Temposchlucker

 The result of my games has been pretty poor with 3.5 out of 9. That is of course pretty disappointing. However it is the same result as previous year. It is only disappointing because I had the wrong expectations. What is more important, is that I have discovered a whole new area of research. I found the next step in the process. In March this year I discovered that system 1 cannot be educated directly in any way. It can only be educated indirectly, by educating system 2. I experimented with diverse ideas of chess logic, but none of the methods I used gained momentum. I tried the chess logic behind high rated mate in four problems, high rated mate in three problems, high rated mate in two problems, high rated tactical two movers and complex composed mate in two problems. The problem with these problems is that the frequency of occurrence in my own games of the logic that is discovered is way too low. I reformulated the chess logic I need to discover. I found two areas of importanc...

 The only way to educate system 1 is via system 2. There is no other way. What does that mean? Chess is too complicated to let system 2 solve problems on the fly during a game. System 2 is simply too slow for that. What we need is bite sized logic, ready to apply to our game. These logical modules must be generated during study time. How does that look like? Black to move Whites last move was 4.Nh4 What does white want? White wants to trade his knight for a black bishop. Why? Because that makes black weak on the white squares. What is the follow up? Say that black plays 4. ... Bg6 5.Nxg6 hxg6. Now what? White to move There are two ways to change the balance of a game in an irreversible way. Pawn moves and piece exchanges. After this trade, white must activate his light squared bishop. He does so by placing his pawns on the dark squares, and by loosening the black pawns on the light squares.  Black to move This idea stems from the Colle-Zukertort by GM Simon Williams (Chessable...

 In March this year I have been able to solve one of the most important conundrums of chess development:   How to educate system 1 in a way that its knowledge transfers to other positions than the one you are investigating? The answer is surprisingly simple: system 1 goes where system 2 goes. System 1 cannot be educated directly. But by looking over the shoulder of system 2, system 1 works its magic, and finds ways to support system 2. The implications of this cannot be overestimated. If an adult is plateauing at some level, even after trying for years, it means that he doesn't learn anything from his games. And if he learns something, it is something that doesn't transfer to his other games. The above conclusions lead automatically to the next question: what is the best way to educate system 2? I dabbled around with mate in 4 exercises, which require a lot of logical reasoning, with high rated mate in 3 exercises, mate in 2, high rated tactical problems with only two moves, a...

 Chessadmin said in  a comment to this post : "Your description of all the steps it takes to actually improve in a concrete way is daunting, yet realistic. It also means that for those of us who have yet to learn all these things, it means there is plenty of room for improvement !" What has been daunting is that I dabbled 23 years with tactics. Which in the end lead to the conclusion that chess is about logic. Something I already suspected 23 years ago, but the amount of good advice set me on the wrong foot time and again. But since I "have seen the light", I looked for chess authors that give advice that is consistent with my findings. And I found two of them: CM Can Kabadayi with the books: The Art of Exchanging Pieces The Art of Burying Pieces The Art of Awakening Pieces And a few other books from him that I haven't studied yet but that address a few issues I know that must be addressed. IM Yuriy Krykun with The Unexplored French Defense Black is Back: Old B...

 Just a few notes to myself so I want forget impressions from the tournament that need further investigation later. My mind is easily overwhelmed. In chess that translates to seeing too many possibilities and a mind that stalls as a response. 18 years of blogging has brought a bit of order in the chaos. This process is documented in this blog. A bit order results in less time trouble in my games. The watch is a useful tool for finding the areas in my mind where chaos reigns. I spent 17 years with dabbling around with tactics, and now I begin to see some order in that area, there is finally emerging some time to think about other elements in chess, like positional stuff and such. In my youth I spent a lot of time with thinking about the reason why the notes of an octave in music are what they are. And after a few years I found the mathematical background behind this. Notes are in harmony when they have a simple ratio to each other. Like 1:2, 2:3, 3:4 et cetera. I assume that the phy...

 A lot, actually. But most is not worthy to write a post about, so I obey the discipline to write nothing when I have nothing to say. In the meantime I'm working hard. The essence of my new method is that system 2 does the work and system 1 looks over its shoulder. In the past 23 years system 2 didn't learn anything useful from my games. Now it is totally different. Drawing logical conclusions from your own games without a coach, is no sinecure. There are a whole lot of holes in my bucket, and no game is the same. Of course if it was otherwise, chess would be boring soon. But it is a lot of work to conceptualise ideas in a way that they become useful for other games, without over conceptualizing it by transiting it into trivialities. Take for instance the idea of the good and the bad bishop. When the pawn structure isn't fixed, you cannot say which bishop is good and which is bad. So you must develop some logical ideas about how to force the fixing of the pawns.  And when t...