The post that was quoted here has been removedStart by keeping it simple. The most obvious 'good moves' are those that either a) win material or b) force checkmate.
What you want, at first, is tactics puzzles with a very low degree of difficulty. Something where you either win a piece or checkmate within a move or two. Go through those until you can see them fairly quickly. Then up the difficulty a bit. Lather, rinse, repeat.
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Originally posted by Paul Leggetti agree, i was being quite general. what i meant to say was that the level of the 1900 player will be so much greater than the 1300 that the 1300 will not always see what the 1900 is talking about regardless of how well they explain it. for me personally i've always learnt more from people 200-300 points above me.
I'm not sure I completely agree with this particular part of the post, although there are times when it will be true. The rating of a person is an indicator of their playing strength on the site, but the ability to communicate the ideas of the game to another person is a different skill set, and I don't think ratings are necessarily a good indicator. I think the idea CAN be true, but is not automatically true.
4) When you are considering your candidate moves always consider your opponents response. All analysis goes to your opponents response. Saves a lot of blunders that way.Great suggestion. This may sound a little trite, but I make a point of using (or at least think about using) the conditional move function every move, because I've found that it really makes me focus on what my opponent might do.
Maybe it's overkill, but I think it has reinforced in me the habit of really focusing on what they other guy might do, and it has helped me catch a few of my own errors before they became reality.
Paul
Originally posted by nimzo5edit: oops, quoted the wrong part at first.
4) When you are considering your candidate moves always consider your opponents response. All analysis goes to your opponents response. Saves a lot of blunders that way.
the best way of training this, for me, has been doing tactics striving to high accuracy. when you train on CTS, don't get sucked into the tempting ratings game, it'll just develop a disasterous habit for guessing and ignoring the counter threats. every time your otherwise working solution fails because your king is checked etc, you should lay down on the floor and take five minutes to kick yourself in the head with steel cap doc martens until you're unconscious. don't dismiss it with 'oops, oh well'. make a big deal about it, because it's the only way to develop a habit to look for the deadly counter threats.
so, even though you have 16s to solve on CTS, it doesn't mean you should guess before you're ready. instead take your time, move only when you're ready. leave it to the problem selection algorithm to adjust your rating and consequently the difficulty level, until the problems are easy enough for you to get in 16s without bad habits. that's how it was designed to work, and that's also how you'll get most sustainable improvement over longer periods. - every time you get a problem wrong, you're in effect teaching your brain that 1+1=11. make sure you teach it 1+1=2 instead.
in practice that means you shouldn't be satisfied to anything less than 90% correct every session on CTS. I suggest you keep a training diary. 90% means 1/10 problems wrong, check out your recent problems page every now and then to make sure you're really reaching that standard. -because, practice has shown that getting to 90% average requires aiming at 95%, which a bit unintuitively means 1/20 wrong already. your mind will sell you short if you don't pay attention to that.
Originally posted by trev33by board vision I mean spotting the patterns on the board. the key features. as opposed to calculation, which is different and requires different kind of training (ie. slow) to improve at.
what do you mean by 'board vision'? like the sequence of moves you can see when contemplating a move?
it includes seeing where everything is, the pieces, the checks, their available squares, pawn structures etc. -you should become able to see it at glance, over years. but as you maybe remember when you started chess, you simply couldn't make sense of a position even with long conscious think. it was just a random jumble of pieces, which your brain can't make any sense of. (it still happens if you get into a totally unfamiliar position. and will happen even to a GM if presented with a random position. the visual cortex only sees what it's been fed with.)
it's a multidimensional type of vision. you also learn to see time (depth) in addition to the pure 2d position. the brain doesn't (need to) differentiate between the different types of input. it'll process it all the same, once you teach it, and spit the results to your conscious thought process to work with.
anything worth doing takes effort.
I checked out the tactics server. I am not a fan of timed tactics. Even with the modern abbreviated time controls it doesn't make sense to me to penalize for taking more than 10 seconds to come to a conclusion about a postions.
Otherwise a very worthwhile site. I signed up in case Chandler is slacking on his corner while I am at work.
Originally posted by wormwoodagreed. Didn't see this when I was posting.
edit: oops, quoted the wrong part at first.
the best way of training this, for me, has been doing tactics striving to high accuracy. when you train on CTS, don't get sucked into the tempting ratings game, it'll just develop a disasterous habit for guessing and ignoring the counter threats. every time your otherwise working solution fails because your kin ...[text shortened]... ready. your mind will sell you short if you don't pay attention to that.
Hi
Looks like we all agree tactical training is the way forward.
How we put this into our games and the reason why we see these tricks is
an explanation that has stumped some of the best writers on the game.
I can only tell you that if you keep seeing and solving these puzzles or playing
over games that have tactcis in them then you will get better and better at
solving them and putting them to use into your own games.
The thought process we use appears to be complicated and differs from
individual to individual.
What training method works for one may not work for another.
You often see one player praising a book over the moon and yet another
player condemining it as useless.
I reckon if you got 6 good players to look at a position and write down what
they are thinking you may well end up 6 correct solutions.
But you could 6 different methods of getting there.
Here is a position from the European Championship. White to play.
I got it not by first of all solving it but by 'knowing' there was a win.
'Intuition' how do we explain intuition? How can you teach Intuition?
Then it was a matter of simply finding the moves using all the tricks and
patterns at my disposal gathered from years (and years) of playing over
games with such tricks in them or solving puzzles.
White missed it during the game and agreed a draw here.
