7 Chess Training Habits You Should Drop Now

Written by Yury Markushin

Monday, 05 May 2014 00:00

There are not that many chess players out there who enjoy training process more
than actuallyplaying and winning the games itself. The last thing you want to do is to spend your valuable
time training in the ways that do nothing good for your chess. While no chess training technique is totally
useless, some are not effective enough to invest your time on. Let's find out which ones!

1. Playing tons of 'Blitz' and 'Bullet' games

Why it is useless: Playing short and extremely short time control games does not encourage deep thinking
and position analysis. If you do that... you will simply lose on time. In blitz, contrarily to classical chess, a
player who analyses the position and plays good moves, simply loses on time.

Such approach will not promote your growth as a chess player if your aim is to improve and to better
understand the game. It is especially hard to switch from playing just short time control games to classical
chess. Most players need to lose a bunch of games to break that 'thinking 1-2 moves ahead' habit.

What to do instead: Playing long time control games is what most players need and lack to improve their
general chess level. That's where things like strategy, positional game and endgames come into play.

2. Solving timed tactics problems

Why it is useless: Again, like in blitz chess, timed tactics solving forces you not to take enough time and to
use intuition (aka 'educated guess' ) instead of utilizing your calculating ability.

The point of solving tactics is not only to get the problem right, but more importantly, to learn the correct
solving process to use in the real games.

What to do instead: Solving tactics without time restriction is a much better approach since it promotes deep
analysis of the position. The key to solving tactics and taking the full benefit from it, is to see the whole
variation in your head before you move the pieces.
3. Focusing on the wrong tactics themes
Why it is useless: Many people only solve complicated, artificially composed problems with things not often
seen in real games like 3 pieces mating sacrifice, castling ('o-o-o') with a mate or a smothered mate after 2
sacrifices.

It is good to practice solving this kind of things occasionally, but that's not the type of tactics you need to
solve to start seeing these forks, pins, mates in 2 and to avoid 1-2 move blunders (95 % of all chess players
fall into that category).

What to do instead: Solve more 'down-to-earth' tactics that happened in the games of real chess players
around your strength (maybe 200 - 400 points higher).

4. Playing a lot against much weaker opponents

Why it is useless: Yes you will win most of the games and even may get your confidence level up. But, you
won't play at your full strength. You won't try hard to find that tactics since you know you'll win anyway. If
you always play with weaker players you will become one of them at some point.

What to do instead: Progressing at chess is not possible without playing a stronger competition. Play against
stronger players, lose games and learn as suggested here. You'll improve in no time!

5. Using engines to analyze your games

Why it is useless: No doubt chess engines can calculate these variations like nobodies' business. That
doesn't mean, however, that they can teach you to calculate the moves better... unless you have a computer-
brain. After sticking your game into the engine and seeing these lines with '-1.74' and '-0.89' next to them, you
most likely wouldn't understand where it came from, and definitely won’t learn to evaluate positions the
same way as the engines (if you do, write me and I will interview you).

What to do instead: I'm not saying that you shouldn't use chess engines at all. They can be useful, very
useful, especially for the stronger players. What you should do is to always analyze the game with your own
brain prior to relying on the machine. That way you will find yourself where the game went wrong and will
avoid these mistakes in the future.
6. Reading chess books
Why it is useless: Reading chess books will not do much in terms of improving your chess. You will learn
some information about chess, which, most likely you won't be using anytime soon and then successfully
forget.

What to do instead: I'm not saying in any way that chess books are useless to improve your chess. In fact, I
think reading materials are the most effective way of getting better at the game.

Note: that's why we constantly compose best chess books lists: here, here and here.

Chess books should be treated as textbooks, not as novels. You wouldn't just read a math or physics book,
wouldn’t you? Exactly, you would study them with a pen and paper (or chess board) in your hand, going
through all the theory, etc. Take notes, play through the variations described in the book on the board and
you will benefit 500% more from reading the book.

7. Using opening memorization tools

Why it is useless: Have you ever seen a chess software tools that plays the first 2-3 moves in the opening of
interest and then asks you to continue the line? Chances are, you have. It will probably help you to memorize
the opening moves, but it won't tell you why the certain moves are played and what to do after the opening is
over. It won't make you a better chess player. It's like learning a foreign language just by memorizing the
words without learning their meaning.

What to do instead: Study the opening in the traditional way. Look up an annotated GM games on the opening
of interest and go through them carefully. Only after you have understand basic ideas and motives of the
opening you should read on the opening theory. You can read more about how to choose a right opening for
you here.

Comment with your feedback . Good luck!

3 Things That Will Increase Your Chess Rating
Written by Yury Markushin
Thursday, 19 December 2013 00:00

Every chess player wants to increase his or her ELO rating. They spend
many hours studying without much of the result.

