Quality Chess Blog

One of our regular readers have kindly edited the Yusupov Q&A. It can be downloaded here.

We all know that water will follow the path of least resistance if its runs down a hill. Unless our house is at the bottom of the hill and there is quite a lot of water coming, this will not disturb us much in our daily lives. But if we look at how we calculate variations at the chess board, we will quickly come to the conclusion that if we do not take full control, our calculation will take the path of least resistance as well.

How can this manifest itself? Here are a few possible scenarios:

• A variation is complicated and offers us resistance. We choose to go with a vague evaluation or guess, rather than going deeper.

• We see a promising variation and choose to go for it without seriously looking for pitfalls.

• We see a problem with our promising variation and we reject it and look for our move elsewhere.

All of them come to the same thing. In the face of resistance, we choose a different path: the path of least resistance.

In real life, the path of least resistance leads to physical, financial and emotional ruin. We call this mediocrity because so many of us choose this path rather than overcoming our weaknesses as human beings. (Personally I live in the fattest country in Europe and do little to improve the statistics).

In chess the path of least resistance leads to mediocre decisions. The only comfort we can find there is that most of our opponent’s decisions will be mediocre as well. The ability to consistently overcome the obstacles we are faced with, overcoming our own limitations, is truly a terrifying ability.

I have little time these days to train individuals, but I do work with a few young people who fascinate me. With the two strongest guys I work with at the moment, the main focus we have is learning to overcome resistance. We do this a lot through exercises. It is not always possible for me to anticipate where they will have problems, but it tends to be in the same places. Maybe we think more similarly than we expect.

A very useful part of the training is to talk through the exercises, to close in on what kind of mistake they were committing. I will not be able to offer this to all of you, but I can offer you one of the exercise sheets I give them for preparation, with a focus on overcoming resistance. The exercises sheet can be downloaded here. The solutions can be downloaded here.

Please look at the solving of these six exercises as a competitive sport. Use 60 minutes if your rating is over 2400 and 90 minutes if your rating is less. The aim of the game is to score as many points as possible in that time frame. The points are rewarded based on which points you saw in the timeframe. Please give your score here as well as your rating to allow others something to compare with. Do not be disappointed if you are scoring far from maximum points. The exercises are hard, so even one point might be an achievement!!

Postscript: John and I have a favourite book called The War of Art by novelist Steven Pressfield. In this he describes a phenomenon called Resistance with a Capital R. I like my description in this article, but I would be dishonest not to recognise where some of the language comes from. In this way many great ideas are extensions of similar ideas in other fields, like Jonathan Rowson’s brilliant quote, “Improvement comes at the end of your comfort zone.”

I was asked recently by a friend about how to avoid/limit time pressure. Rather than answering him personally, I thought I would answer him in greater detail; but share it with you guys.

From my perspective, time trouble is to a great extent a philosophical problem.

A common problem is that we try to calculate as far as possible or in other ways aim to be in control. We do this because we do not fully understand the nature of the problem we are trying to solve. If we try to keep control, to look for certainty, we will certainly over-think, over-calculate and so on.

On the other hand, if we understand that we need to solve a particular type of problem in a limited amount of time, we are better off.

In STRATEGIC PLAY I divide chess into four different types of decisions:
1) Automatic decisions – can be played within seconds

2) Simple decisions (Positional Play) – decisions that do not need calculation, but might still require some deep thinking to determine positional factors

3) Critical Moments – Positions where accurate calculation is needed and positional considerations are of limited value (often there are not too many of these in a game)

4) Complex decisions – what we also refer to as strategy. Where deep positional and tactical considerations intertwine.
I was talking to a famous grandmaster about his battles with the clock and he immediately recognized his problem as being in Category 4. This is where he spent too much time.

His problem was simply that he hesitated in making decisions.

For my friend, I think he was looking too much for control. I think he is calculating too much; trying to put lines on positional questions, where we instead have to trust our feeling, make our moves and save time for making more complex decisions later on.

I have played a few games in my life that were perfect; but obviously I made the right decisions for the wrong reasons along the way. There is no way we can solve all the problems we face during a tough fight at the chess board.

Calculating too much is a control issue – basically we seek to control things we cannot. And as a result we have too little time to calculate the critical moments that tend to come later in the game; and, ironically, then we cannot control the controllable either – because we have wasted our time…

A few details that might interest regular readers.

