Mental Muscle: Fast Twitch vs. Slow Twitch

Those of you into exercise know that there are two general categories of skeletal muscle: fast-twitch and slow twitch. Fast-twitch muscle is capable of short bursts of intense power, but tires more quickly; slow-twitch muscle is less powerful but capable of long periods of aerobic exercise. I think that, when it comes to chess, something comparable applies to the muscle between your ears.

The #1 mantra of chess success is "study tactics". To me, however there are two separate components to tactical strength:

• speed of pattern recognition
• depth of vision

This is a bit artificial...the two aren't completely separate. Here's a hypothetical example to hopefully clarify what I mean.

You analyze a game of yours with Fritz, and Fritz points out that you could have won a piece by force. The error could fall into one of two broad categories:

• "Oh, of course! I should have seen that!" (a sign that either you weren't playing "real chess", or that you were playing "real chess" but you missed a relatively simple tactic) This is your standard patzer error that tactics drills a la Heisman and proper thinking technique help to weed out. The aspect of chess strength most at play here is pattern recognition, and quite possibly the speed of calculating short forced sequences.

• "How the hell was I supposed to see that? That's twelve ply deep!" Assuming it is a fairly forcing sequence, the relevant component of chess strength here is how clearly you can see the board several moves ahead. Even if it's a Kotov-esque tree of variations, visualization is an important component of the calculation process.
  

For me, the approximate boundary between the two in a middlegame of average complexity is six to eight ply--in other words, falling into the Chernev and Reinfeld "how to see three moves ahead" range of set up the tactic, execute the tactic, collect the booty.

I don't think that the idea of training your "visualization muscles" is often addressed. Instead, we have books or programs such as CT-ART that have a gradient of tactical problems from simpler to harder. Then, to do the harder ones, you need to work that muscle and see deeper. To me, that's a bit like exercising your back by doing squats. Yes, the back muscles will coincidentally get worked out a bit while you develop your legs, but you're not actually targeting them.

I have recently started studying master games in earnest. I try not to spend too much time on each one (I'd say 5-30 minutes, depending on the depth and quality of the annotations), but I usually use a board and pieces and take notes. For most of the annotations I push myself to visualize as best I can the sequence of moves. If it's a bit fuzzy, I may make a move or two on the board and try again. I do the best I can without spending too much time on it, then move on.

This position from Alekhine-Marshall, NY 1924 struck me as an excellent example:



Alekhine has the following side note: "[8. d5] must be done at once, inasmuch as Black, after 8.Be3, would obtain counter-play by means of 8... Bxf3 9. Bxf3 e5
10. fxe5 dxe5 11. d5 Nd4! (12. Bxd4 exd4 13. Qxd4 Nxe4), etc."

Set this position up on a board...go on, do it. Try to visualize down to the final position and get a feeling for what "etc." entails. Try to visualize, for example, why White doesn't play 14.Qxe4. If you can't get it, make a move and try again. Repeat until you get it. I'll add a comment about the final position at the end of my post...spoiler alert.

In the past my eyes would start glazing over at around 11.Nd4 and I'd just continue playing over the main line of the game. Here I said, "this isn't impossible, push yourself a little". While it's not a forcing sequence, it's a logical series of exchanges. With a little effort I was finally able to visualize the position at White's move 14 fairly clearly.

Note that I'm not trying to calculate my way through to the end, just visualize. In some cases, as you work through an annotation you'll be struck by alternatives: "hey, wait, why not _____ ?" If something jumps out at you, then go ahead...take a look, try to quickly figure it out, and if it's unclear write a note and move on. I have found that lengthy, linear analysis, especially by lesser annotators, is often suspect, and you may find that your own ideas are correct. For example, I found one instance in Capablanca's Best Chess Endings where Chernev missed a classic queen sacrifice and double-bishop mate. I was pretty chuffed about that.

I am hoping that by studying master games in this fashion that I'll overcome some of my mental laziness and improve my ability to visualize several moves ahead. One of the few books I've come across that actually touches on this aspect of chess development is Best Lessons of a Chess Coach, where in several critical game positions the reader is pushed to see ahead as far as they can.

