CHESSTIGER

Many questions have been asked about thoughtproces. Many answers have been given, both by respected chess players like IM Silman, NM Heisman, GM Kotov, GM Aagaard, ... and amateur players from my chessclub and in the blogosphere.

The best answer so far,in my personal opinion,comes from GM Natalia Pogonina at her chess.com blogpost "getting-better-in-chess-critical-mistake-to-avoid".

She is right on the money when she writes that a suitable thoughtproces can only be formed by playing lots of games. By games i mean not bullet, blitz or rapid games (which are only good to get a feel of new studied openings) but games of atleast 60 0 (60 minutes and 0 seconds increment) because afterall you must have some time to think during the game at hand.

The rules, examples, of thoughtproces given by Silman, Heisman, Kotov or Aagaard one must see as guidelines, not law. Because i can honestly say that my thoughtproces isn't 100% the same as one of the mentioned players/authors. I have taken a piece from here, a piece from there, a chunck of ..., to mould my thoughtproces and so have many other chessplayers that i know.

In this article GM Natalia Pogonina also writes, and i quote: "success is 80 percent practice, 20 percent study". With this i have a problem because if i study one hour i must have 4 hours of practise. I doubt my practise/study is 4/1 based, rather 1/1 (or 50-50 if you like it more percent wise).

Does that mean i will never face succes? Offcourse not! I will never be GM or even IM but i have seen many players, who are in the same situation as i, namely "working class" who can reach FM-level. Some even make it to IM but they have something that i dont really possess namely chess "Talent". I have to work hard for every little rating point i can get my hands on. :-)

I guess for us, working class people, a ratio of one serious game (of atleast 60 0)a week is sufficient to go a long way in the practise department. Wich means about 50 games a year, which i know from personal opinion, is doingable. I have about 43 (official) games a year, if i dont count in the games i play in a major tournament in the summer holidays. The quickest timecontrol is 40 moves in 2 hours + 15 minutes to end the game. So if i can do it, so can you.

To end i wish you, dear reader, best of luck in your endeavours, both on the chess front as in real life. Have a happy and pleasant 2010.

It took me a whole lot of time to come up with a suitable plan of action. I still am not sure i gonna follow the right path. But i have to make a decision and move on, standing still isn't an option. So after the celebrations of christmas and new year my study plan will be Total Chess Training of Convekta.

Total Chess Training contains five unique, training programs on one CD. Chess Tactics Art 3.0; Strategy 2.0; Encyclopedia of Middlegame; Encyclopedia of Opening Blunders; Studies 2.0 covering every phase or aspect of the game. All in all Total Chess Training includes more then 9000 commented games and positions to be solved for chess players with ratings from 1800 to 2400! Total Chess Training is the product of the best Russian chess instructors' efforts. Take advantage of their training and knowlegde now, and rais your playing level to a nez standard.

How did i make this chess study decision? Mostly thanks to talks with my friend the IM. Without hesitation, or batting his eyes, he ensured me that i have the already the qualities and the strenght of a 2000+ player and that he was kinda shocked to hear that in the royal belgian chess organisation my rating is only 1897.

He advised me to work on my thoughtproces with this total packet of total chess training. Solving all the exercises, tactical as strategic as middlegame as fun opening bloopers and studies will help strenghten my thinking during a chess game because i will need to think during all these exercises and studies.

My plan may look one-sided on thoughtproces but since it contains all aspect of the game, expect endgame, its certainly a total package. So cross your fingers and pray to whatever God your religion descrive and lets hope that its enough for me to break that magic 2000 rating border.

Fourth round of the national interclubs was played sunday 22th of the 11th month 2009. We had to visit the current leaders, KASK 1, a team formed by 3 2100+ and 3 2000+ players. Not an easy task but chess games are unpredictable, so we had a sparkle of hope to get a surprising result.

I dropped from board 4 to board 6 since two of our 2000+ players who can only play a few rounds were able to come and help our team. This made that the difference in team averages was only 52 points (2087 against 2035). Would we be able to deliver another surprise like we did previous round?

