Woodpecking
Yesterday I had been busy by investigating a "standard" bishop sacrifice on h7. I wrote down all preconditions. Today I had it on the board. I could tick off all the checkboxes and sacced the cleric. Stockfish showed me that I could have sacced the lancer even one move earlier, which I have to investigate yet.
Woodpecking
I acquired the Woodpecker method 2 positional play
The method seems to be heavily inspired by MDLM. If I understand it right, then both Hans Tikkanen and Axel Smith became grandmaster with the method.
Technically, there is nothing wrong with the method. All three are a proof that the method works. I would like to add the following remarks:
- All 3 authors don't stress enough what is the most important point of their method: understanding of the subject to the highest degree possible.
- The authors put far too much emphasis on speed. Speed is totally irrelevant, since speed is a result of the training, not a necessity during the training.
I have done the first 10 exercises, and I think the quality is quite good. I consider my positional problem set as being ready to train.
It looks to me, that the positional exercises are chosen to get a stamp of approval from Stockfish, maybe to avoid discussion. Hence the moves to find give a clear plus, albeit not decisive. It seems that I accidently stumbled on the preparative moves that lead to a kingside assault.
ReplyDeleteI scored quite a few scalps lately against players that are 200-300 points higher rated. So my method definitely works. Since it were unrated games at the club, it will not translate to a higher rating, but that will be a matter of time.
ReplyDeleteI can now better predict the workload that is needed and what the effect will be.
Absorbing 350 puzzles will cost you 1000 hours and gain you 100 rating points.
I have seen a lot of prodigies who maintained a progress of 100 points per year up to the level where they stall.
The difference at any level all the way up to grandmaster is made by superior tactics. Tikkanen and Smith became grandmaster by applying their woodpecker method to tactics.
I'm gathering evidence that tactics make the difference between a super grandmaster and an "ordinary" grandmaster too.
Temposchlucker wrote (in part):
ReplyDeleteAbsorbing 350 puzzles will cost you 1000 hours and gain you 100 rating points.
Interpolating:
If 350 puzzles cost 1000 hour, then 1 puzzle costs approximately 3 hours, on average.
{That seems like a lot of time to “study” a single puzzle, but the idea is to ABSORB it, which is NOT going to happen if trying to solve large quantities of puzzles in a very short time.}
If 350 puzzles gain 100 rating points, then 1 puzzle gains approximately 0.3 rating points, on average.
Concluding:
If 3 hours of study gains 0.3 rating points, on average, then approximately 10 hours of study will be necessary for gaining 1 rating point.
If your current rating is 1800, it will take 4000 hours to reach the FIDE Candidate Master rating of 2200, 5000 hours to reach the FIDE Master rating of 2300, 6000 hours to reach the International Master rating of 2400, or 7000 hours to reach the International Grandmaster rating of 2500 (at least once). That’s ignoring the other norm requirements.
Those numbers are considerably less than the putative average of 10,000 hours to achieve “mastery”, but then “life” might intervene, requiring additional hours. Or, if you are lucky in your choice of problem sets, it may take fewer than that many hours. You won’t know unless and until you try it!
Recalling (again) an interesting anecdote from the Introduction to GM John Nunn's Secrets of Practical Chess [New Enlarged Edition].
"An assiduous program of self-training is bound to have a positive effect. In 1977, Jon Tisdall explained to me his plan for becoming a grandmaster. He had estimated how many hours of study were required to advance by one rating point. Multiplying this by the difference between his current rating and the grandmaster level gave the total number of hours of study required. I laughed and pointed out that with each advance, the number of hours required to gain the next point would probably increase, and so he might never make it. However, his plan proved justified, because in 1995 he did indeed gain the grandmaster title."
It is definitely encouraging that someone else has already done the exact same calculations (perhaps with different numbers), and achieved the desired result—even if it took 18 years to do it!
Good luck!
Hence 3 hours to absorb a problem. 10,000 hours to become an "expert". You need to absorb 3500 problems for that. I have already gathered the right problem sets.
ReplyDeleteOur comments crossed each other. It is important to note, that crushing opponents who you previously thought to be invincible is a lot of FUN!
ReplyDeleteI'm convinced that 3 hours per problem is not the most efficient way to absorb it. I'm going to experiment whether I can do it faster. Of course.
ReplyDeleteAt least, this works.
Funny: as I wrote my previous comment, I also thought that 3 hours to absorb a single problem is excessive. Surely everything on offer in a given problem can be identified and absorbed in much less time. It will require regular spaced repetition to maintain that absorbed skill.
ReplyDeleteThere are a lot of other considerations beside merely absorbing problems. The raw math does not consider your opponents nor your psychological and mental state when playing tournament games, for instance.
I read somewhere that you know you have improved when opponents that you previously thought were invincible turn out to make a lot of mistakes that you never saw before, making it easier to defeat them. {Or something similar to that.}
Yes, it's FUN when you can turn the tables on someone. It took me 3 years of study before I could crush my brother-in-law the same way he had previously crushed me (before I knew anything at all about chess other than the raw rules for piece movements and checkmate). Unfortunately, the result was that he would never play me again; that’s not good for long-term family relationships.
100 points PER YEAR sounds pretty wild too. If you realize that all it takes is to study only 1 problem per day AT AVERAGE, then it seems less inaccessible.
DeleteI suspect that tournament results and rating will fluctuate nonlinearly, even if rating points gained in SKILL is a linear process. There is an element of luck involved in tournament results - pairings can be somewhat random, depending on the participants and their ratings. And sometimes your opponents will "gift" you a point, just as you sometimes "gift" a point here and there to your opponents through "dumb luck."
DeleteFocused attention, consistency and persistence are the key non-chess components of any successful training program.