Chess Improvement

At a tournament this weekend, I received many compliments on my own personal chess improvement. I'm used to this by now due to the rapid increase of my rating. However, someone actually suggested I write a book! I don't think there is a publisher that really would take me on :)

However, I will relate a few tips. My chess training program is designed for the busy person (I go to work full time, school full time AND still play chess and hangout with friends though I have no family... one could presumably substitute either school or job for this kind of commitment).

My goal is to start and end the day with chess! If you are going to expect to improve at something you must give it some of your free time (I would hope this is not a ground shattering idea). I do this by starting the day with 15-30minutes of correspondence chess and ending the day with 15-30minutes of Endgames (and I usually fit in 15-30 minutes of tactics either during or after my workouts).

The result is I spend 45minutes to an hour and half on chess a day. This is not a huge amount of time. Especially if you consider all the time you waste during the course of a day. If you need to pick your kids up from school just throw a chess tactic book in the car. While you wait for the kids to come out just do 5-10 minutes of the book. Whatever you get done, great! This time adds up over a long period. 45minutes is basically what you should be doing to workout (stay in shape!) cook dinner (if you do cook) or probably a fraction of the tv you watch in a given day.

I understand "rapid chess improvement" advocated 8hours of chess a day. My program is designed for a busy person but still to touch on all the key components of chess: Tactics, endgames and well playing full games! However, the twist is the correspondence. It forces you to spend sometimes 30 minutes several days in a row on ONE position. It will teach you patience and FORCE you to learn your openings. It is the real deal. I play about 12-100 games of correspondence at once (right now 50 and trying to cut back to 24). But you know as you get real busy in life you just ignore the games for a week or two. When you have alot of free time instead of 15 minutes spend 2 hours. It is the beauty of correspondence how easily it can be fit into your personal schedule. I recommend for starters to get no more than 6 games going to see how long you will personally need on the games. I use http://www.ficgs.com/index_affiliate.php?ref=265966 to play. However, there is a whole slew of correspondence sites on my links to the left. You only need one site! The key differences will be web layout, pay site, strength of opponents and different options of play (time control/variants).

Believe me 45minutes a day can add up to major improvement over a couple of months!

Solution

This mate in 11! solution began with the incredible Queen sacrifice to keep the initiative (else black trades Queens ie hxg6 Qxe3+).m

Qh6+! Kxh6 hxg6+ Kg5 Rh5+! Kxh5 f4+ Nxe2 Nf6+ Kh6 Rh1+ Kg7 Ne8+! Rxe8 Rxh7+ with mate next move:



This concludes the Royal sacrifice of Q+R+B+N

Sacrifices

In chess sacrifice goals seem simple. You sacrifice material (usually) now for either mate or a huge material surplus in a few moves. It always feels wonderful to see sacrifices pay off but they can often be hard to calculate and visualize correctly. However, chess sacrifices seem simple compared with sacrifices in your daily life! In day to day affairs, one can not even be entirely sure what the end goal of a sacrifice is. Do you give up time for family or friends? Do you give up a hobby for another hobby? Do you go back to school now at a highcost for a good return in better job offers later? And so... it can become even more complex as you are not reasonably sure your compensation will ever materialize... therefore, it seems prudent to appreciate sacrifices in chess even more because their result can never be questioned.

With that, I bring a position directly from Vukovic's Art of Attack (p158).



answer to be posted later!

Who said Chess players can't Dance! Well Hula

Apparently WIM Arianne Caolli isn't the only chess player that can Dance (that is if you consider Hula dancing). WGM Jennifer Shahade might have even one uped her by hulaing while simuling! Enjoy the following clip:


Untitled from jennifer shahade on Vimeo.

Raises a good question about multitasking now doesn't it? I guess while calculating all those variations on all those boards it would be nice to have a stress relieving hula going on! Probably creates a very nice fun environment not normally seen in chess playing halls!