Goals: 1600 at playchess to start with, more generally to reach a level where (obvious) blunders do not determine the course of my games, and as such allow me to appreciate chess at a higher level.
Plan:
1. Tactics, tactics, tactics
-I am doing concentric circles of Chess Tactics for Beginners (CTB), to become extremely familiar with simple tactics, the number of circles I do is variable, but at least 6, more likely 10 or more. (Also to write down the number of exercises that I take longer to solve, as CTB does not take note of this, and work on them separately by repetition, narration etc...)
-Go through Seirawan's Winning Chess Tactics twice, to expose myself to a wider range of tactics, and just to practice solving more tactics, as opposed to memorization.
-This should be enough for the near future, but after this I plan to progress to Chess Tactics for Intermediate players, and then Ct-ART.
2. Endgame
-Read the sections of Silman's Complete Endgame Course appropriate for my rating, and practice the test positions against Fritz.
3. Strategy
-Play through annotated games, as Heisman suggests there is a law of diminishing returns on further study, so a large amount of games may be more helpful than intensive study of a few. There is also the school of thought that memorizing master games can be extremely beneficial, and so I will effect a compromise, that is drumandchess's approach, and memorize a select few games that I consider particularly important as I go through them.
-Complete Chernev's Logical Chess: Move by Move (only a few remaining).
-Work through Chernev's 40 most Instructive Games ever Played, descriptive annotations might be a pain here, but I have the pgn files so it should be minimal. Seems like there should be great games to memorize here.
-Work through a Moprhy game collection (looking for suggestions here).
-Work through a Cappablanca game collection (the Chernev one probably).
-More to follow when I reach this point.
4. Play Games
-Play as many rated games on playchess as possible, with slow time controls.
-Analyse all games, determine where it leaves book and so what I would do next time.
-Identify my and my opponent's blunders.
-Create a database for white and for black of positions that I can drill with Chess Position Trainer. For every tactic my opponent walks into I can drill that, for every tactic I miss, for every tactic I walk into I will drill the correct move, and from the opposite side drill taking advantage of my mistake.
Well that's it for now, progress reports soon to follow, and perhaps some post-game analyses.
Cheers.
2 hours ago
4 comments:
Wow. My only comment would be on the endgame section. You said you plan to use Silman's Endgane Course, which is a great resource and I would highly encourage that.
But you also said you plan to use Chessimo. Unfortunately, its endgame modules are riddled with errors. It will mark you wrong when you find an alternate that is just as fast as their solution, and sometimes it even marks you wrong when you find a faster solution. This is not such a good tool for endgame training although it is a very good tool for tactics and strategy.
A really good way to master endings is to setup positions that are similar to but not exactly the same as what you see in Silman. Eg, move the pawns one rank forward or back, one file closer to the edge or the center, etc. Then play them out against either a chess engine (Fritz, Crafty, Nalimov) or even "shadow box" against yourself (humans tend to find 'trickier' but less sound moves which you also have to know how to defeat).
Hi.
I would just like to comment on your plan to work through a Morphy and a Capablanca collection. First of all, I think it's a great idea. I would just like to suggest a website to you, It has a lot of games in PGN format for free. You can use Chessbase light with them.
http://www.chessopolis.com/chessfiles/pgn_players.htm
Good luck!
Good luck. I agree with Likeforests on Chessimo (and I *love* Chessimo for its tactics and strategy modules).
Thanks for the encouragement guys.
It's unfortunate about Chessimo's shortcomings in the endgame section, but thank you for saving me wasted effort, I will do as you suggest and tinker with the Silman positions.
A few people have commented that the strategy section is good, so maybe i'll aim to try and complete module 1 by some point, although I am a little overwhelmed by the strategy information available, with game collections and the lauded Silman works.
I have heard good things about Frisco Del Rosario's A First Book of Morphy, banatt thank you for the excellent resource, I have bookmarked it, but in addition to the pgns, the annotations are critical to me at this stage.
Cheers
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