Absorption
I found the right problem sets:
- The Checkmate Patterns Manual
- 1001 Chess Exercises For Club Players
- 1001 Chess Exercises for Advanced Club Players
I found the right method:
- Formulate a logical narrative which describes the tactic
- Go every repetition a bit further, until the narrative is completed for every variation
- Repeat until the total solution is logically quite clear
- Speed of any kind is taboo
- Repeat until you have absorbed the whole solution
- Limit the quantity in favor of the quality
You know that you have absorbed the solution when:
- You see the solution immediately with great clarity
- You become too lazy to verbalize the logic since you already know what the position is about
- You know where the pieces must be without seeing them
- You know when you have absorbed the position because the feel totally differs from just remembering the logic
Within the set with mates, the following two types of mate are special:
- dovetail mate
- swallow's tail mate
These two mates are paramount for chasing the king into a mate net. Pay special attention to:
- pawns that serve as a base for the queen when driving the opponent's king
- plugging the killbox by trading
These to mates are often used when the king is in the middle of the board.
Where am I currently standing
So far I have absorbed 280 problems while there are 221 still in the pipeline. This might already be measurable during the next tournament in december.
280 problems absorbed in 1.5 year might not sound as very much. But I have been experimenting with different problem sets and various approaches. Furthermore, I made tremendous progress in positional middlegame play.
There are two glaring holes in my bucket:
- opening play
- endgames
I hope that the upcoming tournament will shed some light on positional opening play.
Endgames are not in the planning yet. First I must fix the tactics and the opening to an acceptable level.
Don't be surprised when the instinct takes over, and you forget the logical reasoning behind a solution. That is why grandmasters tend to be such bad explainers. They have forgotten how they do it. They just do.
ReplyDeleteI will focus on absorbing the 221 problems which are still in the pipeline. When those are done, I will have absorbed 501 problems in total. That is a good moment to measure how that affects my rating. Then we can estimate how many problems per rating point are necessary. I haven't registered the time per absorbed problem so far. I reckon an hour, but I can be very wrong in both directions about that when it comes to averages.
ReplyDeleteI had not known about the following book (that you referenced above):
ReplyDeleteThe Checkmate Patterns Manual: The Killer Moves Everyone Should Know, by Raf Mesotten (an average club player from Belgium).
Here is a very enlightening excerpt from the Introduction (with emphasis added on key points):
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“Each of these 30 chapters has one or more short but instructive informational sections to give you an idea how a certain checkmate idea can be executed. I base these sections on similarities that I SAW among the many thousands of games I looked at. . . .
“Each exercise starts at the moment the game can be ended with one of the checkmate patterns I describe in this course. Every solution is headed with the name of the checkmate pattern on which that exercise is based. In order to collect enough quality exercises for EACH PATTERN WITHIN A PATTERN, I sometimes took examples where e.g. a queen (only using her diagonal ability) replaced a bishop. I decided not to mention this in any of the chapters, because it would complicate the basic patterns too much.
“This is a book about checkmate PATTERNS, not about “finding a good move.”
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I took a look at the Kindle edition. Very informative! I think the emphasis on PATTERNS is the best way to develop SKILL.
Do you have any recommendation for tactical books that are structured similarly, with emphasis starting on simple patterns, then building on that basis using more complicated problems embedded with those patterns?
TIA!
The same book has a follow up, which uses the same mates, but focuses on the building up of the mating pattern.
DeleteI don't know of any better books than the three I mentioned in the post.
After absorbing only 280 problems from the mating pattern book, my rating starts to take off. After a slow decline in rating the past 15 years that is a first.
PART I:
ReplyDeleteMy apology: this is going to be a LONG word salad. However, just because it is long is not sufficient reason to reject it out of hand. I may be in over my head here, but I think the ideas are valid.
In some ways,The Checkmate Patterns Manual reminds me of Victor Charushin's The Tactician's Handbook, which I have. Here's the Amazon.com blurb:
"In the late 1990s, American publisher Pickard & Son released five books, each dedicated to a unique tactical theme, and each with approximately 100 pages. Written by the late Russian correspondence master Victor Charushin, the books were Alekhine's Block, Combination Cross, Lasker's Combination, Mitrofanov's Deflection, and The Steeplechase.
“They were very well-received by chessplayers everywhere. And, in fact, Charushin had written two more books in the series, Domination, and Less Common Combinations, but these were not released.
