goblue, everyone agrees with you about middlegames when they say "tactics, tactics, tactics."

On a separate note, I've been watching a lot of kingscrusher videos and its really helped me understand a lot of positional concepts. He has a very positional style that involves a lot of sacs, and its really helped watching some ideas play out in practice

hmmm i thought tactics referred to endgames?

who is kingcrusher and where can i get his videos? also, out of curiosity what is your rating these days? i feel like we both started taking the game seriously around similar times.

http://www.youtube.com/kingscrusher
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=14179

I guess the question would be: what is your understanding of the definition of tactics?

ha some type of strategy or plan you need to execute to get the result you want?

but i just assumed you guys meant endgame strategies. my fault. so tactics refers to different middle game positions? when you say to study tactics, you mean to study different middle game positions and the different approaches involved?

heh the very first posts of this thread start with what tactics are and its still unclear Possibly oversimplifying, tactics is just not giving material away or getting checkmated, and taking your opponent's material or checkmating him when the chance comes. This wikipedia page only has tactical motifs, but I'd also count the basic level of "taking pieces that are en prise, not putting yours en prise" as tactics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_tactics

hmmmm ya im an idiot. i guess i didnt retain anything from the first few posts. but theres a lot of good information there. i think i was really disappointed when nobody offered examples of epiphanies they had, and i didnt pay as close attention as i should have to the responses.

i will look for books with middle game puzzles (tactics puzzles). one thing i dont like about puzzles is when they rate them from easy to hard. i think that makes the solving process a lot easier. if it's rated "hard" you automatically rule out obvious moves that you might actually make in a real game. i will also look for books in general on "tactics."

anyway, theres definitely great advice in this thread so i apologize for my previous (ignorant) post. i think this is the most informative forum on 2+2. people almost always write out their analysis rather than just the conclusion.

Ok, here's something that would help me:

What do you do when you don't know what to do? How do you minimize the damage until you reach a point where you see what you should do?

If that question doesnt make sense, let me know, and I will elaborate.

when you don't know what to do yourself (that is, you can't find a good plan), try to understand what your opponent wants to do (his plan) and then either try preventing it (if it is good for him) or encourage him to do it (if it is actually good for you but he does not realize it).

Allow me to ramble:
People always say to find your worst placed piece and improve its position, but I've never really been able to implement this.

They also say that every move doesn't have to immediately do something (you know, you don't need a tactic with every move). But this too has given me trouble as tactics, being immediate things to do, are much easier to see.

So what do I do? Sometimes just try out the obvious moves and see which one doesn't fail. It's a better idea to try to see what threats you have -- try to move other pieces to increase pressure on certain squares or lines of attack (and of course, try to prevent your opponent from being able to do the same). I also sometimes look for my fantasy position. What would I like to be able to play if I could just re-arrange the pieces a bit? What's holding me back from getting there and what can I do about it?

I also read some book on pawn structure and I'm almost done with Nimzo's "My System." I think these help as they give good insight into the positional concepts at play.

lol pawn structure. I have no f'ing idea about solid pawn structure.

Maybe I should work on that...

a solid pawn structure is one that looks nice. That's not rocket science. The difficult thing is working with those pawn structures, plans associated with them, knowing when to loosen it in order to attack, and knowing how and when to change them to your advantage.

A basic concept: Maybe the most important epiphany was taught to me when I was a kid "after every move your opponent makes, see if he is threatening anything". It's also a good idea to try and figure out what your opponent is doing in general and not just try and realize your own schemes.

There are "dry positions" where either side cannot do much, as for example the one in post #13 in this thread. The plan outlined in post #15 does not impress me. After 1. Rfd1 Rad8 2. Rxd8 Rxd8 3. a4 Black has 4. -a6 on 4. a5, tying White's Rook to the defense of the a5 pawn.

For the other positions where you don't know what to do, it may be time for you to read up on imbalances. The classic on this subject is Silman's "Reassess Your Chess".

Pierre/

Also, I don't know if it's been said yet, but Dan Heisman's articles are pretty good, iirc.

http://home.comcast.net/~danheisman/...Nook_Links.htm

They're free and easy to read, so at least worth a shot.

tactics. spend an hour or so per day here and you'll be better:

http://chess.emrald.net/

When I can't come up with a plan, I try to identify my worst placed piece, and find a way to improve its placement.

Yeah, that's good...also to add to that...it's a good idea after the move to note how the position has changed...was something left behind? Did the move create weak squares in his position, etc?...basically, identify both the pros and the cons of the move.

I think an important transition for me is going from playing 2/3min games to 5min games.

I will start implementing this tomorrow I guess...

The point is that I tend to lose to an "obvious" rook skewer which I tend to see just after I make my move. I suppose that if I were to have that extra second or two per move then I wouldn't make that mistake...

One skill which contributes to excellence in chess, and may be more important than any other, is pattern recognition.

