margriet is a few days out of town and I have taken a few days off, so I'm doing some serious chess study. Inventing the wheel all by myself by pondering 10 hours per position in order to master practical endgames isn't very effective. There are a lot of annotated mastergames around though with useful endgames. I study everything I can lay my hands on. You must see the main idea's of all sorts of practical endings as played by the masters several times, before you can recognize these idea's yourself in a new position. That is simply 100x as effective as trying to find it all by yourself. Given the fact that I still have 2 weeks before the tournament, and given the boost in endgame insight, I must be able to play the endgame with confidence by then. Since I have no experience at all, I will not be a Capablanca right away, but when I have an idea what to head for in the position that makes a huge difference in comparison to my usual state of total despair when the queens...

After two bad hair days finally some hope is glittering on the horizon. Montse affirmed the results of my 10 hour meditation over yesterday's rook ending. Maybe it is possible to learn something about this most important part of the game after all! I'm listening to all chessvideo's about the endgame that I can find, and a greater picture seems to reveal itself. During a flash of megalomania I decided to go over the more difficult endings when I have a break from the study of yesterday's position. B+N vs K causes little problems, although I haven't the fastest of all methods. But why should I be bothered by that? But K+Q vs K+R is very tough. It used to be a pretty straightforward endgame, but with the advent of the endgame tablebases a new resource for the defender is found, the so called third rank defense. As far as I know only a few people know this. IM Kraai, who devoted an entire chessvideo on the subject, didn't know it for instance. I don't think that...

Last week I had a nice chain of reasoning. Today I tried to play out the position from yesterday against various chess engines and immediately I hit the wall. When I trade off to a rook ending, I'm not able at all to win this. On the contrary, in most variations I manage to lose. I have no clear picture what to do in this position. It is a side-variation from the game in the book, which means that I'm left on my own. This is the position: White to move. The plus pawn looks promising. I went to my endgame books for advice, but they only treat endings that are much closer to theoretical endgames. This is the advice I could distill from my 16 endgame books: Play actively, often even at the cost of material. Trade the rooks when the remaining pawnending is won. The other three "rules" I found had no relation with this position. This advice is very flimsy. Even more since "actively" isn't exactly defined. It's obvious I hit the same wall as Takchess . It...

Here you have a typical practical ending. White to move and win. This is a typical situation where the middlegame has just ended and the practical endgame has just began. White is better and a pawn ahead and should be able to win. I played this against a few different chess engines and proved that it is even possible to lose in this position with white. Which is the very reason why I would offer a draw in this position when I had to play it with white against an opponent with 100 ratingpoints more. Ok, by now you are convinced that this kind of positions is not my forte. As you can easily see, theoretical endings are of very little use here at all . If all pawns and pieces are traded off I'm left with the a-pawn which would be a theoretical draw. So when things develop, there will come a moment that the knowledge of the theoretical ending king+rim-pawn vs king=draw might play a role and makes me steering away from it. But as for NOW, that knowledge is not going to help me. The murk...

Takchess, tag, you're it. More information here and here . I have a mixed feeling about this. Why should I help someone who doesn't work for himself and who even is too lazy to read my blog where he can find more answers then he ever wants to know? On the other hand, it is my experience that if somebody gets something he didn't work for, he don't know how to appreciate it and mix it up with idea's of his own until the information has become counter productive, so that's my assurance. 1) Blogger name and URL? Temposchlucker, http://temposchlucker.blogspot.com/ 2) How did you learn about the Circles? By Googling around. 3) When? Februari 2005 4) How long have you been going through the Circles, or if you have finished, how long did it take? I have finished the circles with 3 different problemsets: ca 1500 problems from TCT, 1300 problems from Renko's intensive course tactics and 10,000 problems from CTS. It took me about 2 years. 5) How is your progress? I ga...

A major flaw in my play. If I haven't killed my opponent before the end of the middlegame, then invariably I reach a position at the begin of the endgame where I have no clue whatsoever. I even have no idea at which side of the board I should look. So no matter how favourable the position, no matter how low the rating of the opponent, at this stage I offer a draw. Always. Often even when one or to pawns ahead. And when the oppenent declines the offer, I 'm invariably lost. I swap rooks which I shoudn't, I advance pawns which I shouldn't etc.. In an attempt to cure this problem I studied theoretical endgames daily for 6 month, without being able to lay the connection with my own games. That's why I abandoned the study of theoretical endings. Discovery of the practical endgame. Yesterday I discovered that there is a vast area between the middlegame and the theoretical endings. About 95% of the endgame play takes place in this area of practical endings. From the 16 end...

The post with chess maxims is added to my sidebar. Sometime ago I have dabbled around for 6 months with daily study of the endgame. I always had the feeling that it was not effective what I did. I had no overview over the area. The books I studied could only help me with the details of the study, but none of them gave an overview over the whole area. To work your way bottom up to a topdown overview isn't easy at all in such vast area. I'm not blessed with an innate feeling for the endgame. Or as I use to say it "I must have a great feeling for the endgame since I make always the wrong move, while statistically I should make a good move every now and then." If you have no overview, you don't know what is important and what not. So you buy a book in good fate that the author will lead you by hand. Not. The most endgame books are a mixture between a reference work and a book with endgame compositions. And they don't tell you at which moment they are what. Workin...

Latest update:december 7, 2008 This post will act as a scrapbook for endgame maxims and will be updated regularly. From time to time it will look chaotic, maybe. After sorting things out that will disappear. There is quite a difference between endgame technique and endgame strategy . In order to develop an endgame strategy I will gather all maxims I can find, put them in a blender and distill a strategy out of it. I will try to avoid double maxims around the same topic: what good is for you to strive for is automatically bad for the opponent and has to be avoided by him and vice versa. Endgames of the 0-st order: pawnendings. If one pawn can hold two that is favourable. If you have two pawns on adjacent files, push the one on the free file first. To prevent the previous maxim. Have your pawnmajority on the side where it is not opposed by the enemy king. Advanced pawns can lead to a favourable break because they are closer to promotion. Create a passer whenever it is safe. Create an ou...

Since a todo-list with 3 items is too long for me I have decided to focus my tournament preparation on visualization and endgame strategy . Forgetting about reasoning . The bulk will be endgame strategy. When I'm tired of that I relax with some visualisation exercises. I don't expect the visualisation exercises to be of any use for my chess, but I want to learn it anyway. It is meant as investigation of how to learn to use the LTM. Ok, now let me gather some books.