A Study Plan
by Tom
Rose
 I've
ranted against the habit of making excuses
for failing to give your best. I believe that being objective and
accepting full responsibility for the results of our actions (or inaction)
are essential first steps to improvement. I've explained my ideas on
what are the biggest
differences between a strong player and the rest of us, and on what you
have to do to become strong. I've ranted against the ageism that is
rampant in chess and is at least in part a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I've also ranted against the belief that unless you are born with huge
amounts of natural chess talent you will never amount to much.
The practical consequences of this are that until you really
try you don't know what you can and can't achieve, and the only place you
can start from is where you are now.
You can't make yourself any younger. You can't go back
to before your birth and get a different set of genes or a better start.
But what you can do starting now is to work hard, and try to do the right
things. How hard am I working? What am I actually doing with my
time? I have already explained my choice of study materials (Chess
Books). Now I'll show you how I have organised my study plan, and
why.
Immersion in Chess Culture
According to Nigel Davies the way to become strong is to
"Immerse yourself in Chess Culture". That may well be true, but it is
a little vague. Chess culture. There is a lot of it!
At my age I can't afford to randomly follow whatever aspects
of chess grab my attention. I don't believe that my age condemns me to
mediocrity, but it still has disadvantages. I can't afford to waste
time. Having lived this long I can expect to carry on for another 30
years, but for much of that I may not be fit and healthy enough for chess.
So I have to pick out the most important parts of chess culture, chop them
into into manageable chunks, and assimilate them efficiently.
Effective use of time
It is easy to be overambitious or unrealistic in the amount
of work or training you think you can handle. It is also easy to be
over-specific, then find that things take much longer than expected.
In the past I have set myself detailed and difficult tasks, and eventually
got discouraged and gave up on them. Even with no regular job to get
in the way I have decided to organise my time with some flexibility. One
full day each week I leave completely free, with nothing specific planned.
On each of the other six days I have three study sessions, but they are not
rigidly set to be at certain times of day, or for a fixed number of hours.
A session needs to be long enough to look quite deeply into a topic, but not
so long as to be tiring. For me that means not less than half an hour
but not much more than two hours. This arrangement means that I am
spending not less than 1.5 hours a day studying chess. I have managed
this for three months now, and am finding it easier and easier as it becomes
a habit rather than an effort. An hour and a half may not sound much,
but as the months go by it is enough to get through a phenomenal amount of
material. In reality, on many days, I often study for a full six
hours. The psychological difference is that instead of feeling guilty
if I do less than six hours, I now feel good about doing more than one and a
half.
Developing skill versus Acquiring knowledge
It is a lot easier to talk a good game than to play one, but
competitive chess is not like a quiz show. It is more important to
have the skill and determination to figure things out than to have massive
powers of recall. Chess demands that its players solve problems for
themselves in virtually every game.
It is about "knowing how" rather than "knowing that".
It doesn't matter how much you know about chess, or how well you can
"understand" a master game if you can't find good moves for yourself in your
own games. So I make my study sessions as interactive as I can by
setting myself problems along the way, figuring out what I can before
looking at what the annotator has written and questioning what the writer
has to say, rather than passively soaking it up.
What skills and qualities am I trying to develop?
I need to learn, develop or improve:
-
The ability to project positions (APROP)
-
Positional judgment
-
Tactical and Combinational Vision
-
Intuition - A feeling for position, and for strong moves
-
Objectivity - There is no room for self deception
-
Decisiveness - You cannot spend forever fretting over
your moves, nor in regretting the moves you didn't make
-
A sense of danger
-
Specific knowledge of all phases of the game
Specific knowledge includes:
-
Endgame (general methods and theoretical positions)
-
Opening (General principles, methods, specific
variations)
-
Middlegame (Concepts, typical plans, patterns arising
from specific openings)
-
Transitions between phases
On top of that I need to develop the ability to perform well
under stress. That can mean not feeling it (the laid back approach),
responding well to it (heightened sensitivity, greater awareness, increased
energy, clearer vision), or performing well despite it (being so well
trained and drilled that you can do it well on autopilot).
You may have different needs ...
... but I doubt it!
Chess Content
So far as specific chess knowledge and skill is concerned, I
have broken down the aspects of study into five categories. All the
skills and qualities that I've listed need to be developed through study of
these five areas:
How much time on each category?
