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My Thought Process

October 14th, 2009

Update: 10/17/2009

I modified the process based on conversations with FM Charles Galofre, I have merged the tactical and strategic scans into one. His point is that even if you find a strong tactical move, you should still look at the strategic aspects of the position since the game might be won with a quiet positional move which you would not have considered if you cut your search short once you had found a tactic.

The following is the thought process I have decided to employ during long games. The idea is to drill these questions in during practice, so that they become second nature when playing an regular game.

The idea is to create your own thought process checklist and make it your own.

It is highly recommended that you also check out Chessplanner by Blue Devil Knight, since it is more thorough than my checklist.

1. Threat Scan

I. What is my opponent threatening?

II. What are the consequences of my opponent’s last move? (how has the position changed?)

III. Do I have any checks, captures or threats (CCT)? Consider forcing moves as possible candidates

2.  Move Scan

A. Tactical Scan

I. Is there likely to be a tactic in the position?

a. Tactical Motifs: hanging pieces, weak back rank, discovered attack, pinned or skewerable along same rank, overworked pieces, lack of development, poorly guarded pieces, overworked pieces, forks, weak king position (uncastled King), large accumulation of pieces on one side, in-between moves.

Even if you find a strong tactical scan, if time allows do a positional scan. If you find a good move look for a better one.

B. Strategical Scan

(If there are no tactics, you need to come up with a plan)

I. Material balance

II. King safety

III.  Pawn structure

a. Who has the better pawn structure (look for doubled pawns, isolated pawns, and hanging pawns)
b. Are there any open lines or diagonals?
c. What are the strong and weak squares?
d. Who is controlling the center?
e. Who has more space and where on the board do they have it?

IV.. Activity
a. which pieces are active and which are not? (how can you make them more active)
b. Who has better development?
c. who has the initiative?

V. Minor pieces
a. Bishops (bishop pair, bad / good bishop, good diagonals for bishops)
b. Knights (outposts, strength compared with bishops)

VI. misc questions
a. what stage of the game are we in?
b. If we removed the Queen’s off the board, who has the better endgame?

4. Select your candidates (based on scans above)

5. Analyze candidates (start with the most forcing)

6. Select move based on analysis

7. Blundercheck

8. Write down your move

9. Blundercheck again

10. Make your move

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Karpov & Mazukevich’s Chess Thought Process

August 22nd, 2009

(adapted by Herman Grooten)

The following thought process which is recommended by Karpov and Mazukevich is used to detect the important features of an arbitrary position in order to devise a plan that conforms to the positional assessment derived by using this thought process.

This thinking process is based on 7 criteria in which the White position is compared with the Black position.

1. What is the material balance?

2. Are there any (direct) threats?

3. How is the safety of both Kings?

4. Pawn structure questions:

   a. Where are the open lines and diagonals?

   b. Are there many strong squares?

   c. Who is controlling the center

   d. Who has more space and where on the board do they have it?

5. Which pieces are active and which are not?

Training applications:

Go through the questions out loud while doing middlegame positions based on  Stoyko Exercises. The idea is to practice “talking out loud” with the list in front of you so that when you are in real game mode the questions will be asked subconsiously.

Source: Chess Strategy for Club Players pg. 37.

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Improving Chess Analysis Skills with Stoyko Exercises

August 17th, 2009

This content was buried in a post for Kotov’s Method for Chess Improvement, and since it is such an important chess improvement tool, I figured I would promote it to its own post.

Stoyko Exercises

from Dan Heisman’s Exercises page

A summary of Stoyko exercise:

1) Find a fairly complicated position

2) Get out a pen/pencil and paper

3) You have unlimited time

4) Write down every (pertinent) line for as deep as you can see, making sure to include an evaluation at the end of the line. This will likely include dozens of lines and several first ply candidate moves. Evaluations can be any type you like:

a) Computer (in pawns, like +.3)

b) MCO/Informant (=, +/=, etc.)

c) English (”White is a little better”)

5) At the end state which move you would play and it’s “best play for both sides” line becomes the PV

6) When you are done, go over each line and its evaluation with a strong player and/or a computer. Look for:

a) Lines/moves you should have analyzed but missed

b) Any errors in visualization (retained images, etc.)

c) Any lines where you stopped analyzing too soon, thus causing a big error in evaluation (quiescence errors)

d) Any large errors in evaluation of any line

e) Whether the above caused you to chose the wrong move
etc.

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Blunder Checklist

July 29th, 2009

To help track the reasons why a mistake was made during the game.

