Hello Chessfriends

I found out by obsering slow games on ICC ( either simuls versus IM or
GMs or games within the STCBunch) that they are full of tactical flaws
and unexpected and probably sub.optimal moves. Well, this is no
surprise after all My point is that I have a much easier time
understanding whats going on there and its easy to discover mistakes.
Not so with master games! I feel they are far above my head. So I ask:
Might it be useful to analyse games by mere mortals maybe only 200
points above my rating? I appreciate your input.

Ingo

"Ingo K?hne" wrote in message m...
Hello Chessfriends

I found out by obsering slow games on ICC ( either simuls versus IM or
GMs or games within the STCBunch) that they are full of tactical flaws
and unexpected and probably sub.optimal moves. Well, this is no
surprise after all My point is that I have a much easier time
understanding whats going on there and its easy to discover mistakes.
Not so with master games! I feel they are far above my head. So I ask:
Might it be useful to analyse games by mere mortals maybe only 200
points above my rating? I appreciate your input.

Ingo

This is a good idea. Games where at least one player is an amateur can be quite instructional. The problem with games you usually
find annotated is that the games selected are not really representative of master praxis. They tend to be the brilliant flashy games
rather than the games normally played. Moreover, they are even less representative of the games that the typical amateur plays.

You can find games that include a amateur player, but the main problem is that the game you select needs to be annotated by a very
strong player, so you can compare your thinking with the good quality annotations. This is not commonly found. Using a computer to
make up the difference helps, but does not quite provide the type of commentary that is most valuable.

Fortunately, there are a couple of excellent books that exploit this good idea providing commentary by a strong player:

Chess master vs. chess amateur
by Max Euwe & Walter Meiden

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...=glance&s=book
s&n=507846

The Amateur's Mind: Turning Chess Misconceptions into Chess Mastery
by Jeremy Silman

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...=glance&s=book
s&n=507846

I suggest that the way to squeeze the most instruction from the games in these books is to _carefully_ annotate them yourself, then
compare your annotations with those of the authors of these books.

If you _carefully_ do as a suggest, I would expect you to improve quite a bit. 95% players in the world seem to lack the discipline
to carry out such a plan. That's why they're weak.

The key word is _carefully_. You should patiently spend at least 2 hours on each game.

Good luck!

On 11 Dec 2003 17:38:35 -0800, (Ingo K?hne)
wrote:

Hello Chessfriends

I found out by obsering slow games on ICC ( either simuls versus IM or
GMs or games within the STCBunch) that they are full of tactical flaws
and unexpected and probably sub.optimal moves. Well, this is no
surprise after all My point is that I have a much easier time
understanding whats going on there and its easy to discover mistakes.
Not so with master games! I feel they are far above my head. So I ask:
Might it be useful to analyse games by mere mortals maybe only 200
points above my rating? I appreciate your input.

Ingo

I find that watching games on a chess server (FICS in my case) of
amateur players with a group and whispering back and forth to be great
fun and a good learning experience - it allows you to check if the
mistakes you're finding are actually mistakes and get insights on the
position from a variety of points of view.

Do you kind of "guarantee" that these two hours of _carefully_ annotating a
game will be good invested - i.e. I will feel an improval in my game?
I usually - as you write - don't find the patience to do so. Then I rather
spend the time with tactical training - or just playing myself over the
internet....
Al



Ricardo Gibert wrote:
"Ingo K?hne" wrote in message
m...
Hello Chessfriends

I found out by obsering slow games on ICC ( either simuls versus IM
or
GMs or games within the STCBunch) that they are full of tactical
flaws
and unexpected and probably sub.optimal moves. Well, this is no
surprise after all My point is that I have a much easier time
understanding whats going on there and its easy to discover mistakes.
Not so with master games! I feel they are far above my head. So I
ask:
Might it be useful to analyse games by mere mortals maybe only 200
points above my rating? I appreciate your input.

Ingo

This is a good idea. Games where at least one player is an amateur
can be quite instructional. The problem with games you usually find
annotated is that the games selected are not really representative of
master praxis. They tend to be the brilliant flashy games rather than
the games normally played. Moreover, they are even less
representative of the games that the typical amateur plays.

You can find games that include a amateur player, but the main
problem is that the game you select needs to be annotated by a very
strong player, so you can compare your thinking with the good quality
annotations. This is not commonly found. Using a computer to make up
the difference helps, but does not quite provide the type of
commentary that is most valuable.

Fortunately, there are a couple of excellent books that exploit this
good idea providing commentary by a strong player:

Chess master vs. chess amateur
by Max Euwe & Walter Meiden


http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...071194080//ref
=sr_8_xs_ap_i7_xgl14/102-6324538-1144915?v=glance&s=book
s&n=507846

The Amateur's Mind: Turning Chess Misconceptions into Chess Mastery
by Jeremy Silman


http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...071194204//ref
=sr_8_xs_ap_i0_xgl14/102-6324538-1144915?v=glance&s=book
s&n=507846

I suggest that the way to squeeze the most instruction from the games
in these books is to _carefully_ annotate them yourself, then compare
your annotations with those of the authors of these books.

