Doing some chess search, I came to Dan Heisman’s web site to the page with his guidelines. There were quite a few of them, very useful stuff. I chose ten I liked the most, so here they are:
1. “You would not give up the Bishop Pair for nothing any more than you would give up a Queen for nothing.”
I have a correspondence game now where I am pawn down, my only hope is a pair of bishops. I’ll see how it will develop.
2. “You improve (and your rating goes up) when you
a) learn a new pattern or principle or
b) when you identify a mistake and are able to avoid repeating it – not when you win a bunch of games.”
I will trace it.
3. “Play as much as you can, especially slow chess – it helps you develop board vision.”
I switched from online blitz to online correspondence chess, will see the effect.
4. “*Don’t be afraid of losing. Be afraid of playing a game and not learning something. Losing can be a great motivator if it helps you identify and correct things you are doing that cause the loss”.
This is very right.
5. “*Time management is an important skill in chess; having 15 minutes left when our opponent has 5 (in a sudden death time control without time delay) is worth about 200 ratings points!”
The opposite (5/15) happened to me twice lately and the result was disastrous.
6. “A bishop is good behind its own pawns if they are mobile. If those pawns are fixed, then it may be a bad bishop.” (but remember Suba’s ‘Bad Bishops guard good pawns!”).
I am playing 4 bishops correspondence endgame right now, will use it.
7. “In the Ruy Lopez, the play is rich enough that the better player almost always wins.”
I love Ruy Lopez exactly for that.
8. “Botvinnik’s rule: In slow games, use about 20% of your time for the first 15 moves. In fast games, use LESS than 20% of your time for the first 15 moves”
I will try to make it a golden rule for me.
9. “When looking for tactics – for either player – look for Checks, Captures, and Threats, in that order – for both players.”
I miss threats when they come not on the current move, but on the next one.
10. *”Never push a passed pawn passed its zone of protection (unless it promotes by force!).
I was punished twice for that in the last dozen OTB games.
Interesting how many out of this ten somebody else reading this post will select as helping him/her.
November 2, 2008 at 4:55 pm
***2. “You improve (and your rating goes up) when you
a) learn a new pattern or principle or
b) when you identify a mistake and are able to avoid repeating it – not when you win a bunch of games.”
3. “Play as much as you can, especially slow chess – it helps you develop board vision.”
4. “*Don’t be afraid of losing. Be afraid of playing a game and not learning something. Losing can be a great motivator if it helps you identify and correct things you are doing that cause the loss”. ***
I selected these because they all fall under my motto namely ‘strength is more important then rating’.
November 3, 2008 at 11:06 am
Yeah, you selected the good ones :).
I played this Sunday an OTB game and I used 1. and 8. I opened the play for my pair of bishops and all hell broke loose. I also managed the time well, almost getting under 20% for 15 moves. I won the game in 26 moves.
November 3, 2008 at 4:10 pm
2. “You improve (and your rating goes up) when you
a) learn a new pattern or principle or
b) when you identify a mistake and are able to avoid repeating it – not when you win a bunch of games.”
Have you ever heard the quote “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result.”? That’s what number 2 is about. When we stop making the same mistake we will get better.
Time management is very important. I want to cry when I think about all those games where I was winning and imploded in time pressure because I didn’t have the time to work out the proper continuation.
November 3, 2008 at 4:32 pm
Polly – exactly. I see the things I am doing wrong repeating almost in every game. I think I can do something about that.
I agree about time management.
You need time for the endgame. Last time I tried to make 40 moves in an hour (with 90 SD format), leaving at least half an hour for endgame. I was a bit behind this schedule and it didn’t get to that, but at least I would have more time than a week before, when I completely screwed up won B vs N endgame blitzing it.
November 5, 2008 at 2:46 pm
5. Time management,
I have been in games were i have more time than my opponenet,so as to race them to a clock loss i play fast and make silly mistakes.
November 6, 2008 at 8:38 am
chessx – I found this on chessville.com: “If your opponent is in time trouble, don’t rush your moves. Take some time to find surprising moves that force your opponent to think”.
I like how Magnus Carlsen does it systematically, first he creates problems on the board getting his opponent into time trouble, then he continues to complicate things, very effectively forcing mistakes and blunders.