Hmmm?

Btw, it's a human approach to the position. I've just plugged the position into Stockfish 8 for fun, and what it recommends is ridiculously computerish as usual :

So finished the weekender on 3.5/7. Pretty mediocre IMO, but played alot of competent opponents so I guess I learnt some stuff

From analysing my games, it seems that my strength lies in opening and positional play. But my one defining weakness seems to be tactical vision and calculation ability.

Instead of my usual post about games I won, I liked to show analyse some of the games that I had less success with.

The two problems from tactical vision and calculation ability seem to result in some clear flaws.

1. Inability to convert strategically winning positions

2. Defending against Hacks

Even if you play a great positional game, you would still need tactics at the end to get the full point most of the time.

This post deal with the first issue, converting strategically winning positions. Often I get a good position form the opening and play well positionally to gain a significant advantage just off positional play. However my tactical vision and calculation lets me down and I let my opponent escape or worse, steal the full point from me.

The next two games I play as white. Both against solid 2100s. The first one I drew and the second one I lost. Both were strategically won game, but I failed to convert a positional advantage into a tactical advantage.


Game 1

Played in the zonal

http://www.chessvideos.tv/chess-game....php?id=109424


1. c4 Nf6 2. g3 g6 3. Bg2 Bg7 4. Nc3 O-O 5. e4 as usual, I play my pet line, especially since I knew he was going to play KID d6 6. Nge2 c5 7. O-O Nc6 8. d3 Ne8 9. Be3 Nc7 10. d4 thematic break through cxd4 11. Nxd4 Ne5 12. b3 Ng4 13. Bc1! Part of my preparation in this line is knowing to keep the pieces to hold the advantage Ne6 14. Nde2! Same idea h5 15. h3 Nh6 16. Be3 f5 17. Qd2 Kh7 18. Rad1 fxe4 19. Nxe4 Nf5 20. Ng5+ Nxg5 21. Bxg5 Rb8 22. c5! b6 23. cxd6 This was my first opportunity to win the game outright, I thought c6 was crushing, but couldn't calculate a concrete line to win, after





23. c6 Qe8 24. Be4 e6 25. c7 Rb7 26. Bxb7 Bxb7 27. g4 hxg4 28. hxg4 Qc6 29. f3 Nh6 30. Bxh6 Bxh6 31. Qxd6 wins ) Qxd6 24. Qc1 Qb4 25. Bd2 Qc5 26. Qxc5 bxc5 27. Rc1 Nd4 28. Nxd4 Bxd4 29. Be3 Rd8 30. Rfe1 e6 31. Bf4 Rb4 32. Re2 Kg8 33. Bd2 Rb8 34. Bf4 Rb4 35. Bd2 1/2-1/2

I threefolded here thinking he can probably hold and has counterplay with the bishop and I'm also abit low on time and have a round right after this so I wanted some rest. But the winning method would've start with Bg5, and after some calculation, white should be much better from here.

I was lucky to get multiple chance to win but still couldn't. Against an IM+, you would be lucky to get one.



Game 2

Played in the weekender

http://www.chessvideos.tv/chess-game....php?id=109436


1. c4 g6 2. Nc3 Bg7 3. g3 c5 4. Bg2 d6 5. e4 Nc6 6. Nge2 e5 7. d3 Nge7 8. O-O O-O 9. f4 f5 He tried to copy me with symmetry, which might not be such a bad plan here 10. Be3 Nd4 11. Qd2 a6 12. Rab1 Qa5 13. Nxd4! cxd4 14. Nd5 Qxd2 (Qd8 was more accurate) 15. Nxe7+ Kf7 16. Bxd2 Kxe7 17. Rfe1 you might ask why not the other rook, and I probably should've played the other rook, but often I follow my intuition over concrete variations, and I thought I would need the other rook on the c- file, turns out I was very wrong Kf6? 18. h4 h6 19. Bb4 Rd8 20. Ba5 Rd7 suddenly his position lacks harmony and all his pieces are on gross squares 21. Bh3 Rf7 22. Bd8+ Ke6


How do I not win from this?