I think the study of master games tends to be overlooked for a couple reasons:

• You aren't getting a concentrated dose of tactics, or endgames, or opening theory, or strategy. So, if you're setting goals like "today I'm going to study tactics", or "this week I'm going to work on rook endgames", etc., you're going to be using other, more specialized, training material.

• You aren't being spoon-fed the information. You have to actually think about the game on your own and ask your own questions. For example, an annotation may read "obviously forced" or "this alternative would result in a dead-lost endgame" as if it's self-evident, but you actually have to stop, think, and see if you can understand what the annotator is getting at.

Spoiler alert for the above position: I had difficulty visualizing that the e-file was completely vacated of pieces, save for the king. I had a residual shadow in my mind of one of the bishops on the e-file. After working my way through it once, I was able to work forward from the given position and visualize fairly clearly the final position, complete with vacated e-file.

Synergy

In advance of a more complete review of Daniel King's Power Play 2/3 DVDs, I'd like to express (or maybe, re-express) an opinion of mine on selecting study material.

Obviously, the biggest payoff for improving your chess strength is to focus on your weakest area or areas... the facets of your game that are costing you the most points. For most of us that is probably playing "real chess" and tactics. For some people it may be the endgame, or maybe it's playing reasonable opening moves (less likely). However, I think there are two caveats to this approach:

1. This approach ignores synergy between different areas of chess knowledge. A little bit of positional understanding (a la Silman, Nimzovich and Kmoch), endgame knowledge, and basic opening principles goes a long way. You may understand that a certain opening move is bad because it creates an understandable pawn weakness; a tactical threat may only be parried if the opponent allows you to have the two bishops; you may be able to tactically sacrifice the exchange to force a winning endgame. I can't tell you how many master games I've played over where a kingside attack is converted to an endgame advantage.

2. You may not realize what some of your weaknesses are unless a stronger player looks over your games. Fritz can spot the more glaring tactical boo-boos but it can't tell you that you habitually ignore the center, routinely overlook attacking possibilities, or commit cardinal sins in your rook endgames that "every Russian schoolboy knows about".

One example of point two : Only after re-reading My System, did I really come to terms with how little I appreciated the center. I mean, I've known for a quarter of a century that it was important, and I would think about the center in vague terms as I played, but it wasn't often that I would think about it concretely (e.g. "If I trade off the Nc3, I weaken White's control of d5 and can push d7-d5"). Now this is becoming more natural. There are fewer instances where Fritz looks over a blitz game and says, "dumbass, your opponent played a weak move and you should've pushed d5, der!" The games I'm playing over from the 1920s are constantly harping about the center. In the Daniel King DVDs, he's constantly pointing out that such-and-such an attack was only possible because the center was under control, and so on. It's like in the movie "They Live", where I now have these special glasses that allow me to see (or, more accurately, pay attention) to things I was oblivious to before.

The thing is, I figured this out the hard way. If you can, take advantage of stronger players at the club, or lessons if you can afford them, to periodically check if you have hidden weaknesses you were unaware of.

Returning to the subject of synergy: I'm sure I had a lot of losses that I wrote off as "tactical blunders" or "mishandling the opening" where central control was the main underlying factor. Maybe it was the tactic that ultimately cost me the game, but it was exacerbated by the difficult position I got into because I didn't act in the center when I should have. So, while studying tactics may be the most important area for most club players to work on, a little bit of work put into other aspects of chess can have disproportionately large payoffs.

This is one reason I'm enjoying studying master games: I'm working on spotting tactics and visualizing variations, but I'm also getting small doses of opening ideas, strategic principles, execution of attacks, and endgame technique. In particular, I think that once you're familiar with the basics of chess strategy that you're better off playing over master games than buying more and more books on chess strategy.

Brief update, and a preview of Daniel King's DVDs

Getting my stitches out on Wednesday. Just wanted to post an update, and a few random thoughts.

Currently playing through the NY 1924 tournament games annotated by Alekhine, and taking notes. I've entered the Finkelstein games into my master games database, but oy! what lousy annotations by the author! Even without the computer I found many. The longer and more linear the line he gave, the more certain that it'd be completely debunked.

I'm entering material from the giant Laszlo Polgar book Chess: 5334 Problems, Combinations and Games into Chessbase as well. The goal is that by the time I've gone through 2-3000 master games, that book will be completely entered as well. Ditto with the Encyclopedia of Chess Middlegames and Tal's Winning Chess Combinations. Yes, I am insane. I'd better start backing up my files more regularly...if all this stuff got erased from my hard drive I'd flip out.