Devices I know I used were:
Forcing moves - everything with a check.
Under promotion trick.
Look deeper past the bit where you think there is nothing.
Do Rook and Knight mating patterns work?
Why I knew there was a mate on and the exact method of calculation I used
I cannot tell you even though I did it.
'Look deeper past the bit where you think there is nothing. '
This was the important bit - everything was standard till here.
Why did I go deeper, why was I even looking for a win?
(I was not told there was missed win - I 'felt' there was a win).
Where does the 'feeling' come from - how do you teach it?
It must be training or perhaps the Rook & Knight pattern jumped out at me.
I honestly cannot tell you how I calcualted it out and in what order I saw it.
WW & SG I know will solve this.
It would be interesting to hear their explanation how they reached and saw
the end.
White to playe. Stevenson - Galic. European Team Championship 2009.
Tactical training via a website?
I saw the missed win in the previous post on a monitor. I can tell you this,
about 2 years ago I was terrible at seeing these things on a screen.
Hours of blitz and playing games on here have fuzed my OTB ability and
I can now say I get the 'thing' that I cannot explain that tells me something is on.
Not all the time but it has seeped through.
I'm not 100% confident in the trickier postions I have had in my games.
I get doubts but when I transfer to a full board I usually find my doubts were
groundless.
This is because I don't trust the trust myself on the screen as much as I do a board.
I don't even trust myself solving from printed diagrams.
It has to be the board if I am doing a solving session.
I'd prefer students to learn on a full set.
I know this works and through time it does appear this can be transposed to a
screen.
I do not know if this works the other way.
If you want to be a good OTB player then you must study and learn your trade
on a full sized set.
I think this is good advice and although though my stance v screen training
has changed over the past 5 or 6 months I will always maintain the book and
board method is better for the absolute beginner than learning from a screen.
There is something about reading with the phsyical act of moving the pieces
that helps the brain retain the information.
But I am proof that looking at positions on a monitor can be done and through
time you will have this ability - to solve and 'feel' from a screen.
My worry is that because I toiled to transfer from board to screen will not
players toil transferring from screen to a board.
I think this is a plausible concern.
What do you want to be?
Good at OTB play or good at internet chess?
Looks like you can gain the inert ability and skill from either
and then re-train yourself to put it into practise in the other.
(Interesting to note that today America has banned these Einstein Monitors
for teaching children how to read an write because they have proved totally
useless.)
Originally posted by Jasen777I'm afraid White did miss it.
Can't believe white would agree to a draw there. Even if they didn't see a mate, the move that puts black in tremendous trouble seems obvious...
It would have been a great finish to a good game by White.
I'd guess at time trouble?
I know White, he is not the type of player to grab a draw only seeing
the grading points and his previous play did not indicate he was scared of
his opponents grade and title.
Sleepless night ahead for him I'm afraid.
Just before he drops off that position will pop into his mind.
His toes will curl, his legs will bend up to his chest and he will wish he had
never heard of the game of chess.
Been there - we all have.
Here is the full game.
Originally posted by greenpawn34
Hi
Looks like we all agree tactical training is the way forward.
How we put this into our games and the reason why we see these tricks is
an explanation that has stumped some of the best writers on the game.
I can only tell you that if you keep seeing and solving these puzzles or playing
over games that have tactcis in them then you will get ...[text shortened]... Championship 2009.
[fen]5nk1/p1r3p1/4P3/1p1Q1P2/6P1/1PP1R1KP/8/2q5 w - - 0 1[/fen]
White's R is hanging and his King is somewhat exposed. Black, if given the chance, will go for perpetual Q checks. If White is to win, he simply must give check every move.
The first three moves are obvious from the standpoint of keeping Black in check while making progress [a promotion, and killing off a black defender]. From there, it is a matter of continuing to look at checks, no matter how absurd they may look at first [witness white's 4th move]. Knowing mating patterns, as GP34 mentioned, helps greatly - it gives you something to aim for.
Pattern recognition effectively shortens calculations. Even though the line here is six moves long, the calculation really ends on move 4 once the familiar pattern is spotted.
Hi SG.
It's hard to explain how it all fits in. It just does.
Discovered check wins the Knight.
Where did the under promotion idea come from - why did you think of that?
Why do you keep looking when you have no more sensible check left?
Where did the Queen sac come from?
What did you see first. The idea of the Queen sac or the R & N mating pattern?
I could not begin to tell you they way I got it unless I was shown another problem
and I recorded myself thinking out aloud.
Maybe that is an idea.
I'm going to try that using strong players as test dummies.
I'll show them the same postions and they must talk there way through it,
I'll recorded them and see what I get.
Now that is going to be interesting. I'll put the results on The Corner.....
....perhaps even YouTube it.
The post that was quoted here has been removedIn CTS set it to: BREAK ON FAILURE...this way it stops automatically serving games so you have
a chance to look at the failure to find out what you missed. You might find the odd one where
you just can't work it out...make a not of the problem number and ask someone here.
You might like: http://chesstempo.com/
This is a great thread!. My RHP rating is hovering around 1600, yet I feel that I don't desreve anything higher than, may be 1400. My victories are mostly results of opponenets' blunders and blatant chess blindness. All of my opponents have a lower rating to start with. My loses are due to either lack of attention or inferior chess knowledge.
I try to recognize patterns and learn openings but I always lacked good memory. I don't feel I porgress at all. I'm quite old, I have not played the game for 35 years and restarted only a year ago. I want to play so my brains doen't go to pot...