23. h5 (I missed the crushing idea 23. exf5+ gxf5 24. Bg2 Kd7 25. Bd5 Rf8 26. Ba5 Re8 27. Rbc1 )23... Rf8 24. Bh4 Kf7 25. Rf1 exf4 26. hxg6+ being low on time, I couldn't calculate a win, and basically liquidated and simplified his position and save him the game Kxg6 27. exf5+ Bxf5 28. Bxf5+ Rxf5 29. Rxf4 Rxf4 30. gxf4 Re8 31. Re1 Rxe1+ 32. Bxe1 Kf5 33. Kf2 oops free pawn you're welcome Kxf4 (we played a few more moves before I resigned. I thought I could play for the queenside and just sac the pawn, I was dead wrong lol) 0-1


The notion that chess might be 90% tactics might be true, technically tactics is an important part of both openings, endgames and chess technique as a whole. Many times over I see even 2300s gets completely winning positions against a GM and failed to convert the position due to tactics. I will post about a tactical training program in the near future.

Do you think the 24. Bg2 follow-up in the weekender game is easy enough for an FM hopeful to see OTB (in the sense of figuring out that it's stronger than the patzer follow-up 24. Bb6)?

While, I've seen FM make blunders and miss simple tactics, I think most on a good day will find that easily. 24. Bb6 isn't even necessary yet, it's not under attack, so why not leave it here for a while.

I didn't find the 24. Bg2 because I had a one track mind and was trying to find the win with some h5-hxg6 idea. This is one of my major leaks imo. Sometimes you gotta just step back and take a breath and be willing to look for new ideas to win

Paging resident FM, paging resident FM...

You bastard, now I cannot safely NOT post.

FWIW, I don't think Bg2 is that "clear cut" and despite what the computer says, you should not be beating yourself up because of it. I might find this idea in the game more on general principles of piece play, but I would not necessarily think "hey, I am clearly winning here".

Well, I WOULD probably think that I am clearly winning, but I would think that also in the initial position, not BECAUSE of the Bg2 plan.

Moral of the story is - either ignore the damned machine, or try to understand why it shows what it shows. Why do YOU think the final position in your line (after Rbc1) is so crushingly winning? Don't consult the machine to answer this please.

Hold up guys, posting my bad Caro Kann games soon, but I'll address this



I'm not so much beating myself up for not finding Bg2, but more so, from losing that position lol. There's probably many plan to win anyway from that position, black is struggling to free itself, until I let him liquidate ofc (but I was in time trouble, maybe shoulda offered a draw).

In the Bg2 plan, after Rbc1, I would say I have c4-c5, followed by possibly Rxc5-c7 ideas, Bf7, Rec1, strategically it seems so much better for white as I'm basically penetrating into his camp with all my pieces, tactically speaking alot of lines probably end up winning an exchange or forming some sort of a mating net around his king in the centre. I haven't concretely analysed the variations but it just looks extremely promising.

Time to do the second part.

The second problem from my lack of tactical vision and calculation ability is to do with defending in particular. It's probably one of the most underrated area and a huge area of seperation between GMs and amateurs. Everyone can build up a great kingside attack, align their pieces and launch a flurry of combinations to win and claim a minature, but turn the situation around and they are all panicking. Defensive technique especially with the advent of Engines are probably one of the pinnacles of modern chess. Back in the days, Tal would obliterate players but now, even 2400s-2600s would find satisfactory defense.

To give you a background, my opening choices against 1. e4 in particular has generally been quite dubious, unlike the rest of my repertoire which is very solid. But I think it's a good thing to put my tactical abilities to the test or else I would just become another positional grindlord that can't play dynamic position and get killed by juniors in sharp positions.

I, like every young player ever, started with the Sicilian Dragon which is already rather speculative as a main opening choice. The Yugoslav has constantly put the dragon under the test and it has experience many deaths and revivals. Not only you have to keep up to date with theory, white gets a very comfortable game with much less risk. I decide to move to a more respected opening choice, well not really. I chose the Kozul Suicide line ( http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chess...on?cid=1008325) which is EVEN MORE theoretical and speculative than ever - it's not called suicide line for no reason. Perhaps I decided it will be one of my opening possibilities, although I have to book up for alot of other anti sicilian lines.

