Chess Training

I'm trying to discover some new ideas for chess training. For years I did it all the wrong way with little-to-no results. I suppose you could say I'm an expert at knowing what not to do.

My first mistake was studying openings. I knew it was useless, but I liked the openings. My first wake up call on this should have been in 1997 at a tournament in Korea. I was a 1300 player and was paired against a 1900-rated Army Captain. During the hour-long bus ride to the tournament I looked up a chess line in the Guico Piano that went about 20 or so moves deep. Amazingly, against all odds, we entered that line I memorized. We reached the end of the line where according to the book I had a winning position. Actually, it was winning, but I didn't understand why! All of a sudden I was clueless and after a few moves he crushed me. id I learn my lesson? No. I thought, well I just need to memorize more theory.

Later I learned that too much opening theory was not the best for lower-rated players like me. But that didn't stop me. I liked the openings and it was fun for me. It took me until late 2005 to wake up after my rating began to drop to 1600.

I went back to learn the basics that I didn't learn. Sounds crazy doesn't it. I was painfully weak in the fundamentals of the game. It could be compared to playing basketball without learning to dribble. By the way, that was the same way I learned basketball! I learned how to dribble last. After all the wasted years, I know that a good grasp of the fundamentals is required in everything.

During the North American Open I talked with a chess trainer from Chicago. We talked for about 30 minutes. It was mostly just me listening. He gave me some tips/suggestions:

- Memorize 100 master games as recommended by Seriwan (25 sounds reasonable to me)
- Pick one active chess player and follow him for a year--break down his games and deeply analyze them
- Tactics, tactics, tactics. He told me to do tactics daily--to do mate-in-one and mate-in-two very rapidly (building up the intuition)
- The Kotov Method of Training...basically put a position on the board and use a clock (20 min or whatever) and write down your analysis

He highly stressed tactics. He said, at my level my first, middle and last name should be Tactics. Then he said upon reaching the 2000 level I should have openings developed. He spent 3 days with Karpov and gained some valuable knowledge. Unfortunately, I don't remember much. He also mentioned Akopian's use of hypnosis and shared some training tips from his GM friends.

He also talked about not confusing the brain. For example, don't mix, opening, middlegame, tactics, strategy, and endgame. Break it down and work each seperately as you learn. It could be broken down further by let's say working on Tactics and even breaking it down into Pin, discovered attack, etc. He said just focus on quality not quanity. Take your time to grasp it.

What he told me made sense. I was doing it wrong all these years.

I'm also losing interest and satisfaction of playing at the club. There's person who is really beginning to irriate me and I'm ready to tell him how I feel. So, I think it's best for me to drop out for a while before I make a scene.

The only thing that might bring me back to play is playing on a team. It sounds fun, but for some reason I won't believe it until I see it.

Is it too late for me to improve? I would like to think I can still improve. We are only limited by our beliefs and age is a difficult belief for me to overcome. We heard it over and over about how difficult it is to improve with age. I don't buy it. Us older guys might not be as tactically sharp as before, but there are advantages with age and experience. Patience is a big plus and also being able to listen and take advice is something us older guys can do. But the bottom line is that it's a young man's game.

I hope to make a big push just to see how I can improve. I plan on making a journal and keeping track of everything. The key is to work on it daily and to have some focus. No, it's not a New Years' resolution. It just happened to fall in this timeframe.

cheers

Paul