When I renewed my USCF membership I also ordered a mousepad roll-up board and heavily-weighted Marshall plastic pieces. I can now play outside without the wind blowing stuff all over the place. Since the shipping was so much for the pieces, I said "what the heck" and ordered the 2nd and 3rd of Daniel King's Power Play DVDs. Very good so far. I didn't order the first because I felt the material would overlap with material I already have (e.g. The Art of Chess Combination by Eugene Znozko-Borovsky and The Art of Attack in Chess by Vucovic). Similarly, I'm holding off on the 4th CD until I hear more about it, since it supposedly deals with opening play.

Themes from the second DVD are:

• a strong center is generally a prerequisite for an attack, and an attack may be thwarted by counterplay in the center
• King emphasizes the need to get the heavy pieces involved in an attack. I get the feeling the second DVD focuses on rook lifts to get your heavy pieces in front of your pawns, and the third DVD will focus on pawn storms backed up by heavy pieces.
• A weak, poorly defended king is an obvious sign of a possible attack, but an even stronger theme is lack of coordination between the defender's pieces, esp. if the Queen can't get back to the kingside easily and if rooks can't coordinate on the back two ranks. So the real "blood in the water" is realizing that you can develop a local superiority of force around the enemy king. This in itself is not that profound, but how it's reinforced through example is enlightening. I kept comparing this concept to the concept of the "mismatch" in the endgame, where say bishop and pawn or two pawns are able to overpower a rook and thus queen a pawn.

So a summary would be: a strong center cramps your opponent, whose army is divided in two with limited ability to swing from a queenside assault to kingside defense. The attacker swings queen, a rook or two, and any other available pieces to the kingside and mates the king faster than Black can defend. Easy, no? The "HULK SMASH!" school of chess.

Edit 6/19/07: The second DVD also covers the advance of the g pawn to open lines. The advances of the f and h pawns are covered in the third DVD. So, it seems it was a good idea to buy the two DVDs together. I found the g pawn material in particular to be enlightening. I also want to point out that the material is quite balanced. King has you find not only good moves for the attacker, but for the defender (or bad moves to avoid) as well. Also, in the f-pawn material he has multiple examples of how pushing the f-pawn creates weaknesses that ultimately cost the original attacker the game.

May be Out of Commission for a Bit

Having some wrist surgery tomorrow, so that'll probably put a crimp in the whole blogging thing. My next Magnus Opus will be delayed.

On the plus side, this is an excellent opportunity to go cold turkey on online blitz and start tinkering with Fritz settings to play long games and practice "real chess". I've been putting that off.

In other news, I've finished two games collections, so that puts me at about 72 games or so towards the 2000+ target. Wheeee!

Interesting Opening Statistics

What follows is a statistical analysis of Kasparov's 1.e4 openings using Chessbase. This is just a quick and dirty dissection of the information I found in the Big Database 2006. You can quibble exact numbers for my statistics, but shouldn't change the take-home message.

I was playing around with Chessbase's Player Dossier feature by pulling up Kasparov's information, and was surprised how few main-line Spanish games there were. I then did some searches in the database for Kasparov vs. people rated 2100 and up (to weed out the simuls and such). I did all of these as position searches so that I didn't lose any games because of transpositions. Here's what I found, and what the implications are for the average club player.

• Games played by Kasparov with 1.e4: 340
• Games where Kasparov reached the Spanish with 3...Bb5: 69 (so 20% of his e-pawn openings brought him here).
• Games where the opponent played 3...a6: 58
• I then searched for the main position that arises after 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 4. Ba4 Nf6 5. O-O Be7 6. Re1 b5 7. Bb3 d6 8. c3 O-O 9. h3: 22 games (so less than a third of his Spanish games end up here, or 6% of his 1.e4 games).
• At this point, only 4 games continued with 9...Na5! Instead, 14 continued 9...Bb7 (11 of them from games with Karpov). In other words, only 6% of Kasparov's Spanishes as white (and only 1% of his 1.e4 games) resulted in Black's primary system in the Closed Spanish.

