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Subject: Re: Chess improvement method and CC

Author: Miguel A. Ballicora

Date: 14:43:49 02/04/02

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On February 04, 2002 at 17:13:35, Uri Blass wrote:

>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.

This is a pre-learned procedure spotted by pattern recognition.
It is tactics but the GM do not actually _search_ 9 plies.
It is in his "eval", it is knowledge, and that is the reason why more knowledge
also increase your apparent tactical ability.

Regards,
Miguel




>
>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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