“For this edition of The Tactician's Handbook, German grandmaster Karsten Müller has carefully reviewed and then selected the material he thought most enlightening. Then instructive exercises were added. All the analysis has been checked by the silicon monster, while Charushin's notes and comments were revised where necessary. All seven titles were then combined into one comprehensive volume.
“Add to that a foreword by one of the great tacticians of our time, Hungarian grandmaster Judit Polgar, and the result is an excellent, instructive handbook covering some of the most exciting tactics in chess. The Tactician's Handbook is sure to provide you with many hours of enjoyment and instruction!"
I skimmed through the Kindle excerpt, looking for the overall approach used in the book. It is based on the perception of patterns, along with the logical Narrative(s) associated with each of 30 different common checkmate patterns. Sufficient examples are given to provide clues as to what to SEE when a given pattern is possibly hidden in the position. System 1 then has to work its magic through analogy when encountering an unfamiliar position that possesses the requisite preconditions (clues).
The perception of patterns is triggered by System 1. Sometimes the pattern that we SEE is a basic pattern (such as a weak back rank), which can form the basis for a more complicated pattern. Regardless of the level of complexity, the largest pattern that can be seen is the important thing in the position.
PART II:
ReplyDeleteMy hypothesis regarding the child prodigy "trick" is predicated on training to SEE, the perception of patterns (sometimes within larger patterns). A child perceives rather than conceptualizes without requiring verbalization (or a minimal amount), somewhat along the lines of “money see, monkey do.” Perception precedes the verbalization skills that are dependent on language. Training is based on visually presenting patterns (sometimes containing more basic patterns), but not necessarily having a fractal relationship—the multiple levels of nested patterns do not necessarily have any similarity across levels and may have different goals.
The position presented in the 24 NOV 2024 post is a case in point.
FEN: 2rr2k1/p4ppp/2q5/1pbNPb2/2p2P2/P3BQP1/1P3RKP/3R4 w - - 0 1
Please note the first two listed salient cues:
• Black might have backrank problems
• Rc8 is overloaded
Simplify the given position down to the minimum required for a backrank checkmate: leave all the pawns onboard, and remove all the pieces except for the kings, the WRd1 and the BRd8, White to move. This is a basic backrank mate pattern.
A larger pattern (containing the basic backrank mate pattern within it) is to add to that basic backrank pattern: WQf3, WRf2, BQc6, and BRc8. Again, the PATTERN revolves around the basic backrank mate BUT the goal is no longer the backrank mate. The White THREAT of that mate by capturing on d8 WITH CHECK forces the BRc8 to recapture, thereby leaving the BQc6 unprotected to the THREAT of the WQf3 to capture it. The goal changes from mate to material gain.
Adding in the remainder of the pieces in the original problem position merely complicates/obscures the two patterns (on different levels). System 2 must deal with these complications because they are NOT part of the pattern. It does so by constructing a logical Narrative that obviates the complications.
PART III:
ReplyDeleteIt is possible to train a child to SEE not only the basic patterns (which are emphasized in all elementary tactics puzzle books) but the more complicated patterns which have one (or more) basic patterns within them. The recognition of the patterns (within patterns) and the associated logical Narratives is how the child learns to play. Think of it as “on-the-job training.” The child is an apprentice to the teacher, who may (or may not) be a master. Most likely, the initial instructor is likely NOT a very good player. That does not matter if the instructor can find and present positions for study that are pattern-based. The emphasis is on SKILL, not on KNOWLEDGE.
We as adults crave verbalization (“logical explanations”) that we can regurgitate on command—as if it is an academic test. Why? Because from our first steps in education, we are taught by example and by instruction that the process for gaining KNOWLEDGE is the ONLY overall goal, and the process of gaining and regurgitating KNOWEDGE is hammered into our thick skulls until we “forget” (if we ever knew) that SKILL is acquired by DOING, NOT by acquiring more and more KNOWLEDGE. As a consequence, we have all that educational inertia “built-in” that must be overcome if we are ever to gain SKILL.
The presentation of patterns must be from simple to more complex patterns, emphasizing patterns within ever more complicated patterns. Typical books present patterns but the emphasis is on the moves (the “solution”), without emphasizing the importance of SEEing patterns within patterns and the associated logical Narratives for each level of pattern.
(BTW, this is why I asked if you knew of any tactical books that were oriented in this way.)
PART IV:
ReplyDeleteThere are also two other issues I’d like to address.