Our first board, only 20 years old but already sporting a 2170 rating , won relatively easy after a nice kingside attack. Fifth board fought hard for a draw and saw his efforts rewarded. Third board forgot his openings theory and went down horribly since his opponent who had 100 rating points more knew what he was doing.

Sixth board,thats me. Suffice that i show you the game. Let me know where i could have played better moves, improvements are always welcome.

Johan.pgn


Which brought us to 2.5 - 1.5 in our favor. Two boards left to finish. Hopes for a tie were uttered.

Second board miscalculated so instead of winning a piece he went to lose the game. Fourth board sacked a piece for the attack but when the attack died so did the game for our player. Endresult, we went down with the smallest margin, 3.5 - 2.5.

So far i may not complain of this National interclub season. With 2.5 out of 4.0 against an average of 2023 elo rating i scored way more then i should with my 1897 elo. So hopefully i will be back a 1900+ player when the next ratinglist comes out.

Caissa, the goddess of chessplayers, has another group of worshippers, namely the Adult Chess Improvement Seekers (A.C.I.S). Its a group that is built on the ashes of the Knight Errants who went thru hell, and burnt themselfs at the flames, trying to follow the time consuming seven circles quest to the holy chess grail which their priest Michael De La Mazza described in his bible Rapid Chess Improvement .

Founding father aka Blunderprone's has written a decent A.C.I.S birth post, which you can find at adult-chess-improvement-seekers-acis. I suggest you go and read it at Blunderprone's wonderfull blog instead of me getting a lawsuit for breaking copyrights rules, or said otherwise, i am to lazy to mirror what is already decently described elsewhere.

I couldn't be a member of the Knight Errants because i had neither the time nor the willingness to do the De La Mazza regime which i personally find useless anyway. That i am not standing alone with this opinion proves Jeremy Silman and Randy Bauer review of the MDLM bible.

Dont misunderstand me, doing tactical exercises isn't a waste of time. What i am against is that doing the seven circles is too one-sided. With tactics alone one doesn't come far if one doesn't know how to create a position in which a tactic is present and works. But enough about Knights who run in circles so they become errant seekers of chess improvement. Lets talk about this new movement, the Adult Chess Improvement Seekers, A.C.I.S. in short.

What pulled my attention is that one may choose his or her own study plan. So one isn't pushed towards Rapid Chess Improvement of Michael De La Maza or How to Reassess Your Chess from Jeremy Silman or Novice Nook written by Dan Heisman or International Chess School (ICS) or Lev Albert's Chess Course or ... . This is a good thing because for all we know, all combined may bring a bigger outcome chess wise then following only one of these courses.

I haven't formed a clear, personal, study plan in my head but i know now already that i will mix things up. Tactical exercises + reading (not studying) Novice Nook combined with the more positional orientated course ICS together with comparising to other thoughtprocessess like mentioned by Dan Heisman, Jeremy Silman, ..., will be the basis of my plan of action, but later, in another post, more about this.

What i miss by all those chess courses is the psychological factors like 'How to concentrate' or 'How to built up selfconfidence without becoming an ass' or '...' . Anybody suggestions for those topics?

Third round of the national interclubs was played sunday 8th of the 11th month 2009. Games are of timecontrol 2 hours for 40 moves followed by 1 hour quick play finish. With other words, a game can last for 6 hours. Indeed a long game that can give you many headaches and nervewrecking experiences.

My opponent, a 2113 rated player, and i have battled many times against eachother so i could predict his first move namely 1. Nc3 . A move i had many problems with in the past but since i decided to just play my own game against this unusual opening move my results became better and better. Helas, in this game i didn't got good out of the opening so i had to battle for a very long time in a worse position. Lucky for me my opponent went the wrong way somewhere in the game (didn't have time to analyse the game).

Here is, for your analytical pleasure, the played game.Your sharp minds will probably find many improvements for me, the little 1897 player, as for my opponent. Love to hear them!