They read books, study long opening variation, accumulate chess knowledge but the rating seems not to
go up. Sounds familiar?

Then you should read about 3 things that will increase your ELO.

1. Calculating Moves
This is the very reason why computer plays the best chess on the planet. It may not be the smartest
player, but if it can calculate 20 moves deep in 10 lines and do it quickly, winning chess games is a no
brainer. The point I'm trying to make is simple, if you calculate better that you opponent, you will most
likely win the game.

What does it mean when we say calculating 'better' than your opponent? It means two things: deeper and
quicker. All grandmasters have exceptional calculating abilities, and can analyze up to 15-20 moves
deep in some positions. How do they do that? Magnus Carlsen pointed out that the trick is to visualize and
to evaluate the just final position.

How to train your calculating ability?

As GM Alexander Kotov pointed out in his book 'Think Like a Grandmaster' the most important part of
calculating long variations is to actually know what lines to calculate. You shouldn't calculate every
variation you see on the board for two reasons:

1. You're not a computer.

2. Therefore, cannot calculate all lines sufficiently fast.

If you do that you will either get tired and lose or your clock will expire.

What should you do?

Kotov suggested to pick few (2-3) best moves that are possible in the position. These are called candidate
moves. Then, we only need to calculate 2-3 lines that arise after one of the candidate moves is played.
This approach simplifies the calculation complexity and saves time. Instead of calculating some random
variations, you will only focus on the strongest, thus the most important continuations.

How deep you can calculate the variation depends on your calculation ability. That can also be improved
by training. Solving tactics problems (5-7 movers) in your head, just looking at the initial position without
moving the pieces is one of the most effective approaches. First find the candidate moves and then try
calculating the variations in your head. Think of each problems as a position that arose in a tournament
game.

2. Fundamentals of Strategy
Calculating ability is a very important skill to possess for a chess player of any level. But, it's not the only
weapon grandmasters have. Aaron Nimzovich was a positional game expert. He analyzed many of the
typical middle game positions in the great detail.

For example, he analyzed positions where one side had a king's/queen's side attack, while the other side
had a play in the center of the board. Nimzovich analyzed many asymmetrical positions, became an expert
in such and have won many games on that territory.

Capablanca also worked in a similar fashion as Nimzovich did but, with a main focus shifted towards
Queen endings and Rook endings. He had became an endgame expert and scored many points at the final
phase of the game.

What should you do to improve positional play?

Analyze and study typical middle game positions that frequently arise in the game:

1. Pawn majority on one side of the board

2. Isolated pawn (playing with and against)

3. Closed center positions

4. Pawn sacrifice (both tactical and positional)

5. Weak pawns positions

Analyze and study typical endgame positions that frequently arise in the game:

1. Bishop vs. pawns

2. Opposite color bishops

3. Knight vs. pawns

4. Same color bishops

5. Bishop vs. knight

6. Rook endgames

7. Queen endgames
3. Attack on the King
Checkmate is the final goal of chess. It does not matter how much you're down in material or how short
on time. Once the checkmate is delivered the game is over. Therefore, it makes a lot of sense to work on
the attacking chess, and primarily on the attack on the king.

Many players like to play aggressively and to attack their opponent, but they rarely work on their
attacking skills.

How to work on the attack on the king?

1. Analyze games of attacking players: Alekhine, Fischer, Botvinnik (part 1, part 2, part 3), etc. By doing
that you will learn many attacking themes and ideas that can be used in your own games. No need
reinventing the wheel here.

2. Sharpen your tactical skills and calculating skills. These are crucial instruments of an attacking player.
The more you work on these, the more success you will have as an attacking player.

3. Study basic themes of the attack on the king:

 Same side castled king attack

 Opposite side castled king attack

 Un-castled king attack

 King in the center of the board attack

5 Simple Things That Will Help You Win More Chess
Games
Written by Yury Markushin
Thursday, 07 June 2012 13:48

Today I will talk about a few things that you can do while playing chess that may significantly increase
your winning chances. I believe that the most effective way to get good results in chess games is to be
systematic and to use the same technique before each move.

By training yourself on how to look at the chess board, how to see things and what details to pay
attention to the most will help you to simply play better chess and win more chess games.

1. Evaluate the opponent’s move

The very first thing you should do after an opponent played a move is of course to look at the move and
see what changes does that move made on the board. You should first focus your attention on threats
that this move could have caused. You should ask yourself the following questions:

-what is overall purpose of that move (attack, defend, relocate, control squares, etc.)

-is there danger for my King?

-which of my pieces are being attacked?

