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Subject: Re: Chess improvement method and CC

Author: Uri Blass

Date: 14:13:35 02/04/02

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On February 04, 2002 at 16:37:53, Miguel A. Ballicora wrote:

>On February 04, 2002 at 16:19:04, Uri Blass wrote:
>
>>On February 04, 2002 at 16:04:52, Miguel A. Ballicora wrote:
>>
>>>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.
>>
>>I think that you are wrong to assume that the GM does not calculate at all.
>>I believe that few seconds of GM's calculation is simply often better than few
>>minutes of 1900's player calculation.
>
>Players in simuls against much weaker players do not calculate a damn thing.
>They just play the first move that pop into their heads. Once in a while they
>stop to calculate to finish up a game but that is the minority of the cases.
>
>You are less likely to blunder when your pieces are in the right spot and you
>follow plans that you did hundreds of times before. Not to mention if you
>managed to trade queens and went into an endgame. You can go into cruise control
>against a lesser player.
>
>Regards,
>Miguel


I can give a simple example

I know about the idea of the following simple mate:
Qc4+ Kg8-h8 Ne5-f7+ Kh8-g8 Nf7-h6+ Kg8-h8 Qc4-g8+ Rxg8 Nf7#

Suppose that I play a simultan game against weak players and my opponent blunder
and give me the opportunity to use that idea.

In this case I win the game.
Did I win thanks to tactics?
yes.

Did I play the first move that I think about?
Yes

Playing the first move that you think about does not mean that you cannot
outsearch the opponent.

I suspect that in part of the games the GM simply outsearch the opponent inspite
of the fact that it is a simultan game.

Uri



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