You can make arguments such as "well, that's because the Berlin and the Marshall Gambit have really taken off", or "but Kasparov has played the Scotch", or "people avoid the main line against Kasparov because they're afraid of his preparation" and so on. Out of 340 1.e4 games, there were 22 scotches, 3 Evans Gambits, and 6 Italian/Two Knights. In the Spanish, Kasparov pretty much stuck to the main lines, deliberately avoiding the main line on 6 occasions. Still, of the 94% of Spanish games that didn't end up at the main line, only 9% were Kasparov deviating, so the fault lies more with his opponents.

Now, as far as Black deviating to avoid Kasparov's preparation: the Spanish is an opening where the main line is pretty much delineated, as opposed to some branching monstrosity such as the Sicilian. Black has some serious deviations at move 3, at the Open Spanish, and the Marshall Gambit, but apart from that it's pretty much on rails. I have in my possession Glenn Flear's The Ruy Lopez Main Line, which covers only from move 9 on. Kasparov would only have reached positions in Flear's book in a small fraction of his Spanish games. I would have expected a larger number of his games to follow the main lines, but these statistics make it look like I have about as much chance of getting the main line Spanish in my blitz games on ICC as Kasparov did in a GM tournament. Perhaps more so, since some of the ICC players are theory monkeys that belt out the main lines. Lower-level players may play fewer Berlins and Marshalls, but they play far more Steinitz Defenses, Cozios and "junk" like that.

So, what's the take-home message here?

• The farther down a main line you go, the less of a chance of seeing it in your own games (well, der!)
• Memorization of main lines won't solve your opening problems.
• If you buy an opening book with the intent of using it as a map to direct you through the opening, you're wasting your money. Books that deal with common pawn structures, such as Kmoch's Pawn Power in Chess, are a better use of your study time.
  

Nonetheless, I recommend people play and study main lines. Why?

• You will find more annotated master games featuring those lines, so you'll develop more understanding about why certain moves or variations are played.
• You will see examples of good development, effective piece manoeuvres, thematic pawn structures, and typical middlegame plans, which may arise in your own non-mainline games.

So, if you treat an opening book as examples of good opening and middlegame play that you may choose to adopt, and read through the lines critically, they'll have some utility.

In my opinion, you really don't need to worry about any main line past what I consider to be the "real" end of the opening, which is typically where the minor pieces and queen are off the back rank, and the players have castled. I say "typically" because some lines will have a stay-at-home bishop, a delayed queen deployment, no castling with a closed center, or some such exception. If you follow general opening principles of development and central control, you may find out that you've just played the same line as a GM. You're best off treating opening manuals as examples of possible play, rather than "you must commit these lines to memory and execute them unfailingly". Rather, just be sure to analyze your own games (and all phases too...middlegame and endgames as well). If you find that you followed a "book" line, check it over until you find where you or your opponent left theory (often it's as simple as Fritz finding the patzer move), and figure out what you'd do if that were to arise again. If you've actually successfully followed a book line past the end of development, then go ahead and explore some typical lines and master games that also occurred in that line. For this purpose, books such as the "Mastering the..." series that discuss typical pawn structures and associated plans, as well as general material such as Kmoch's book, are of more value to amateurs than more specialized tomes. King and Ponzetto's book Mastering the Spanish is a classic in this regard.

{Postscript: after composing this, I obtained Mihail Marin's Beating the Open Games, which fills the same role as Emms' Play the Open Games as Black (a 1.e4 e5 repertoire for Black, except the Spanish--although Marin mentions the Spanish Exchange as well) but which a whole lot of explanatory text. It may become the only openings book I've ever read cover-to-cover, since it seems to be chock full of instructional material. It's too early for me to give a review, but right now I'll just say that it appears to be an openings book that will make you a better player. When I searched online for a hyperlink to Marin's book, I found that he has a repertoire book for the Spanish coming out soon as well. I'll be looking forward to its release.)}

In a future diary I hope to show an example of what I consider to be the proper way to go about studying an opening system.

Finally Finished Zurich 1953, and My Reading List

I have another article on opening study queued up, but I hate having so many posts on a topic that club players already spend too much time on. Instead, I'll just say that I finally finished Zurich International Chess Tournament, 1953 by Bronstein. It was my "carry with you and play through on a pocket set" book for quite a while now. I've replaced it with Chess: The Art of Logical Thinking by McDonald.