MdlM was on the right track, but his academic training obscured the true value of his training method. If you reread his Rapid Chess Improvement or the articles he wrote regarding gaining 400 points in 400 days, he identifies the right idea (unbeknownst to him) and then emphasizes aspects of his ‘method’ that do NOT and CANNOT reach the goal! He noted how valuable the CT-ART program was, and why: because it gave you a relatively complicated problem AND ALSO THE OPPORTUNITY TO SEE PoPLoAFun as “hints” toward a solution, but most importantly, it gave the opportunity to SEE the “pattern within a pattern” by using a simplified 5x5 board with several pieces removed. He overlooked the significance of these features, and instead, emphasized gathering any old collection of problems (approximately 1,000) and then going through them at increasing speed until your eyes bled! There is virtually ZERO chance that any old collection would present patterns within patterns and little chance that there would be any organization other than the number of moves required to reach the solution, or (at best) a random collection of problems having a common theme/device without any logical Narrative at all. He got most of the benefit by using CT-ART, NOT a random collection of tactical problems that may have nothing in common in terms of patterns.
The second issue is the question of how long it takes to train someone to gain a particular SKILL at a fairly high level. Dr. Betty Edwards conducted many workshops on drawing. The workshops consist in a small number of exercises (less than 10), conducted over a 40-hour period in ONE WEEK. The students are not preselected; they sign up because they want to learn how to draw [SKILL]. Note that I did NOT say “learn how to draw BETTER.” She accepts students who have NO drawing background or skills, as well as some who have had art instruction previously. At the end of a week, all students can draw realistic portraits of themselves and others. That SKILL is considered to be one of the most difficult drawing SKILLS to achieve. Yet, she is 100% successful at teaching those fundamental SKILLS in 40 hours—based on PERCEPTION!!
Many chess writers have “pooh-poohed” Dr. Lasker’s speculation that, by following a good course of instruction (such as the one outlined in Lasker’s Manaul of Chess, one could acquire the level of a first category (expert) chess player in 200 hours. The only way that can be done is if the student is trained for SKILL, not KNOWLEDGE, with the emphasis on PATTERN PERCEPTION and acquisition of experience in constructing the necessary logical Narratives.
I assume that MDLM had found a way to absorb the 1134 solutions of CT-Art in some way. I'm not sure that the patterns within patterns stuff is really relevant. System 1 is already very skilled, it only need to be fed in the right way. I'm sure that any dataset will work, if treated the right way.
DeleteI have absorbed the solutions that were in the pipeline too, so that adds up to 387 in total.
If the absorption of 1134 solutions caused MDLM to improve 400 points, than this would imply that my 387 absorptions lead to a gain of 136 points. Give or take.
In other words, I should see SOME progress when I play a tournament at the end of the year.
I'm out on a limb, because I haven't internalized the standaard scenarios YET.
ReplyDeleteBut I noticed the following:
First stage: see the salient cues. That is an activity of an educated system 1.
Second stage: apply the standard scenarios.
Like: change the balance by adding attackers or removing defenders.
For now, stage two is mainly an activity of system 2. That's the limb. This must be internalized. Meaning: the standard scenarios have their own patterns. When these are internalized, the standard scenarios are retrieved a tempo once you see the salient cues.
I see the standard scenarios as a kind of frozen knowledge. The patterns contain the implicit frozen knowledge.
The function of knowledge is pruning the tree of analysis. It should be handled by system 1. You must educate it with system 2. But that should expressly be a temporary situation.
It took me 18 years to solve the conundrum of MDLM. Since then, it took me 1.5 years to transform a theoretical model into a practical model.
The next step is to realize the transformation of the logical narratives that form the standard scenarios into patterns that system 1 can use.
Only when that is accomplished, I can think whether it should be possible in 200 hours. I wouldn't be too surprised, albeit that it took me 23 years to get at the starting point.
Notice my first comment.
I did notice that first comment. I'm not sure that the GMs "forget" how they "do it." Instead, I think maybe that the problem is that they are traditionally constrained to verbalization in order to instruct through the medium of books and videos. Unfortunately, verbalization is an inadequate substitute for DOING, and there are few teachers who can convey SKILL through verbal instruction.
ReplyDeleteThose that can DO teach best by doing. Those who cannot DO are stuck using verbalization. There is a good reason why:
"A picture is worth a thousand words!"
At some point in my life, I learned (from a source that is now forgotten) that managerial decisions should be made in a timely manner based on the best information available. That kind of decision will most likely be correct, but any attempt to verbalize and explain WHY the decision was made will likely be off-base.
