Author: Miguel A. Ballicora
Date: 13:04:52 02/04/02
Go up one level in this thread
On February 04, 2002 at 15:37:38, David Rasmussen wrote: >On February 04, 2002 at 11:40:07, Miguel A. Ballicora wrote: > >>On February 04, 2002 at 10:38:04, David Rasmussen wrote: >> >>> >>>Thanks for the link. Great article! I too am a weak chess player, and I have >>>also recently had an insight about focusing on tactics instead of positional >>>knowledge. I have 40 chess books or so, and of course some of them are about >> >>I found this kind of things too dogmatic. >>The most important part of learning is interest and motivation. If you despise >>going through thousands of tactical exercises with nothing in between for >>a year most probably your are going to quit after two weeks. This is like >>the magic diets where you have to juggle your day around the diet. >>As always, improvement is an individual effort and depends very much on the >>individual. That's where the importance of the teacher comes, NOT TO EXPLAIN >>WHY Ba4 is better than Bxc6 in the Ruy Lopez. >>Tactics will be a key for a player, but might not be for another. There >>hundreds of details that are important and some of them are not even related >>to chess (like attention etc.). In general, tactics are very important >>particularly at that level, but it is not wise to separate it from everything >>else. >>Tactical exercises are good, but it is never good to be 100% of the training. >> >>Ah! do not forget to play real OTB chess, but not too much. 60-80 slow paced >>(anything that last more than 3 hours) games a year, select some and analyze >>them to death WITHOUT A COMPUTER, show it to a stronger player or a friend. >>Share analysis... Then, use your computer. Keep a notebook with everything... >> >>Regards, >>Miguel >> > >I know what you mean, and I generally agree. I too find the article dogmatic, >but that doesn't matter, IMO. Sometimes that's needed to fight another (older) >dogma. The articles is even wrong at some points: It is not necesarily better to >be able to look 5 moves with "no positional knowledge (not even material?)", >than to look 4 moves with Grandmaster level positional knowledge. In chess >programming terms: There are a lot of evaluation terms that makes up for search >depth: If you have a passed pawn on the 6th rank supported by your king in an >endgame, with positional knowledge, you will know with a 0-ply search that this >is strong, whereas it takes a 3-ply search with "no knowledge" to see this. Besides, a GM can play a full game without calculating at all (say just 3-4 plies) and outplay a 1900 player that spend 2 hours for the game. That's what happen in simuls. >Anyway, my point isn't that everything he says is true. The point is that there >are almost no books that shows a practical tangible studying _technique_. What >to do when practicing. How to practice. In every other sport, it is not enough >to show people how the masters do things, and what not to do. It is a very >important part for the all beginners and immediates, that they are shown _how_ >to _practice_, not only what to practice or what to aim for with practice. If >you want to get better at running, you don't just put on some shoes and start >running. On the other hand, you don't just view some videos of great runners >winning races. The most valuable advice you get, is _how_ and _what_ to >practice. No chess book that I know of does that. At least not very much. What >should I do with my time, to develop? How _do_ I play over games from books? Do >I do it on a board? On a computer? In my head? Do I think about each move for 5 >seconds or 5 minutes? Do I play out variations on the board? A lot of very >basic, repetitive excercises are needed to "train" in chess the same way as all >other things. And we're never told what or how to train. I understand. Chess books have always centered around "chess" and not around the "players". The books that might come close to what you want could be "Training for the tournament player" by Dvoretsky et al. "Improve your Chess Now!" By J. Tisdall and a little less "Secrets of Practical Chess" by J. Nunn. However, the Russian school had their methods for teaching kids and we have seen the results. Regards, Miguel > >/David > >/David
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