Chess for Penguins

This plan is for a 1500-1700 elo player who has a basic tactical foundation and knows a tiny bit about strategy, endgames, and openings.

1. Average 60 min/day studying chess.

Surveys show FIDE-rated players, both titled and non-titled, average 5-6 hrs/week of study and reach their peak after 6-10 years of play. Another study found that masters (non-GMs) on average peak after 4000hrs of study.

Studying less than 1 hr/day reduces your chance of making master. But doing much more increases your chance of burning out.

2. Use per-position spaced repetition to retain my knowledge.

I did 7 circles through Heisman's Back to Basics: Tactics & 3 circles through Polgar's Chess Tactics for Champions. I got stronger, so circles ain't bad. But they're an obscene waste of time for someone with limited time.

Suppose on circle three I know 15 positions, I can calculate 10, and I miss 5. When should I review the book next? There isn't really an answer.

Per-problem tracking is the solution!

3. Read 100 Endgames You Must Know, My System, and Predator at the Chessboard and acquire their patterns

I added Predator at the Chessboard since the diagrams are easy to copy & paste into Supermemo. I was already studying the others.

100 Endgames You Must Know is an extremely readable FM-level endgame text. Once I have it down, I may be done with endgame theory for a long while.

4. Study the games that define my openings. Analyze key positions and write narratives, then memorize the lines.

I've avoided memorization a long time, but it has its place.

5. Play 3 rated OTB games/month at my local chess club.

Study and practice in combination is far superior to either one alone.

6. Review the games myself, with Rybka, and with a coach.

I found a coach who'll give me a great rate as long as I play OTB regularly.

7. Balance: Eat right, exercise, spend time with family, do well at work, and pursue interests besides chess.

But of course. Chess is a board game. :)

Psychology & Chess

Me

I was away for a week on a business trip. It was a blast enjoying prime steaks, T3 Townshend, and Crown Royal with usually faraway colleagues. But the workdays were long and in the evenings I suffered from insomnia.

A couple interesting books helped me to pass those long nights:


       

The Books

There are two models that explain how people succeed, and which one you subscribe to has a dramatic impact on your chess and life success.

Entity Theorists hold that factors beyond our control mostly determine whether we succeed--such as talent, luck, or a wealthy upbringing. Instead, Incremental Theorists attribute most success and failure to things within our sphere of influence such as effort or using optimal strategies.

You may be thinking you are a bit of both. Most people are. The key question is, which side of the continuum do you lean towards?

Carol's Take

Carol Dweck is a leading researching in developmental psychology. She gave 400 kids an easy exam, a difficult exam, and then an easy exam.

Group #1 was told after the first exam, "You must be smart at this". When given a choice, they opted out of the second exam. When not, they were demoralized by it and scored 30% worse than expected on the third exam.

Group #2 was told after the first exam, "You must have worked really hard at this." When given a choice, they opted for the second exam. When not, they found it educational and scored 20% better than expected on the third exam.

Similar experiments have yielded similar results in adults.

Josh's Take

Josh Waitzkin, who is both an IM and a world champion in the martial arts, agrees with Carol's research. In the martial arts there is a special phrase for being an incremental theorist--having a Beginner's Mind.

He adds that one trap that incremental theorists fall into is being ego-less, viewing each game as a lesson and not caring whether they win or lose. A true competitor is confident and cares intensely about the result of the game.

At first this may seem paradoxical, but it makes perfect sense. We stand to learn the most from our games when we put everything on the line. Clearly, we should aim for a mix of successes and failures in our practice games that boost our confidence while helping us learn.

Memory & Chess

"When the dawn comes, tonight will be a memory too..."



Scientists know what role the parts of our brain participate in, via brain scans and studies of people and animals with partially-malfunctioning brains.

• Amygdala - Stores emotionally-charged memories and reacts when you re-enter a dangerous situation for the second or third time.
  

• Basal Ganglia - Stores skills and habits that we've repeated many, many times such as driving our car, using a spoon, or exercising in the morning. Pros: Anything in procedural memory can be done on auto-pilot and it's hard to forget. Cons: It's hard to forget!
  

• Hippocampus - Forms and stores long-term semantic memory, like principles, techniques, and tactical patterns. The longer we know these, the less likely the hippo's involved. It also stores visual-spatial memories, no matter how long we know them.
  

• Frontal Cortex - Stores long-term semantic memory. If we know something well, and we know it for months or years, the knowledge will transfer completely from the hippocampus and into the frontal lobes.

A brain scan of players 1700-2600 shows that the stronger the player, the more they use their frontal lobes and the less they use their hippocampus. They remember while we calculate.

What does this mean to me?

1. The secret to mastery is not in learning to play chess on auto-pilot.
   
2. The secret to mastery is not studying drawing of 3d boards.
3. The secret to mastery is not how many positions we can calculate.
   

Since most of our chess knowledge is in forgettable, semantic memory we should be selective about what we learn and remember to review it (think: spaced repetition).

Basic Endings: Rook vs Knight

vs

This is one of the 100 endgame you must know, says GM Jesus de la Villa. It was also the subject of the first recorded chess endgame study by Al-Aldi in 842 AD.

I. Evaluation & Principles

• 71% draws.
• Usually won if the knight ventures away from his king's protection.
  
• Usually won if the knight's in a corrner (red zone).
  
• Winning chances with a knight on the rim (yellow zone¹).

[08-Oct-2008 update: Added b4, b5, d2, d7, e2, e7, g4, and g5 to the yellow zone.]