First off, I really hate this when it happens: The headers for two pages in the ATTACK & DEFENCE book say “Calculation”, which is a bit of a pain. Luckily Colin has changed it for the excerpt; but the printed version is dead and gone.

John is working hard on Playing 1.e4. If you are a 1.d4 player and hate getting killed by well-prepared opponents; this is probably bad news. If you play 1.e4, this should be good news. I have personally played a lot of this repertoire in 2012 with great success.

I am getting towards the end of ENDGAME PLAY quite quickly. In general I think this will be the least popular book in the series as endgame books traditionally don’t sell (unless your name is Mark Dvoretsky of course). For this reason I am just going to finish it and put it out there. Another two weeks of uninterrupted writing should do it, as I spent a concentrated month on it at the beginning of the year (and a few hours 2-3 times a week since then). I quite like the book as it is, but I am considering adding a few additional small sections. Karsten Muller has gracefully provided me with some positions and as a fan of the series in general, he has insisted that he should also write the foreword. As I was planning to ask him anyway, this is of course very welcome!

ATTACK & DEFENCE and PUMP UP YOUR RATING should be out in 2-3 weeks. To be honest, I have been away from the office, training a 2600 intensively for a week and sort of lost track of where we are in the printing cycle. I shall try to do an updated publishing schedule soon.

Colin is 75% into the editing on PLAYING THE FRENCH. My contribution to this book is not as great as it was for GRANDMASTER 10: THE TARRASCH DEFENCE, but I might have saved the most important main line against the Tarrasch (3.Nd2) line! Nikos has done a great job and I managed to find only cosmetic changes to his analysis. I think we will publish his next solo project under his name alone. It is always nice to see when you invest your confidence in a person that they reward it with a great performance. Nikos can no longer be said to be a well-kept Greek secret…

Finally; Emanuel Berg might have done too much material on the French Winaver. The current mood is to split it into two big volumes. We have done three books over 600 pages in our time, two of them recently. But it is impractical in quite a lot of ways. We understand that sales numbers will be less for a two-volume Winaver compendium, but they will work better as books and respect the author’s work. To me this is quite important. And for the hardcore French/theory fans, this will hopefully be very popular.

Your feedback is welcome.

This week German grandmaster Artur Yusupov will answer your questions. Artur is the author of probably the best training series for club players ever produced, as well as being a former World No. 3, a serial Olympiad winner, a trainer for Anand and many others, and he is also an all-round fantastic guy.

The format is simple: Please ask anything you want about his books or general training advice. Artur will answer twice over the next 7-10 days, whenever he has time, after which Artur will no longer be available.

Following on from last week’s post, I have a few observations.
 
Obviously not many of us will be privileged enough to play for the World Championship; in a match or in the Candidates tournament. But we will play games against players who know us well and who will prepare against our standard defences.
 
Basically there are two strategies for designing an opening repertoire.
 
Principled: Take for example Alexei Dreev or Sergei Tiviakov. They play the same lines again and again and improve their repertoires incrementally. They are very difficult to throw off balance and quite often have nice small surprises ready. What is characteristic for the openings they play is that they are generally not too sharp. If they are surprised and react poorly, it does not mean an immediate loss. The advantage of this method is that you will get a game every time and you will be familiar with the structures. The disadvantage is that you very rarely win in the opening.
 
Opportunistic: Other people like Peter Heine Nielsen or myself, move around. We try to outsmart the opponent and be one or two hours ahead of him in opening preparation by analysing a new idea; either against his favourite defence, or maybe just in a side line. The advantage is that you might be better out of the opening and get ahead on the clock; the disadvantage is that you can quite easily be outsmarted and end up in a territory you are quite unfamiliar with, which means the decisions are harder to make; an expensive scenario on the clock.
 
The combined strategy: It has always been my opinion that a combination of the two is the best strategy. You will see a lot of grandmasters do this; half the time they will play their standard repertoire and the other half they will try something new, just for the sake of it. In this way, you are a moving target. The opponent never knows if you are going to go for familiar ground or try something new.
 
If you are able to do this, develop a main repertoire, but be ready to deviate often enough to keep the element of surprise.
 