It'd be tempting to count the book's contents towards my "2000+ annotated master games" collection, but somehow it seems like cheating since they were spread out over months. After polishing off a couple half-read collections, I think I'm going to go through my collection roughly by the copyright date of the original publication. That way, if the same game comes up multiple times I can add the more modern analysis to the older annotations. Also, I expect the older books to have more general positional assessments and fewer variations, and the newer material to have more "exceptions to the rules", plus more and longer variations.

I'm planning on going through the following pre-1980 books in this order. The first few aren't in chronological order because I'm already in the process of reading them. Books I've previously read cover-to-cover are marked in red.

- Self-Taught Chess for Beginners and Intermediates by Milton Finkelstein (again, I don't actually recommend this book to others...this is just a sentimental favorite)
-the instructive games section of My System by Nimzowitsch
-Chess Master vs. Chess Amateur by Euwe and Kramer
-a block of Alekhine: the tournament books for NY 1924 and Nottingham 1937 (Dover editions), plus I'm counting Nunn's algebraic translation of Alekhine's Best Games as 1937-ish.
-One Hundred Selected Games by Botvinnik
-Zurich International Chess Tournament 1953 (yes, again.)
-Logical Chess move by Move by Move and The Most Instructive Games of Chess Ever Played by Chernev.
-My 60 Memorable Games by Fischer
-Tal-Botvinnik 1960 and The Life and Games of Mikhail Tal, by Tal
-The Art of Positional Play by Reshevsky
-Capablanca's Best Chess Endings by Chernev

Not counting doubles, that's 1166 games right there.

Unfortunately, most of these old books are in descriptive notation, which is a bit of a headache. Only Alekhine's Best Games, Zurich '53, Tal's books and Capablanca's Best Chess Endings are in Algebraic. I realize some of the others have algebraic editions, but I'm not going to drop the money on them.

Thoughts on Gambits, and a Mini-Review of The Modern Morra Gambit

Gambits have been on my mind lately for a few reasons.

• A while ago, in my Openings for Beginners series, I recommended main lines. However, I still wondered if certain tactical, dodgy openings would be appropriate for developing tactical skills. Things like the Moller Attack in the Italian Game, or the Max Lange Attack, or the Morra Gambit. The latter two were actually some of the first weapons I adopted when I started playing rated chess, but I abandoned them early on.
• I actually succumbed and bought Langrock's The Modern Morra Gambit to relive the past and give it a whirl in blitz. I was wondering if it might be appropriate after all.
• I saw that Nigel Davies has put out a book called Gambiteer I, featuring gambit lines for white after 1.e4. The bastard. I have his Play 1.e4 e5! book, so the dirty blackguard was holding out on us with his secret weapons.

I've mulled the matter over in my head. Here's what I believe:

• If you're not playing "real chess" yet, don't play dodgy, anti-positional openings. Build a repertoire around solid moves that feel good and make sense. Concentrate on playing "real chess" until your mistakes depend more on other aspects of chess strength such as visualization and calculation of variations.
• If you're playing "real chess" on almost every move, then look at your games and see what's costing you points. If it's tactics and calculation of variations, or using the initiative, or attacking the king, try out some tricky lines. If it's strategy or endgames, work on those instead. If you're like most of us patzers stuck in the under-expert category, you'll be lucky to get the "real chess" aspect solved.

A problem I have with some of the tricky openings is that they encourage memorization of lines. I don't think that the Max Lange was as bad as some of the others in this regard. I had read through Koltanowski's booklet when I picked this opening up and, although there's a tactical maze to pass through, a lot of the tactics made sense and felt OK. In contrast, the Morra Gambit feels bizarre in a unique way, which leads to my mini-review.