II. Technique

While the above will help you determine whether to enter a rook vs knight endgame, you need to know more to actually play it well. Read on to learn more. :)

Trapping a Separated Knight

[FEN "7R/k7/8/1K6/8/1n6/8/8 w - - 0 3"]
3. Rd8 Nc1 4. Rd2 Nb3 5. Rd1

1.Rd8! confines the knight, the first step towards winning it. Finishing off the knight is straight-forward: 1...Nc1 2.Rd2 Nb3 3.Rd1 or 1...Na1 2.Rd2 Nb3 3.Rd1.²

Surviving on the Rim

[FEN "3KN3/7r/8/3k4/8/8/8/8 b - - 0 5"]
5... Ke6 6. Nc7+ Kd6 7. Ne8+ Kc6 8. Kc8 Rh8 9. Kd8 Rh7 10. Kc8 Ra7 11. Kd8

White's knight prevents the Black king from occupying d6, e6, or f6. If the rook attacks on the eighth rank, White can survive by escaping via the e7 flight square.

More Complicated Cases

These examples may mislead you into believing this ending is simple. Nothing could be further from the truth. Even super-GMs can goof, and amateur games are often comedies of errors.

rn-pos-3.pgn

As you play over the above game, can you spot all the mistakes? Every ?? indicates one side blundered so badly the result changed from won to drawn or vice-versa.

III. Mastery

"This time, let go your conscious self and act on instinct." -- Obi-Wan Kenobi

When your clock is down to 5 seconds/move, it's not enough to know the winning technique. You must be able to play on instinct, as smoothly as you swim or ride a bike. Once you reach this level of mastery, you never forget. You've never forgotten how to swim, have you? ³

GM Yasser Seirawan learned this endgame by playing a simple game. He put only a white rook, white king, and black knight on the board. He then moved the White pieces and Black pieces in turn (Black is allowed to pass!) and saw how quickly he could hunt down the knight.

Play this for a few minutes a day for the next month. :)

Footnotes

¹ - Specifically, if the knight's in the red zone it can be immediately trapped by either the king or rook. If the knight's in the yellow zone it can be trapped by the king and rook together. I find this a useful way to gauge the relative danger of squares.

² - This position arises in a line from the Al-Aldi 842 AD endgame study.

³ - For the scientifically inclined, It's stored in your procedural memory. Experimental evidence proves this knowledge even survives many forms of amnesia.

Open Files and Pins

Tactics without strategy is like having the awesome firepower of an artillery battery, but nobody to spot and direct fire at key enemy targets.



An artillery gun and its operators by themselves are dangerous. They may score the occasional decisive shot--and yet their true potential is revealed only when they work with a spotter. This team is worth far more than the sum of its parts.

This brings us to a recent rapid game, where I successfully combined open files (strategy) and pins (tactics) with a smashing result! I was excited to see the one-two punch of hitting the tactics and studying My System pay off so clearly in an actual game.   :)



Black to move and win. Can you spot White's best defense and Black's winning line?

game-file-pin.pgn

Tactical Warfare: The Pin

A great player once said "Chess is 99% tactics!" While modern masters argue chess is only 90% tactics these days, it's still the most profitable area for amateurs to study.



Target Audience: <1500 online rating

The pin is one of the basic tactical motifs. When you attack a piece, it's pinned if it can't move without exposing a more valuable piece.



In the diagram above, the rook pins the bishop to the king. White will capture it for free on his next move. When the target of a pin is the king, we call it an absolute pin, because it's illegal for the pinned piece to leave the line of fire.



In the second example the bishop pins the rook to the queen. It's legal for the rook to move... but that would be a big blunder! When the target of a pin is not the king we call it a relative pin. Calculating the outcome of a relative pin tends to be harder than calculating the outcome of an absolute pin.

Notice that only the bishop, the rook, and the queen can pin!

How to Spot More Pins

• Study tactical puzzles and games involving pins.
  
• Note which squares a pinned piece isn't defending due to the pin.
  
• Note that pinned pieces are immbolized and thus vulnerable to attack.
  
• Look for tactics whenever pieces are on the same rank, file, or diagonal.
  
• Look for missed pins in your games to identify your blindspots.

Challenge Yourself

These practical tactical positions are lifted directly from my games. Try to find the best move. When you're done, review the answer key below.









Answer Key

#1: Bb5! pins and wins the Black queen.

#2: Black had attempted to shake-off the pin with ...h6, but this runs into trouble. Nxf6+! gxf6 Bxh6 wins a pawn and shatters Black's kingside.

#3: Nxf6+! and Black can't recapture because the g7-pawn is pinned.

#4: Qxb3! and Black can't recapture because the c4-pawn is pinned.

#5: ...e4! wins the pinned knight.

#6: ...Rg8! pins and wins the bishop.

#7: Bxg7? Rg8! loses the bishop. Just about anything else, even Kg2, is better.

Conclusion

If you got most of these, give yourself a pat on the back. But remember... in real games nobody tells you when there's a tactic. So if you want to defeat your opponents with a tactical flourish (and avoid the same fate yourself!) you should study pins from a tactics book until they become second nature to you.

My New Bookcase

I'm happy to finally have a place to store all my chess books and magazines. :)

How's my studying going? Not so good. After work, exercise, and playing with / reading to my daughter I haven't had the energy to dig into tactics problems. For the past week I've focused more on productivity and eating right, and now my doctor wants me to run some tests for diabetes, thyroid issues, etc.

Studying chess has its ups and downs. I hope to hit my stride again soon!