If you _carefully_ do as a suggest, I would expect you to improve
quite a bit. 95% players in the world seem to lack the discipline to
carry out such a plan. That's why they're weak.

The key word is _carefully_. You should patiently spend at least 2
hours on each game.

Good luck!

In article ,
"Alexander Fischer" wrote:

Do you kind of "guarantee" that these two hours of _carefully_ annotating a
game will be good invested - i.e. I will feel an improval in my game?
I usually - as you write - don't find the patience to do so. Then I rather
spend the time with tactical training - or just playing myself over the
internet....

Studying chess doesn't work that way... it's not like, "Oh, I did this
for two hours, I'll notice an improvement!" You study regularly, you
will notice an improvement, but you may not notice that improvement for
weeks.

But carefully annotating a master game is something almost every
teacher recommends. .

The problem with looking at amateur games (especially online games) is
that the players make all sorts of mistakes and pick sub-optimal plans,
so while you can learn from seeing their mistakes, you can't neccesarily
learn from their plans.

I strongly recommend looking at older master games. They're often
simpler, easier to understand, and therefore illustrate the themes you
need to be learning more clearly. Capablanca, Lasker, Tarrasch, etc...

Ingo K?hne wrote:
Hello Chessfriends

I found out by obsering slow games on ICC ( either simuls versus IM or
GMs or games within the STCBunch) that they are full of tactical flaws
and unexpected and probably sub.optimal moves. Well, this is no
surprise after all My point is that I have a much easier time
understanding whats going on there and its easy to discover mistakes.
Not so with master games! I feel they are far above my head. So I ask:
Might it be useful to analyse games by mere mortals maybe only 200
points above my rating? I appreciate your input.

Ingo

The answer is very simple.

For beginners there are only two kinds of games worth analyzing:

1) Their own
2) Classical games from vintage collections, preferrably from 1850-1900
period.

--
Roman M. Parparov - NASA EOSDIS project node at TAU technical manager.
Email: http://www.nasa.proj.ac.il
Phone/Fax: +972-(0)3-6405205 (work), +972-(0)51-34-18-34 (home)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The economy depends about as much on economists as the weather does on
weather forecasters.
-- Jean-Paul Kauffmann

En/na Ingo K?hne ha escrit:

Hello Chessfriends

I found out by obsering slow games on ICC ( either simuls versus IM or
GMs or games within the STCBunch) that they are full of tactical flaws
and unexpected and probably sub.optimal moves. Well, this is no
surprise after all My point is that I have a much easier time
understanding whats going on there and its easy to discover mistakes.
Not so with master games! I feel they are far above my head. So I ask:
Might it be useful to analyse games by mere mortals maybe only 200
points above my rating? I appreciate your input.

Ingo

A have used sometimes an interesting exercise:

Ask my students to comments what were the mistakes in some "amateur
games" like:
1.f4 e5 2.fxe5 d6 3.exd6 Bxd6 4.Nc3 Qh4+ 5.g3 Qxg3+ 6.hxg3 Bxg3# 0–1

or a more complex example of this kind (depending on students level):
1.e4 Nf6 2.Qf3 e5 3.Bc4 Nc6 4.d3 Bc5 5.Nh3 Nd4 6.Qd1 d5 7.exd5 Bg4 8.f3
Bxh3 9.gxh3 Nh5 10.f4 Qh4+ 11.Kd2 b5 12.Bb3 Qxf4+ 13.Kc3 Ne2+ 14.Qxe2
Bb4# 0–1

From those games we can discuss and learn.
But to learn from that process, you need other players to discuss with
you (maybe a teacher is not neccessary).

AT

Ron wrote:
"Alexander Fischer" wrote:

Do you kind of "guarantee" that these two hours of _carefully_
annotating a game will be good invested - i.e. I will feel an
improval in my game?
I usually - as you write - don't find the patience to do so. Then I
rather spend the time with tactical training - or just playing
myself over the internet....

Studying chess doesn't work that way... it's not like, "Oh, I did
this
for two hours, I'll notice an improvement!" You study regularly, you
will notice an improvement, but you may not notice that improvement
for weeks.

Ron,
thanks, that's what I meant. The question is, will I notice more improvement
after practising tactics for two hours a day for two months, or if I spend
the same amount of time for annotating master games?

Is it maybe a question of my personal strength? My feeling is that my chess
is still to weak to benefit from a better plan, since I keep making tactical
errors (maybe not all blunders, but those nasty
three-moves-lose-a-pawn-for-nothing-moves)...