If you find any immediate danger you should deal with it. For example if your piece is being attacked you
should either move it away, or defend it if (and only if) you think the trade is beneficial for you or at least
is equally good as for your opponent.

If you did not find any immediate threats you should look at the board and see what weaknesses in
opponent’s camp that move could have caused. Maybe that piece does not defend some other pieces or
squares it was protecting previously or the opponent’s King position got weaker. This evaluation is helpful
for coming up with a plan. You may want to read more about how to deal with chess threats.

2. Have a plan

That can sound simple but it’s what really separates stronger players from weaker ones. Having a plan is
crucial for chess success. After seeing an opponent’s move and looking at the position of all the chess
pieces on the board you should have a rough idea about how to proceed in the game. It’s not good enough
to only know what you will do the next move. You should have a general idea how you plan to continue to
develop and attack. It may not always be possible to have a plan that you can follow exactly step by step
for 20 moves. The game of chess is full of surprises and opportunities. You never know what problems
your opponent can set in front of you but if you have plan, even a simple one, you can always be sure that
you not wasting your moves and working towards your goal.

A simple plan can be a 3-4 move sequence about, for example relocating a knight into a better square, or
launching a pawns attack towards the opponent’s king, or supporting a past pawn and helping it to
promote, etc.

It should be noted that having a plan also will give you a psychological advantage against your opponent;
he will see that you trying to achieve something specific and not just moving pieces around the board just
for sake of it. Especially, if your opponent does not have a plan of his own and if you do he will really feel
uncomfortable in this game. Even if your opponent does have a plan too, he will maybe get a doubt in his
mind and be more hesitant asking himself if he is “doing the right things” or if his attack is “quick
enough”? Regardless, you will greatly benefit from having a chess plan. If you want to further explorer this
topic you should read about chess psychology.

3. Make a good move

To win a game of chess you don’t actually need to make the absolutely best move available on the board.
Making a move that is better than your opponent’s is usually sufficient enough for securing a good result.
But how do we know if the move you’re about to make is a good move or if it is better than your
opponent’s? Unless you’re a computer you cannot know for sure (even they make mistakes in some
positions, believe it or not). Therefore, humans need a different algorithm for playing chess than machines
do.

After you have evaluated the opponent’s move, figured out its purpose, or absence of it (believe it or not it
happens more than often), come up with a simple plan, you are ready to make a move. But wait, just one
second, let’s discuss specific traits that good move usually has.

A good move should:

- Win some material, gain space, create threats for your opponent

- Improve position of your pieces

- Exchange pieces, but only if It is beneficial to you

- NOT create weaknesses in your own position (there are exceptions however, if you have a mate in 3 you
would not mind giving up the knight for it)

-it should be multipurpose, the more things you can accomplish with one move the better (if you attack on
piece it is easy to defend for your opponent, but if you attack two pieces at the same time and also
threaten a mate he’ll has something to think about)

If you want to learn in greater detail how to pick the right move I suggest reviewing how to analyze a
chess game

4. Exchange pieces wisely

We talked briefly about only exchanging pieces when it’s beneficial for you. But what does that really
means? In some cases it’s simple. For example:

- if you’re up in material you want to exchange pieces to win

- if you have a passive piece you want to exchange that off, ideally for the active piece of your opponent

- if the game is closed (not much open space on the board, closed pawn structure, closed files and
diagonals) you may want to keep the knights and exchange off the bishops

- if you have more pawns or a better endgame you should exchange pieces off

- if you are down in space or under attack, you want to exchange pieces off

- if you are playing against a stronger opponent, you don’t want to exchange too many pieces since that
will lead to some sort of standard endgame in which stronger players are usually superior. There are
exceptions, if you believe that endgame is the strongest element of your chess, you should aim for the
endgame.

Before any piece exchanges occur you should think first how that will change the game and only then
decide exchange pieces or not.

5. Manage you time well

Regardless of how good your position is chess wise you can still lose chess game if you run out of time.
Therefore, clock management becomes an important part of competition. There are some people who
almost never get into time trouble, while there are others that almost always do. The basic idea of
efficient chess management lays in one simple rule: don’t spend too much time where it not needs to be
spent. For example, majority of people who do get into time trouble would have a difficult time deciding
what move to play when they have two equivalent alternatives. They are chess idealists and they will
think for 20 minutes which rook needs to occupy the file, when in reality it does not really matter. They
will try to find the ideal moves and spend all their time. Then they will drop a piece when they have 5
minutes for 20 moves to make a time control. Don’t be like them. Think rationally. Spend time wisely.

Playing too fast is another extreme. Some players try to play blitz during 2 hours game, which never is a
good idea. Why give your opponent such a huge advantage for nothing? If you want to learn more about
managing time in chess I recommend reviewinghow to manage time at chess.

