Chess

I've been surprised at how competent (probably not to you) that even the low-ranking people on Yahoo are. Makes me wonder if I went back and played just your average joe at a family gathering now if I'd win handily. Not that that's the goal.

 

Just remember, the harder it is to get better, the more rewarding it is to get better And it's great for setting goals and reaching them.

It's really not a game you can just sit down and play by eye. You get better through experience and dedicated study.

Like I said, it's *really* rewarding to put your mind to it, but it takes dedicated time and practice.

 

I used to play quite a bit when I was a kid, just against the computer.

I go the chess.com app about a year ago, and the computer was tearing me up. But admittedly I've played very little.

I just beat it twice in thee past 24 hours.

 

I'm going to play a pretty intense game of shotglass checkers this weekend. Black is Jagermeister, red is Jack Daniels.

Bet it'd be a lot more fun if I was playing it with someone else.

 

I've been continuing to work at it. Still not very good yet, but I've gotten more competent, especially with my openings. I know that's the last thing I'm supposed to try to master, but the problem was that within four or five moves, I was behind in material and position because I just didn't know how to answer anything. I knew general principles, but those don't help when someone is springing something on you. I felt like I was just moving pieces around.

What I've done is gone over my openings compared to grand master games. Typically, they make the same exact answer for four or five or even six moves to whatever black does to me. Eventually, of course, things start to veer. But at least it has given me a road map to typical responses so that I don't totally screw myself two or three moves in.

There seem to be a couple issues I'm really dealing with:

(1) I still end up hanging a piece here or there, and that's how I end up falling behind in material and eventually lose the game.
(2) I'll reach a point where I'm either ahead a little in material, or even in material and in a good position on the board, and there will literally be no move I can possibly see that will help me. And most of them will hurt me in some way. I wish it was like Scrabble and you could just pass! It's like my knowledge just reaches a standstill and I get stuck in the quicksand at that point.

 

The way I learned openings was the "one mistake at a time" method. After every game, I'd look it up in Modern Chess Openings (you can also do it online) and see where I diverged form "book" or recommended lines. Then I'd try to remember the next move in the sequence. Over a metric shit-ton of games, it adds up. Eventually, you need to learn *why* those are the book moves, but this will get you through for awhile.

Obviously, you just have to train yourself to not hang pieces. Tactics training, a little bit every day. Either on a site or there are some excellent books.

Okay, on your different issues:

1) When you are even in material and aren't sure what to do, well, welcome to chess .

This is an issue Dan Heisman, author of the Novice Nook chess column, addresses a lot. Before you've had a few years of experience to learn various middlegame strategies and plans, he has a very good rule of thumb on how to find a move in those positions where you aren't sure what to do:

"Look for your piece that is doing the least, and find a square for it where it does more."

Here's a couple Heisman articles that will help you with implementing that. Some of it might be a bit above your level, but you should be catching up pretty quick and it's good to start exposing yourself to it:

http://www.chesscafe.com/text/heisman20.pdf
http://www.chesscafe.com/text/heisman09.pdf

Once you get to the point where you can usually get through a game without hanging material and the "take your least active piece and improve it" rule of thumb is no longer enough, you are probably ready for an introductory middlegame book.

My recommendation would be "The Amateur's Mind" by International Master Jeremy Silman. It's aimed at players in the 1200-1400 USCF range, so maybe 1500 to 1700 Yahoo.

http://www.amazon.com/Amateurs-Mind-Turning-Misconceptions-Mastery/dp/1890085022/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1326836698&sr=8-1

2) Okay, what to do when you are ahead in material. You'll get used to this pretty quickly. It won't be long before you are annoyed when your opponents don't resign down a piece, because you don't find it challenging or interesting.

Some general rules:
a) Safety first! When you have a decisive winning advantage, any move that doesn't lose is an eventually winning move.

b) Try to trade pieces whenever you can, but try to avoid trading pawns. So long as you have one extra pawn at the end, you can (usually) win fairly easily. But without pawns, you can't win with just one minor piece (knight or bishop). It's very hard to win with two minor pieces and not worth the trouble of learning at your level (I can do two bishops if I think about it. Two knights is brutal and I only vaguely remember the technique involved).

It'd really be worth your time to learn the basic king+pawn vs. king endgames. Sometimes they are won and sometimes they are drawn, and you need to learn which is which and how to execute the best result for yourself. Once you start to learn that, it'll be easier for you to see what you should be steering toward in endgames. There are some videos on youtube that will teach you K+P vs. K endgames, but try to get out a board (either by yourself or with a partner, physical board or computer board) and play it out, don't just watch passively. Keep practicing until you can do it instantly without thinking about it.

