Later this summer we shall publish a book by Swedish IM Axel Smith called Pump Up Your Rating. Axel is also writing a related blog called Pump Up Your Rating at the following link. That blog is not controlled by Quality Chess, so it will be up to Axel what he writes about, but I suspect chess improvement will be a recurring theme.

I have read the first draft of Axel’s book and I am delighted with how it is shaping up, but then I would say that, wouldn’t I?

But this week I am trying to write a disciplined blog entry; one that I feel I should write. It is a bit like going for a swim in the ocean, rather than lying on the beach watching the girls walk by. It is good for you and you might even enjoy it once you get going, but it is not your preferred choice.

So here come ten possible ways for you to improve your chess. No matter who you are, if you are seeking my advice on anything, you will find at least a few strategies here that will help you along the way.

1. Analyse your own games deeply (and the games of others).

2. Solve puzzles regularly (my advice is six times a week x 20-30 minutes).

3. Understand what type of player you are and adjust your style accordingly.

4. Push your levels of concentration upwards and become a fighter.

5. Play real openings. Throw away the London, c3-Sicilian or whatever rubbish you are playing. If you want to develop as a player, playing main lines is important.

6. Learn by heart all the 222 obligatory positions from Dvoretsky’s Endgame Manual.

7. Play through game collections with good comments.

This might vary from player to play; for some the Move by Move stuff from Everyman might be reasonable. But for most readers of this blog, I recommend books written either by great players, or books with a great reputation. For example, Botvinnik, Smyslov, Kasparov, Nunn, Anand, Karpov (the old books), San Luis 2005 and so on.

8. Use your body to the best effect for the game (stop poisoning it, for example).

9. Analyse your openings deeply and find your own systems with your own ideas.

10. Understand the basic principles of dynamics, statics and strategic play. These can be studied indefinitely of course, but you can always improve your understanding.

There are always a lot of ways to do anything. Anyone who wants to sell “the only way” is either selling chess studies or tablebase printouts. In the same way, it is possible to reach the same conclusion by many different thinking processes.

The only real danger here is that you fall in love with one system and become fixed to it. You can be the openings guy, or the endings guy, or the expert in solving studies. My closest-sitting colleague in the office, GM Colin McNab, is the last two. I am not sure if it has given his over-the-board play any great advantage, compared to if he had spread out his studies. On the other hand, he just regained the British Championship in solving (yes, Nunn and two other World Champions were competing)…

If you have to pick only one strategy (could be ‘Number 11’ for all I care), I would recommend to either do the one that excites you or the one you know you have been delaying forever.

Dear John,

I pre-ordered your book “King’s gambit” last autumn for my son as a Christmas present. Do you know when it will be published?

Regards,
xxx

More importantly, he said that he is teaching a bit these days and that he has created a nice little website. So we thought, if we push that, maybe he will feel grateful and write another book for us. Is it too much to ask?

There are many ways to improve in chess, and I shall list a few of them next time. But this week, I want to focus on just one area – analysing your own games (as well as those of others). The simple yet important point is that, as with everything else in life, if it is not done well, you will not feel the benefits.

Mauro – Marina Brunello, Perugia 2011

22…Bxg5 23.Qxg5 Qd8 24.Qf4? 24.Rf6 with a worse, but still playable, position was to be preferred. 24…Bxf3 Now Black wins. 25.gxf3 Rc6 26.Bg5 Qe8 27.Bh6 f5 28.exf6 Qf7 29.axb3 cxb3 30.Qe5 Rac8 31.Bd2 Rb6 32.Be3 b2 33.Rb1 Rb7 34.Bd2 a6 35.h4 Rb5 36.Qd6 Qxf6 37.Qxa6 Rcb8 38.Qd6 Qf5 39.Kg2 R5b6 40.Qd7 R6b7 0–1

22…b2 was better, in Marina’s opinion. She was following the computer’s line of thinking and concluded that Black was doing well after 23.Rf1 Rf8 and now either 24.Rh3 Bxg5 25.Qxg5 f6 26.Qg4 Qe4 and Black wins, or 24.Re3 Qa5 25.Bxf8 Rxf8 26.Rh3 Bxg5 27.Qxg5 f6! 28.Qe3 Qxa2 29.exf6 Bd5 30.Qh6 Rf7 and Black wins.

