Chess for Beginners

In a previous post I had promised to compile and post the most instructive games in ChessBase format. I haven’t been able to get around to compiling all of the games, so I am posting a PDF file containing a list of these Educational Chess Games based broken down by themes.

08.15.2007

Play Standard Game

Played and analyzed my G/60 ICC ST Tourney game

08.16.2007

Study Strategy
Reviewed through page 24 of Chess Strategy for Kids don’t mind the title…the book is highly recommended by Dan Heisman, and it ensures that you have all your chess fundamentals in place.

Key Points

Everything in chess can be explained in terms of three basic ideas:

• Material
• Safety
• Freedom

Based on those ideas when selecting candidate moves 5 good questions to ask are:

1. Who is ahead in material?
2. Is either King unsafe?
3. Who has more freedom?
4. What would you play if it was your opponent’s turn?
5. What do you play that takes advantage of the three keys to strategy?

Solve Endings

Did Endgame module 1 of Personal Chess Trainer’s endgame module (40 exercises). I had not planned on using PCT, but it has a good amount of endgame puzzles, and it uses pattern recognition as a teaching tool which is a positive.

Today is the first entry of my online training notebook, I’m still trying to figure out how I will work this out, but I plan on adding an entry with the salient topics that I covered as well as personal progress and benchmark data.

I also plan on adding a downloadable ChessBase file which will contain additional positions, games and notes.

Study Endgames
Reviewed pages 57-88 in Silman’s Endgame Course. This chapter dealt with distant opposition as well as basic K+P vs. K endings.

Below are a few keypoints from the chapter:

Opposition without a direct connection

In the diagram below notice that the corners of the rectangle have the same colored squares, in this case White has the opposition, since he is 5 (odd number) of squares away from the Black King. You can determine the opposition of two King’s without a direct connection by creating an imaginary rectangle with intersecting same colored squares.

Questions to ask in a K+P vs. K endgame:

• Is the pawn a rook pawn? (then more than likely the game will be drawn)
• Is the stronger side’s King one square or two squares in front of it’s pawn? (One square and it depends on who has the opposition, two squares is a win for the stronger side.)
• Who possess the opposition?

Endgame Puzzle

White to move. Is White lost?

Study Tactics

Did questions from the 3rd stage of studies (Queen Checkmates) #419 -442 (23) for 30 minutes with an 84% success rate.

This is a simple puzzle, but I notice that tactics that involve pinned pawns give me difficulty. Highlight for answer [1.Qh6+ Bh7 2.Qxg7#]

Monday
Study Endings (30 min)
Solve Tactics (30 min)

Tuesday
Play (ST Tourney on ICC G/60) (up to 2 hrs)

Wednesday
Analyze my game (1 hr)
Study Openings (part of game analysis)

Thursday
Study Strategy (30 min)
Solve Endings (30 min)

Friday
Solve Strategy (annotated master game review with Stoyko exercise at critical points) (1hr)
Solve Tactics (30 min)

Saturday
Play G/30 (up to 1 hr)
Analyze game (30 min)

Sunday
Solve Tactics (optional) (30 min)

Resources

Strategy: Logical Chess Move by Move and Chess Strategy for Kids

Endgame:Silman’s Complete Endgame Course and Pandolfini’s Endgame Course

Tactics: Convekta’s Chess Tactics for Beginners

As part of my benchmarking before I begin my new training on Monday August 13th, my ICC rating is as follows:  

In an earlier post about creating a chess notebook, I overlooked the obvious: using this blog as my online chess improvement notebook.

I can post my daily training regimen, as well as benchmark my progress as I go along. Hopefully, this will help others get ideas as well as help me in maintaining a log of my training activities as well as to get feedback via comments.

The best thing I can do for my chess is to improve my thinking process, which is one of my greatest weaknesses. Below are some of the reasons why it my thinking process just plain stinks.

1. Not considering the consequences of a move at least 3 ply deep on every play.
2. Focusing too much on my plan, and not worrying about my opponent’s plan.
3. Not following a standard though process method.
4. Not considering the most aggressive candidate moves.
5. Poor candidate move selection. This includes.
   1. not considering aggressive moves
   2. retained image errors.
   3. Worrying about misconceived threats, or not choosing candidates because of worries about King safety.
6. Not looking for tactics during my opponent’s move.
7. Not looking at the whole board. This leads to underutilized pieces at best and a surprise checkmate at worse.
8. Poor evaluation of the position.
9. Playing without a plan.
10. Playing too much blitz. Not that blitz games are bad, but they do not allow you to apply a though process and it does not allow you to practice your analysis and evaluation skills. All improving players should stay away from blitz until we have developed a consistent and applicable thought process via games played at long time controls.

That’s it for now, I’ll add more in time. Feel free to leave comments on how you can improve your thought process.