Author: P. Massie
Date: 10:22:35 07/11/03
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My apologies - I mis-quoted Mueller's book title slightly - it's actually Fundamental Chess Endings. I was frustrated for a long time at that level, and I've had many friends the same way. You read all the books on how to get better, and you try to apply it in tournanment games, and yet your results never seem to change much. Finally, after much time and suffering, I decided to try a different approach. A lot of GM's write books on how to improve, yet if you actually see how most of them improved, they did it through extensive playing and studying of games, rather than by following any general rules. Chess is such a complex game that success cannot be boiled down to a few simple rules. If it could chess programs would be simple to create. You need to develop a huge store of memory patterns such that you can recognize the key elements of a given position and have a reasonable idea of how to proceed. This is the key element that separates GM's from Masters and them from amateurs. As you get stronger the store of patterns gets bigger and you can recognize more patterns faster. That's why a GM can glance at a familiar position and instantly pick out one or two reasonable moves. Then they just have to calculate the tactics around those moves. Whereas in that same position an amateur has no clue, and spends all of his/her time just trying to find a move, with no time left for tactics. Also, since the GM is familiar with the position, he/she already knows the common tactical themes to look for, so they'll see most of the tactics almost instantly. Different people use different methods to develop these memory patterns, but clearly you have to pick a relatively small set of openings to minimize the work, you have to study characteristic games in those openings, and you have to play frequently in those openings. And ask questions about the moves - whether looking at your game afterward or a GM game. Sometimes even GM's miss things, or they pick one move just because they like it, not necessarily because it's better. If you do this you will get better. How good you get and how fast are determined by your natural talent and time invested, but this is the only method I know that actually works. Dvoretsky's system is exactly this - he works with each of his students to determine their weaknesses and gives them exercises tailored precisely to those weaknesses. Thus his students develop the necessary patterns in their bad areas. This works great if you can afford Dvoretsky as a personal coach, but not well at all if you're just trying to use his books, since those attempt to be general, and generality doesn't work well. Paul
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