Checking over her analysis I asked the first question that came to mind.

Why should White go with the rook to f1 instead of b1, with the simple idea of taking the pawn? I put the move into the machine and immediately it went ballistic with 23.Rb1 Bxg5 24.Qxg5 Qe4, with the idea of …Qxb1 and …Qe1. But after 25.Rf1 b1=Q, things are not so simple:

Obviously it looks intimidating with two black queens on the board, but it does not require a lot of human brute force to find: 26.Qf6! Qxf1+ 27.Kxf1 Qb1+ 28.Ke2 Bxf3+ 29.gxf3

I am sure the computer was suffering from a horizon problem when it first approached this position and just counted the pennies. But as our regular readers will know, quality trumps quantity every time! Black has to take a perpetual check.

Conclusion: This is not a small point about computer horizons, as it came across at first. My apologies. The idea was to be inquisitive when analysing your own games. To ask questions (and if you like using a computer, then at least make it a dialogue) and to find the answers. To remember what you were thinking during the game and find out what was right and what was wrong. It is an excellent feedback opportunity on the 4-5 hours you spent playing the game. But if you just spacebar your way through it, copying down computer evaluations, your benefit will be slim to none. Invest your mind and soul in the analysis and you will reap great rewards.

Thank you to Marina for allowing me to use this example.

Chapter 1 is mainly original analysis and spreads over 82 pages in the book. No wonder it was wearing him down.

I predict that this book is written in two weeks from now. Last I did prediction (read gambling on chess results) I lost 16 out of 16 bets. Luckily the betting agency sponsored the blitz event and I won my money back. Here is the prediction regarding some of our publications this year.

Quick comment by Jacob:

Before engaging with this debate about critical moments, I contacted Willy Hendriks and asked if he would take offence, promising to disagree, but not be disagreeable. He would not, he said. I offered if he wanted to close off the debate with his personal view. As I did not want to invite him into a quagmire of never-ending arguments, I will not comment on his piece (which I have purposefully not read yet), although I am sure that I will disagree to some extent.

In the autumn I will publish Thinking Inside the Box, which will lay out my full view of chess and chess improvement. I will probably not refer directly to other books there, but state everything in the positive. But those wanting to find it, can find my view there and then (or earlier in this debate, most likely).

Next week I will return to focusing on chess improvement in the positive. Now to our guest writer:

Under the sign of uncertainty

– Willy Hendriks

In last week’s post Jacob Aagaard discusses chapter 14 of my book Move First, Think Later about the usefulness of the notion of the critical moment. I gladly accept his invitation to delve a bit deeper into this subject.

Aagaard considers this notion to be “well established” but I’m not sure it has the same meaning for everyone. Anyway, those who have read my book know that ‘well established chess theory’ is not sacred for me.

There are two aspects of this notion I’m a bit skeptical about, though they are not always explicitly brought forward. The first is the idea that games (very often) consist of a few (one or two) moments of extraordinary importance or difficulty and a lot of moments of much lesser importance.

The second is the idea that these moments not only can be identified with hindsight but also can be detected when you’re actually playing a game. Which would make the notion a constructive part of our thinking process.

My main point in the chapter under discussion, which Aagaard doesn’t mention, is that I offer a different model for looking at the difficulty of the decisions we have to make during the game. It’s a model of gradual differences. If we could make a scale from zero to ten, expressing the difficulty of move selection, I don’t think the great majority of our games follows a pattern like one or two tens and the rest somewhere between zero and five. Speaking for myself: in most of my games I face quite some easy decisions but also a lot of difficult decisions, some very difficult decisions and some extremely difficult decisions. Using Aagaard’s definition of a critical moment as “a moment where the problems in front of you hold great complexity and failing to find a good move will a) lead to great suffering, or b) lose the advantage”, I can truly claim that this applies to, well, maybe not the majority, but for sure to quite some moves in most of my games. If I am allowed to have something like fifteen critical moments during one game, I’ll have no disagreement with Aagaard. (And if I would be allowed to think 50 minutes on all these moments I finally might play a decent game.)

