Coaching

Annotating games

Submitted by DrDave on

A recent email:
I've never annotated a game. Could be interesting. Perhaps you could
send me a game and I'll try to annotate it without computer. Might show
you my thinking.

The games that are most valuable to annotate are your own games, (but maybe in future it might be a good exercise to look at somebody else's). I think it's a good discipline to look at all of your serious games at least briefly after the game with your opponent, then again at home with some software, and record your thoughts.

Chess Psychology

Submitted by DrDave on

Special lecture by Ish Ramdewar

Chess Psychology- It's all in the mind! 

Or

How Not To Play Chess

by Ish

I did an analysis on all my games this season, and I found that when I lost, it was mostly because of something wrong in my thought processes. Usually, I just got lazy! This is the number one reason I dropped points or half points! I trusted to instinct what I could have worked out. In no game did I drop below 5 minutes on the clock at any point, and only once below 10 minutes.

Do chessplayers think?

Submitted by DrDave on

The late Simon Webb had a wonderful idea a while ago, to record chessplayers of different strengths for 10 minutes while they considered a chess position.  He published them in Barry Wood's old CHESS magazine in the 1970s, and I've used them before with groups.  We tried this last week; I gave them all this position:


Fridrik Olafsson
Svetozar Gligoric

Los Angeles (1)
1963

No. 1

A Thinking Process

Submitted by DrDave on

I often think, only a correspondence player has the luxury of adopting a genuinely consistent thinking process. The rest of us have to contend with the clock, our emotions, our laziness...

I have struggled with this issue all my life, it seems. There has to be something which balances the thorough with the realistic.

For juniors, I have been playing around with a THINking scheme, which was really driven by the need to correct some common errors; it goes:

Elements of a chess profile

Submitted by DrDave on

So, last week we launched the summer coaching sessions.  I explained the idea of the profile, and went on to ask everyone to complete the 3+3 exercise described below:
  • Three things I do well (or try to do well)
  • Three things I do badly (or want to do better)

The items were written onto coloured sticky notes, and I arranged thinto rough groups on a table.  Doubtless other arrangements were equally legitimate.  The idea was for everyone

Coaching for Adults

Submitted by DrDave on

I'll be running some more coaching sessions over the summer, which might mean a poke around on the website.

When we first started running coaching sessions in the early 1990s, the set-up was a bit different.  We had lots of handouts on paper, we had a separate room to go and be noisy in, and there wasn't an awful lot of help available.

Over a decade on, where are we?

Well, one thing that is going to be the same is the self-help feel of the sessions.  I'm not that good a player to pose as an expert and

Coaching for Juniors

Submitted by DrDave on

[all] 13th May 2007. Coaching 2007 Part 1: Juniors

My congratulations to my esteemed friend and occasional team-mate Mark Abbott, who put on another ten points to his grade last year.nbsp; When we played last year in the summer, I discovered he had played about 70 match and tournament games over the season, while I barely played 20.nbsp; It's a harsh realisation, but I think I'm never going to improve while playing so little.nbsp; But I did have a better tournament [this year

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