Baadur Jobava on chess training

Read the full interview here

Question: So you think that a player can improve only by doing what you have suggested above? Don’t you think that a coach is essential?

Jobava's answer: Books are your coach. Botvinnik is your coach. Alekhine is your coach. Having a trainer is good but not everyone can afford it. So many books are available out there, and if you are ready to use your brain then you can learn from them. Coaches will teach you from those very books and charge you money for it. Why do you want to do that? 

An interview to Fide Master Loris Cereda

The most of the tournament chess players would like to improve his/her chess ratings. But statistically the elo growth happens most often in young players. Older players find it difficult to improve. Today we want to tell you an extraordinary story. It’s about a newly appointed Italian Fide Master Loris Cereda.

And why is this story worthy to be told?

Loris Cereda is 54 years old now. According to the italian Chess Federation Database his historical elo performance is as follows:

•  Between the year 2002 and the beginning of the year 2004, Loris had a national elo rating below 2000.
•  In the year 2004 (age 42) he obtained a Fide Rating of 2007;
•  He was able to exceed 2100 elo rating in the March 2011 (that means it took about 7 years to gain 130 elo points) ;
•  From March 2011 to Dec. 2013 his rating fluctuated between 2137 and 2160 with a peak 2242 rating in 2012.
•  No active chess for Loris for the first 11 months of the year 2013. A brief synopsis of what happened in that period can be read in a previous post.
•  Then from December 2013 to January 2016 he started to play again and gained 141 elo points and obtained the FM title at the age of 53.

So, we wonder about the specific actions that Loris has put in practice in order to improve and obtain the FM title. We have decided to ask him…J

Question: Loris, first of all we want to express our felicitations for the FM title you obtained this year. The story of a middle age man who improves to obtain the FM title at the age of 53  is a message of chess hope and inspiration for all the many chess players, aged between 40 and 55 who are somewhat stuck in their chess growth. Do you want to share with us the secrets of this success story?

Answer: Well, let me say that I consider chess strongness as a function of three major factors:

1) Chess culture

2) Practise

3) Mental set up and commitment to results.

I built up the larger part of my chess culture in the young years, then, after a long period far from serious chess, I decided to improve targeting Italian Master level as my goal. I took some lessons to fine tune my chess culture, mainly setting up a new opening repertoire, understanding pawns structures (the highest effort was put on the d-isolated pawn ones), I better interiorized basic end games. Then I devoted 2 hours per day in practicing chess tactics. Finally I went deep into my mind to discover the missing links which were often jeopardizing my chess understanding. The program took 1 year and a half to present the first concrete results, then obviously I had some up and down due to various reasons including that a non professional player cannot always be duly prepared. The final step up to FM was dramatically forced by my “bad adventure” with the crazy cheating story, this fact gave me an extraordinary motivation to demonstrate that those all stories were ridiculous.

Question: Well, that’s quite a serious work! And it deserves our respect and appreciation. You showed real determination and will power as well. Could you elaborate a bit more about the way you found “the missing links which often jeopardized your chess understanding”?  

Answer: Actually it is not so easy to squeeze the entire concept in an answer, ok, let me say that is something like looking into what Ludwig Wittgenstein called “mental cricks”. Let me make you an example, you noted a girl, she appears you so fascinating, a friend of you says that she doesn’t appear fascinating at all, in reality she isn’t fascinating at all, she simply reminds you, for some characteristics, it might be just a shirt, your past great love. So, you miss objectiveness in looking at reality.

Ok, it happens several time in playing chess, when your computational brain is choked by your “memory” and your analysis miss the link with the real position.

Question: I understand your point now. Is there a  book that you consider an eye opener? I mean a book that really helped you to improve your chess understanding?

Answer: Well, there are a lot of books talking about chess and mind, I think that the one which gave me the larger support is “Chess Master at Any Age” by Rolf Wetzell

Question: What are your chess plans for the future?

Answer: It depends by my own professional activity. Assuming an acceptable amount of time I will first consolidate my rate over 2300, then I will prepare an attack to the first IM norm. I tried it last December but failed and I was really in an excellent shape, so I need to prepare something else. In case I will be able to reach this first norm, then I will go on step by step trying to get the 2400 level and the IM title, it could take 4/6 years, might be at 60 and we will meet again.