Does this apply to players of all strengths? I find it difficult to judge on people playing stronger than me. The world’s elite players will have a better view on what is going on in a game but since they face tougher opposition, smaller mistakes will become more important. A few very small mistakes sometimes seem sufficient to lose an equal endgame against Magnus Carlsen. So for most levels, maybe for all levels, the idea of gradual differences seems more sensible to me than the idea of the mystical critical moment that only occurs once or twice every game.

The problem of our time management evidently is connected to the notion of the critical moment. For those who regularly find themselves under pressure of the clock, the notion of the critical moment might be a dangerous incentive to spend too much time on one move.

When the position is complicated, we often have the feeling that the present choice is of more than average importance. But the future is open and we cannot know how many more difficult decisions the game is going to present. Nor can we be certain about the decision at hand. Is the better alternative we hope to find available? Do the moves we are tossing between make a difference? We (most of us) are playing under the sign of uncertainty. This means you sometimes have to force yourself to move (on) and make a (hopefully educated) guess.

To quote myself: Playing chess is solving too difficult problems in too little time. This sounds a bit depressing but actually it is what makes our game so interesting. We would like to have a bit more control and the sensitivity to detect the critical moments in advance would come in very handy. But I’m afraid this is striving for a sort of predictability that cannot be attained. With hindsight it is easy to identify the turning points in a game. But when playing you are well aware you are constantly on a severe threat level.

To illustrate this I showed some positions where players went wrong in not so complicated positions. Just one more tragic example, from the Dutch Youth Championships now in progress. Black is to move, can he win this endgame?

Sadly no, after 1…Kb5? 2.Rxa5! he lost!

Aagaard thinks that comparing a position like this with his very difficult position against Ong is ridiculous. This is true but I’m not really comparing them. I only wanted to show that if we take all our good moves for granted and only concentrate on our mistakes or on a few moments of exceptional difficulty, we easily forget how much room we have, at almost every move again, to go fatally wrong.

In that game against Ong, Aagaard thinks for 50 minutes, finds a very strong move and brings the point home in the resulting time. In a different game, the less strong player thinks for 50 minutes about what turn out to be three equal alternatives and later goes down in heavy time pressure. To get from B to Aa, developing ‘a sensitivity for the critical moment’ I think is not the way to go. But raising your overall level might help. It’s not a matter of ‘thinking technique’ but of quality.

This touches upon a general theme of Move First, Think Later: the idea that improving in chess almost completely depends upon taking in good chess and that ‘methodical shortcuts’ are not available. In the latest issue of the New In Chess magazine I look at the reception of my book from this perspective of ‘move against method’. I think Aagaard has slightly more confidence in the methodical aspects than I have but judging by his work he might agree that taking in lots of good moves (quality chess) is the only way to improve.

Obviously I am honoured to be the antagonist in a full chapter of Hendriks book, even if he does not elevate me to the level of a Bond villain. Especially because he initially represents my explanation of what a critical moment is rather truthfully.

The position I use to explain the concept and which Hendriks represents is this:

Aagaard – Ong, Sweden 2003

After Black’s last move, to my horror I realized that 18.e5 would be met with 18…Bb4. I understood quickly that unless I found something strong, I would be seriously worse. For that reason I struggled with the position for almost 50 minutes before I came up with the solution:

18.e5 Bb4 19.Bf5!! Bxe1? 20.exf6 Qb6 21.Be3 Rxe3 22.fxe3 Bxg3 23.Qg4 Bf2+ 24.Kh1 Qxf6 25.Bxc8 h5 26.Qd7 Bxc8 27.Qxc8+ Kh7 28.Qc2+ g6 29.Rf1 1–0

So far all is well, but then Hendriks starts to psycho-analyse (me?), claiming that it is all hindsight. Maybe there could have been no 19.Bf5 available. His argumentation is probably fairly represented by this quote: “With hindsight it’s easy to say: ‘there I went wrong, that was the critical moment, why didn’t I use some more time there?’”