Health

1. Not enough sleep
2. Headache, cold, etc.
3. Food problem: hungry, ate too much, too much sugar, etc.

Concentration

1. External distraction (noise, light, etc.)
2. Internal distraction (worried about prior mistake, other issues, etc.)

Lack of familiarity with tactical pattern

1. Visualization – did not correctly retain piece position in analyzed (possible) sequences
2. Board vision – did not see entire (current) board properly and missed a move capability

Thought Process Error

1. Hope Chess – did not attempt to look for opponent’s dangerous replies
2. Analytical error – miscalculation/missed sequence
3. Quiescence error – stopped analyzing too soon
4. Did not look for all the things a move did
5. Did not look for a better move
6. Opponent’s move was forced so did not look for its threats, too

Time Management Error

1. Played too fast
2. Got into unnecessary time trouble
3. Panicked trying to avoid time trouble

Psychology

1. Underestimated opponent
2. Excessive fear of opponent
3. Overconfident in winning (drawn) position

Source: Dan Heisman
http://www.chesscafe.com/heisman/heisman.htm

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Kotov’s Method for Chess Improvement

July 26th, 2009

The Road to Chess Improvement

Ruke Vin Hansen in his amazing article Mind Games: Who is Doing the Playing? comes to the conclusion that the best way to improve chess skill is not through reading chess books or watching DVDs. He argues that reading more books only helps fill your short term memory whereas quality moves are a result of the subconscious processes which are not affected by the “conscious” short term memory.

thinklikgm

Hansen asserts that the best way to improve playing strength, improve judgement and to combat blunder tendencies is to follow a similar approach as that found in Kotov’s Think Like a Grandmaster.

Here is the process described by Hansen:

No matter what position you choose to analyse, opening, middle game or end game, complex or simple; find annotated games and play through them till you to come to the point with the greatest number of variations.

Cover up the annotations with a sheet of paper and, without moving the pieces, analyze the position from 30 minutes to an hour. If the variations are extremely complex, you might write down your analyzes while analyzing.

When time is out, stop analyzing and uncover the annotations in the book or magazine, and compare your notes with the annotator’s. (This is crucial since this trains and disciplines the brain’s ability to perceive positions correctly)

Strictly speaking, this, and not his highly criticized graphic presentation of tree-analyzes, is the Kotov-method. This was the method catapulting Kotov to super GM strength and even if Kotov was unable to, we can partly explain why it works, and in short, it can be put as TWT or “Targeted Wiring Training”. As long as thinking is subconscious, we have no idea what the mind looks like when pondering or producing chess moves or analysing positions. This method simultaneously teaches a whole array of different chess skills even if not targeted individually or specifically.

When starting out, there might be a great discrepancy between your analysis and the annotators’ but with time, you learn to delineate relevant moves and variations as this training and final comparison will exercise and target the mind’s ability to perceive chess positions and produce high quality moves. Initially, this system of training may appear time consuming and even monotonous, but patience and diligence will return generous rewards since you will:

* Achieve total mastery of a new and important position

* Broaden your opening repertoire and theoretical knowledge.

* Become better acquainted with positions of similar pawn structures or themes (note; not “pattern”)

* Absorb motifs which you can also apply to other positions.

* Dramatically improve combinative skill.

* Improve both long and short range planning.

* Analyze more deeply, accurately and efficiently.

* Increase concentration and attention span.

* Sharpen board visualization.

* Develop patience and perseverance

* control impulsive tendencies.

For the full article please go to: http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=5055

For those of you who follow Dan Heisman, this training technique is very similar to Stoyko Exercises.

Stoyko Exercises
from Dan Heisman’s Exercises page

A summary of Stoyko exercise:

1) Find a fairly complicated position

2) Get out a pen/pencil and paper

3) You have unlimited time

4) Write down every (pertinent) line for as deep as you can see, making sure to include an evaluation at the end of the line. This will likely include dozens of lines and several first ply candidate moves. Evaluations can be any type you like:

a) Computer (in pawns, like +.3)
b) MCO/Informant (=, +/=, etc.)
c) English (”White is a little better”)

5) At the end state which move you would play and it’s “best play for both sides” line becomes the PV

6) When you are done, go over each line and its evaluation with a strong player and/or a computer. Look for:

a) Lines/moves you should have analyzed but missed
b) Any errors in visualization (retained images, etc.)
c) Any lines where you stopped analyzing too soon, thus causing a big error in evaluation (quiescence errors)
d) Any large errors in evaluation of any line
e) Whether the above caused you to chose the wrong move
etc.

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Posted in Chess, Exercises, Improvement, Thinking Process, Training, learning

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Why Our Chess Does Not Improve

August 17th, 2008

Frustration

Over the last few months while my knowledge of the game has increased my skill has not improved. If anything I have sufferred a decrease in performance over the last few months. The frustrating part is that I have invested time into my improvement plan, and while I feel that both my tactical pattern recognition and strategic knowledge of the game has improved this new knowledge has not translated into increased playing strength.

I have a tournament in 1 month and I am concerned about my plateau. I am nowhere near where I wanted to be 3 years into my chess improvement plan.

My Downward Spiral

  • ICC standard rating at an all time low of 1330 from a peak of 1663
  • FICS rating temporarily increased to 1350, but over the last few weeks it is back down to 1225
  • ICC Blitz 5 0 dropped from 1250 to 970, it is now back up to 1170 and on the way up
  • USCF rating is the same (1278) I have not played any rated USCF tournaments in several months
  • OTB performance in friendly skittles games is the same as 6 months ago, I still ocassionally lose to players who do not take chess as seriously as me

Why I am Not Improving

  • Playing too much blitz versus longer games.
  • Not analyzing (not learning from) my games
  • Theory based learning versus practical learning
  • Faulty thought process

Getting to the bottom of it

I selected several of my latest games and anlayzed them looking for the reason I lost the game, and guess what I found:

Over 80% of the games I lose were because I blundered and not due to knowledge gaps.

