Smack my bishop (into shape!) - The training log

Lucena · 05-09-2014 8:50pm #1

The journey begins:

First, a little about myself.

I've been playing chess for a shade over ten years, and pretty quickly stagnated at around the 1700 level. For years this was fine, I had other things going on in my life; going back to study as a mature student, trying to get a job, trying to get a better job, buying a house, improving the house etc. Ok, I would've liked to have been stronger, but wasn't too bothered about it.

Now that I'm more settled in life, I've finally had a chance to reflect on what I'd like to do for the next half-century (the big 4-0 will be knocking on the door next month) and one of those things is to work on my chess.

I feel that I can push a bit further, improve my game, understand it better and get more out of it. I know I'll never be a GM, but having had the opportunity to go for a few drinks with GMs in the past, that's not necessarily a bad thing (it can be quite a hand to mouth existence!) But still, I'd hate to be looking back in thirty years thinking I could have done better. As Kurt Vonnegut put it: Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, "It might have been.”

Initially, I wanted to set myself a result-based goal; qualifying for the Irish Championships by reaching 1850 by May 2015 (I'm currently 1723!) The thing is, that's an objective, which is all well and good, but to reach an objective, we need the means. And the means to reaching a goal is work, so I've decided to focus on my training, and this thread is my motivational tool (that and that Rocky IV montage music, listen here, you know you want to! : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bu00RiPjaa4)

So the goal of this thread is to force myself to work harder. I want to work harder at my game, but for this I need to get other stuff sorted. I need to get to bed earlier, for example. Some nights, it'll be 9 o'clock and I'll say to myself "nah, no point getting the board out for training, you'll be going to bed in half an hour, just play a few games of blitz". I'll still be blitzing away at midnight!

I'll need to be more ruthless with myself, more disciplined. If I want to train for an hour in the evening, I'll need to say it in advance (to my OH) and then stick to it. I need to get up early on the weekends. A lot of people seem to think that chess is purely a matter of natural talent, but hard work also makes a difference. The average player who's solved a thousand chess problems will have an advantage over the average player who has done nothing. Sometimes the difference between good and better is putting the work in.

So what will I be putting in this thread? Well, at the end of every week, a recap of what I've done during the week, and objectives for the following week. Games played, the good, the bad and especially the ugly. Random thoughts about chess, improvement, and the universe.

Hopefully I'll be able to keep this thread going for a full season, but I think that writing down my commitments on boards, even if there are only three people reading, will keep me on the straight and narrow.

Ok, here we go!

Lucena · 05-09-2014 9:08pm

I'm going to start with general goals for between now and the end of the year.

1. First and foremost, I'm making a commitment to starting a chess book, and reading it from cover to cover before moving onto another one. In the past, I've read a bit from one, put it down, looked at something in another book, put it down, picked up another etc. etc. This is not the way to improve! A lot (not all) of books have a logical progression from start to finish, if you read it out of order over the space of ten years, you're not likely to progress.

2. No buying new books! I already have 30-40 books, most of them mostly unread. If I fully studied all the books I already have, I'd be a lot stronger than I am today.

3. Regular tactics. I'm currently using chesstempo.com for my training, so I'm going to put in 20 minutes a day on average. I'm not going to set myself up for failure by saying 20 minutes a day everyday, I know that's impossible (work, social life, other commitments)

4. Analysing my own games. I'm going to be realistic about this. If I play a 5-round tournament, I probably won't have time to analyse everything, so I'll pick the two or three most interesting games and analyse those. Trying to do too much is, once again, setting myself up for failure.

Incidentally, there's quite an interesting article on why goals and resolutions fail, mostly related to vague and unrealistic goals:

http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-reasons-your-new-years-resolution-going-to-fail/

5. Working on my endgame. Apparently there are lots of points and half-points to be picked up here, but often when I get to an endgame, the board turns to a random blur of pieces in my mind. I'm sure my fellow 1700s are the same, so some endgame work and I'll get the jump on them!

Lucena · 05-09-2014 9:20pm

For the week ahead.

I'm currently working through 'Silman's Complete Endgame Course' which is divided into chapters based on your rating. So under 999, mate with, for example, K+Q v K, K+ 2R v K etc. The idea is you learn just the amount of endgame knowledge for your level, no point having advanced endgame knowledge if you're hanging pieces straight out of the opening!

I'm currently working through the 1800-1999 section, so this week, I'm going to spend 2 hours on that chapter. My goal is to eventually finish this chapter and also the 2000-2199. Once that's done, I'm going to finish Silman's 'Reassess your Chess Workbook', which I'm about 3/4 way through.

