Playing Styles of the Rich and Famous

Last week I discussed some of the different openings that I was taking a hard look at for future play, along with the scientific/mathematical approach that brought me to them. I also touched base on the new study techniques I was going to implement. This week I will talk about how the openings are working out for me, some different opening choices I might be making, new playing sites that have caught my eye, and my search for a study partner.

I have been playing a lot of correspondence chess the last couple of weeks, especially this last week. Playing these corr games gives me the awesome ability to get an actual pure feel for how my new openings work and how they will work for me in my future tournament play. Corr chess also lets me utilize my new study techniques and come up with new study positions, which, as I stated in earlier posts, is going to be a huge part of my chess career. As the old saying goes "When in Rome, do as the Romans do", can easily be summed up to "When studying chess, do as the Masters do". Why wouldn't you want to use training techniques that got the best players where they are today? I used to play a lot of corr chess at the website www.redhotpawn.com . This website has some cool things going for it, but it doesn't offer nearly as much as chess.com does. More players, better players, and way more options is what can be found at the latter. They offer some excellent options for instruction, but I would have to say that if you are a stronger player, you'd get more benefit from getting a membership at the Internet Chess Club (ICC) at chessclub.com . ICC has the best players from around the world who can be found playing all sorts of different forms of chess 24/7. If you want to watch GMs, IMs and FMs duke it out, you can do so. Their lecture forums, for instruction, are awesome, with new material being added all the time. They also have Live coverage of the biggest events, with Masters of all strengths commenting on the games. The playing software that they use, Dasher, is a separate download, which means that play is not web-based, like what chess.com has to offer, which means that ICC runs much smoother. ICC is not a corr site, but every other variant of the game can be played there. This is where I play my live games.

Of the openings that I discussed previously, The Scotch Game is the only one that I've decided, so far, to implement on a regular basis. It gives me positions that I really enjoy playing and I feel that white has an easier time getting a better position, compared to some other openings I've dabbled in. One of the openings that I failed to mention before is the Benko Gambit, which is an aggressive gambit towards 1.d4. I have played this opening quite a bit in the past and with my new study techniques I'm having even more success with it. When playing white vs the Sicilian defense, I discussed that I was playing the Grand Prix attack. I have had some excellent results with it so far, but I've noticed that I try to force sacrifices. I'm working very hard on this, and am using my new study method to come up with positions that help me understand what I actually need to do positionally instead of trying to hide behind the complications invoked with sacing material prematurely.  I've started to take a look at the Open Ruy. Positions that arise from this are much more sharp than closed variants, and I believe will lead to positions that I feel much more comfortable playing. This pretty much sums up what I've taken a look at, openings wise, in the last week.

Finally, I wanted to take a moment to let everyone know that I'm actively searching for a study partner. This person will: 1. Be close to the same playing strength as I am, 2. Be very serious and interested in improving their overall play, 3. Be available to study twice a week (I'll work around your schedule), 4. Have an ICC membership or be willing to get one, since this is the site we will be meeting on for sessions, 5. Have some sort of game database with updated games, preferably ChessBase. I'm not a morning person, so I would prefer to have sessions after 12 noon. Late night is certainly an option. Either respond to this post or send me a message on facebook.

Until next time, I wish the best of luck to everyone in their chess studies.  

Next Steps in Study

Over the last week I have taken the time to go through the one million games that I downloaded for ChessBase and created sub-databases for each opening. This way, when I want to search for a game it wont take as long for CB to come up with results. It was tedious, but it had to be done. In doing so, I was able to come up with a good idea of what openings I would prefer to play as both white and black. I had mentioned last week that I am switching from a Queens Pawn player to a Kings Pawn player. This switch will certainly play towards my strengths, as I like to play for a lot of tactics instead of "grinding out" a won game. One of the huge problems that I've had in the resent past is that around hour 6 in longer tournament games, I have huge concentration lapses, or "brain farts" if you will. I've had completely won games against stronger players and Masters, to just throw the game away with awful blunders. Playing more tactical based games will, by no means, create an easy environment, but it will, hopefully, cut down on the time spent at the board. So, instead of playing 6 & 7 hour games, I could be looking at 4 & 5 hour games, and these games will have more exciting positions.

 After I had created the "Sub-Databases" I really took some time to try and find openings that were appealing to me and what I was trying to achieve. The first thing that I had to pay great attention to was the fact that just about everyone and their mother likes to play the Sicilian. I find this very funny because it's such a complex opening and it's very hard to grasp all the concepts of each part of the game. Also, there are so many different variations, with each variation having an almost unbearable amount of theory. Then comes the part of understanding all of the theory and positions that arise. One has to be comfortable playing completely unbalanced positions and the various unbalanced material "advantages" of Knight and two pawns against Rook, or Rook and Pawn. I wont go on and on about how hard it is to grasp these types of things, but it is baffling to see people try to play these without the proper study or instruction.  So, taking this into consideration, I always like to try and first ask myself "if I were to play this type of opening, what would I least like to play against?". I came up with the "Grand Prix" attacking. The Grand Prix is one of the more aggressive attacks against Sicilian players. One of the best parts of this opening is, is that no matter what variation of the Sicilian my opponents play, the general set up and piece placement on the white side is nearly the same. This cuts down on a lot of study time, and position recognition is much easier to grasp.

Next, I ran into the problem of "What if my opponent doesn't play the Sicilian?". A lot of you are probably saying "Well that's easy, just play something like the Ruy Lopez". The only problem with that is that the Ruy is probably the most complicated openings in Chess, with a whole heap of variations going 20 moves deep, or longer. I haven't come up with an exact answer on what I'll play against it on the black side, but decided to instead play the Scotch game. The Scotch is by no means simple, but it gives me positions that I feel much more comfortable playing. I wish I could give the readers a better explanation to why I chose it, but that is just the way I feel about it.

