Five areas of improvement

 The following rant is a summary of my experiences of the past 1.5 years and especially the last tournament. It might sound a bit vague because it is partly based on my gut feelings, and not hindered by common beliefs. Since it sketches a realistic view of what might be needed to improve in the following years, I think it is useful anyway.

There are five areas of improvement.

Technique

• tactics
• positional play

Strategy

• endgame
• opening
• king assault

From these five areas, I have only developed tactics to a certain degree. To what degree?

Ad tactics

I have absorbed:

• 389 mates
• 208 knight moves
• 122 other tactics

These numbers are problems. One problem is inhabited by 3 patterns, at average. I estimate that I have absorbed 36% of the tactics that are necessary to become the tactical wizard we all want to be.

Currently, the absorption of tactical patterns has as effect that my my view changes from pieces to the cooperation of pieces. 

It turns out that the PoPLoAFun system is especially useful for checking the found variations for completeness. When you know what you want to play, you can use it to check how the opponent can possibly intervene with the lines of attack you intend to use. It is not used for finding the variation lines.

Ad positional play

It may sound weird to share positional play under "technique". But technique is everything that is strategy independent. It is used in each and every game, regardless the strategy you are pursuing. The sub areas are:

• increase piece activity
• restrain your opponents pieces
• exchange the right pieces

The absolute minimum amount of problems for positional play to absorb is 400. I have absorbed 0%. Yet it didn't came out as a major cause of losing points during the last tournament. It is indispensable, though. The problem set I gathered is ready to absorb.

Strategy

The last tournament showed that I suck at all three areas of strategy. All three sub areas have a totally different taste over them. This means that the approach to become better in these sub areas will be very different. Furthermore, a lot of preparation is needed to get the right problem sets.

Ad endgames

I reckon that I can make the fastest progress in this area. I have invested a lot of time in the past in endgame study. But due to the helter-skelter approach of chess authors, that was mainly a waste of time. The most difficult task is to get an idea of priorities. What to study first?

Don't start with the endgame compositions of Grigoriev, since it are freak positions that don't occur in real games. Don't start with B+N vs K, since you will get it only once in a lifetime. And when you get it and fail, you will have the perfect motivation to do it well the next time.

I think it is a good idea to start with pawn endings. Since they underpin all other endgames. The pawns dictate the strategy, the pieces are only the docile servants to get them forward.

There are the theoretical and practical endgames, and you need to know them. But they form only 20% of the area. There are two sub areas that form the remaining 80% and that are usually totally neglected:

• endgame strategy
• endgame tactics

As Robert pointed out:

“I know at sight what a position contains. What could happen? What is going to happen? YOU figure it out. I KNOW it!” - Jose Raul Capablanca

And that expresses the feeling that emerges lately. The amount of scenarios is finite. The basis must be the pawns. I guess that we don't need an enormous amount of positions. It suffices to study a few positions (like the Trebuchet 😋 ) but they must be studied deeply and thoroughly.

Ad openings

The opening is a totally different animal. The narratives are geared around squares. Which squares do you want and which squares do you give up? I assume the amount of narratives is finite, but I deem that it is huge nonetheless. It is the art to prune the possibilities without throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I have no concrete plan yet.

Ad king assault

The big surprise of this tournament, which gave itself away by a sudden increase in time usage. I thought naively that doing tactics would make me better in the assault of the king. But that is not the case. 

The assault of the king is terra incognita. I must invent the wheel myself here. Every suggestion is welcome. That means that I'm far away from absorbing the patterns that govern the king assault. Since I have no patterns nor an adequate problem set.

Sucking at chess