The Chess Mind

There are many ways and materials that discuss this. Here's my suggestion, and I think it holds for anyone from "relative newbie" through master.

First, you need to pick a game. I recommend using games that are annotated, though you should make a copy of the game without the comments and cover up the moves, revealing each half-move only after you've made your guesses. (If you're using Fritz or ChessBase, that's easy. First, open a commented game, then use "delete all commentary" and save the result. (NOT "replace"!) Then use the "training" tab, which will hide all moves but the preceding one.)

Having picked out a game, go through it one half-move at a time (i.e. first one player's move, then the other's, etc.), starting from the end of your book knowledge, and try to guess the moves. (By "guess" I mean "work out as best as you can".) Do that all the way through, writing your guesses down.

Next, go through the game as played, a half-move at a time, and try to figure out why the players made the moves they did. Work out the positional moves, work out the tactics - the whole thing. Don't use your computer chess engines (and if you are doing all this on a computer, make sure you turn the heumas move-input tool off)! You might want to go through it twice - first without moving pieces to analyze, then moving them. If you can't figure something out, make a note of it.

Step four: see if you can figure out what was wrong with your mistaken guesses in part one. You could break this up into three sub-steps: working out mentally, then moving pieces, and then with a chess engine's help.

Now that you've extracted all you can from your own abilities and understand the game as deeply as you can, it's time to look at the annotated version. This should prove a real eye-opener after your preliminary work! I recommend you go through the notes the same way as in step three: try to understand all the analysis, and make a note of whatever you don't understand. (After doing this, you might make a second run-through with the chess engine, especially to check any tactical questions you might have.)

Finally, if you've done all that, ask a (sufficiently strong) friend or chess teacher to have a look at your analysis and to help you understand whatever leftover questions you might have.

Hypothetical Q&A:

Q: Gee, that sounds like a lot of work.

A: Who said chess was easy?

Q: I don't have time to do all that.

A: You don't have to do it in one setting, though there are benefits to doing so. One is that tournament games take a long time to play, so this exercise will help improve your mental stamina. But if you can't, or can't always finish steps 1-5 in a single sitting, break it up into several sessions. Do make sure, though, not to let too much time elapse between sessions.

Q: When copying games, I see moves and annotations, and that ruins the whole exercise.

A: There are ways of avoiding or overcoming this problem. If you have a database, it's no problem at all, because you can open a game in training mode without seeing anything, delete the annotations without looking at them, and so on. If you don't have any databases and are using a game from a book, no problem: print the game from an online database (here's ChessBase's - find the game there, select it, choose "View* as PGN, paste it into something you can print from and you're good to go). Another thing you can do is to pick out a bunch of games, copy them out by hand, and then wait a while - give yourself time to forget what you've seen.

Q: Will this really help my chess?

A: Immensely.

Q: Why are you sharing this information with the general public?

A: I'm a nice guy! Besides, most people are lazy - probably all of us, at least some of the time - and they'd rather buy "Winning with the Four-Move Mate" or similar rubbish. You'll lose a game here and there to these trapmeisters, but you'll leave them in the dust if you make a habit of studying games in depth.

Q: I think I still see some dregs at the bottom of the cup: what else haven't you told me about studying a game for all it's worth?

A: Practically speaking, there's no end to what you can extract from a good game if you're willing to dig. Here are two more suggestions. First, you can look up other games that use the same variation, looking for similarities and dissimilarities, and doing so with an eye to solving whatever problems you became aware of while studying the first game. Second, you can do a search for games featuring similar motifs. (E.g. two bishops vs. two knights, a certain attacking pattern, endgames with a given material balance, and so on.)

Q: Should I just buy a "Solitaire Chess" book?

A: You can, but I have two caveats and a more serious objection. The first caveat is that if you use the book directly, you'll often be given information that helps you with subsequent moves, and the notes are almost always given for the winning side's moves. That means you'll get too much information (when you're doing the exercise) and too little (when you're working on step 5). Caveat number two is that it's only a temporary fix at best: what happens when you finish the book? Save your money and use the resources you already have. The most serious objection is that I dislike the "points" system and the imaginary ratings attached to them. The goal is to work and to learn, not to achieve a completely meaningless score. If you want to know how strong you are, play in tournaments, and you'll get a rating.

(Speaking of which, don't be one of those players (i.e. almost everyone) who says "my rating is x, but I'm reeeeeeeeeeeeeeally 200 points stronger." No, you're not, unless you're a sandbagger or a clearly improving player who has avoided tournaments for an extended period of time. Chess is a performance business, and your ability to score like an x + 200 player on a tactics test or your alleged possession of the "understanding" of an x + 200 player doesn't prove you're an x + 200 player when it counts, in a real life game. To paraphrase Bruce Lee, diagrams don't punch back.)