Chess for Beginners

According to Johnathan Rowson in his book Chess for Zebras we can develop chess skill through a combination of playing combined with chess training, where ‘training’ means working things out by ourselves. The main skill a chess player needs is skill in making decisions so making decisions is what you need to do over and over when training (learning by doing).

The best training is the kind that pushes you up against the edges of your comfort zone, where you force yourself to take responsibility for difficult decisions.

- Johnathan Rowson in Chess for Zebras

So here’s what you can do to put his advice into practice:

• Playing and then analyzing your games afterwards
• Solving complex chess problems
• Trying to win won positions against strong analysis engines
• Blitz games (comparing your first impression of positions with the way they actually developed)

Silman calls the Lucena Position “The Holy Grail of Rook Endings”. In this position Regardless of who’s turn it is to move, White wins.

1.Rf2+ Forcing Black’s King to leave the scene of the battle.

1…Kg7 [1...Kg6 2.Rf4 Kg5 3.Rd4 Kf6 4.Ke8 Re1+ 5.Kf8 Rf1 6.d8Q+ Ke5+ 7.Ke7 ]

2.Rf4 Building a bridge.

2…Kg6 3.Ke7 Only now should White leave the cover of his pawn. Since promotion is threatened Black must go into checking mode.

3…Re1+ 4.Kd6 Rd1+ 5.Ke6 Re1+ 6.Kd5 Rd1+ 7.Rd4 Rxd4+ 8.Kxd4 Kf6 9.d8Q+ 1-0

Black to move (Stefanova - Shirov 2005)
r3rq1k/8/p2p3p/P1pPnp1P/1p3Q2/5PNR/1PP2K2/R7 b - - 0 29
Download game

Evaluation
The first thing I did was to evaluate this position, and I gave it the following evaluation: Material =, King Safety +/=, Activity =/+, Pawn Structure =. So the game in my opinon is even. (When I gave it to Fritz 10 he sees it as -+ (- 1.61 with Black winning) and Rybka sees it as -1.19).

Threats and Opportunities
I then looked for threats and opportunities in this position, and I found that White was threatening to win Black’s f5 pawn with Qxf5.

Candidate Move Selection
After performing the threat analysis I looked for candidate moves, and this is the order in which I found my 4 candidates: 1…Re7, 1…Kh7, 1…b3, 1…Ng4+. The first two candidates are defensive, trying to deal with the potential threat of Qxf5, and the last two are aggressive candidates.

Analysis
I then began analyzing the most aggressive candidate based on CCT (checks, captures and threats), in this case …Ng4 would be the most aggressive since it starts with check, below is my analysis:

Candidate 1 …Ng4+

29…Ng4+ 30.fxg4 30…fxg4 31.Qxf8+ Rxf8+ 32.Kg2 gxh3+ 33.Kxh3 This line is good for black since he wins the exchange, so taking with 2.cxb3 is not good for White so I analyzed another line in which White does not take to see if …Ng4+ stands up. [30.Kg2 Not taking keeps White in the game. 30...Ne5 coming back to the same position is not good for Black, since White's King is now safer on g2. At this point I figured that if White didn't take I would wind up in this position, and I stoped analyzing this line, and I jumped to the ...b3 line which was the 2nd most aggressive candidate I had selected. The problem is that 30...Ne3+ should have been considered as a mainline, and I did not see this knight check, with the rook defending it. (30...Ne3+ I did not analyze this subvariation, but it was much better than 30...Ne5 which I did analyze and caused me to jump to another line. 31.Kh1 Nxc2 32.Rc1 Nd4 Black wins a pawn, and defends g5.) ; Rybka 2.3.1 32-bit : 30.Kg1 Ne3 31.Re1 Nxd5 32.Rxe8 Nxf4 33.Rxf8+ Rxf8 34.Rh2 d5 35.Kf2 Kg7 -0.91/12 ]

Candidate # 2 …b3

[29...b3 This is the second line I analyzed. 30.Qxf5 So, I analyzed another line other than 30. cxb3, the problem is that this line is not the best line for White. (30.cxb3 Nd3+ Taking my b3 pawn is bad because of this fork.) 30...Qxf5 31.Nxf5 bxc2 32.Rc1 (32.Ne3 Nd3+ At this point I decided to chose this line.) 32...Nd3+ ; Rybka 2.3.1 32-bit : 29...b3 30.Qd2 bxc2 31.Qxc2 Ng4+ 32.Kg1 Ne3 33.Qd2 f4 34.Ne4 Re5 -1.27/11 ]

