Just how to play...

I've been analysing my approach to this site after nearly a year of playing chess. Much like other people I've come across, I find the itchy trigger finger is the easy way to play of an evening. Make a move whilst cooking, drinking, watching TV. It doesn't seem the most efficient way to play GOOD chess. And games almost go off like blitz rather than correspondence - and bad blitz at that! Playing this way sure is fun and if you don't care about losing, blunders, or rating then the excitement of waiting for a move to pop up using the 'Wait for move' feature is stimulating. Heck half the time I just keep refreshing my browser! Oops there's another and another. Move, itch, trigger, move...

I'm starting to want to grow up a bit and perhaps take more time over moves, perhaps analyse and think instead of just move based on instinct, as I always do. Enjoy a longer and more meaningful relationship with a chess position.

Seems like a really dumb (sorry) question, but how do you play on RHP? And if you are mega-analytical and enjoy few slow games, how do you rid yourself of the urge to really need to know what the next move from your opponent is and make a response quickly so you can see what he'll do?

What's your approach to playing on RHP?

I pretty much play entirely by instinct. Lately it's been mostly instink 🙁

Originally posted by GraemeK
I've been analysing my approach to this site after nearly a year of playing chess. Much like other people I've come across, I find the itchy trigger finger is the easy way to play of an evening. Make a move whilst cooking, drinking, watching TV. It doesn't seem the most efficient way to play GOOD chess. And games almost go off like blitz rather than correspo ponse quickly so you can see what he'll do?

What's your approach to playing on RHP?

I try to create an initiative, if there is no initiative i develop with tempo if possible (this is rather controversial but there are hundreds of games where initiative has won out over mere routine development). I always try to work towards a particular strategic goal, these are fairly simple, like swap off an enemy bishop and go after the squares of that colour or look at the pawn structure and pawn breaks etc. Material is the last consideration, for its much better to consider the actual function of the of pieces rather than their material value. This i do while arguing with my friends on the spirituality forum and reading stuff and trying to remain calm with wife and kids constantly booting me from the pc or enticing me away with offers of food and drink. If the games are slow i sometimes practice on chesstempo.

I think i am very similar to you in this respect, i barely take more than five minutes for a move and i dont really like to sit and analyse by moving pieces around, i find it much easier and quicker to try to visualise the position in my mind, sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't, occasionally ill use the analysis board thing if its real tricky. I have noticed that there is a tendency to analyse some lines and then play a completely different and unanalysed move, why it should that be case, i dunno, but it happens with some regularity! 🙂

Not very competitive and more than happy to play my friends.

Ideally I come up with candidate moves and analyze them using the analysis board, flipping it around to my opponent's side, and trying to see what he or she would do as a best answer.

After spending a few hours looking at variations, I would finally make a move.

In the real world, I log on the form to say something snarky, see I have some moves to make in my games and quickly make them so I can get back to trolling.

🙂

Originally posted by GraemeK
How do you rid yourself of the urge to really need to know what the next move from your opponent is and make a response quickly so you can see what he'll do?

What's your approach to playing on RHP?

You're only playing seven games, currently. Why not take on more games, with longer time conditions? That way, you'll have more games to mull over, which might reduce the urge to keep a single game running.

Granted, don't take on too many- otherwise, you'll end up making hasty moves to keep from losing via timeouts. I'd say try out having 15-20 games running at a time first before adding more.

Keep a notebook. Write down all of their moves and your moves like a scorecard. And write down what move you expect them to reply with. Make note of why you are making each move. Just in the time it takes to do that, you'll talk yourself out of a lot of rushed moves that were inferior. I was about a 1350 player when I started doing that, and I've jumped up to play consistently at about 1500 now, and I've beaten a handful of players 1700+ since then. It helps, if you are willing to spend a little bit of time on each move.

If you aren't interested in keeping an entire journal, list your candidate moves, then go away from the game and come back later and re-look at the moves you suggested to yourself. SOmetimes just looking again later makes them jump out at you, or you see your flaw...

P

Similar to the notebook suggestion...write your ideas for your next move, and so forth, in the notes section for the game. You slow down your trigger finger, and can also pick up your long term strategy again, which really helps when you have a bunch of games in progress. I highly recommend at least writing down your next move ideas, your expected opponent responses, and your response to that move. That makes you think not just about what looks good now, but whether it will hold up by your next move.

Plus, if you keep notes of your thoughts, it is easy to post your game annotation and get feedback on it from other players, to help improve your play!

Look at the position.
Play a move.

...

It wont improve ur chess but is fun.

I'm with Thabtos. Decide which move you'd make, open the analyse board feature, flip it so you're looking from the opponent's perspective, work out what you would do in retaliation. If the retaliation move(s) are better than yours, start again, if they're worse, make that move...

Even though this is ostensibly a correspondence site I am not really interested in playing correspondence style chess. I joined to keep in touch with a former work colleague. I play all my games as if they were over the board and to facilitate this I use the piece set "new dimension raised" which gives the best impression (in my opinion) of the three dimensional set. In this way I convince myself that I am exercising my "OTB Muscles". On games that progress slowly I do allow myself to play back the last half dozen moves to see what, if anything, I was thinking.

Of course I lose games to those who take the "war room" approach described above, to those who capitalise on my carelessness when I am in rapid simul mode, or for a hundred and one other reasons most of which come under the heading "I played cr@p". In general I am happy, certainly not alone, and I do not feel any imperative to play any other way.

There is no right or wrong answer here.

PS: I meant to say Kudos to User 368190 who designed the New dimension raised set.

ok the notebook idea sounds great, but I've never been a journal type person. I detest writing to myself...I analyze and look at which moves they could do...and then they do something I didn't even expect...it's like those moves were invisible to me. any advice (that doesn't involve being more observant cuz that's like a "no duh" answer) I love the game and I just learned to play three months ago. I start out strong and then fall on my rear. I need maybe a mental technique that helps.

I think you're asking the ultimate question that everyone wants to know the answer to (not the 42 question)... as per the notebook idea - I'm not much of a writer either and find that using a computer allows me to better manage notes. RHP has a good note feature, but I tend to use regular text files, scraps of paper, the RHP feature, and others (including none).