The same is true of teaching SKILL.
It is an experience, not a hypothesis.
DeleteCompare it with shifting gears. When you learn it, you have to think about what you are doing. When you acquired the skill, you don't think about how you do it.
Old Chinese saying:
Delete"Not hearing is not as good as hearing, hearing is not as good as seeing, seeing is not as good as knowing, knowing is not as good as acting; true learning continues until it is put into action."
PART I:
ReplyDeleteI have gained some helpful insights regarding what to SEE by studying the basic components of perception as outlined in Betty Edward’s Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain: A course in enhancing creativity and artistic confidence, and trying to correlate them to chess.
The perception of edges is rudimentary and fairly easily applied to chess. Instead of thinking of a line as one-dimensional scribble, think of it as an edge, boundary or connection between two different areas of what you SEE. In chess, this is the boundary/connection between any two (or more) arbitrary nexuses of attention. What do these nexuses share in common? This is the “stitching together” of the logical Narrative that combines them into an integrated whole.
The perception of spaces (positive image and negative space, also known as figure and ground, foreground and background) is a little more difficult to discern. What is your focus of attention when you initially look at a position? You isolate some feature(s) of the position as a clue to what is most important. This is the positive image. It does not matter in the least that this “clue” may NOT be the most important of the available clues. It is merely a starting point in the investigation. Other “clues” may rapidly supersede the initial clue; just go with the flow.
What we often do NOT see (or ignore as a result of our focused attention on the positive images) is the surrounding negative space (not necessarily EMPTY space), IE., everything BUT the positive images. It is this negative ground that often provides the salient cues as to “What is this position REALLY all about?”
The perception of relationships (perspective and proportion) deals with paradox and ambiguity. What is the importance of one nexus of attention relative to another nexus of attention? All features of a given position are NOT equally important.
Perception provides vital clues to focusing attention on more than just the positive image(s), to SEE the negative space(s) which define the positive image(s). It should take little effort to apply those ideas of perception from drawing to any chess position.
Talk is cheap, and word salads are a dime a dozen.
PART II:
ReplyDeleteI’ll use a chess position that is fairly well known as an illustration of those three ideas regarding perception.
Game Ignatz von Popiel vs Georg Marco
Monte Carlo (1902), Monte Carlo MNC, rd 1, Feb-03
[http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1099222 ]
FEN: 7k/1b1r2p1/p6p/1p2qN2/3bP3/3Q4/P5PP/1B1R3K b - - 1 36
Marco “looked” at the position and didn’t like what he SAW. His Bishop is pinned against the BRd7; if it moves, the Rook will be lost. If it does NOT move, it will be captured next move by the WNf5. So, he resigned.
What clue(s) did he fail to perceive?
First, nobody ever won by resigning.
Second, the pin is relative, not absolute. That means the Bishop CAN move, even though the consequence may be a (temporary?) loss of material. That should have “triggered” a search for an Equal or Greater Threat [EGT] – but he panicked and didn’t bother looking for anything as a counter move.
ALL relationships are bidirectional. The BBd4 is pinned by the White Queen as the first attacking piece along the d1-d8 LoA. That means the BRd7 is (indirectly) attacking the White Queen. ASSUME that the Black Bishop is just taken off the board (in the mind’s eye). With Black to move, White would lose his Queen. That’s certainly a different perspective and also disproportional!
When in a desperate situation where you are (apparently) FORCED to lose material, what MOTIF should we look for? DESPERADO! Is there anything POSITIVE we can do to get that Bishop out of the way?
Instead of focusing only on the “positive image” of the pinned Bishop while ignoring the negative space(s) (other nexuses of attention), and the fact that White has superiority on d4 [3:2], is there anywhere we can generate an
EGT? In short, look for a different nexus of attention, which we may have considered to be part of the background, rather than a positive image in its own right!
The BQe5 attacks the h7-square, defended by the White King [1:1]. It is a B.A.D. square! What procedure should we use in this kind of situation? Add attackers or remove defenders to the B.A.D. square. We cannot remove the defender, so the only alternative is to add an attacker. Is there such an attacker available?
SERENDIPITY!! The BBd4 is begging to be moved, and is DESPERADO. 1… Bg1 creates an EGT, threatening checkmate. White has no choice but to capture the cheeky Bishop, leaving his Queen hanging.
PERCEIVING all these components in the position would have resulted in the Gestalt experience of winning instead of losing.
I’m quite sure that neither player SAW this possibility until AFTER Marco resigned.
