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23rd_Sept_09 Your chess profile

Ish has been kind enough to give me his copy of Igor Khmelnizky's Chess Exam and Training Guide.  You remember me banging on a couple of years ago about knowing your chess profile, having an idea of what your strengths and weaknesses are?  Well, this book does what I was telling you to do: it gives you a rating for a set of diverse features.  So, if your study of your own games gives you no clues, or you'd like a second opinion, I think you can't do better than this book.

Sample Profile

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21st Sept 09: What you see with your mind

"Sight is what you see with your eyes, Vision is what you see with your mind." http://lessons.chessvision.net/

There is a gap between what is under your nose and what you actually notice. It's the gap between what is obvious once your opponent lands a punch and what you did failed to see beforehand...

Chess uses a big board and it's hard to see how things join up sometimes. How can we see things coming before the accident happens?  Can we somehow look ahead better? This is sometimes called sight of the board, or chess visualisation, or chess vision... Shall we call it boardsight, rather than eyesight?  

I was putting together a set of mixed exercises (below), and came across several exercises for developing your boardsight... Here's a selection.

There's a great free online exercise from the Chess Drum

with items like:
  • Without looking at a board: what colour is the square ... b3?

  • Complete the sequence... a7-b8-h2, a5-d8-h4, a3-f8-h6, d1-a4-?

  • On which square can you put a knight to attack .... the g7 and e3 squares?

  • Where would you place a Queen so that it attacks h6, e4 and a3?

  • With a knight, you can attack the d2 and a5 squares from both c4 and...which square?

  • After the moves 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 e6 3.Nbd2 d5 4.g3 c5 5.dxc5 Bxc5 6.Bg2... What should black play here?
Chessboard tasks (Martin Gardner)


  • Place eight queens on a chessboard so no queen attacks or defends another (you can use 8 pawns to stand for Queens).

  • How many Bishops can you place on a chessboard so that no Bishop attacks or defends another?

  • ...And how many knights?

  • Arrange five queens on the board so that every single square is attacked.

  • How many Knights does it take to do the same thing?
Knight Dance

The famous Czech IQ test:
-+-+-+-+
+-+-+-+-
-+x+-X-+
+-+-----
-+-+-+-+
+-X-+x+-
-----+-+
N-+-+-+-


Visit in turn the squares a1, b1, c1...h1, then h2-a2, a3-h3, etc. WITHOUT ever moving to a square occupied or attacked by a Black Pawn. Not too difficult, but can you beat 5 minutes against the clock?
Blindfold chess


Play chess without the pieces, calling moves out to each other.  If you play an illegal move, you lose!  You need a referee for this, who does have the pieces! (There's software too.)  Or try it when only one player plays blindfold… 

Commercial:

Chess Eye


A demo offline/online chess visualisation trainer
Chess Vision trainer


You play against the computer on the screen, but the board shows the position two ply behind...  If you can manage that, it will hide one quarter of the board!
Professor Chess (Jim Mitch)


Jim offers a sample homework set, with questions like:

In this position:
  • How many possible White captures? 
  • How many possible White checks?
  • How many possible Black captures? 
  • How many possible Black checks?

Count again, picturing the board two moves hence!

What's the fastest way for a [Knight] to move from [a7] to [a6]?

Which squares are attacked by both [Qd3] and [Nd2]?
Alex Bartashnikov's chess software


A superb suite that includes some try-before-you-buy visualisation training (including blindfold chess).  Excellent for youngsters!
Detective Chess (Gerry Quinn)


There are White pieces KQRBN at b7,c3,d4,g8 and g5.
The squares a4 and e1 are attacked once each,
the square g1 is attacked twice, and the square g7 three times.
Where is each White piece?

I dunno about playing blindfold or with a partly hidden board: I find playing blindfold a zillion times easier if I have an empty board to look at, and you will never be without a board during a game.

Maybe the simplest idea is: load up a complete game from a database, or open a book of chess games, pick a position half-way through, then imagine the position two moves hence, and count all the possible White checks and captures for each side. Then make the two moves, and check to see if you were right.  Slap yourself once for every one you missed.  Then pick more complicated positions.  Then look further ahead.  Then slap harder.

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20th Sept 09 Free junior club cards e-book

[DOWNLOAD CARDS]

Here is a set of cards that you can have up your sleeve while running a junior chess club.  Sometimes you have a spare player -- and sometimes players get a bit bored playing the same old faces each week – so here are some ways to mix things up. 

There are four sorts of card:



BOARDSIGHT



Chess uses a big board and it's hard to see how things join up – these tasks will help you get your eye in

EXERCISES



Practice for a chess skill

GAMES



A variation of chess – maybe one that will help you practise an important chess skill

ENDGAME



Target practice for finishing off a game

Draw a card for everyone to have a go at when they arrive, or draw one later for  one or two players who are at a loose end. The number of possible ideas is enormous, but these have been tried and tested.

I've left out perhaps some of the better-known ideas, like blitz chess, doing tactics puzzles, and crazy lightning.  In the unlikely event that you haven't heard of these, you will find them on the Internet.   

I don't think any of these ideas are completely original, but I don't know where they all came from.  Credits are due to Gerry Quinn (Detective chess), Jeff Coakley (Winning Chess Exercises) Steven Addison (100 other games to play on a chessboard) David Pritchard (The Encyclopedia of Chess Variants), Raymond Smullyan (The Chess Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes) and Martin Gardner (Mathematical Carnival).