Calculating ability and tactical vision are essential for
practical success, and they deteriorate quickly without regular practice, so
one session every day is spent practicing those skills. That means
that over the course of a week I devote twelve training sessions to the
other four kinds of study, three sessions on each.
Calculation and Tactics
I do three different kinds of work on tactics. First,
easiest, and most fun, I solve a few tactical positions. I'll usually
do eight or ten of the sort of exercise that you see in books like
Winning Move (a collection of problems from the Times newspaper) and
It's Your Move by Teschner and Miles.
Next I play through a game "blindfold". It is a
technique that Andrew Soltis recommends in his book on tactics and
calculation (The Inner Game of Chess), as does Jon Tisdall in
Improve Your Chess Now. The idea behind this is that if you can
follow a whole game correctly in your head, you should be able to look ahead
more clearly in a tournament game. I am not completely convinced by
this. I tend to get into trouble because I don't know what I should be
doing, rather than because I can't clearly see the consequences of some
sequence of moves! The tactical errors that I do make are usually only
a move or two deep, and are because some idea fell completely outside my
competence, and not because I failed to see that some line or other had been
opened, or blocked, or control of some square gained or relinquished.
There is no doubt that blindfold ability gets easier and faster with
practice, and it is useful to be able to read chess books without a board
and men. And it is fun, so I keep doing it. But right now it
seems that it just enables me to play weak chess with rather more clarity.
Finally I study one or two of the real game positions in one
of Dvoretsky's books like Secrets of Chess Training, Secrets of
Chess Tactics or School of Chess Excellence 2 - Tactical Play.
Dvoretsky's exercises are more like real chess than the tactical puzzles.
It might look like there is a combination on, but nothing quite works, or
there may be just too many possibilities to be certain of the outcome.
Just like real chess you have to decide whether there is a clear combination
to be played, or decide intuitively to enter unfathomable complications,
proceed with the logical implementation of a plan, or play generally sound
positional moves. This is the hardest work. It is real work.
There is satisfaction in it, but it is the same kind of satisfaction you
feel after turning down a night out with friends to do a hard 4000m in the
pool. But of all the things I do it is probably the most beneficial
for my practical chess. It is easy to get motivated when you have a
complex attacking position, or better still, a crippling bind and a clear
plan, but much of chess is finding the hidden ideas and resources in
positions that at first sight are dull and uninteresting.
Complete Games
There is not a lot to say about studying whole games.
So far as I can tell every very strong player has studied hundreds if not
thousands of master games and many instruction books recommend it as a sure
way to improve. Simply reading over games and their notes is very
passive, so I use the unoriginal but effective technique of covering the
moves, and revealing them one by one after making some effort to figure out
what I would have played. Nimzovich used this method, and it didn't
seem to do him any harm.
Sometimes I will play over four or five games in a couple of
hours, just looking at short variations and the alternatives at one or two
critical points in the game. At the other extreme I might spend two or
three study sessions on a single game, trying to understand it as completely
as possible.
I eventually want to have a good grasp of most of what has
been found to be possible in the realm of the 64 squares. But I know
that it will take years to properly study two centuries of progress in the
game. My first task is to get an overview of chess from Philidor to
modern times, and for this I am working through the first two volumes of
Kasparov's "My
Great Predecessors, though I am planning to make a sideway's
diversion and study Bronstein's book on the candidates tournament, Zurich
1953. That is to be followed by deeper studies of the giant figures in
the history of the game, starting with the games of Capablanca and
proceeding to those of Alekhine.
I've studied the games of Keres and Fischer before, though
many years ago. That did me a lot of good but there are dozens of
other players that I know little about to be studied before looking at Keres
and Fischer again.
The only other player whose games I have studied at all
deeply is Nezhmetdinov. I once saw (I forget where) what a coach
reputedly told his protégé about a forthcoming game with Nezhmetdinov.
"First he will sacrifice a pawn for the initiative, then he will sacrifice a
piece to keep your king in the centre, then he will sacrifice some more
pieces and checkmate you."
All this is completely true! That is exactly what he
did to most of his opponents. I hope one day to play a game or two
that could believably be the work of Keres or Fischer but I shall never be
able to play a game in the style of Nezhmetdinov!!