Plus of course the 20 minutes/day of tactics.

If I have any time left over, I might have a quick look through my openings before next weekend, when I'll be playing the first of two Fide-rated 5-round weekenders in September, but this isn't a priority.

Ok, time to go to bed if I want to be rested for the week ahead. I won't be starting my 'get up early on weekends to train' this weekend as I have to spend tomorrow throwing firewood into the shed (real life, eh?!)

Current Fide rating: 1723
Current chesstempo rating (standard) : 1821
Blitz rating on playchess: 1610

cdeb · 05-09-2014 11:21pm

I approve of the thread title!

Currently on a similar journey myself - "inspired" by a run of 12 straight defeats last season, which saw me drop 200 points - so will be keeping an eye on this one. (For the record, my current run is now one defeat in 14, gaining 50 of those points back)

Best of luck!

Valmont · 05-09-2014 11:25pm

I've been thinking of regimenting my training - I study a few hours every week but it's rather haphazard at the moment. Keep up the updates! Re endgames, I was thinking of buy Paul Keres' Practical Chess Endings (I like Paul Keres' style) but like you said I want to finish the book I already own cover to cover first.

caissa007 · 06-09-2014 9:10am

Valmont wrote: »

I've been thinking of regimenting my training - I study a few hours every week but it's rather haphazard at the moment. Keep up the updates! Re endgames, I was thinking of buy Paul Keres' Practical Chess Endings (I like Paul Keres' style) but like you said I want to finish the book I already own cover to cover first.

The Keres book is good but very dry. The Silman book imho is by far the best endgame book for the club player. He's very engaging and chooses very memorable examples/rules of thumb etc. Good luck!!

cdeb · 06-09-2014 9:42am

Don't know if this suits your training plan, Lucena, but I've found DVDs much easier to study than books. I find them more engaging; they're split into bite-size snippets (10/15 minute long clips) and there's a wide range of topics on the chessbase.com shop or amazon. There's also one-hour downloadable videos focussing on fairly specific topics (the French Winawer, for example, rather than just the French). I make notes on endings and (in particular) openings in a notebook, so after a game, I can go back and check where I left book, for example, and try improve my openings knowledge bit by bit. Have had a bit of success with it so far; openings have always been a weakness of mine because I started playing seriously relatively late.

Obviously what works for one mightn't work for another, but said I'd throw that out there if it helped.

Valmont · 06-09-2014 10:13am

The only thing stopping me buying any of Silman's books is that almost everyone in the club recommends them - I think if I read similar material from other authors I'll pick up some things they don't know about. I do accept however that this might not make much sense! And I'm still only 75 ECF - I jumped 15 points at the recent Leeds congress. Sorry for chatting in your training thread, Lucena!

Valmont · 06-09-2014 10:18am

If you want to get in more tactics training and have a smart phone you should consider the iChess app (I have it on android). It comes with approx 1000 puzzles split into three categories: normal, advanced, and master. You can also buy blocks of themed puzzles for 99p - I've just been doing some endgame tactics this morning. I like the app because I have the habit now of training my tactics when I commute back from work in the evening.

Lucena · 06-09-2014 8:36pm

No worries about chatting in "my" thread, Valmont, I happy to be getting any feedback!

Regarding the Silman endgame book, I find Silman's style very readable, sometimes a little OTT with the humour, but it's definitely easier to read than say Nimzo's 'My System'.

I'm looking forward to getting stuck into Rook and pawn(s) v Rook and pawn(s) endgames, I always personally felt that a proper chess player should have a knowledge of rook endgames!

No training today, but a shed full of firewood and a nice glass of IPA to reward myself!

Valmont · 10-09-2014 11:51am

Are you still on the IPA, Lucena? Along the lines of chess 'training' I was thinking of getting the first volume of Artur Yusupov's series Build Up Your Chess. It's won some awards and comes highly recommended. I like the look of the books as I think I need to improve my OTB thinking efficiency. I waste a lot of time calculating what are ultimately pointless or overly fanciful variations.

eclipsechaser · 10-09-2014 8:33pm

Best of luck, Lucena. While I don't play tournament chess too often, I feel I've improved a fair bit in the past year by playing online (and casually) along with doing some study. I think the suggestion of Chessbase DVDs is a good one. Karsten Muller has a good series on endgames and Daniel King on attack. Chesstempo is great for tactics. I also use chess.com for correspondence games which really force you to think strategically and go deeply into lines. I've just joined the FIDE online arena which allows you get online FIDE ratings.

