Temposchlucker

 We theorized that concepts and analogies would be at the core of the solution of the transfer of knowledge from one position to another. When we talk about familiarization of the ABC of chess, concepts definitely play a role. When you look at a position for the twentieth time and you try to deepen your knowledge of what you see, you clearly will notice that you make use of concepts and analogies. Yet there is an area that is even more intelligible for the use of concepts: strategy. In the past we talked a lot about Troyis. A game where you had to move a knight in a contained space. That game illustrated perfectly the effect of training by trial and error. By just playing it an awful lot of times, you became better in it. To a certain degree. After that, you would notice that your game level would just plateau. No matter how much more effort you put in your training. Just like chess. Playing by trial and error means not playing by a strategy. Simply because there was no strategy, y...

 Today I finished the first tournament of 7 rounds long OTB games. The result might look a bit meager. My start rating was 1691. My TPR of this tournament is 1716. Normally I don't hide myself behind excuses since they obscure an objective result. But in this case, the result might obscure what has actually happened. Generally, I try a new training method for a few months. I use to start euphoric, but after a few months reality sets in and I abandon the method. In this case, it is different. I trained this method during 80 days, for a few hours per day. A few of my wins can clearly be attributed to the method. At the same time, the losses can be attributed to other reasons. Like abandoning all opening preparation for my new repertoire in favor of the new method, my poor physical and mental condition due to a long sick bed, my being not used to games longer than 30 moves and so on. During my penultimate game I had trouble to focus my eyes on the board at move 78 after 5 hours, and ...

 U try to deepen my knowledge by looking time and again at the problems in my database. That is encouraged by the method of spaced repetition. Some positions are suited for the identification of phantom patterns, while this position seems ideally suited for the conceptualization of ideas around the kingside attack. r2qk3/pp1n1pp1/2pbp3/3p3n/2P3bP/1PNP4/PB2PPBP/R3QRK1 b q - 0 1 A prime idea would be a black queen at h2, delivering mate. What is the route to that, how could white put up obstacles and how can black level these. The lines of attack Qd8 - h4 - h2 Bd6 - h2 The obstacles  a pawn on h3 blocks the direct access from h4 to h2, albeit the maneuver Qh4 - f4 - h2 might circumvent this.  a pawn on h4 blocks the d6 - h2 diagonal and let the white queen protect h4 Skedaddle If you give white too many free tempi, he might get rid of his rook on f1 and  flee with his king to f1 If f3 or f4 is played, a hiding place via f2 might be found Blocking the blocker 1. ... Bf3...

 A Fide master said that he knew only 20 patterns of the 32 checkmate patterns. What does this tell us? It is not the amount of patterns that counts. What is important, is the frequency of occurrence of the patterns you know and how deep your familiarity with the pattern is. I noticed that I'm not familiar enough with the phantom auras of the pieces. That is to say, the virtual future influence of the pieces. This observation arose from studying checkmate puzzles. Where you chase a king with the phantom auras of the pieces into a killbox and squeeze it. Now I'm focusing on other puzzles I have trouble with, and I notice that there are other phantom patterns I have trouble with. Take for instance this diagram: White to move 3R4/p5r1/4q1k1/4p3/6n1/4NQ2/PPP5/6K1 w - - 0 1 In order to find out why these positions cause me trouble, I ask myself: "what should I ask myself here in order to trigger the right pattern?" Well, I don't know yet, but the pattern I'm missin...

 The yellow squares are not safe for the black king. Theoretically he can be forked there with his queen. The black king is only safe on the light squares and on the red squares. White to move Now you see what this position is about. The bishop should keep the black king off the light squares, while the rook can chase him from the rook file.

 In a post of quite some years ago , I talked about the drawbacks of the trial and error method. It often took me a long time to realize that a piece was defended, and that the logical conclusion was to eliminate that defender. In order to speed that up, I invented the tree of scenarios. With 23 standard scenarios, if I remember correctly. But thinking about scenarios is a system 2 exercise, it is no skill. So it didn't work. But slowly we are finding out how to transfer this knowledge to system 1. It is about the concepts and the analogies we talked about. I work with a database of 748 selected tactics. It is very important that these tactics are selected well. I found these careful selected tactics in two books at Chessable.com: The checkmate patterns manual by CraftyRaf and 1001 chess exercises for club players by New in Chess. Right now, I'm internalizing all 748 tactical exercises. The spaced repetition method is a great help for that. Once the moves are internalized, I fo...