Preparation
I have been immersed in chess the past 10 days. I scored 4 points out of 9, which is less than I expected.
But for the first time in 25 years, not the method to improve was under scrutiny, but the areas in which the method can be applied.
It turned out that there are 3 areas where I fail:
- opening
- endgame
- king side attack
I didn't apply my method to these three areas, so in fact it is quite logical that these areas caused the loss of points.
The third area came as a surprise to me. Which in itself is very surprising. The past time I have been busy with studying what is happening after the middlegame and before the final blow to the king. The "Vukovic" area, so to speak. And I noticed that this area is reigned by the LoA landscape (lines of attack). I didn't realize that just gathering the knowledge isn't enough by far to master this area. A stupid thing to miss, since it is very logical, but hey, that is what these tournaments or for.
It was the clock which put me on the track. Since I use my method, my time troubles are over. But when I'm thinking about a king side attack which may or may not be there, the time is ticking away. And that is how I noticed that I have a problem in this area. The fact that there might be a mate, only obscures this fact. If I mate my opponent AND you I too much time, I still have a problem to solve.
Before I can address these three problem areas, I need to prepare the patterns that need absorption.
Opening
For the opening the heavy lifting is done by GM Jon Ludvig Hammer. He has provided a simple easy to remember repertoire for black, which I gratefully made use of this tournament. But remembering the lines is not absorbing the patterns and the logic, So this aspect I must add to the opening. Furthermore, I will have to select lines from other opening whenever a line is not ambitious enough or unbalanced enough to my taste. But the path is clear.
Endgame
I'm quite happy there is finally room to address my endgame problem! I'm going to use:
- Improving Endgame Technique: Pawn Endgames
- 100 Endgames You Must Know
To begin with. It will take a lot of time to formulate the logical narratives.
Kingside attack
This is the most difficult part. The work of Vukovic isn't finished, as he himself admitted. So I will have to do some thinking for myself. I'm going to let IM Andras Toth inspire me, though:
I'm very exited about the results of this tournaments. It showed that my method works, and it showed that the culprits of my mediocre results lies in the area that weren't addressed with my method yet.
Hence the path is clear. Now you will see a monkey do gymnastics (a lousy translation by ChatGPT).
It is hard to make the difference with simple tactics. The reason for that, is that all young people train tactics on a daily basis on a website of some sort. And we know that a first time exposure to tactics can lead to a rating gain of 250 points at average, no matter the method. The Knights Errant have proved that.
ReplyDeleteThis year I played against 5 kids, with an age between 11 - 14. The reason for that is that there was a separate veteran group this year, where seniors could hide from the youth. So the normal groups were deprived from a lot of seniors.
So I was happy to identify the areas where my method CAN make the difference, when applied correctly.
A year ago, I identified knight moves as a problem area for me. I have used a set with 209 knight problems. Since I hadn't developed my new method completely yet, I did this on the old way. With spaced repetition as provided by Chessable. That didn't work out. That way, you don't absorb the patterns.
ReplyDeleteLuckily, the distance to absorb the patterns still is not far from here. So I'm redoing the set now in the correct way.
Let this be an important warning. No absorption, no progress.
Every pattern is accompanied by a logical narrative. By scenarios. You know that you have absorbed the pattern when you SEE the logic. When there is no longer the need to describe it verbally.
ReplyDeleteThere are two types of preparation indeed. The one that you can outsource and the one you have to do yourself. The first type is about gathering the problem set. If you are lucky, the set is themed and provided with analysis and explanations by a GM.
ReplyDeleteThe second type of preparation is about creating a logical narrative from a problem. Maybe in an ideal world, that can be outsourced too. But as far as I have seen, there is no free lunch here. Why is it called preparation? Because it doesn't cause skill forming. If you stop after this preparation, you will have nothing to show for it. Only after absorption it will bring you results. You can get help from Stockfish here, though.