I ended up settling down with the Caro Kann and even spent abit of money on Schandorff GM Rep. I getting all the lines in PGN (with some assistance) but didn't really go through them in too much detail. However, I start to notice a distrubing trend - the caro, while solid, has to deal with alot of attacking plans (like opposite side castling) and plays quite passive in general, especially in the classical variation.

My current scores against experts-master+ in the caro against 1. e4 is 0.5/4. Pretty poor. But I have a good idea of where I went wrong in each game. All of the game has a pretty clear trend. I spazzed out and played some ridiculous move/plan to lose the game.

I wanted to find a game to go in depth, but I then realised all these games I was much worse/lost right out of the opening. The games took me 18, 11, 14 moves respectively to get into a worse game (white is around +1.00).

Maybe you can argue that it was my opening that let me down, and you wouldn't be wrong. I probably shouldn't play an opening I have zero experience with in an international tournament. But you can also argue that if I had better calculational vision and concrete calculation, I would be able to not go into panic mode and play some pretty ridiculous moves.

Of all these three games, I played a spastic move to send a completely fine position up in flames.

I'll give you the three position here.




So in this position arrive after some prep line in the classical caro kann. My opponent was a close friend and has been helping me with my repertoire, so he knows this is what I'm gonna be playing. I had to prepare for semi slav possibilities and other lines the night beforehand.

White played 18. Ne5 and I instantly went into the tank. I forgot my prep after this point and realised I was supposed to play 17. Ng4 to prevent Ne5, g4 and Rh4. This one key move is the key theme of Black's defense in The classical Caro Kann 0-0-0 lines. Obviously, I started panicking here and should've realised I could've just played Bd6 or even Nd7 here. But instead I played the extremely passive and awkward 18. ... Qe4?! 19. f3 Qh7.
Had I just calculated abit and played 18. ... Nd7 19. f4 Nxe5 20. dxe5 Qe4! pinning the bishop and preventing g4 with the threat of Bc5 and forcing white to spend a tempo to get out of the pin.






This second position was even wackier and I arrived to it after falling into a gambit line prep by my opponent. In my preparation I was expecting the Panov, but turns out my prep was outdated. Once again I should've realised 11. ... Be7 12. Rd1 Nd7 13. 0-0 Qc8! and I get out of the pin and can castle next move. Instead I spazzed out and got obsessed with the Bxb8, Bxc6 sac lines and played a series of ridiculous and anti positional moves 11. ... f5?! 12. Bc2 Qf6 13. 0-0-0 g5?? making my king even more exposed. I had alot of variations of Bh6, Nd7, 0-0-0/0-0 in my head but they were wrong. Somehow my opponent didn't exploit that and I got into a drawn endgame O.O only to blunder a free pawn






The last position was against another friend of mine. He played an early Qf3 line which is a decently line actually. After 14. ... e5 15. Qg4 g6 Black should be fine, but I went for the gambit line 14. ... 0-0-0 which was rather unneccessary and just gives a pawn with no compensation. I went for some Ne5->Nxc5 and even later missed Qxe6+->Qxc5 without even losing a tempo.

If I had calculated abit more, I would realise that black doesn't really have any initiative with opening the e- file, it only gives white more counterplay and my Rdf8, g5-g4 plan is too slow compared to his hack. These opposite side castling lines need concrete analysis rather than simple thematic ideas. Feel free to look further into this line if you want.

Alot of those lines weren't hard to calculate at all, in fact they were quite easy. But my lack of classical experience and my tendency to play intuitively (from blitz) hampered my ability to do even some of the most basic calculations.

I will write a post on how I intend to focus on my tactics and calculation training.