Here's an excellent Novice Nook on playing when ahead in material titled "When You're Winning It's A Whole Different Ballgame."

http://www.chesscafe.com/text/heisman13.pdf


3) Sometimes there *are* positions where there is literally nothing you can do to strengthen your position. You must move, and in moving, you will lose something. This is called "zugzwang" and it's a very important endgame principle. Most simple endgames would be drawn with out it. Zugzwang is extremely rare in the middlegame and non-existent in the endgame, so don't worry about it too much for now.

 

Yep. This is exactly what I've been doing. The Chess Master computer program has a data base of grand master games, so you can plug in the moves that are made, then search the database for that game. With that, I can tell where I diverged from the normal play.

Will respond to the rest of your post later tonight or tomorrow.

Thanks for all the motivation.

 

I'm all about Scrabble.

 

http://www.chessvideos.tv/chess-game-replayer.php?id=58819

A rather shameful draw for me against International Master Milanovic Vojislav in an 11-game online simul. I had a very nice attack going, but chickened out and we agreed to a draw (saves him the time and energy to focus on the other games in the simul, saves me the embarrassment of risking losing a dead drawn position).

Reminds me of this documentary. Any chess fans who haven't seen it should take the time:

Garry Kasparov plays a six-person simul against six of the best young American masters at the time. This is considered a pretty gutsy, tough challenge for him to take on.

Very early, he offers a dead-drawn line of play to two of the players playing white. If they take it, they get a draw against the world champion, but they leave their teammates out to dry because they've wasted one of their team's white games and left Kasparov with more time to focus on the other games. If they decline and play away from the drawn line, they get a complicated position where they probably have the advantage, but it's very unclear and a lot of problems to solve.

One of them declines the draw and goes on to win. Another takes it, and Kasparov refuses to shake his hand and gives him a rather nasty (by chess standards) tongue-lashing for wasting the opportunity of a lifetime on an easy way out. Great stuff.

 

Anyone still remotely interested in this thread? Lessons? Shared thoughts? Game challenges?

Relatively hot chess women?

Okay, done:

Scored a draw in an online 15-minute game against Women's Grandmaster and former U.S. Women's Champion Rusudan Goletiani today:

 

Am rereading "Funeral in Berlin" by Len Deighton, still the best spy novel of the '60s. While being interrogated by KGB Col. Stok (one of the great characters of spy fiction, BTW), the anonymous British spy protagonist is asked if he plays chess.
Answer: "I prefer games where there's a better chance to cheat."

 

Random update: Haven't played as many tournaments as I'd like this year, but did finish 2nd out of 18 at nearby open last month. Only loss was to a kid who looked maybe 13 or 14 and outrated me by a few hundred points. I think I had a shot at beating him, but I voluntarily went into a line of the Ruy Lopez Marshall Gambit that requires white to play a ton of perfect defense, then made a small calculation error. That's all it takes to lose.

Interesting story about that game. One of the biggest problems with chess today is that anyone can have a free computer program on their phone or laptop that would easily beat any player in the world. I'd guess that roughly half the top players online are cheating at any given time. In over-the-board tournaments, cheating incidents are rare, but happen just often enough to keep everyone paranoid.

There was a funny one about a year ago where a high-rated European grandmaster was playing a lower-rated master (kind of the equivalent of MLB player vs. A-ball pro). The master kept taking bathroom breaks at odd times, so the grandmaster followed him into the bathroom and listened for "bathroom noises" outside his stall. When he didn't hear any, he alerted the tournament director, who confronted the master. He admitted to using a chess engine on his phone and was banned for three years.

So anyway, Mr. Up-and-Coming-Pubescent is there with his dad, who sits in the playing hall with a laptop while his son plays. At a bigger tournament, that'd be a big no-no, but this is a small local tournament so nobody makes too big of a fuss. I'm playing him, and we open with a very well-known line as he confidently blitzes out his moves. On the 12th move, I go into a small sideline that I know pretty well but throws a lot of people off, and the smirk immediately fades from his face and he begins to think. After a few minutes, his dad comes over to the table, hands him an open Harry Potter book, then walks out of the room (with his laptop). The kid looks at the book, nods, then closes it. After a few more minutes of thinking, he leaves the playing hall. After a couple of minutes, I get suspicious and begin to look for them. I don't see them anywhere on the grounds or in the parking lot. I give up and return to the board, and he shows up a minute or two later and begins making moves again.

I keep waffling between thinking that maybe I should have complained to the tournament director, or deciding that I'm just being paranoid and having sour grapes that I lost.