My reference book when I took up the Morra Gambit aeons ago was Burgess's Winning with the Smith-Morra Gambit. One thing that made the book hard to use was the organization. Transpositions abound, so the material was organized along the lines of "lines where Black plays Qc7" or "lines where Black plays ...Bd7". Langrock's book follows pretty much the same organizational setup, except with a much harder to follow index of variations at the end. I've owned a lot of chess books, and this one takes the cake for difficulty in finding the line you're interested in. I had to make pencil marks in the index to tie together which variation ties on to which preceding move. I actually entered the whole freakin' index into Chessbase and printed it out as a table, and then as an index of variations....that helped a lot. However, there are still a lot of variations that are either not covered in the book, or well hidden. {After I wrote this, I found a review of the book by Silman, who agrees with me on this.}

For example, the lines with ...Qc7 presume that ...a6 is played first. Presumably this is to prevent a Nb5 from White to harass the queen. Yet I couldn't find this specifically addressed, nor could Fritz spit out an outright condemnation of omitting ...a6. For example, a recent blitz game went 1. e4 c5 2. d4 cxd4 3. c3 dxc3 4. Nxc3 Nc6 5. Nf3 e6 6. Bc4 d6 7. O-O Nf6 8. Qe2 Qc7. Fritz wasn't giddily jumping up and down over 9.Nb5 at this point, so the most reasonable continuation to me seemed to be to transpose into the main line with standard Morra moves. This is what indeed happened, as did many of the games in my database.

Maybe I need to play more gambits, but the Morra stands out to me as completely alien, an entirely different kind of game. A lot of the tactical motifs seem peculiar to this opening. A lot of the best moves for White, at my level of ability, are highly tactically sophisticated. Although I can see that there are certain tactical patterns that can act like signposts to guide you through the opening, there seems to be a high premium on memorization.

On the plus side, the positions get so crazy that, even if you badly bobble the opening, your opponent is likely to screw up badly as well. Also, some of the tactical patterns you learn here do appear elsewhere. One of the simpler tactical tricks I learned when I first played the Morra was this idea:


1. Bxf7+! Kxf7 2. Qxd8 +-




















I must have internalized this motif, because 13 years later I spotted this in a flash during a blitz game, in an entirely unrelated opening:

1. e4 e5 2. f3 Nf6 3. g3 d5 4. d3 Bc5 5. Ne2? (Diagram) 5...dxe4! 6. fxe4 Nxe4 7. dxe4 sets up the same decoy tactic: 7...Bf2+ 8. Kxf2 Qxd1 9. Be3 Bg4 10. Nec3 Qf3+ 0-1

I'm still impressed that I found this tactic almost at a glance.















I think the bottom line is that, if you are a weaker player (I'll guesstimate below class A), you can successfully employ this opening if you have a good memory. I could see kids booking up to the eyeballs on these lines and taking scalps. Even with my poor memory and limited study of this gambit, I can already see common Black mistakes and can recall the proper White response (without fully understanding it, perhaps). However, if you're not playing "real chess" reliably yet, playing such an opening is probably holding you back, because you're overwhelmed with memorizing lines and getting lost in a maze of tactics, rather than working on fixing your sloppy thought process.

(On a similar note, I flipped through Davies' Gambiteer I, and if I recall correctly some of the main lines led to bizarre, icky-feeling positions where, although Davies says white has an advantage, I would hate to have to play that mess. I seem to recall one position with an uncastled king on f1 with damaged pawn cover being a position to aim for. I'm just going by my impression of what I saw flipping through it in the book store, so don't hold me to specifics. I may at some point buy the book if I find my opponents using the lines against me, but right now I'm not anxious to try them out myself as White.)

So, what if you love gambits but frankly suck at the whole "real chess" thing? Intuitively, it seems to me that a reasonable compromise would be to play your gambits against lower rated players, and play solid against higher rated players. On the other hand, if you've ever read Simon Webb's Chess for Tigers, you'll see he recommends the opposite approach. Webb argues that even bunnies have sharp teeth, so you should play solidly against them rather than try to blow them out of the water. In contrast, when playing a stronger player you should muddy the waters with complexities to counter their edge in technique. And on the third hand (?!), Webb's advice would violate Petrosian's Rule:

The great Petrosian was patron to his assistant, the young and
talented Russian-Armenian master Karen Gregorian. Once
Gregorian returned from an important qualifying tournament and
showed Petrosian a game in which the young man had played
some very risky opening moves as Black and lost. Petrosian cross-
examined him in a characteristically chiding way.

      Petrosian:  "Why did you play such terrible moves? Even you
      should understand these are bad."
      Gregorian:  "I had to win to qualify."
      Petrosian:  "Make a note. It's much easier to play for a win
      from an equal position than from a bad position!"

So, hell, I don't know...play what you want.