Lessons Learned
My evaluation was off by a pawn, Rybka and Fritz think that Black is at least ahead one pawn, while I thought the position was even, so I need to work on my evaluation skills. I was happy with my candidate move selection, and the order in which I began analyzing (the most aggressive moves first). Out of the 4 candidates I only had to analyze 2 and both were the best moves. In the analysis department, I am missing the best response when I calculate variations or I am not analyzing all possible oppnent candidate moves. I need to use the same candidate move criteria fwhen looking for or my opponent responses, but I have a feeling it also has to do with board visualization. Even though I picked an appropriate candidate, the logic for selecting it was flawed and incomplete. The analysis for …b3 did not take into account White’s best responses and much was left to chance by selecting it. I need to be more thorough when analyzing and I also have to attempt to evaluate the position at the end of the my analysis (which I did not do). The line played in the game was …Ng4+!, while Fritz 10 and Rybka prefer …b3.

Study Schedule

Legend:

* If you run out of time during daily session, you can finish annotating your game during the study openings session

** Study strategy by going over annotated master games

*** Use Stoyko Exercises format

Virtual Chess Coach Pt I

About the Virtual Chess Coach Program

This program is geared for my improvement (a 35 year old 1278 USCF rated player), but I hope that others in a similar situation will be able to derive benefit from it as well.

I will be modeling this program on the teaching’s of Dan Heisman. Dan Heisman is one of the best chess teacher’s in the United States and if you don’t already know this, then run to danheisman.com and check out his Novice Nook articles at Chess Cafe.

Now not all of us can afford a chess coach, so we will be using books and information available on the web (Heisman’s Novice Nook Articles) to create a virtual chess coaching experience. If you can afford a coach, then there is no substitute for the hands on feedback that they can provide but I’m aiming to make this the second best thing.

Things to know before we go on:

• This program is aimed at the adult beginner / intermediate player (ELO 1200 - 1700)
• Our chess philosophy will be based around Dan Heisman (with a sprinkle of Purdy and Silman for good measure)

Absolute Beginners

For complete beginner’s to chess Heisman recommends they start with The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Chess and then go to a basic chess tactics book like John Bain’s Chess Tactics for Students. After doing this you should be approximately 1200 ELO and then this guide will be more useful to you.

The Assessment Phase

We need to assess our strengths and weaknesses, yet we are in no position to do so (how can we assess what we do not know / understand). This is one of the weaknesses of not having the feedback mechanism a coach provides. But do not fret, there is a great book that helps you assess your strengths and weaknesses in chess, and that book is Igor Khmelnitsky’s Chess Exam and Training Guide. After going through Igor’s book, you will have an idea of which areas of your chess need to focus your improvement efforts.

Assessing Your Games

Another area where a coach can provide much needed feedback is in going over your games. Because we’ll be going at it on our own the following process is very important in order to get a close benefit to that of having a real coach.

• Go over all of your losses.
• Quickly re-play the game again making light annotations
• Go over the game in detail, and this time make extensive annotations and analysis
• Go over the game with a chess engine and compare your annotations with those of the engine

Key things to look for when annotating your game

You should jot these down as part of your annotations and include them in your chess notebook

• See where you could have improved in the opening
• Look for missed tactical opportunities (both defensive and offensive)
• Look for missed positional opportunities
• Look for missed opportunities in the endgame, if necessary refer to Mueller’s Fundamental Chess Endings
• Look for moves that caused a shift in the game based on the engine’s evaluation. (any move with an evaluation change greater than .35) and find out the root cause behind the evaluation shift, then go back to your annotations and make sure you address this and don’t forget to add this to your chess notebook.

The games you annotate and go over, should be standard time control games if possible. You should make an effort to play at least 1-2 standard games (>= G/30) per week. You can do this by either joining the Team 45 45 league, or playing ICC’s Standard Tourney or even playing at your local chess club. These games will give you more food for thought than quickly played blitz games, but if you do not have at least 1 standard game to go over, then do go over your well played blitz games (which is better than not going over your games at all).

Thought Process Before Lessons

There are certain bad habits that you should eliminate before you consider taking lessons, otherwise you would be throwing your money away. Most of these stem from careless play or hope chess .

• Do not leave pieces en prise
• Do not move quickly and without thought
• Perform a blundercheck before playing your move

Reference

The following books and websites will be used for this program:

Tactics

Back to Basics Tactics

Chess Tactics for Beginners (Convekta)

Endgames

Silman’s Complete Endgame Course

Strategy

The Art of Logical Chess Thinking

Thought Process

Everyone’s 2nd Chess Book

Play

• FICS
• ICC
• Redhotpawn (Correspondence)