It might seem silly, but those two openings cover a lot of the stuff that I will see over the board. I know some of you are asking "Well, what about the French, or the Caro-Kann?" and the answer I have for you is that yes, I have those types of defenses on my list of things to have answers for, but they are not nearly as popular as the first two I have discussed.

Going into my openings search, I wasn't nearly as worried about the white side of the game as I was the black. I'm still putting a lot of time into searching for the best answers, for me anyhow, to the Ruy. So, at this time, I don't have a whole lot I can say about my plan for this opening as black. Just know that I'm working on it. I have decided, however, that I will play some form of the Dutch against queens pawn. I failed to mention earlier one of the factors on how I was choosing the openings I will be playing. ChessBase is an amazing tool that not only lets you search for any type of opening or player, but it will also give you the statistics on wins, draws and losses for each opening. So, I took a little more of a mathematical approach to help me find something that others had more success with. I am happy with the results that I've had, so far, and will continue to use this calculation to aid me in making a good decision.

The final thing that I came across was idea and study tactic that I hadn't been using in my studies. I always knew position recognition was a big part of the game, but it didn't click until I started reading "Studying Chess Made Easy" by Andrew Soltis. I have always enjoyed Soltis's books in the past, and it had been a long time since I picked one up. This book is a very easy read, and for the more advanced players, you don't even need a board or magnetic set, as most analysis goes maybe ten moves deep. I learned that the best players in recent history don't only know a decent amount of theory, but have large notebooks or databases full of positions that meant something to them. In any opening, there is a common Priyome that arises again and again. The purpose of creating these databases is to make sure that you understand what to do in similar positions. This was a great breakthrough for me, and it will be something that I will use on a regular basis from now on.

I wanted to thank any readers for taking the time to go through my thoughts on becoming a better chess player, and also wanted to encourage people to post their thoughts or constructive criticism, as I'm open to new, or old ideas.

Starting Fresh

I've had the time, as of late, to sit back and take a good look at what I want to do, not only in life, but in my chess career. Now, "career" is a pretty strong word for what I've achieved so far in chess, but chess is and always will be a big part of my life, so it's about time I start to take things a little more seriously and do whatever I can to make myself not only a better person, but a better chess player.

The road that I have to take to achieve any sort of chess goal is going to be much different than a normal persons would be, and this is the reason why. Two years ago I had a third knee surgery to clean up some damage that occurred after I slipped and fell on it in an icy parking lot. After that knee surgery I noticed that my back was hurting pretty bad. The pain got worse and worse until I was unable to stand for more than a few seconds without my legs feeling like they were going to give out because of the pain. An MRI told me that I had two herniated discs in my lower back which had to be operated on immediately. I was also diagnosed with "Degenerative Disc Disease", which means that the discs in my back are basically crumbling away. I had the surgery and at first thought that my pain problem had been fixed. After a couple of months I was able to get back to work, and everything started to get back to normal. Then, after a couple of months, I started to have pain again. It wasn't exactly like the pain that I was having before, but it was close. The pain increased, and to make things even worse, my hips started to hurt. A few months went by with pain increasing, and then I had an accident where I was taking some laundry into the basement and missed the last step on the way down. I jarred my back very badly, and was in pretty extreme pain. I had multiple MRIs, bone scans, X-rays....pretty much every test that you can think of. They couldn't find an exact point to target for surgery and told me that there was nothing they could do about how I was feeling, and the problem would probably get worse as time went on because of my disease. I cannot sit for more than a short while in regular chairs, because my back and legs begin to hurt very badly, and then i begin to lose feeling in my legs. I cannot stand for more than a few minutes because of the same problem. So, this poses a small problem for my tournament chess playing career. I am working on possible solutions for a tournament situation, but for right now I'll have to stick to online play, mainly through ICC (The Internet Chess Club).

What am I doing different? Some of you may ask, "why do anything different?" because you had pretty good results by the way you used to do things. Well, I did have good results to raise my skill to an "A" class ranking, and an actual play strength that's slightly higher. But, the results tapered off. The definition of "Insanity" is for one to do the same thing over and over again, but to expect different results. I will have to reconstruct my game, from the ground up, meaning that I will switch from being a Queens Pawn player to a Kings Pawn player. I will have to study the classics, as every idea through every opening stemmed through the classics. Lengthy study of tactics and endgame will also be done. I have a large library of chess books and computer programs to help me on the way. So, the two main problems now are; 1: Out of the hundreds of books I have and stacks of programs, where do I start?, and 2: What should I do for a study program. Because of my inability to work, I don't have the cash flow to pay some master to help me out with a program, but, in some of my experience, most internet "teachers" in chess lack the want for their students to really get better.....they want to give "lessons" but don't really care about every students success. So this means that I'll just have to put in some extra time to come up with a scheme that will work best for me.

To start things out, I spent a few hours last night installing ChessBase and the last 10 years worth of games that chessbase.com offered. The day before i also installed Rybka 4 Aquarim and CT-Art 4.0. So things on the computer end are shaping up well. I will spend time today looking through my book collection and come up with some sort of study program.

Things will not be easy or normal for me....or at least anything close to the way I used to do things, but I'm optimistic that I'll find some way to make everything work. I hope that anyone reading this that has problems or obsticles in their way, or someone that has been sidelined because they can't do things the way they used to, will find the courage and inspiration to join me and find a way that works. Don't give up. Patients and persistence will help you prevail.