Coincidentally, our ICU ratings are the exact same.

Lucena · 15-09-2014 6:45pm

The much-delayed update!

Throwing in wood and chess are not compatible. Mad pain in my shoulder stopped me getting proper sleep last Sunday night (I'd say I got 3 hours in all) knackered for work the next day. Came home, did me few bits and bobs, then sat down to study for an hour.

After about 10 minutes of staring blankly or moving the pieces around but not mentally paying attention, I decided there was no point studying when too tired.
Tuesday evening: meeting
Wednesday evening, had originally planned to study, but my trainer had rang me up Monday to see if I was available for a training session Wednesday, so we spent two hours analysing a recent game, which was interesting, but not part of my study plan.
Thursday evening, spent quality time with OH as wouldn't be around much for the rest of the weekend.
Friday evening, club AGM and 5-round Fide tournament Saturday and Sunday.

Total time spent working on the endgame: 0 hours!
Total chesstempo training: 3.1 hours

Chesstempo rating: 1814.7 (-6)
Playchess rapid rating: 1395 (-215!) Don't play chess when you're tired kids!

Lucena · 15-09-2014 7:07pm

The Fide tournament!!

Before playing, I decided I needed to work harder during the games, as I have a tendancy to spend too much time wandering around during the game, and ending up in time-trouble later on. Initially my goal was to be something vague like 'spending more time at the board', but it's impossible to keep vague goals. So I decided to be more precise, and only allowed myself to get up from the board three times during the game!

I managed to keep to this more or less (in two of the games I got up four times) and as a result, got to think more about the game in hand. On my own move, I concentrated more on concrete calculation of the position, on my opponent's move, I thought about more general strategic concerns, looking for misplaced pieces, files/columns and all that.

I feel my hard work payed off in the sense that I enjoyed the games more, but not really regarding results.

Round 1: loss to a 1988
Round 2: win against 1548
Round 3: win against 1461
Round 4: win against 1485
Round 5: loss against 1908

So 3 out of 5, a perfomance rating of 1750, and according to http://www.kosteniuk.com/EloCalc/elo.php , a 1758 rating performance and a whopping 3 rating points gained!

A bit disappointing, especially as I felt I had a good position in the last game, and should probably have won. I'll analyse the 1900 games fully, and have a quick run through the others. I will do that this coming Sunday, as I've nothing else planned that day. If anyone could point me in the direction of tools that would allow me to insert games and/or positions into boards.ie, I'd be eternally grateful. Must have a look in the stickies, might be something there.

For the week ahead:

Tonight, finish inputting the games from this week's tournament.
Wednesday: An hour of Silman's endgame magic!
Thursday: Hopefully half an hour squeezed in somewhere, but not too optomistic!
Sunday: Analyse the two 1900 games.

20 minutes a day of Chesstempo.

We'll see if I can stick to it this week.

One final objective. Felt a bit tired (physically and sleepy) during the tournament, so sleep is important. Especially as the tournament the weekend after next goes from Friday evening (7.30 pm start!) to Sunday evening, and it's quite a drive from where I live. So going to try to average 8 hours a night for the next 10 days. Going to keep a little chart beside the bed. Romantic or what!

Good night!

Valmont · 16-09-2014 12:14pm

What's the purpose of the twenty minutes a day of chesstempo? Are they mating puzzles? I've started Yusupov's course and it's left me rather red-faced so far; I thought I would recognise the standard mating patterns fairly easily but it turns out the opposite is true. Good news is that the book will be more useful than I thought - maybe I will start a training thread too!

cdeb · 16-09-2014 12:43pm

Lucena wrote: »

Round 1: loss to a 1988
Round 2: win against 1548
Round 3: win against 1461
Round 4: win against 1485
Round 5: loss against 1908

Bit of an unfortunate series of opponents; might have been a better indicator had you drawn someone within 150 points or so of your rating!

Was it an open? Or an under 2000?

Lucena · 16-09-2014 1:24pm

Under 2200 with accelerated Swiss pairings for the first two rounds. Not sure exactly how it works, but the idea is to avoid the mismatches of normal Swiss pairings, especially in the early rounds.

Unfortunate series alright, not that the games against the weaker players were too easy, just that I didn't get to test myself against similar level opposition.

The tournament in ten days’ time should give me a better idea if I’m progressing, as I’m playing in the B section which has players between 1600 and 2000.

cdeb · 16-09-2014 1:38pm

Accelerated Swiss pairings are explained here.