My Bond moment has clearly deteriorated, but now I suddenly I find myself in an Austin Powers movie! Next Hendriks gives a game with a move 10 blunder that loses a piece and then the following example:

Jens – Berg, Germany 2005

13…Bd6? was played. Instead Black could have won in one move with 13…Nb4, as had indeed happened in a correspondence game in Canada 1992.

This is where the reference to last week’s posting becomes relevant. We are clearly not talking about the same thing!

A critical moment is not where the evaluation of the position changes. Classically this is referred to as a turning point. A critical moment in my definition is something along the lines of a moment where the problems in front of you hold great complexity and failing to find a good move will a) lead to great suffering, or b) lose the advantage.

The comparison by Hendriks of the two positions is plainly ridiculous. In my game clearly there were deeply complex problems to solve, while in the Jens – Berg example, we are simply left wondering how two 2350 players both fail to spot a one-mover.

Hendriks continues his argumentation along the lines that all moves are critical ones and you might better save your time for later decisions. In the words of Boris Gelfand, when asked why he spent 55 minutes on move 10 in the 12th game of the World Championship match last year: “If I did not find the right move here, it might already be too late!”

Anand – Gelfand, Moscow (12)

10…c4!! 11.Nxc4 Ba6 12.Qf3 Qd5 13.Qxd5 cxd5 14.Nxe5 f6 15.Nf3 e5 16.0–0 Kf7 17.c4 Be7 18.Be3 Bb7 19.cxd5 Bxd5 20.Rfc1 a5 21.Bc5 Rhd8 22.Bxe7 ½–½

Anand was clearly disappointed when he had looked at 10…c4 for a few minutes. His fantastic preparation was refuted over the board.

Did Gelfand understand it was a critical moment immediately? No, obviously not. But after some minutes he realized that there were poor positions waiting for him everywhere. He did not believe that he had made any mistakes, so he decided to “gamble” and invest the time necessary to find a solution.

I do not like it when the debate is ruined by one side misrepresenting the other and then talking down at them. Is this related to the Dunning-Kruger effect, which Hendriks himself refers to on page 213? Usually when we make a simplistic refutation of another person’s position, we have not fully understood it.

Or it could be that Hendriks wants to make the point that all moves seem critical for less experienced players? But how this is relevant to a book on high-level calculation techniques I am not really sure.

I do find that Hendriks draws too many comparisons from modern psychology into chess. He comes across as better read in philosophy than in chess theory, but clearly he is an intelligent man who has thought a lot about chess. I do not agree with all of his conclusions and ideas, but I would certainly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in chess improvement, with the caveat that you should always get a second opinion; and preferably a different one!

Dear Quality Chess Reader,

All modesty aside, we must announce another Quality Chess prize winner – in fact a 1-2. Jacob Aagaard won the Association of Chess Professionals’ 2013 Book of the Year prize for Grandmaster Preparation: Calculation. In second place, just one vote behind, was How I Beat Fischer’s Record by Judit Polgar. My personal congratulations to both authors.

This award means that Jacob is the chess author who has won the most prizes – ACP, ECF, Boleslavsky, ChessCafe and Guardian. It was close with Mark Dvoretsky and John Nunn before, but Jacob now has his nose in front.

In a supersized chess file (pdf or pgn) there are many games from the Danish Championship and Danish Blitz Championship, plus analysis that updates and adds to Grandmaster Repertoire 12: The Modern Benoni. The new Danish Champion is GM Davor Palo, but who is their new Blitz Champion? It was another prize for GM Jacob Aagaard.

Regards,

John Shaw

Chief Editor

Quality Chess