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Improve your chess: set up the board, flee the computer

Tom Chivers has a post on the Streatham & Brixton Chess Club blog that usefully restates advice given by such authors as Mark Dvoretsky and Jonathan Rowson (as well as, on a humbler level, yours truly): the best training is game simulation (e.g. training games and analysis exercises). It's not online blitz, or even, says Chivers, solving problems online or from a book. Rather, there's value in using genuine physical equipment in one's training, if only because that's how the real games are played. More info at the link above, along with some positions he recommends for training purposes.

HT: Brian Karen

Posted by Dennis Monokroussos on Thursday July 24, 2008 at 2:44pm

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Marc Widmaier (mail):

This is quite interesing, as I have a huge problem memorizing/learning anything straight from a book or computer. But, if I use the board, viola, like magick it sticks in my head for much, much, longer. Maybe this is something us "older" folks (35 and up) have difficulties with, as we didn't enter the PC chess age until our late teens/early twenties. Or, maybe it's a problem with us "weaker" players, in that we get thrown off by the differences of translating a 2d representation into a 3d one, where masters and stronger tend to think of the board in abstract terms.

7.25.2008 10:52am

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P.:

Marc - I'd be more inclined to think that it's because when you use the board, you're engaging tactile and spatial circuitry that doesn't come into play when you're just looking at the computer screen. Multiple studies have shown that turning that circuitry on when learning often translates to better results.

The problem, of course, is that it can be a huge pain in the neck, especially when you're looking at a lot of subvariations in a book with very few diagrams...

7.25.2008 12:00pm

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alfanje (mail) (www):

It is very difficult to reproduce the tournament play conditions in a training room. In the end you will still miss the tension or the motivation. I think the computer is a great tool, but just remember that in a real game it is impossible to make 20 moves in 10 seconds moving physical wood chessmen ;-)

7.25.2008 3:05pm

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