But very roughly, the first round is top half against top half, and bottom half against bottom half, while the second round is top eighth v the second eighth, the second quarter v the third quarter and the seventh eighth v the bottom eighth.

Valmont · 16-09-2014 1:44pm

Could you post up any of your games, Lucena?

Lucena · 16-09-2014 1:46pm

Valmont wrote: »

What's the purpose of the twenty minutes a day of chesstempo? Are they mating puzzles? I've started Yusupov's course and it's left me rather red-faced so far; I thought I would recognise the standard mating patterns fairly easily but it turns out the opposite is true. Good news is that the book will be more useful than I thought - maybe I will start a training thread too!

Chesstempo is general tactics training, although there are also endgame and mating problems.

Yusupov's course is quite hard, but worth sticking to, I'd imagine. I did the first seven chapters in the first book, before wandering off and doing something else! The series was originally published in German under the titles 'Tigersprung auf 1500/1800/2100' with the implication being that doing the first three books would help you on your way to 1500, second three up to 1800 and so on.

However any reviews I've read say that the first three are actually fairly challenging for players already above 1500 (say up to 1800-1900). The idea behind the series is that most players' knowledge has huge gaps in it, due to the fact that they have learned in a disorganised fashion, hopping from one book to another. So by reading the books, from start to finish in order, you should have well-rounded knowledge in all areas of the game.

Actually it was probably Yusupov who gave me the biggest scare of my life, as well as stopping me from buying new books. For each chapter, he reckons it takes two hours of study, plus two more hours to do the associated problems. At 4 hours x 25 chapters = 100 hours. When I sat down to think about it, I realised each book could take me six months at four hours a week! At that rate, it would take ten years to read everything in my collection.

Valmont · 16-09-2014 2:08pm

Lucena wrote: »

When I sat down to think about it, I realised each book could take me six months at four hours a week! At that rate, it would take ten years to read everything in my collection.

As soon as I read this my eyes drifted across the room to my copy of Bobby Fischer's My 60 Memorable Games.

It took me a whole afternoon to read through Fischer's annotations of his 1958 draw with Petrosian. Fischer's book is hugely enjoyable but at my level it's something I sit down with as a treat every now and then rather than use as a learning tool -- too much of it is beyond my comprehension.

Lucena · 16-09-2014 2:25pm

I hear ya, buddy! My copy of Tal's Life and Games serves a similar purpose.

Lucena · 17-09-2014 11:31am

Could anyone explain how to insert diagrams and/or games into boards? If it's possible, maybe it could be stickied for other users.

cdeb · 17-09-2014 11:51am

Games can't be done I think. Or, well - maybe it can, but it'd mean installing a pgn patch across the whole of boards. We've asked, the relevant mods are looking, but it's not going to happen soon unfortunately.

Diagrammes should be more straightforward; you can upload an attachment, which should do the trick. I think you're fairly limited by attachments though, as these are hosted on the boards website.

Alternatively, if you have a website of your own, you can upload the pictures to there and then insert an image in your post by clicking on the yellow box with mountains and sun on the control panel, and adding in the relevant url.

Valmont · 17-09-2014 11:57am

You can create it in Chess.com and then post the link. It's not too much trouble.

phnompenhchess · 21-09-2014 2:58pm

Really nice thread Lucena, following you with interest and hoping that you make progress. Your story mirrors mine and probably many many more.

Jackson (from Gonzaga) made efforts to work on his chess and added about 200 points.

Lucena · 22-09-2014 7:56pm

http://www.chess.com/blog/Binouzenours/early-september-2014-tournament

My first tournament game with a sprinking of comments.

Here's the link to the Marocky Bind game analysed by Seirawan:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icJcMIv2q50

Lucena · 22-09-2014 8:09pm

Regarding training over the last week, once again I'm falling short of my targets. Unexpected phone calls, chess organising (I'm quite busy as a team captain and helping organise local events) and being involved in the community (Thursday and Friday night and all Saturday out the window, at least from a chess point of view)

Still, I managed to get two hours of Silman's engame book studied on Sunday. Finished the 1800-2000 chapter, and started trying to solve the end of chapter problems. The K + pawn v K are ok, as were the bishop endings, but I seem to have major problems with Rook and One V Rook. What I'd like to do, if I get the time, is input these endings in Fritz, that way I can always have a quick look through them when I've a bit of time. Hopefully it'll be easier than having to get the board out every time.

