Wanna study a great chess book? Check out "Chess 5334 Problems, combinations, and games" by Laszlo Polgar.
This thing is thick enough to choke a horse, at over 1100 pages, and I have had it sitting in my chess library for a year or more, and am just now starting to work with it.
It is really a master work, and for all you get, I picked it up for ten bucks at the local bookstore when I first purchased it.
That is raelly a steal of a price.
suposedly, the problems he presents in it are the same ones he trained the Polgar sisters with.
Let me quote form the intro, by pandolfini: "here reconstructed is the path followed by Zsusza, Zsofia, and Judit Polgar in their metoric climb to the top of the chess pantheon. It is said that each sister worked through and played out similar groups of their father's carefully chosen and arranged examples, until vital patterns and schemes became second nature, very like the way music stuidents master finger excercises."
Anyway, only seek out the book if you have some SERIOUS time and ambition on your hands. I warn you, it is a monster!
Although I sincerely believe that applied diligence and assiduous effort on my part over a LONG period of time should produce a significant improvement in my game. In other words, fellas, this is gonna take some serious WORK!!!
Just thought I'd pass along the tip.
I also have the book. I read several recomendations for it in different places as a means of burning patterns into your memory. With this in mind the recomendation I have followed is to do the first 450 problems, then start over. Repeat until you can solve every one in just a few seconds. Then repeat the process for the next batch. Some folks find this odd to re-do problems you already know the answer to, almost like cheating. If you think of it as a pile of chess brain teasers though, you are missing the real opportunity to improve your game. It's not an IQ test. It's about developing the ability to recognize a situation instantly when something similar arises in an actual game.
What you said about solving the first 450 problems and then REDOING them is an excellent idea. The reason this is so good is because in so doing that, you are literally BURNING these patterns into your brain and memory through the process of OVERLEARNING. I think a great part of chess mastery is pattern recognition. Unless you have a true photographic memory like Fischer, the way to do it is through repition.
Hopefully by doing this, they will be on the "tip of your conciousness", for want of a better way of phrasing it. The key is you want easy fluent and instant recognition and access to the patterns you have burned into your brain, so that when you see them over the actual board they will "jump out at you", and your brain will click in " Ahaaa! Mate in two!", (Or whatever). In other words, when you see these patterns over the board, man, their should be a "nudge" in your brain.
Even more desirable than that, they should SCREAM at you like a fire truck barreling down the road in your lane with lights flashing at one hundred miles an hour! That would be the ultimate!
Even beyond that, is the ability to CREATE these patterns on the board using appropriate tactics. I confess i am FAR from that goal. But i'm working on it, fellas, I'm working on it.
What I did to enhance the process is to buy a small pocket size notebook, then I copied the patterns on a zerox, and cut them out and pasted them in the notebook in sequential order (I'm still not finished with all of them). Anyway, by doing this, i can carry the patterns in my pocket wherever I go, and when ever I have a free moment during the day, (for instance when answering nature's call), I take the notebook out of my pocket and work on them on the spot. It's very handy, although a bit expensive and alot of extra work. But my chess game is worth it to me.
Besides, I need ALL the WORK I can get as far as solving mating patterns. My game is in sad shape. And the only way to change is, as Tony Robbins says, is to take "massive action".
I wish to God there was a way to "sleep learn" chess. We waste ALL that time every night watching the inside of our eyelids, and Hell, if we could learn chess during that time, well, man, we would have it "made in the shade"
geez--I thought the book was a deal when I paid $25 for it, though I've often seen it for $10 the past couple years.
I worked through the first 1500 or so problems by devoting 30 minutes per day for a couple months, but then I put it aside for some other problem sets. Polgar has similar books on combinations and endings, though I haven't seen them on any discount tables.
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Good to know his books are good.
I literally just got back from buying my FIRST chess book. I'm gonna be gone a LOT of the next month and a half and figured this would be a great time to actually read/learn from a chess book.
After sifting through all the books at my local Border's I selected, "Weapons of Chess" by Pandolfini. It by far seemed to offer exactly what I was looking for. Explanations to chess strategy in English. Not just lots of puzzles and pages of Algabraic notation...
I fully intend to post a detailed review of the book when I return. If any of you all time me out while I am gone, I will have to use my newly acquired book-knowledge and whoop up on you.
Tim
Originally posted by tmetzlerI have that one. You'll like it. I guarantee you'll learn something from every page. It's one of my "bathroom" books. 🙂
Good to know his books are good.
I literally just got back from buying my FIRST chess book. I'm gonna be gone a LOT of the next month and a half and figured this would be a great time to actually read/learn from a chess book.
After sifting through all the books at my local Border's I selected, "Weapons of Chess" by Pandolfini. It by far seemed ...[text shortened]... ile I am gone, I will have to use my newly acquired book-knowledge and whoop up on you.
Tim