Modifications to the Plan

  • Focus more on my thought process while I am playing in order to eliminate senseless blunders.
  • Begin playing at least 1 non-blitz game every night, which I must analyze before playing any other games.
  • Focus my study time around tactics and topics that I need help on based on discoveries during game analysis.

I need to strike a balance between blitz versus and standard games, and I must eliminate blitz play several weeks before playing in a tournament. While tactics will be a strong component of my training, I will be more flexible in my training schedule selecting areas of weakness that I uncover during my game analysis.

The key is to focus on building skills over knowledge, and learning to apply the knowledge I already have. As Dan Heisman likes to say, we need to subtract negatives if we want to get better. I have made the mistake of thinking that studying and reading chess books (adding positives) will make me a better player, and while I am increasing my knowledge of chess this does not translate into improving my performance (because we need to subtract negatives).

I hope that these modifications to my training plan, which will focus more on ’skill building’ than ‘knowledge building’ will show improvements in my play. I’ll keep you posted…

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Analysis Exercise #1

May 24th, 2008


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.

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Faulty Thought Process: Missing the Obvious

April 26th, 2008

Why is it that beginners fail to choose simple plans that are right before their eyes? One answer may be that beginners do not evaluate the position before choosing a candidate move. Beginners briefly scan the board, choose a move they like and quickly analyze and play this move. The problem with this thought process is that 9 out of 10 times the move they have selected is not the best move, since it is not a move that follows a plan based on the needs of the position. This thought process error occurs during candidate move selection and is a very common mistake that beginner’s must overcome in order to reach the next level. The difference between a weak player and a strong player is that the strong player evaluates the position and they then choose a plan based on this evaluation.

Dan Heisman in a Novice Nook titled ‘Evaulation Criteria’, uses the following criteria to evaluate a position (in order of importance):

1. Material
2. King Safety
3. Activity
4. Pawn Structure

Based on these evaulation criteria, not only will we know which side stands better, but why they stand better and what our plan should be. The candidate moves will show itself based on the plan we have selected.

In order to improve we need to evaluate the position during critical junctures of the game (after the opening is over, after a series of exchanges, whenever the position changes substantially). We should get in the habit of re-evaluating the position every couple of moves to ensure that the needs of the position have not changed. We then need to choose a plan based on the evaluation and select candidate moves that help us meet the goals of our plan. We should then take a close and honest look at our candidate moves and keep looking for the best move that will improve our position on the board.

Hope this helps, and I would love to hear your thought process for evaluating the position and selecting candidate moves.

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Faulty Thought Process: Wishful Thinking

March 13th, 2008

A frequent issue confronted by amateurs is wishful thinking when calculating combinations. This propensity to fabricate beneficial scenarios in our analysis is very typical throughout an amateur’s game, but it is most dangerous when calculating combinations.

You see a pretty combination worthy of Tal, and you analyze it over and over, after you have finished your analysis you are sure that the move is a winner. You make the move and you lose a piece, or it initiates a series of exchanges that cause you to lose your initiative and perhaps the game. Unfortunately, you have failed to see the refutation or you simply missed a defending piece that you have conveniently kept out of your analysis. This very common oversight causes you to lose material and / or the game.

If only you had realized that there was a defending piece all you usually need to do is to combine that information along with the combinational theme to make the winning move. In most cases by adding the bothersome piece to your analysis you can easily spot a sacrifice or deflection that will get the piece out of the way and lead to a winning combination.

Getting rid of this faulty thought process will lead to more accurate analysis and an improved ability to calculate. Here are a few ways you can improve by eliminating this error in your thinking process:

  • Play long games with a standard time control greater than 30 minutes
  • Pick interesting middlegame positions and spend > 15 minutes analyzing
  • Try to visualize the position before making your move
  • Double and triple check your analysis

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Faulty Thought Process: Thinking Defensively

February 26th, 2008

Improving your Thought Process

This is the first in a series of posts about faulty thought process tendencies by beginners. Unfortunately, I am the source of inspiration, but hopefully by writing about these errors my thought process will improve.

The most important thing that a beginning to intermediate player can do to improve their chess is to improve their thought process. There is no point in reading positional books and learning new openings when you do not keep your pieces safe, or you fail to see that your opponents piece is not safe, this is the main reason preventing you from winning your games.

Dealing with Aggressive Moves

When a beginner is faced with an aggressive move by an opponent they tend to think defense first (sometimes exclusively), and as a result they fail to see that the aggressively posted piece is not safe. Both beginners tend to make this same mistake, the offensive player blindly plays the aggressive move thinking it is winning without further analysis and the defender assumes that the move is good and fails to see that it is a blunder which hangs the aggressively posted piece.

Take your time when you are faced with an aggressive move or a difficult situation and always ask yourself Is your opponent’s move safe? as part of your thought process and you will win many more games as a result.

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