Endings
It is easy to study endings. There is a systematic
body of material to be mastered, so it is just a matter of doing the work to
master it. To help there are plenty of good books of endgame theory so
whether you are a minimalist, or want comprehensive coverage, whether you
like to figure out underlying concepts for yourself, or have them patiently
explained there is something available to suit you.
Easily said, harder to do. In reality it is not that
simple. It is not always easy to remember theoretical positions and
precise methods, and there are a lot of them. Dvoretsky doesn't think
you should even try. He thinks there is a relatively small number of
basic concepts and standard positions that you just have to know, but beyond
that he thinks it is enough to have seen them, know the result, and have a
general idea of how the play goes. To tell the truth I enjoy the
feeling of confidence that comes from having a technique off pat - knowing
it inside out. So while I am using Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual, I am
aiming at knowing it ALL inside out and back to front. What this means
is that by aiming high I shall probably end up with the general idea that he
thinks is enough.
Just as important as specific knowledge is knowing how to
approach the endgame so as to make the best use of that knowledge. I
have lost count of the times that I have broken some endgame principle that
I thought I knew, then wondered afterwards what was going on in my head.
This is where books like Shereshevsky's Endgame Strategy are so
useful. They show you how to approach the endgame, how values are
changed from the middle game, and how to play it well you need to reorient
yourself to the new kind of struggle.
What this boils down to in practice is that right now I
alternate studying specific theoretical positions with working through
Shereshevsky's book a few pages at a time.
Middlegame Judgement, Strategy and Planning
This is the most fun, and the easiest to explain. I
work through one book at a time taking a few weeks or months to do it
justice. I start by skimming through it to get an idea of the content
and approach, then work through it at a comfortable speed from page one to
the end. I play over all the illustrative games and the more complex
diagrammed positions with a board and pieces. If anything seems wrong
or doesn't make sense I spend a little longer on it, and if I still don't
get it I just make a note and move on. Right now I am working through
Vukovic's Art of Attack
in Chess, and after that I am planning to re-read Nimzovich's My
System and see if a 20 year gestation period has clarified the ideas of
maneuvering against weakness. (And for anyone who read
Rant 4 on Chess Books ... yes I have sneaked a
few extra books into the motorhome, by jettisoning a box of clothes that I
would never have worn). Besides these middle game books I have added
the two volumes of Korchnoy's best games.
Openings
My basic view of openings is that at the lower levels of
chess (below master strength) it should be possible to figure out enough at
the board to get a playable middlegame, but playing that way is very hard.
It is much more practical to have your openings worked out in advance, and
have some familiarity with the sort of middle game that you are going to end
up in. And if you are aiming to play at master level some day it is
essential to have a well thought out repertoire so it is a good idea to get
started building one as early as possible.
The immediate task is to have a reliable and comprehensive
repertoire as quickly as possible. But even so I have chosen proper
main lines of lasting value ... not offbeat and outlandish systems like
1...a6 or 1.g4. It is all very well to get the opponent onto your
ground, but if the result is an inferior position and a stunted chess
education it is counter-productive.
I started my repertoire building by playing over a handful
of games from a computer database in each of the systems that interested me:
solid, dependable systems, that depend more on understanding the strategy
than on memorising complex variations. I whittled this down to a small
but comprehensive nucleus with shared ideas and and transpositional
possibilities to form the basis of my repertoire.
Right now I am fleshing out my French repertoire. I
have dug out a few dozen games in the Advance, Exchange, and Rubinstein/Burn
variations, and in a system against the Chigorin and King's Indian Attack
lines - game that seem paradigmatic of the various effective schemes for
Black. From these and the relevant sections of Psakhis's book I am not
only learning how to play typical positions but also constructing my own
database of exactly what moves I intend to play in answer to all of White's
likely tries. I've even found a few new ideas that seem consistent
with Black's positional aims, but don't appear to have been tried before.
It is going to take me a year or so to be fully prepared so
much of the time I'm going to be playing the opening on my own resources ...
general skill, plus whatever I have picked up from the games I have studied.
But I have made a promise to myself that I WILL play the first few moves of
the new systems I have chosen with 1.d4 for White 1...e6 for Black and will
not give in to the temptation to play the 1.e4, 1.c4, 1.e4 e5, and Benko
openings that I half learned and struggled along with years ago.