Some players learn an opening for a tournament and then move on to a new one for the next one. I have quite a lot of personal affection for this strategy, as it can be very difficult to make real progress against something you are not even sure your opponent will play, without the help of a second. But the downside can be that you do not keep up with your core repertoire and become an entirely opportunistic player.
 
If I were to give any advice (which obviously will not fit everybody) it would be to start by building a core repertoire and after some time – say six months – spend half your time looking at openings in your core repertoire and half the time on whatever takes your fancy. In this way you will get the best of both worlds.

I was in Moscow last year to follow the World Championship match – and to be honest, to see Boris Gelfand become World Champion. I was quite sure that his chances were about 50/50 and I think the match showed that fully. In the end the only reason he did not take the title was because Anand was already World Champion. What I mean by this is that when it came to the decisive moments, Anand had less to lose; no matter what happened, he would forever be a part of chess history. Gelfand did not have this luxury and I think it affected him slightly. He said he was extremely calm during the games, but this feels a bit like a counter-reaction. Who knows – it is all guesswork – but anyway, those were my thoughts.

Anand made mistakes preparing for the match. His team was the same as the previous two title defences and consisted entirely of dynamic 1.d4 players, just like himself. Not really a moving target.

Gelfand’s team, on the other hand, was largely a secret and continues to be so to this day. Some were official seconds, while others had helped prior to the match, like for example Aronian.

Gelfand’s choice of the Grünfeld Defence was a big surprise for Anand’s team. I am sure they had expected the match to be fought on the Semi-Slav battlefield, as this was both players’ main defence against 1.d4 prior to the match. But they were experienced and ready for surprises.

Still, it took them a long time to recover from the surprises of the Grünfeld and the Sveshnikov – which Gelfand had not really played for a decade. Quickly they decided to leave the main lines behind and tried 3.f3 against the Grünfeld and the Rossolimo Sicilian.

At the same time, Anand had initial success with the 5…a6 Semi-Slav. Some good novelties led to effortless draws, but after the free day Gelfand finally managed to come up with an idea that gave him chances to play for an advantage. White had a better pawn structure and even if the computer indicates 15…Bf4 as an equalizing moment, the variation seemed a bit suspicious for Black. Anand had to give up the defence he had intended to last the entire match and revert to obscure lines of the Nimzo-Indian, where he was surviving more than thriving.

Read more…

Having retired from ambitious chess (I’m still allowed to go to the Spanish coast to eat paella and make draws, just as I am allowed to win blitz championships – but that is another story) I am now focused on improving my tennis and my general level of fitness. I also have some other ambitions, but more about that another time.

The intention was always that I would start working out seriously after the Olympiad. But when I came home I was quite tired. Then I fell behind with Positional Play (and found it quite hard to write) and had to typeset a lot of books. Then our childcare arrangements collapsed (the last nursery in Milngavie closed down) and I had to pick up the slack, as I am the “flexi-time” worker in the family.

The latter actually was the catalyst to get started. Catherine (age 5) needed afternoon care on Wednesdays. So, Anne signed her up for a dance class, to her utter delight. The dance class was in a gym, so I simply joined.

Over the next six months I went to the gym twice a week and did 45 minutes of exercise. I also did a bit of rowing at home, maybe 20k a week or so. Slowly I was improving my ‘physics’ a little bit, building confidence and gaining momentum. I even went down to the tennis club a few times, though I was still a bit too slow to catch the balls I would like to catch.

During the year I have been working more and more days from home. At the moment I am only in the office Mondays and Fridays. The main reason is that I drop off Cathy at 9am and pick her up at 3pm, making the travel time of 45 minutes each way to work a killer. I would rather spend that time in the gym.

So, since July 5th I have been doing just that. I now exercise about 14 hours a week. I cycle to work (13k in 36 minutes/41 minutes back up the hill), I do weights, row, swim, play tennis, run on the treadmill (10.5kph is my cruise speed), use the cross-trainer and so on. Take today; 26k cycling, 90 minutes of tennis and possibly half an hour on the treadmill/concept 2 afterwards. Hell, in a few months I might not even be fat anymore!

This training pattern looks a lot like everything in my life I have ever succeeded in. I could tell you exactly the same story with the writing of the Grandmaster Repertoire series; or the Attacking Manuals; or the Excelling series. Once you get going, you build up momentum; and even if it is maybe harder stuff you are doing later on, you do it easily.

Actually, it is Newton: Read more…