Hi, Bob. I always get tapes and dvd's in great enthusiasm, but find i drift off into sleep in fifteen minutes. I just can't help it. I think it's a conditioned reflex from normal tv. I also returned to chess after twenty years of not playing or looking at a single game and found i had gotten better (or my opponents had gotten worse!). I are you making out after 40 years of inactivity?
Well, i started chess again in march this year,realised i had forgotton how to play!! Not that i played much when i was a kid, but i played a bit at junior school!!
The omly books i had then was in the old descriptive notation!
Anyway i managed to get up to 1500 rating not quite in your rating,well done by the way 1900 fantastic!!!!!!! I am not sure if i will ever get to those dizzy heights, any tips?
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I've got 22 DVD's from chessbase, thats including the ones made by Gary Kasparov. tbh I can't really fault any of them, if your wanting to learn the Ruy Lopez I'd much prefer watching the dvd of it than reading it in a book, so it really depends on what your after.
What I will say though, alot of the newer DVD's have the games preloaded, that is to say that the person taking you through the game doesn't need to read notes etc because the game data is already there. This I found slightly annoying because now they tend to zip through some moves whereas before they took a little bit more time. This is especially the case with the endgame discs, however I can understand that more due to the number of variations etc. But the German guy does tend to talk a little fast.
For myself I've never really studied endgames, sure I can win rook vs King and other simple things like that however I didn't really know the basics such as with rook vs king deal with making a square each move reducing the square where the king can go, likewise with passed pawns, make a square with them if the king is in that square it can capture the pawn. So it's given me a better understanding of the endgame and making my moves more efficient.
btw I may be selling about 10 of my DVD's on ebay thought I'd make it a joblot rather than sell them separate so if there is anyone here interested feel free to pm me for details😀
I have the ones by Kasparov: How to play the najdorf, queen's gambit. Not very helpful. I find he's like a superbright college professor trying to explain things to a particularly dull freshman. Maybe it's my fault. The best annotator/explainer i've found is Andrew Martin. Practically anything he does is instructive and entertaining.
As for tips, i don't know. I was about 1500 uscf when i started playing over the board again. After four tournaments i was 1800+. I had lost all my books, magazines, etc. I had retired so i now had time. I just decided to look at all the moves my opponent could do first (even the stupid ones). I mean you only have to look at 20 or so. If there was a good one for him, i would counteract it in some way. If he had no really good moves, I would look at all of mine (even the stupid ones) and then pick the most damaging. After that, i would examine his follow up and if he couldn't do much i'd go along with my choice. Three steps. I guess it boils down to "be careful." I still don't consider myself very good. I'm lucky to crack 1500 in blitz.
Chess training dvds
27 Nov '06 21:38
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