Is this plan realistic?
Can I stick at this plan? To make sure that I do not
delude myself I am keeping a study log. As I said, I am now three
months into the plan, and have not missed a day's study. I find that I
have:
-
completed over 500 tactical puzzles
-
studied Dvoretsky's Secrets of Chess Training
from cover to cover
-
played over about 50 games without sight of the board
-
learned over 50 theoretical endgame positions in K+P and
K+Q+P endings
-
read through over 150 master games
-
studied Euwe and Kramer's Road to Chess Mastery
from cover to cover
-
prepared to play the Orthodox Queen's Gambit as White or
Black
How much ground will have been covered in five years?
Just multiply that by 12!
Competitions
Study alone is unlikely to be enough. There are
stories that Rubinstein shut himself away to study intensely, and emerged a
year later as a world class player. I don't believe it! If I
don't play, all the study in the world makes little difference, so I have
undertaken to play in a tournament approximately every six weeks. To
date I have played in three.
Other aspects of preparation
Simply turning up and playing is not enough. In the
past I have played in tournaments when I have been so tired that I have been
almost asleep on my feet. At other times I have turned out with a
streaming cold or headache just to make up team numbers and avoid a default.
Then I have wasted half my time by turning up late for the game, and
wandering around chatting and looking at other games between moves.
Add in my congenital indecisiveness and it is little wonder that a lot of
promising positions were squandered in time trouble.
My practical preparation has often been poor too. I
would sometimes stay up till three in the morning in the days leading up to
a tournament, trying to do the programming work I would otherwise have done
on the tournament days. Sometimes I have turned up at a venue hoping
to find accommodation on the first night of the tournament and spent tiring
hours looking for somewhere to stay in a strange town. I have often
forgotten to pack everything I need like warm clothes and spare spectacles
and have spent hours squinting at the board, and shivering with nothing more
than a T-shirt to protect me from near arctic conditions.
Wasted energy
After all that I would still indulge in "analysis" and
5-minute chess between rounds, often leaving too little time for lunch,
grabbing a sandwich, and rushing to the next game, late, tired, stressed,
and bloated.
All this needs to change.
Correct pre-tournament preparation
Now I have some new rules: to keep up my fitness training
right up to the start of a tournament, to get to bed early in the weeks
leading up to a tournament: to use checklists to make sure that I pack
everything I need; to arrange accommodation and travel well in advance, to
arrive early, and be seated at the board a few minutes before the clocks are
started; to keep after-game analysis to the minimum that will not offend my
opponent; to refrain from 5 minute chess between rounds; to eat lightly
between rounds.
Correct behaviour at the board
And during the game itself, to quickly pick an adequate
"reserve move", and if a few minutes study finds nothing better, to play it
without fretting, and so avoid any possibility of time trouble; to sit at
the board for the entire game with just a single break to stretch the legs
and maybe visit the loo.
Draw offers
Pre-game planning even extends to what to do about draw
offers. This is simple! With few exceptions, refuse them!
To never agree a draw while there is still life in a position. What
exceptions? Well I'd agree a draw if I thought my position was lost or
very nearly so. And a draw that would give me a master norm would be
immediately accepted too. Just maybe if a draw would earn a big
prize I might accept it. But to be in contention means I would most
likely be playing someone very strong, and it might be worth risking the
prize money for the lesson of a competitive game against a player a couple
of classes stronger than me. I just need to decide before the game
itself what my draw threshold (cash at risk) is for that opponent.
Credo
Will this work? Sustained for long enough I believe
that the standard of chess I play will be transformed beyond recognition.
Without that belief there would be no point in what I am attempting.
But I also believe that it will take time, and it is important to persist
even if results are initially discouraging. It is like the old story
about breaking a rock with a sledgehammer. You whack it, and you whack
it, and nothing seems to happen, but you persist, and just as you feel like
giving up, one more blow - nothing special - and it shatters. Every
one of those blows was having a small effect, but it took sustained effort,
blow upon blow, before there was any visible change.
Every game I play over, every concept I worry over, every
tactical problem I solve, every endgame I memorise rewires my brain and my
chess understanding ever so slightly. Every game I play with full
commitment and concentration strengthens the habit of working hard at the
board using time and knowledge and skill effectively. One day it will
pay off.
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