Playchess rating : 1568 (15.5 wins out of 16!!!)
Time spent on Chess Tempo: 2 hours, so just under 20 mins/day average.
Chess Tempo rating: 1788, dropping about 30 points. I tried to solve a few problems this morning, but I just can't seem to concentrate properly, my brain seems to focus on the fact that I need to head off to work!

Objectives for the week ahead. None, other than getting a few early nights. Tuesday and Wednesday are already booked, although Wednesday is a training night with my trainer, so hopefully I'll find out where I went wrong in that endgame! Thursday is quality time, and the weekend is me chessing again.

Lucena · 22-09-2014 8:19pm

phnompenhchess wrote: »

Really nice thread Lucena, following you with interest and hoping that you make progress. Your story mirrors mine and probably many many more.

Jackson (from Gonzaga) made efforts to work on his chess and added about 200 points.

Thanks!

I'm always curious about people who make huge improvements, especially regarding how they did it, and of course, their age. Generally it turns out that they're between 10 and 25 years of age, when time is more available. Which reminds me of this: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/online_gaming

Lucena · 26-09-2014 6:26am

Well, heading off to work now, and playing the first round this evening. Of the 56 players already registered, I'm 37th, meaning that probably most of my games will be against slightly stronger opposition, which suits me fine. I feel less pressure playing against stronger players, as I've nothing to prove and it's up to them to prove they're better than me. Also if a game is heading towards a draw, I don't feel I need to take drastic measures to try and win, as a draw against superior opposition is a good result.

Lucena · 29-09-2014 3:52pm

Well, just back from a shocker of a tournament, results wise.

I scored a mere 1/5 with a performance of 1521! Apparently it's going to cost me 19 points, so I should drop back to 1704, plus the 3 or 4 points I gained from two weeks ago.

How the hell did this happen? Well, you could say that over a short tournament, it's very easy to have a freak result (either positive or negative)

Possibly I didn't arrive in ideal conditions. I worked in the morning, then drove all afternoon to get there (about six hours included pit stops). The first round was supposed to start at 7.30 but latecomers and the opening speeches pushed that back to 8 p.m. This is the first time I've played so late, and unfortunately my first game was a hard-fought affair which last until about quarter to one in the morning! It ended in a loss in which is, I'm fairly sure, a drawn endgame in which I over-reached.

Won the second in a fairly tense game where my opponent was two pawns down (g and h), but I'd castled kingside and he had his rooks bearing down, so lots of tactics to calculate.

Lost the third on the black side of a KID (9. Ne1 in the Classical King's Indian) after making an error in the opening, which led to into losing an exchange for zero compensation. The KID is a bloody hard opening to master, with lots of different variations to learn, and I don't really have time to learn them. I've been toying with the idea of switching to the Queen's Gambit, which seems to be a lot less do-or-die than the KID, but that means pretty much starting from scratch, which is why I haven't started yet. I think I see the problem here; I don't want to 'waste' time studying the KID as I'm thinking about changing to another opening, but I don't want to change because it'll take a lot of time staring from scratch. So for the moment, I'm doing nothing, so am lethally under-prepared for non e4 openings!

Lost the fourth after negotiating the opening quite well and having a bit of an initiative. It came down to a close endgame where I saw a tactic (that didn't work), went for it and ending up a piece and a pawn down, totally losing the game.

Last round I had black again in the KID, this time against the Petrosian Variation. Made a hames of the opening, didn't get the kingside attack going and was getting smashed on the Q-side when my opponent castled long! So this gave me tactical opportunities on the queenside, as his pawn cover was lacking. I had a winning position (I think), but missed that one of my pawns was en prise and let my opponent win as his queen and knight got into my kingside where the king was.

Lessons to be learned:

Learn a defence to d4 (properly). Yes but when???
Try to arrive at the tournament well rested. In this case, it was impossible as I'd a meeting in the morning that I couldn't get out of, but if I do the tournament next year, I'll try and block off the Friday a long time in advance.
I possibly need more practice calculating variations, as a few times I felt the games warranted deeper analysis but I couldn't go deep enough and went with the variation that seemed the best after what analysis I could do.

Positives?

My games are lasting longer, with the average in this tournament being roughly 47 moves per game. I'd like to think that this means I'm making my opponent work harder before he wins, and that eventually my perseverence will pay off, and that my endgame skills will improve. Hope springs eternal!

New mission objectives:

Analyse all five games, looking at the opening, middlegame and endgame. Pay special attention to moments where I felt I wasn't analysing deeply enough and try again, with the pieces on the board in front of me, to analyse the position correctly, checking with the computer AFTER I've come to some conclusions myself.

Smack my bishop (into shape!) - The training log

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