Quote:
Originally Posted by lkasigh
If I may say, I think the main weakness shown by both players in this game is failure to think concretely enough. I saw a lot of lengthy posts describing the players' though process in words, but containing almost no variations. If you watch stronger players analyze, it's exactly the opposite, almost all variations and only occasionally thinking about general positional considerations.
I would say both players need to work on identifying candidate moves both for themselves and their opponent.
I appreciate the feedback and would be curious to hear more people's thoughts/criticisms/suggestions as well. Always looking to improve my game and stuff like this really helps.
I agree with you that I need to think more concretely, that's one thing I struggle with. I've been working on that, but without bettering my understanding of the game, I end up calculating and analyzing useless variations. It's like if 2300 elo is playing a 900. Even if you give the 900 the ability to move the pieces while calculating and limit the 2300 to something like 4 ply calculating depth, the 2300 will still crush the 900 based on his better understanding.
I've observed some interesting things through watching post-mortems with the top players. Some of them are very variation-oriented, like you said, rattling off long lines like a computer. Others seem more intuitive, just sort of being able to know where pieces belong and putting them there and speak more in generalities. A good analogy would be how some golfers are very mechanical, constantly working on their swing and analyzing every small detail, while others are what they call "feel" players, that rely primarily on rhythm and touch, rarely working on their swing's mechanics. Seems like there is a bit of this in chess as well. Of course all good players are great calculators when the position calls for it, no doubt about it.
I do feel like the majority of this game didn't require extreme calculation. There was certainly some, like the portion after black's exchange sac where I unforgivably missed the Nc2 fork, but a large part of the game was pretty thematic and there weren't many wild complications. I'm not trying to take away from your point at all, I completely agree that my calculation sucks.
That was longer and more rambly than I intended haha.