Rudolf Spielmann once wrote, and I'm paraphrasing: 'I can see the combinations as well as Alekhine, but I can't reach the same positions'.

There was no single catalyst for me as I progressed from novice to 2300 player; I typically gained 100 pts per year in rating till I got to 2100, then got near 2300 in one fell swoop and had a period of probably three years before establishing myself at master level, while fluctuating anywhere from 2150-2300+.

As to practising tactics, Tal never missed an opportunity to look at a puzzle, ridiculously easy though almost all those had to be for him. If he felt the need, how about ordinary mortals such as ourselves?

100 points/year? Oh man that makes me feel a lot better about my progression. After playing for 1.5 years I haven't made it to 1400 yet. But I started at around a 1150 skill level.

Hahaha, at a bit higher level of play I just found I'm learning alot making the exact opposite switch. Going from 5min to 3min games. I find there are a ton of players around the level of weak IM who aren't particularly good but they know various mediocre but not entirely busted openings (budapest, baltic, grand prix, etc) inside out. I've always done incredibly poorly against this sort of opponent and low level 3-minute play is full of guys who do nothing but this so its an incredible learning experience. 5-minute seems to be full of more people actually trying to play more normal chess who I do okay against already.

I think studying well annotated games is the best way to improve, hand in hand with playing and analyzing what the source is of the mistakes you make. The lower your level of play, the more categories there are in which you make mistakes. For example elemetary tactics, bad opening play, not seeing or thinking what your opponent is trying to do etc.

The better you start playing, the less obvious the mistakes you make are (or at leat they should be). Now you might underestimate an opponents initiative, not think about good counters to your obviously smashing kingside attack (this is where playing against computers is useful, even setting up promising attacking positions and play them against the comp). Or you might have difficulties calculating lines clearly beyond 3 or 4 moves or play too passively in endgames.

In the end improving at chess is a peak-plateau-peak-plateau kind of business, until you reach a plateau close to your ´peak natural playing strenghth´ for lack of a better word. At every plateau there are new things to learn. Incorporate new knowledge, play against better opposition, plateau for a while, then work towards a new peaking period.

At some point things will start to come together and you will need less ad verbatim instruction and rules like "the isolated queen´s pawn tends to become weak in the endgame". The more you advance, the more concrete (variation based) your play will become. As Dutch legend GM Donner put it: the last rule you have to learn is that you have to forget all the rules. The British former WC candidate Jonatahan Speelman said more or less the same when he noted that ,,becoming a GM gave me the freedom to play the moves I wanted to play instead of the ones I thought I should."

Chess is for a great part a knowledge based game. The player that better, actively and more creatively uses the knowledge he has, will be the stronger one. But a player who uses a little bit of knowledge well, will usually be beaten by a player using a lot of knowledge in chablone-fashion. Creatitivity and tactical ability (or ´strategic board vision´) are most important in games where the knowledge gap isn´t an issue, and I´m not necesarily talking world class players.

I think chess like many other endeavours is more or less governed by the 10.000 hour rule, spent in a good mix of study and practice. At the very end you will be able to draw your own conclusions about games, positions, openings or whatever. Right now for example I think (however presumptious it may sound to be touting my own horn here) that most moves can be evaluated by two simple criteria: activity and harmony. This is of course not original at all, nor very useful unless you have studied a lot of chess. A beginner using this mantra (or Kasparovs Material-Time-Quality) will be absolutely none the wiser. So there you have it: gobble up knowledge, play, analyze, philiosophize.

The first thing that propelled me was fics.org. Just playing a ton of games with opponents having a slightly higher rating than me.

The second thing that propelled me was solving chess problems. I found a bunch online and converted them into LaTex so I could print them out. I literally solved several thousands of problems. If you cannot find just buy CHESS by polgar.

Then I memorized some openings but chose very poorly never had a coach. I had a Kasparov mind and was playing Karpov openings

After that I almost gave up chess except for one minute lightning games and played as much bughouse as partners and opponents would let me. It is just so much more complex, action & fun. You should try it.

"I am not so briliant that I can skip past the basics and not study the way better players say I should study."

I accepted that six months ago, and went from about 15 years of stagnation (though only playing on and off) to 250 points of ICC standard gain in six months. I'm looking forward to a *very* productive 2011.

My training program right now is basically tactics training my brains out, playing at least one long, slow game a night when I get off work (and annotating it in my chess journal with a computer after), and working through Silman's endgame book anytime I have a decent chunk of time but not enough to play a full slow game.

In general I agree. For example, in tenpin bowling and in snooker, I found that brief tips on correct stance hugely improved my results.

But for chess I would say there is no easy answer. My advice: READ BOOKS on the middle-game. (Tactics and position play).

I'd start with more basic tactics books until you can get yourself up to around 16-1700, and then read "The Inner Game of Chess" by Andrew Soltis.