Alex

On Mon, 15 Dec 2003 17:50:00 +0100, "Alexander Fischer"
wrote:

Ron wrote:
"Alexander Fischer" wrote:

Do you kind of "guarantee" that these two hours of _carefully_
annotating a game will be good invested - i.e. I will feel an
improval in my game?
I usually - as you write - don't find the patience to do so. Then I
rather spend the time with tactical training - or just playing
myself over the internet....

Studying chess doesn't work that way... it's not like, "Oh, I did
this
for two hours, I'll notice an improvement!" You study regularly, you
will notice an improvement, but you may not notice that improvement
for weeks.

Ron,
thanks, that's what I meant. The question is, will I notice more improvement
after practising tactics for two hours a day for two months, or if I spend
the same amount of time for annotating master games?

Is it maybe a question of my personal strength? My feeling is that my chess
is still to weak to benefit from a better plan, since I keep making tactical
errors (maybe not all blunders, but those nasty
three-moves-lose-a-pawn-for-nothing-moves)...

Alex



For players below 2000 Elo I would say that spending the time studying
tactics would be better that annotating master games. However, you
left out a number of choices. If you have 2 hours to study chess
every day that is 14 hours per week. You don't need to study the same
thing for all 14 hours.

Some topics in chess that come to mind for study:
a) openings [by this I don't mean the memorization of variations.
Rather this the study of basic opening plans and the middlegames (or
even endgames) they lead to
b) middlegame - tactics/combinations
c) middlegame - strategy and positional play
d) endings
e) annotating master games - putting the phases of a chess game
together.
f) annotating your own games - figuring out where you went wrong, what
to do next time.

A typical alocatation of study time that I have seen is:
a) 20%
b) 60%
d) 20%

These percentages apply to a beginer and then as tactical
understanding increases the allocation for a) and c) would grow and b)
would decrease.

I would recommend first that you annotate your own games played at
slow time control. Focus first on those points where you made
mistakes and if you have time also on where your opponent made
mistakes. As much as you can try to remember ehat you were thinking
during the game at these points.

You should probably spend between 30-60 minutes per game excepting
those games that have only 1 or 2 points where a different move would
have changed the game outcome). If you played several games during
the week that could use at substancial ammount of your weekly study
time. [I don't count the time spent actually playing the game in the
first place as part of your study time; if you do that that will
reduce the maining study time still further.]

Next use these analyses to guide time allocation for further study:
If you are not making it to the endgame or the possible endgames that
result from a given position aren't occuring in your thinking during
the game, then don't spend time on the ending.

If you are falling into opening traps (e.g. traps withing the first
12-15 moves) then spend some time looking at those traps so you don't
fall for them again.

If during games you seemed to drift into worse and worse positions
then you may want to study middlegame planning or strategic play.
Note: these positions often occur a while before a tactical event if
that is what decides the game; they are the point where you start
drifting. In some games this will show up as frittering away an
advantage and allowing your opponent to qualize and draw. In others
it is making inferior moves and drifting from an equal position to a
lost one. [One way to help to find these points in the game is to
have a chess engine evaluate the position after each move by you or
your opponent; then graph the evaluation numbers against moves and
look for points where the evaluation is gently trending down. Don't
use this technique as a crutch though; you want to find those points
where you "lost the thread" in the game.]

The best way to study positonal play (as well as to understand how to
get into positions where tactics come to the fore) is to annotate
another game that either reached the same position (where you started
playing aimlessly) or at least came out the same opening as your own
game. You want to study a game payed by master stength or near it,
that is by players, who knew what they were doing (at least better
than you did) in the game. Also the game should have analysis done by
a master so you can compare your own with it. When you are just
begining you should pick games by early master (Morphy, Andersson,
Steinitz, etc.) and work your way forward chronologically. Play over
the game in solitaire-chess mode, writing down what alternatives you
considered at each move, what you think is the best move and why.
Compare your analysis with the master's paying particular attention to
the reasoning behind the moves.

Typically the weaker you are the more likely the reason you don't win
a game is due to missing an obvious threat: When you miss your
opponents threat you can get a bad position; when you miss your own
threats you can allow your opponet to equalize from a position that is
bad for them. This is why most coaches recommend studing tactics as
much as possible as a beginner.



Mike Ogush
USCF 1961

In article ,
"Alexander Fischer" wrote:


Is it maybe a question of my personal strength? My feeling is that my chess
is still to weak to benefit from a better plan, since I keep making tactical
errors (maybe not all blunders, but those nasty
three-moves-lose-a-pawn-for-nothing-moves)...

As Mike said, 2 hours a day is 14 hours a week. My personal
recommendation would be to spend about 35% of your time on tactics, 30%
of your time on endgames, 20% of your time on Master games, and the
remaining 15% of your time on your own games.

It's not all or nothing in any one of these categories.