I also know from firsthand experience how tough the junior players are in these FIDE tournaments. I played in a tournament a year ago (in Dallas, Texas) and all my opponents were Asian/Indian kids. One was just 9 years old, but was the best 9 year in the country at that time (FIDE 1920 rating). What is worse is also that they are also underrated since their the strength is going up so fast that the rating system can't keep with it in the short term.

Most of the 2300+ players around the world are rising juniors at some point. The ones who study and improve at adulthood that the rare ones.

Basically I came to an epiphany about how to improve as an adult. It's 99% about tactics and I'm pretty sure of it now.

Despite all the hate De La Maza's Rapid Chess Improvement got, it's pretty spot on about how to improve at an adult's age. Most chess trainers can't relate to it, because they all reach their level from years of training since a junior level.

Talking to a GM, a big part of it is tactics, being about to concretely calculate allows you to build plans to begin with.

A known GM from my area, did 44,000 tactical puzzles in the 4 months on CT Art in preparation for the big tournaments earlier this year, including the zonal. His work didn't come to waste, as I see him out tactics and destroy 2300s from completely losing positions, sometimes even down a piece!



I do believe is the best plan to improve drastically, so my core focus from now will be tactics, tactics and tactics!

I was gonna start setting an amount of tactics to do (e.g. 1000 a week) or something like that, as well as set goals but I decided that detract from the main point of training.

I'm just gonna do as many puzzles as I can and I feel like, and see if my tactical/calculation strength can result in a drastic increase in playing strength which I'm very sure it will.

Things which will help my tactical vision and calculation:

- Chesstempo

- CT Art tactical puzzles

- Aargards excelling in chess calculation

- blindfold chess


I've already been doing all of this, but not intensively, just more sporadically over time.

But I'll do it intensively now and see how many I can do.





Other stuff



Openings

I've been spending my time exclusively on openings, I think it's time to take a break. I've been extensively doing lines, I should now treat opening study as more of a hobbie and memorise important games from time to time, as well as refering to the booklet where I typed notes on lines and put my entire repertoire into a single booklet.






I will keep doing some middlegame work (e.g. Aargards books on strategic play) and endgame stuff (Dovretsky).

0/1000 positional puzzles

0/1000 endgame puzzles (might be covered in tactics and endgame study section)



Exercise and health is also probably important. I think things like fatigue plays a very important role in tournament performance so I will have a training regime for that.


I now know what is needed to be done (most of it being tactics alone), and given the upcoming ban on online poker in my country, I'm likely going to only have time left for university and chess which is good.

What's stopping you from emigrating after the graduation, to continue playing online poker?

Anyway, I've heard that there's still hope for poker becoming an exception from the gambling bill, GL with that!

Are you starting with excelling at calculation or going straight to the grandmaster preparation book on calculation? Do you know how they are different? I guess my assumption is that excelling is the one to start with and then you'd move up and on to the grandmaster prep book.

Excelling at calculation is the one to start. Aargard even says in his grandmaster preparation book to read the excelling at calculation one first.

I'm trying to find that book on the net right now.

I can email it to you if you PM me your email

Thanks alot!

This was what I mean, travelling with group of friends to play tournaments in overseas country = goals


Pictures taken from Auckland during the zonals, visited my friends' place after the tournament and realised they worked as a group.

It's true that calculation is the most important thing in chess (and by far the most difficult one to master) but I think there's no need to solve thousands of puzzles in a short period of time. I think 1h a day is more than enough because it's very exhausting if you do it properly. The main thing when solving puzzles is to discipline your thoughts and use the candidate moves technique instead of your previous (natural) chaotic thought process. It's actually much easier said than done. When I'm playing in a tournament I sometimes forget about candidate moves and start thinking in the old, chaotic way, which leads to missing some important candidate moves. I would recommend reading Attack and Defence (title is very misleading) by Dvoretsky, chapters 1 & 2.

Started doing chess coaching again, this time the boss got me to go to a bunch of beginners primary school kid. Kinda funny that some kid kept insisting that you can castle in check...

