Chess Tactics

Last week I participated in a Fide Rated chess tournament where I saw the following exciting combination on one of the boards. Please note that as I tried to remember it by heart, it is possible that the position shown in the diagram was not the exact position, so I will not mention the players' names.

Black to move:

Black played 1....Nxc4+ it followed: 2.dxc4 Qc3+ 3.Kd1 Rh1! (Stockfish prefers 3...Rh3 but the text is spectacular for the audience) 4.Qxh1 Qa1+ wins the Queen and the game.

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.

Missed chess tactic

At the Bratto International Chess Tournament I saw this position arising from a game played between two strong Class B players (Fide rating between 1700 - 1800). 
Black has just played Qf7.
Now White can win simply by playing 1.Qd8+  Kh7 2.Ng5.
But he played 1.Qg7 and the game ended in a draw. :-((

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!

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”

 http://theamazingchessworld.blogspot.it/2012/10/the-steps-method.html
The “Steps method” is a relatively young method worked out by the former Dutch Federation coach and IM Cor van Wijgerden and Rob Brunia, chessplayer and specialist in pedagogics.

The essence of this method is that you learn certain themes, first in their easiest appearance but with each step some complexity is added.
There is a strong emphasis on tactics.

The “Steps method” contributed to give a good chess education to a whole generation of young dutch chessplayers.

What I like the most is that within the method chess knowledge and skills are  nicely structured. This means that the method’s serious student rarely fails in endgames with a few pieces, and rarely misses a combination too.

Step 6 http://www.chess-steps.com/step6.html  may really be the real step for a 1^st class player to become a good candidate master.

The authors explain that it is required to integrate a serious study of the “Steps method” with:

• Playing serious games;
• Analysis of the games played.

Concerning Step 4 http://www.chess-steps.com/step4.html I have studied the first 4 lessons of the manual and I have gone through the same number of exercises in the workbook, with a success rate of about 85% So I can say that the indication that Step 4 is for players up to a USCF rating up to 1750 is quite ok.

It should be noted that Steps 1 to 5 are contained in the Tasc Chess CD 2    http://www.stappenmethode.nl/en/tasc-chess-cd-2.php

Additional material to the standard Steps  is available as well:

http://www.chess-steps.com/workbookplus.html

http://www.chess-steps.com/workbookextra.html

At last we want to highlight that International Master Cor van Wijgerden helped Chessity to develop an exciting new training concept:

http://www.chessity.com/

To conclude, I can say that the material is well organized and challenging. Highly recommended.

PS my thanks to IM Gerard Welling for being a constant source of chess inspiration.

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

The importance of chess tactics

Yesterday it has finished the Bratto International Tournament and these are the final standings.
On Aug. 22nd IM Janev played against GM Prasad. This is what happened:

and here Black played 10.Nb6!! with a winning advantage already on move ten...(see diagram)

  

Marc Esserman vs Loek Van Wely, 112th US Open 2011

A brilliant game by I.M Esserman starting from the 11.Nd5 sacrifice!

IM Bosboom's creative chess

During the recent Dutch Championship, Gerard Welling met the extremely creative IM Manuel Bosboom who played (and won !) a side event. He showed Welling a nice little game he played in a Amsterdam chesscafé, 3 minutes chess, 3 or 4 years ago. An amazing example of an active double rook sacrifice. Welling thought we may have liked to see it, so he wrote the moves down, checked the notation with Bosboom and..here it is for our pleasure.

My thanks to Gerard Welling for his kind contribution.

Answer to the quiz posted on June 8th 2011

Black to move is winning. The position is taken from the italian translation of the book "Chess Positions" by C.H.O'D. Alexander

Ortueta - Sanz (Madrid, 1934)
 1... Rxb2 !! 2. Nxb2 
(2. Rf7 Rxa2 3. Nc3 Ra3 4. Rf3 Ba5 -+) 
(2.Nc3 Rc2 3. Ne4 c3 4. Kf1 Rc1+ 5. Ke2 c2 6. Kd2 Re1 -+) 
2... c3 !! 3. Rxb6 c4 !! 4.Nxc4 c2 with a won position.
If you want to check all the variations, please set up the position and check it with a chess engine.

The importance of Chess Tactics

What follows is not a major revelation but it is a confimation of a known truth. Two weeks ago I participated in a quick time control tourrnament (that means every player had 15 minutes at his disposal to finish a single game). 4 out of 6 games have been deeply influenced by chess tactics. The shorter the time control, the greater importance of chess tactics. He who has ears to hear....  :-))

How to improve our calculation/visualisation skill

A surprising suggestion by GM Soltis, taken from page 141 of his book "Studying Chess made easy":
"Play Checkers. This is serious. Playing checkers is good visualisation practice. Because this game relies much more on calculation than chess does. This was endorsed by Kotov,who said playing checkers helped him become a good calculator "
International draughts Wikipedia's link 
Download Checkers-Draughts-Game 

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!"