PART I:
ReplyDeleteIn order to SEE the patterns associated with [unnamed] negative spaces, it is very important to generalize the patterns so that specific “pieces-on-squares” will not hinder or prohibit recognition of the negative space pattern and the corresponding logical Narrative associated with the positive image.
Let’s use the Dovetail Mate as a tutorial example, using the definitions from Chess Tempo (making generalizing modifications so that the negative spaces become a recognizable [but still unnamed] pattern in and of itself). The same process can be applied to other tactical themes/devices.
Dovetail Mate
Dovetail mates occur when a queen delivers mate by checking the king from a diagonally adjacent square while supported by a friendly piece. The two potential escape squares not covered by the attacking queen are blocked by the opponent's own pieces.
Here’s the Chess Tempo example:
FEN: 2kN4/4bp2/p5pp/1p6/4q1P1/2KR4/P1P2P1P/1R6 w - - 0 1
White moved 1. Rbd1. The b4-square WAS B.A.D.; the obvious(?) “undefending” of the b4-square is disastrous—1… Qb4#. WHY?
The intended takeaway from the example is the description, not the example position. Notice that the description emphasis is on the “positive image” (what the various active pieces DO—the roles of the Black queen and the Black bishop); even the “escape squares” are defined in terms of the queen not being able to attack the two squares that are a Knight’s distance from the focal point.
The unnamed “negative space” is an important component of rapid pattern recognition. The WPc2 and WRd3 block the horizontal and vertical “escape path” of the White king. What cannot be gained from the description is that it does not matter if the escape path is blocked by the edge of the board, the occupation of the escape squares by either the same or the opposite side, or the squares are controlled by the opponent – or some combination of all these factors. You can think of that as a generalization from the description, or you can SEE the underlying pattern without the restrictions given in the description.
We tend to try to remember the formal verbal description and then when LOOKING at the board position for applicable patterns, we apply that descriptive definition to SEE if it is LITERALLY applicable. If it does not meet the exact criteria, System 1 will likely NOT be triggered, and we then wander in the wilderness of trial and error.
PART II:
ReplyDeleteTo gain a better appreciation of what I’m trying to say, here’s the Chess Tempo definition for the Dovetail Mate - (Bishop):
The bishop variation of the dovetail mate occurs when a queen delivers mate by checking the king from a diagonally adjacent square while supported by a friendly piece. The two potential escape squares not covered by the attacking queen are blocked by the mating side's bishop (as opposed to the opponent's own pieces in the traditional dovetail mate).
The Chess Tempo example:
FEN: rR6/4bk2/2p3q1/4QpN1/2PB1Pb1/4P3/r5R1/6K1 b - - 0 1
1...Bxg5?? 2.Qe8#
Without getting to deep in the weeds, Black opened a pathway for the White queen to get to the B.A.D. e8-square. To SEE my point, envision the three squares f6, g6, g7 as part of the “box” (negative space). In this example, the Black queen closes off a potential escape square, which would also be covered by the WQe8. The only thing missing in the initial position is a direct attack on the Black king.
There is really no difference in descriptive stipulations for these two basic patterns. Unfortunately, we really LOVE our verbal descriptions and applying names to every situation, no matter how similar conceptually they might be. System 1 could care less about our names and descriptions; it just wants to SEE the underlying pattern—which MUST include the negative space as well as the positive image.
SEEing both the positive image and the negative space gives us a powerful method to broaden and enhance our pattern recognition while reducing the cognitive load on our memory!
The dovetail mate and the swallow's tail mate are essentially the same, rotated over 45 degrees.
ReplyDeleteAfter doing a series of those mates, which are kind of special since they are of used for mates on the middle of the board, I noticed how the queen hopped from covered point to covered point, chasing the king towards the anvil.
8/5p1k/6pp/1P6/8/1Q1B1PP1/1R4K1/2r1q3 b - - 0 52
6k1/1p1b3p/2pp2p1/p7/2Pb2Pq/1P1PpK2/P1N3RP/1RQ5 b - - 0 32
"are of used" should read as "are often used"
DeleteYou will discover the same scenarios around dovetail and swallow's tail mate time and again. Sacrifice pieces to fill up the escape squares, queens hopping from focal point to focal point, piece sacs to lure the king on the anvil et cetera. There is a finite amount of scenarios which can be combined in infinite ways.
ReplyDelete8/8/p2P4/6Rp/2rQpk1P/q7/P5b1/4K3 w - - 4 57
ReplyDelete