Still doing bad in blitz when playing with my friends, I have pretty huge minus scores against some of my mates and alot of it is to do with tactical pattern recognition (much less so calculation) which I'm gonna train with on chesstempo. I have no trouble getting winning positions against then just trouble winning :P

This was a pretty interesting puzzle that I did in the calculation book (Aargard) and this pretty much demonstrate my (chaotic) thought process during calculation.



Black to move

"Material is equal but both my rook and knight are under attack, I probably need some forcing moves as candidate moves. 1. ... Nf4 looks nice, hitting the queen, 2. gxf4 Qg2+ 3. Ke3 (Ke1 Nxf3+) looks pretty bad for white, even tho I can't see a definite win yet so I'll just calculate that later. 1. ... Nf4 2. Qc2 (Qe3 or Qe1 lead to knight Ned3+ or Nfd3+) Nfd3+ look more natural than Ned3+ if Ke1 or Kg1 I probably have Bxf5 then Qe3 ideas? actually he has Bxe5 so might not be that good, maybe you should try 2. ... Ned3+ then instead? How about 2. Bxe5 instead wouldn't the queen sac keep white in the game? Okay lets just go back to 2. Qc2 Ned3+ same idea but no more Bxe5 for white, Ke3 wouldn't look so good going into the discovery, not sure what to do against Ke2 or Kg1 though, maybe just Bxf5 then Qxf5 and keep somesort of a powerful attack? Hmmm maybe lets look at other stuff like 1... Nxf3 2. Qxf3 Bg4 what's the point? 1. ... Ng4+ is also forcing but doesn't work i think, how about Rxe1 and take away alot of the option of Rxd6 or Nxd6 but I do want to control the d-file which might be the king's escape square..."

As you can see, I have a pretty chaotic thought process during calculation even if I somewhat comes up with the right king of ideas... My calculation is also quite superficial and I need to work on board visualisation techniques
1. ...Nf4+ was actually correct tho with quite a few deep lines and funnily enough as I thought the queen sac actually keeps white in the game to hang on. Feel free to try to solve this.

Knowing I spent too much time on opening theory (although I think it has to help board visualisation when you are memorising lines), I recently found that Grandmaster Repertoire series had two volumes on the dragon by Gawain Jones!!! Had I known I probably would not have learnt the Caro Kann. I really want to read it but I decided it would only be fair to put it as a reward for finishing a set amount of puzzles of 5000 tactics (quick ones like chess tempo or calculation puzzles) so thats what I will do.

I'm surprised you didn't know of that series. Afaik it's very well known. I think Karjakin even said recently it was his favorite book (or some top guy at one of the super tournaments recently). But, yeah, not sure going deeply into that two book series is really the most valuable way to get better. I guess unless you are going to abandon the Caro but that just seems like opening hopping to me and almost a complete waste of time.

As I said, I'm not focused on openings at the moment. The Sicilian Dragon was my lifelong opening but yea I'll focus on tactics now so we 'll see what happens later on.

Ok, I get a few days off work or I get to do some tactics and set my study schedule which is nice.

Also, I changed my mind about the sicilian dragon, after remember why I dropped it in the first place lol. The majority of my player pool are anti-sicilians and non 1. e4 players anyway. Not feasible to study a semi-sound opening for hours and hours just to rarely ever meet it in practice. I think maybe only even one or two IMs+ would bother to even venture into such the critical line.

Also gonna try to minimise my time going to the club for blitz, I've been going alot lately.

Fell in love with the dragon again: http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1329089

HELP!!!

Taught a pretty beginner-ish class today and they still struggled to grasp the concept of a checkmate and prefers material over winning a game...

Went to play at the club when this nice tactic came up in one of my games:


White had just played bxc3 after I played the thematic exchange sac idea Rxc3, find the stunning combination for black





Still deciding whether to make the Sicilian Dragon book as my reward, might be considering a Petrov Defense book now, played it before, it seems to offer a pretty nice narrow repertoire against 1. e4 and even Kramnik and Smyslov have played it... Furthermore, it is somewhat rare, so might be a good repertoire for me to adopt, both side still have plenty of tactical chances despite its drawish reputation...