Somewhere I heard that youngsters being trained in the art of go are
required to learn a number of instructive master games by heart.

Perhaps there is a reason for this; knowing some master games by heart
might be useful for improving ones go or chess, or it might not.
Also one might think that every chess player ought to know something
about the history of the game.

Which games do you think would be the most important for a club player
to know, for a good balance of chess instructivity (is that a word?) and
chess history?

Regards,
Harri Haanpää

"Harri Haanpaa" wrote in message
...
Somewhere I heard that youngsters being trained in the art of go are
required to learn a number of instructive master games by heart.

Perhaps there is a reason for this; knowing some master games by heart
might be useful for improving ones go or chess, or it might not.
Also one might think that every chess player ought to know something
about the history of the game.

Which games do you think would be the most important for a club player
to know, for a good balance of chess instructivity (is that a word?) and
chess history?

Harri,

Every opening has some history to it, so that might be a guide for choosing
historic games. For example, Steinitz-Lee, London 1899 would be a good
background game for the Queen's Gambit Exchange variation. Apart from that,
perhaps a look at the decisive games from each of the world championship
matches -- including those early matches that weren't officially for a world
championship. Now that I think about it, rather than the final decisive game
from each match, how about the best win (by the eventually match winner)
during the match. I make the distinction because the actual decisive game
may occur after the losing side is already psychologically beaten, so it may
not have as much instructive value.

Matt

On Fri, 9 Jul 2004 17:48:16 +0300 (EEST), Harri Haanpaa
wrote:

Somewhere I heard that youngsters being trained in the art of go are
required to learn a number of instructive master games by heart.

Perhaps there is a reason for this; knowing some master games by heart
might be useful for improving ones go or chess, or it might not.
Also one might think that every chess player ought to know something
about the history of the game.

Which games do you think would be the most important for a club player
to know, for a good balance of chess instructivity (is that a word?) and
chess history?

Regards,
Harri Haanpää


Harri,

I would look for games from collections that describe themselves as
either containing either great games or instructive games. Some books
that come to mind:

"The Most Instructive Games of Chess Ever Played" - Irving Chernev (62
games from between 1873 and 1961)
"The World's Great Chess Games" - Reuben Fine (the 1983 expanded
edition covers games from the time of Philidor up through Karpov's
early years as champion. I am not sure how many games are included.)
"The Mammoth Book of the World's Greatest Chess Games" - Graham
Burgess, John Nunn, John Emms (100 games from 1834-1997)
"Instructive Modern Chess Masterpieces" - Igor Stohl (50 games from
recent years)
"Understanding Chess Move By Move" - John Nunn (30 games from the
1990s; Nunn modeled this somewhat after Chernev's "Logical Chess Move
by Move", which also might be a good source of games.)
"Antology of Chess Beauty" - I. Belov, A. Shakarov, V. Tsaturian, L.
Vilensky (1640 games from between 1876 and 1995 that were awarded
special prizes of some kind. Note: unlike all of the other books, the
annotations in this book are all Informator style.)

As far as criteria for selecting games:
1. Avoid GM draws (draws, where the game did not go at least 20 moves)
2. Avoid games where both opponents were not at least master strength
3. At first I would tend to choose earlier games rather than more
recent ones, because these are generally easier to understand. (In
order to memorize games it helps greatly to understand why moves were
played!). Later on as one gets stronger looking at more modern games
would be appropriate.
4. Also in the beginning I would look for games that have either a
similar opening or at least similar style to my own. At a certain
point in my chess development I was playing QGD or an open game (1.e4
e5) as Black and 1.e4 (heading for 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4) as White.
At that time memorizing an intricate game in the King's Indian or
Alekhine Defense wouldn't have been as useful as memorizing a more
classical game. Later on I took up the Sicilian, Pirc, Gruenfeld with
Black and 1.c4 with White and then looking at games for a wider
spectrum of openings was more appropriate.

Aside:
Some decades ago I knew an A player (1800-1999 USCF), who had set his
goal on becoming a master, who was memorizing the games from the world
championship matches. I think that he was going through the games
more or less in chronological order and was at that time working on
one of Alehine's matches from the 1930's. I don't remember if he was
including any of the short draws that some times occur in these
matches (even before Karpov-Kasparov 1984). He did reach expert
level, but I don't know if he ever reached master.

Another aside supporting the idea of memorizing games:
Some months ago I came across a set of web pages authored by an IM
(who was associated with Stanford University at the time). He offered
tips on improving one's chess. One of those tips was that players
even up to master strength would benefit by trying to memorize 100 GM
games. The IM gave an example of a master he knew, who had reached a
plateau in his ability and so he had given this advice. The master
did not make it all the way to 100 games (he only memorized about 30
or so), but he was able to improve his strength and become an IM.
[Sorry, I don't remember, who the IM was who wrote the pages. I tried
to google for these advice pages, but was unsuccessful.]


Good luck.

Mike Ogush