[Sample page]

Suggestions and comments welcome – then soon there might be another set.

P.S. Print them on card or onto labels; A6 labels can be stuck to the A5 playing cards made by Stratus.

""

18th Sept 09 Free tactics e-book

[DOWNLOAD BOOK] [DOWNLOAD PGN]

Here is a collection of very short games organised by tactical theme.  The main aim is to give you a quick run-through the basic tactical ideas in genuine positions.  One advantage of using short games is that you can set the positions up on a board very quickly and accurately.  You can of course just use the diagrams as test positions.  If you have a database that you can use with a group, you might like the PGN regardless.

Anyone could have done this, and maybe you would have done it better, but you might find it useful that it has been done by someone else.

Nearly all the games start 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3, which I hope means they will connect with, and reinforce, good opening principles for learner players, and show poor play punished. There is an opening index by ECO code so you can run through several tactical ideas associated with one opening or even one variation.

Sample page

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18_Aug_09 Mopping up

There were three issues raised at the start of the summer that I haven't dealt with yet, and thought I'd offer some reflection.  It turned out that the people who wanted to work on these issues aren't around at the moment, so I might come back to these!
  1. Making practice (at club and at home) really helpful in terms of improvement
    That would be a good thing to solve!  Well, in many ways I've tried to promote and model this over the last few years, so I will be brief here.
    I think most have us have come across some variation or other of the experiential learning cycle, which Kolb and colleagues have developed over many years, originally in connection with adult education.  A chess version of this might look like:

    PLAY
    		 ==>
    		 REVIEW
    /\
    /\
    		\/
    \/
    STUDY/PRACTICE
    		 <==
    		 REPORT

    The idea is to learn from experience, and focus on what actually is holding you back, and not what you enjoy studying.  Simon Webb (and Ish) have provided good models for how to look at your own game and identify weaknesses; Rowson and Dvoretsky have provided some good ideas about how to study.
    It is possible to improve at chess just by playing, because of course each exchange of moves allows for your current thinking to be challenged, each game gives you new experience to interpret.  But playing without reflection might just rehearse bad habits...
    It's hard to talk in general terms: it's also not clear what it is reasonable to expect from your study.  If you're a tennis player and work on your backhand, you might reasonably expect to be able to play a few backhands in your next match.  But if you study IQP positions, you may not see one for months.

  2. Too narrow an opening repertoire
    I wonder what sort of problem that is.  I would have thought for most of us, we could do with getting into a groove with our openings, getting to know them better.  So, I've been trying to get Brian to stick to one opening system as White and two as Black, so he can get familiar with and eventually expert in those formations.  I think he's doing well with White but keeps making it up as he goes along as Black.  You branch out later, once you've got something solid to base it on.  When you do branch out, you can take on related systems, similar formations, and broaden your expertise in that way.  It's a good goal to be able to play any opening well, any type of position well, but be realistic about what you want to take on as an amateur with limited study time.
    It's possible to play any opening at amateur level, I think, and play it well and with your own ideas.  There is the Tony Dempsey IQP repertoire:
    White:
    Scotch Four Knights' Game
    Tarrasch Variation vs. French
    Panov-Botvinnik vs. Caro-Kann
    Alapin vs. Sicilian
    Black:
    Swiss Defence vs. QGD (although the Tarrasch also makes sense to me: you get into it a lot earlier so you're more likely to end up playing it!)
    Petroff's Defence vs. 1.e4

  3. Calculating all the tactics out (relying too much on intuition i.e. Laziness)
    The penalty for doing that is of course missing things and losing.  If that doesn't hurt enough to make you change your ways...
    As for a cure, perhaps take on sharp positions against a computer, when you will surely be punished for being lazy.  Dvoretsky recommended a couple of deeply-analysed games from John Nunn to be used for playing-out against an opponent, (see the Canon) but by all means pick positions from an anthology of games by your favourite attacking player. 
    A similar technique is: play a series of games against your computer in open games (1.e4 e5), and re-start the game after any oversights.  Aim to extend the average length of the games!
.
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Archived posts:

Help on using inserted games [palview].

I've re-worked this page to use palview, which I think is wonderful; had I been starting from scratch now, I'd use it for everything.

  1. Whole games will be displayed in a new window or tab if you follow the link; play through them if you like, then come back to the main text.
  2. The control panel buttons are, in order:

    |<

    		<<

    		<

    		>

    		>>

    		>|

    		^

    		( )

    		/\

    Go to start

    		Back 5 moves

    		Back

    		Forward

    		Forward 5 moves

    		Go to end

    		Flip board

    		Autoplay

    		Step into variations

    It's working for you, you should see a diagram and a game which will open a new window to play through below:

    Keen C.
    Ward G.

    Exeter vs. Met. Office
    2008


    21... Rf8










    (White to move) ... 1-0 (42) 1-0

  3. Visitors without Javascript, and perhaps with other configurations, may not be able to view and play through these games as intended.  You can download all the games and positions as a PGN file, and this can be viewed using a PGN viewer (N.B. WinBoard is also a PGN viewer, as well as a front end for GNU chess and online play.)
  4. Any other problems, suggestions, etc., let me know.
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List of previous blog articles: (please open in a new window or approach through the
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  • KEY to classes [explanation]
    class A class B class C class D

    class [All]

    • Game(s) in PGN