Going over a game for all its worth: Example time
The same Matt who wrote the letter discussed in this post has written again with his look at the (once) famous 8th game of the 1978 Karpov-Korchnoi world championship match. It's a nice effort for a "near beginner", but there are ways he can extract more from the game before consulting the professional annotators, friends and/or computers. Here's the main one:
A few times Matt expresses disapproval about the players' moves. Now, it's true that at least one of the players must have made a mistake, since it wasn't a draw, but we're talking about two of the greatest players of all time. So a principle of charity should be in effect here: if one doesn't understand why a much stronger player did something, there should be a strong presumption that we need to keep looking or thinking. (This holds both for tactical and strategic factors.)
There are also plenty of missed tactics, which is not only fine but to be expected from a new player. The lesson here is twofold: First, when the game gets complicated, slow down and explicitly look for tactics, starting with checks and captures. Second - and this is the bread and butter for all players, especially those under 1800 USCF - it's the signal to work on tactics. Get the Reinfeld "1001" books, or Winning Chess Tactics for Juniors, or the fat Polgar book entitled Chess. Or use an online site, like the Chess Tactics Server or ICC's trainingbot. Or buy chess tactics software, e.g. from ChessBase. The options are plentiful - just make sure to use them! (I'd recommend the Polgar book for players just starting out: it's very inexpensive in paperback and has more than enough material to push you up to the next level.)
Here's the game, with Matt's commentary; my meta-comments start with "DM" and are in brackets.
A few times Matt expresses disapproval about the players' moves. Now, it's true that at least one of the players must have made a mistake, since it wasn't a draw, but we're talking about two of the greatest players of all time. So a principle of charity should be in effect here: if one doesn't understand why a much stronger player did something, there should be a strong presumption that we need to keep looking or thinking. (This holds both for tactical and strategic factors.)
There are also plenty of missed tactics, which is not only fine but to be expected from a new player. The lesson here is twofold: First, when the game gets complicated, slow down and explicitly look for tactics, starting with checks and captures. Second - and this is the bread and butter for all players, especially those under 1800 USCF - it's the signal to work on tactics. Get the Reinfeld "1001" books, or Winning Chess Tactics for Juniors, or the fat Polgar book entitled Chess. Or use an online site, like the Chess Tactics Server or ICC's trainingbot. Or buy chess tactics software, e.g. from ChessBase. The options are plentiful - just make sure to use them! (I'd recommend the Polgar book for players just starting out: it's very inexpensive in paperback and has more than enough material to push you up to the next level.)
Here's the game, with Matt's commentary; my meta-comments start with "DM" and are in brackets.
Related Posts (on one page):
- Going over a game for all its worth: Example time
- The Readers Write: Going over a game for all it's worth
Posted by Dennis Monokroussos on
Thursday July 5, 2007 at 2:09pm
Yes, thank you very much for posting the game to your blog for discussion.
*Disclaimer* I wrote the annotated comments as just my initial ignorant newbie thoughts; not thoughts that I am convinced were justified by any means! So I apologize for appearing arragont, I realized the masters moves are at this point beyond my initial understanding until I improve my studying of variations and games abilities :)
However, I will be working through the comments you made and variations.
This is awesome!
I took your advice, with some shortcuts last night. I played through Fischer-Panno 1970 from the World's Greatest Chess Games and invested about two hours. As I played through the game (shutting off the innapropriate panes) I guessed the next move (or series of moves) then analysed what I missed before going to the next 1/2 move. Sometimes I could figure their moves out as the game progressed and others were not really clear until I read the annotations. I did think 10... d5 was a mistake because of the Bishop being shut out and totally missed Fischer's 28 Be4. I did find some of my moves in the top two or three variations from Fritz, so I didn't feel as badly as I did going through the game. The annotations and variations in the book were much more meaningful when I went through them after investing an hour without help. I used the engine as I went through the annotations and played out a couple of things I didn't understand.
All in all, it was a really good investment of two hours of time (thank goodness it was only 36 moves-I finished at midnight!) and I will do this much more often. If only I had found your blog when I first began playing again. Thanks for the time and effort you give.
He should be analyzing games like Chigorin-Pillsbury Hastings 1895, epic struggles where the outcome is unclear until the end and both sides played very well while "inventing" moves the entire game.
I recently worked through your comments and variations. I did write up a response to many of the questions you presented, then I realized all of my comments shared a common answer "I have no idea what I am talking about!"
haha.
So, after searching around a bit, and understanding more about variations (which is a bit overwhelming); this particular game followed the Ruy Lopez Open variation!
I recently understood variations to stop after turn 5'ish. I learned the variation name is just the start to a complex layer of named variations built upon the main variation (that is a tongue twister!)
To extend the line of a main variation is overwhelming to me, how in the heck can I remember all of these?
I have decided to begin my regular games with King's openings, and Ruy Lopez main lines; hopefully, over time I will catch on to the sub-variations of the Ruy Lopez.
I just started reading through the McDonald's comments and it was very interesting!