Shifting Focus

{Coincidentally, in an interesting example of parallel evolution, there seem to be many other bloggers that have recently taken self-improvement much more seriously as well. Check out Blunderprone's blog for more info on his ACIS (Adult Chess Improvement Seekers) movement.}

 For the last while I've been content to learn more about chess –endings, opening repertoire, reading some of the classic game collections such as Alekhine's NY 1924 and Nottingham 1936 tournament books, and Botvinnik's 100 Selected Games, etc. However, as I enter my 40^th year of existence, I look at the sidebar of this blog ("hopes to become a B-class player before senility sets in") and the subtitle ("Do as I Say, Not As I Do") and have decided to do more of what I say.

For me, I identified the following areas as needing the most improvement:

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Heisman's "Three Showstoppers"

Last month, Dan Heisman's column at ChessCafe.com ("The Three Show Stoppers") set a lightbulb off for me. Which is odd, because he's discussing issues of time management, piece safety and piece activity that he's written about before. However, these concepts came together to form a "perfect storm" of chess instruction.

A theme of Heisman's is that there are certain basic skills such as time management and playing what Heisman calls "real chess" consistently on every move of the game. The trick, of course, is consistently. If 49 moves out of 50 you play properly, and 1 move out of 50 you launch a stinkbomb of a move because you moved too fast or a piece was hanging, then your chess strength is severely diminished. I think that, for most people, working on improving this aspect of their game will likely produce greater dividends than just about any other chess-related activity.

Easily said, but as the byline of this blog says: "Do as I say, not as I do." It takes gumption to work on this, and if most of your chess is online blitz then you're not going to be able to play "real chess" a la Heisman unless you're pretty gifted. However, in this column Heisman reduces the essentials to three principles:

• Time Management: not moving too fast or too slow, but using the appropriate amount of time for each move
• Safety
• Piece Activity

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Heisman's Latest Article: Counting Errors Revisited

Dan Heisman's latest ChessCafe.com article revisits counting errors ("I take, he takes, I take...oops.") with some more elaborate examples. None of the examples are of mind-blowing complexity, but for several I had to sit and think. For example:


The moves played in this game were (after 1...Nbd5) 2.Ne5? Nxf4 3.Nxf6? Bxf6?? 4.Be4?? Ng6. In particular, Black's third move looks natural, but is not best. If Black's correct 3rd move isn't immediately obvious to you as you play through this example, go straight to Heisman's article, do not pass go, and do not collect 200 ratings points (at least, not until you're done reading through the Novice Nook archives there).

If you routinely mine your games (including Blitz) for tactical errors, you'll be finding plenty of these errors in your own games and can include them in your "Hall of Shame" files.