Question: In January and February 2017 you have planned to present three lectures in Milan (Italy) c/o Mimosa International Horizon. On that occasion, are you dealing more in detail some of the subjects we discussed in this brief interview?

 

Answer: Yes, of course, especially the missing links concept.

Question: Which suggestion would you give to the 2^nd/1^st category middle age chess player who would like to improve his/her chess rating?

Answer: As a first to look deeply into himself, the bugs of his character not only in chess. Then a psycho analysis of his mistakes. I mean, trying to understand, wherever it is not a missing chess culture, why he didn’t play the move that he could easily play. Make a list of the psycho reasons and create a database of his “mistakes origin”.

Then I assume that a 2^nd/1^st category need also to improve chess culture, especially in end games.

Finally a lot of tactical exercises.

Question: Can you show us a game that illustrates your chess style, or your best game so far, as you prefer?

Answer: I am extremely proud about my game with IM Fabrizio Bellia, Novara 2011. His superior chess culture destroy me with a wonderful strategic sacrifice. Then I never gave up and in a crazy zeitnot I found (a little bit lucky) a spectacular draw combination. It is freely available on several database.

Interviewer comment: Thank you for your time and for the inspiration you offered us and good luck for your chess.

Answer: Thank you to you… stay tuned.

A review of "The Steps method"

A nice & detailed review of "The Chess Steps" method

More on the "Chess-Steps Method"

 At this web page 

 we read that specific books are recommended for players having a target rating. For instance:

• Step 4 Workbook & Manual suit players having an USCF rating up to 1750
• Step 6 Workbook & Manual are recommended for players USCF rated up to 2100

Somewhere I read that Fide Ratings are about 100 elo points lower than USCF ratings. I have wondered if these indications were really correct or if they were a vague guess only. So I made a research on the Internet in order to find  if other chess players, besides me, had published any report of their own success/ratio in solving the Chess-Steps Workbooks.

Unfortunately I found only one.
This is the link:
http://chesstrainerphaedrus.blogspot.nl/2009/12/step-6-and-stoyko-exercises.html
There we can read what follows:

5 december 2009 - Step 6 and Stoyko exercises

At the moment I use two training methods. The first is step 6 of the steps method. I already did this book once (over a period of more than a year) and had an overall succes rate of about 85%.
At first I thought it would be best to concentrate on the exercises I failed to solve. But when I started to pick up the book I noticed that I didn't remember most of the (1300) positions. For this reason I decided to go through the book again. Not surprisingly my succes rate is now about 95%, and I also solve them a lot faster than I did the first time. I consider this work to be largely a kind of maintenance of acquired patterns. (...)

 In another post written on 25 February 2009:
http://chesstrainerphaedrus.blogspot.nl/2009_02_01_archive.html
the author states that :
"(...) I think that for a player of my strength (2050+), (...)
so, that player had a Candidate Master rating at the time he was solving the Chess Steps 6th Workbook.

As my own final success rate of Step 4 is about 95% (my current FIDE rating is 1780), in absence of additional data, for the very limited info/reports in my hands, I suppose that the rating indications provided at http://www.chess-steps.com/index.php may be accurate.
If any reader has gone through the chess-steps workbook and he/she would like to share his/her success ratio, please send an email at ricettario@fastwebnet.it so I will be able to update this post. Thanks.

A new DVD on the St. George Defence by IM Martin

***************************************************************************

     Old St. George Defence's material

Link to Basman's tapes 

The importance to study chess endgames

In these days I am following the Bratto International Chess Tournament. Yesterday I saw this endgame played between two Class A players (Fide rating between 1800 & 2000). White to move. 

White played 1.h4?? [1.h3 draws h4 2.Kd4 Kd6 =] Black replied1...gxh4??= [Black would have won with 1...Kf6!!+-] 2.Kxf4 draws

Another reminder of the importance to study chess endgames!

The Steps Method - Workbook 6 Extra

Good news for the 1st category player who wants to work in his/her chess in order to become Candidate Master.
At http://www.stappenmethode.nl/en/step6.php we read:

Workbook Step 6 extra

Read more about the Extra books in info.

