The Chess Mind

From Ari, who opened his email with the question above, and then continued as follows:

Dennis,

I don't mean to limit this question just to you, rather to 2000+ titled players like you. What I'd like to know is, though you've reached a high level of chess ability, what is it that separates you and other similarly matched players from achieving grandmaster status(and I don't mean the actual norm process, rather the playing ability). What is it that makes grandmasters better than you, and what do you think would be the best course of action to achieve grandmaster ability?

Thanks for considering my question, and even more thanks for your excellent blog and videos!

Ari

Because "grandmaster" is an official title, we mystify it, but I doubt that the question has an answer that's any better than the question of why a 2100 isn't a 2300, or a 1900 a 2100, or for that matter why a regular GM isn't a super-GM. (I give this 200 point gap because my current FIDE rating is about 200 points below the GM standard.) There are the usual culprits:

1. Talent (a loose term, which can encompass any and all of 4, 9b, 10 and the ability to more rapidly assimilate new knowledge, ideas and methods) 2. Opportunity 3. Training 4. Tactical ability 5. Knowledge of "chunks" 6. Depth of opening understanding (this carries into understanding the middlegames emerging from those openings, including standard plans and even transitions into various endings) 7. Endgame knowledge 8. Energy/stamina 9. Clock management/speed of thought 10. Good nerves

Some factors might have slipped my mind, but this is a pretty representative sample of the qualities that make one player stronger than another. A typical grandmaster probably won't have me beat on all 10 of these, but will have enough of an edge on enough of them to make a significant difference.

As for what I should do, well, there's no real mystery there either, at least broadly speaking. I, like everyone else, need to work on most of these issues, paying special attention to maximizing my strengths and fixing my biggest weaknesses. If I blow lots of endgames, then I need to focus extra attention there. If I run out of gas as the game gets a few hours in, it's time to hit the gym more often and take a critical look at my diet and sleeping patterns. If I'm getting lousy positions in the opening, or get good positions but don't know what to do with them, then it's time to study my openings more deeply and/or to play those that best fit my strengths as a chess player.

As one gets stronger, the training material needs to become more sophisticated, but the kinds of things one needs to work on remain the same for everyone. As my old pastor used to say, in a different but relevantly similar context, there's no magic foo-foo dust.

That's in effect the question from Amanuel, who writes (via email; lightly edited):

Hello FM Dennis Monokroussos

Everybody knows the most important aspect of chess is the ability to perform calculations, thus the reason why we all solve puzzles. However, nobody ever says which type of puzzles is better. I normally solve 100 puzzles, from [website], correctly each day to improve, but most of them don't feel like real life situations and usually have some sort of clue. Should I continue doing these puzzles that are fairly easy, or try going through the carefully selected puzzles from [tactics book]?

Thank you for reading my message, posting so many instructive videos, and for updating the blog so frequently and with such interesting material.

Perhaps it isn't addressed as often as it should be, but it's untrue that "nobody" ever discusses which kinds of puzzles to work on. For one thing, I've addressed this topic before, and I'm sure I'm not the only one to do so. In fact, I've addressed the issue fairly often, and probably will again. The following is a brief summary of some of my thoughts on the matter.

Basic tactical competence (definition): When I say that a player has basic tactical competence, I mean at least two things. First, they've reached a point where it's very rare for them to blunder mate or hang pieces. Maybe it happens sometimes, especially in time trouble or in a very difficult position, but it's not a besetting problem. Second, the player is familiar with basic ideas like generic double attacks, knight forks, pins, skewers, smothered mate and so on, and is capable of finding and applying such tactical themes in their games.

Step one (for beginners and tactically weak players): For players who lack basic tactical competence, the biggest need is to improve one's board vision and to learn elementary tactics. Simple, rote learning is very useful here.

Step two (for average club players who have reached basic tactical competence): Overlearning elementary tactics by continuing to practice them on a regular basis is useful, but it's time to move up to more challenging positions. (These can be positions that don't fit into the obvious categories, or if they do, the way in which they do isn't obvious to someone who has been working with the basic books.) Thus you consolidate your gains, the ideas you already know, but start to stake out new ground. This should start happening around 1500-1600 USCF/FIDE. (I don't count internet ratings here, which are very hard to calibrate with tournament ratings.)

Step three (for strong club players): The occasional look at elementary tactics is still worthwhile, to keep sharp, but the focus ought to be on more and more challenging material. If step one is 100% basic tactics and step two about 50-50, maybe give or take 10% either way, I think step three should be 80+% challenging tactics. Even this should be somewhat fine-grained. It's not necessary that all one's tactical work be migraine-inducing; I'd say around 1/4 to 1/2 of the hard work should be extremely hard. As with actual playing, a challenge is good, but if there's almost no chance of rising to the challenge it's good to aim a little lower most of the time.

As for particular works, I've listed them even more frequently, and don't really feel like doing so again at this point - interested parties can search my blog for specific resources. I'm also not interested in repeating myself this time around because it doesn't matter that much: there are tons of great tactics books out there. The key is to use them!

Here's a question emailed to me a couple of days ago:

Mr. Monokroussos,

What, in your opinion, is the best openings book for a player in the 1500-1600 range? Also, I would be very interested to know which chess books you consider to be indispensable.

Thanks very much, Sincerely, [NN]

I expect this is a question of general interest, so here, with very minor modifications, is what I wrote back:

1. There's no such thing as the best openings book. I think Boris Avrukh has just written a fantastic repertoire book (1.d4, Volume 1) for strong players (master through grandmaster, I'd say), but if someone isn't going to use or face those openings, then it doesn't matter how great a job he has done. Going down the food chain to the average club player - the rating range you've specified - doesn't change the story. Speaking generally, a club player should look for opening books that are long on explanation, explaining why the pieces go where they do in a given opening, what the key plans are, and so on. But the most important thing for a 1500-1600 player is to improve their skills, and mastering openings is the least valuable and time-effective aspect of chess self-improvement. (Unless you're getting mated in 10-15 moves on a regular basis. Then you definitely need to know a bit more about the opening!) Work on tactics and endgames.

2. There are no indispensable chess books; if there were, then their authors couldn't have gotten good enough to write them in the first place. There are some great chess books out there, but there's no magic secret strong chess players know that's responsible for their success. Play strong players, analyze games, practice challenging tactics, etc., and you'll get where you want to be.

If you're just looking for book recommendations in general, I can give some, but there are so many excellent chess books you'll go broke buying them all. Generally speaking, I'm a big fan of game collections about a great player when they are by the player himself. (Examples: Tal's The Life and Games of Mikhail Tal, Fischer's My 60 Memorable Games, Alekhine's My Best Games of Chess 1908-1937.) On chess strategy, there's Nimzowitsch's classic My System, and more recently Silman's How to Reassess Your Chess is a rightly praised favorite among club players. He's coming out with an apparently very new 4th edition later this year, so while I don't think there's anything wrong with picking up the 3rd edition now, you might want to wait for the new one. Endgames: Silman's book (Silman's Complete Endgame Course) is okay for club players. A more comprehensive (and necessarily drier - the book would be about 5000 pages long if it were as "talky" as Silman's) sort of work is Müller and Lamprecht's Fundamental Chess Endings. For 2000+ players, Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual is about as close to indispensable as a chess book is going to get.

If you have an annotated database like ChessBase's Mega2009, there's an awful lot you can do with that, too. But ultimately, it's work in, results out.