In the extra workbook there are 111 pages with exercises, which means as many as 111x12=1332-36 (drawings)= 1296 puzzles.There have been three changes in comparison with the other extra workbooks. This one is the first extra workbook with a co-author, Erwin l'Ami (the Dutch grandmaster). The book has 112 pages (like the basic workbook of Step 6) and the book is 4 languages. That will not really bother because there is almost no text and multilingualism is limited more or less to the headings of the exercises.

The themes of the exercises are those from Step 6. It is important for chess players of all levels to repeat the material. It is tempting to learn new things again and again but if these are repeated then the practical effect in the long term is negligible. For this reason alone the extra workbooks are an indispensable supplement.
The level of difficulty is higher than in the basic workbook of Step 6. That certainly applies to the tactical exercises. Meanwhile, there are so many players who have gone through all workbooks of all the steps that tougher exercises are just welcome. Are the puzzles too difficult? Returning to Step 4 or 5 is no shame (and no one else has to know!).
The last 26 pages contain tests.
***************************************
As I have stated elsewhere on this blog, "The Steps Method" is an excellent tool to learn chess!

A position taken from the "Step 4 Workbook"

A position on which  I have spent 15 minute without finding the solution. :-((  White to move. The topic is "chasing or aiming".
The position is taken from the Step 4 Workbook" of The Steps Method.

The answer will follow in the coming days.

Update on my working through "The Steps Method" - Step 4

http://theamazingchessworld.blogspot.it/2012/10/the-steps-method_10.html                                                                  I have completed 50% of the "manual for Chess Trainers" and "Step 4 Workbook".

going through 247 exercizes while making 14 mistakes. That means a 94,3% hit ratio. I liked the quizzes and I find some of them quite challenging.
Just to give you an idea, here you will find a position that I liked under the topic "The magnet". Black to move:

As White threats Qxg7 mate, Black needs to hurry up.....

Solution:  1...Qh1+ 2.Kxh1 Bf3+ 3. Kg1 Rd1 mate

While here's a position where I went astray :-(    White to move.



I chose 1.Bg5 but 1...g6 keeps Black position. 
The right move is 1.Ng5 if fxg5 2.Qh5+ and double attack on the rook as well. While 1...g6 2.Qh4+ and mate in 3 to follow.

The Steps Method

Too much time without publishing a post... so now I will simply introduce my next post, apart from the du Chattel's Blitz games. It will deal with an amazing method to learn chess. Here are the explanatory links:
http://www.chess-steps.com/index.html
http://www.stappenmethode.nl/en/index.php
A brief review of:

• the Fouth Step 
•  Step 4

to follow soon. Soooo...Stay tuned

A free tool to train and play chess as well

Luca's Chess
The aim is to play chess against the computer with increasing levels of difficulty and with a limited number of hints that are given by a chess tutor.
Also included are thousands of training positions such as different types of endgames, tactical combinations and chess problems (mate in 2,3,4 and more).

”Play Like Mikhail Botvinnik” training course released for free!

http://chessok.com/?p=24620
This is what we can read at the above mentioned link:
"This year we celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 6th World Champion Mikhail Botvinnik. In honor of World Champion, ChessOK releases a free training course ”Play Like Mikhail Botvinnik” in Peshka interface.Learn to play like the 6th World Champion Mikhail Botvinnik in 350 most interesting and instructive positions from his games!
This course also features 1.069 games played by Botvinnik from 1924 till 1970. The games are deeply annotated by GM Alexander Khalifman, FIDE World Champion’1999 and IM Sergey Soloviev."

Stoyko's Chess Training Method

Stoyko's chess training method

Ken Smith's Chess Improvement Course

Very good stuff.

Ken Smith's Chess Improvement Course

This is one of the gems contained therein:

"If you aren't at least a "high Class A Player…..this news is for you…..! Until you are at least a high Class A player:
Your first name is "Tactics", your middle name is "Tactics", and your last name is "Tactics". You can overcome a weak opening and be so far ahead in material that the endgame is mopping up.
I demand that you get every book on tactics and combinations that you can afford and study it as if your life depended on it!"

Free Training tips by Life Master A. J. Goldsby

Very useful and well done.
http://www.ajschess.com/lifemasteraj/training.html
http://www.ajschess.com/lifemasteraj/training2.html