Last Updated on Thursday, 07 June 2012 14:09

How to analyze a chess game?

Written by Yury Markushin
Tuesday, 24 August 2010 12:39

I have previously talked about evaluating of chess position. Today’s topic is a little
different even though it may seem to be similar: analyzing chess game. The main difference is that we’ll
concentrate on a whole game analyzes which occurs immediately after the game, in contrast, to the
evaluation of a chess position which happens over the board, during the game.

Before telling you how to analyze a chess game, I’d like to tell you how not to. Do not plug a game into a
computer engine to see where it went wrong. In fact, you will learn hardly anything that way. It is like
solving the tactics problems by using a Fritz engine.

We all want to improve our chess, become better players and obviously to win more games. A game
analysis is a powerful tool, or better say a powerful technique, which can aid you in curing your
weaknesses and developing strengths, if used right.

Analysis Outline:

Game is over. Maybe you have won; maybe it was a draw or maybe a painful defeat. Regardless of the
result and feelings it is necessary to act like a professional chess player when approaching analysis in
order to get maximal gain from the game. You need to write down quick notes about the game as soon as
possible after the game’s done, when it’s still fresh in your memory. Especially, concentrate on moves
when you had to make a hard choice and moves when the game dramatically changes its state (positional
->tactical, etc).

It is a good idea to separate a game into 3 parts: opening, middle game and endgame. These 3 stages of
the game require individual analysis and must be treated separately.

Opening

When analyzing an opening you need to say, was that line you played a home preparation, or maybe you
were tricked out of your opening book by an opponent who played unusual variation or maybe something
in between.

Write down your thoughts on the line you played. Was that line sound? Only after you write down your
thoughts you should refer to the opening database to check the existence of this line in theory. You may
be disappointed to find out that line you opponent played wasn’t any good, but you still couldn’t get a win.
It is a very important thing to take notice of. It means you have gained something from the game. You
need to study a couple of annotated games on this opening variation played by a high rated players and
make appropriate adjustments in your opening repertoire. Next time you face this line you will be better
prepared! You may want to check out how to build an opening repertoire from one of my previous articles.

Middle Game

That’s a stage of the game that comes right after you run out of “theoretical” opening moves.

Write down why you have decided to play one or another move, you may also indicate the alternative
moves you have considered and you reasoning behind it (for example, I was thinking about playing Bd7
but was afraid of e5 with a strong initiative). Indicate tactical ideas that you saw, including possible
sacrifices you were considering. It is important to formulate the plan of the game. For example it may be
a minority attack, a queen’s side pawn attack on the opponent’s king, pressure on isolated pawn or
something else. Remember the Botvinik’s saying “bad plan is better than no plan at all”.

Endgame

In endgame you should take notice of the initial position and try to come up with a winning plan or a
drawing plan if your position is worse.

If you get into time trouble often you may want to analyze what type of decisions took you longer, and
where exactly have you burned most of your time. You need to have time recorded on your score sheet in
order to do time analyzes. Avoiding time troubleis a crucial part of the game of chess.

5 Strange Ways to Get Better at Chess

Written by Yury Markushin
Friday, 25 April 2014 00:00

You probably heard many times, from different chess players and coaches that if
you want to improve your chess you need to do this, this and that. What if you tried all that and it did not
work? Should you get disappointed and give up chess forever?

Probably not, and if you're reading this you've made the right choice and keep trying to get better.

Here we present the list of somewhat counter-intuitive approaches to chess improvement that, however,
are very effective:

1. Play stronger opponents and don't be afraid to lose

What type of chess players do you think you need to play to get better at chess? Those who are of your
level? 100 points higher rated? 200? 400? Just think for a second.

Answer: definitely not those of your level . If you want to play an "interesting" (aka entertaining) game,
sure, play those who are100-200 points higher/lower rated. You will win or lose. You will feel good about
yourself but will learn nothing new. Why? Because those of your strength know and think in a similar way
as yourself.
If you really want to improve your game play those rated 400 points higher. That will give a good kick to
your brain, and you will be on the way to improvement!

2. Lose more games

I will never forget the words of an old chess master, who told me that he 'lost more chess games than I
played in my whole life'and that's how he succeed. The truth is simple, the more games you lose the more
chess you learn.

"Most players ... do not like losing, and consider defeat as something shameful. This is a
wrong attitude. Those who wish to perfect themselves must regard their losses as
lessons and learn from them what sorts of things to avoid in the future". - Jose
Capablanca

You need to play your best, however, and fight until the very end. Also record the moves for future analysis
and learning from the mistakes. Only then you will improve.

3. Get motivated by your own failures

Obviously, if you follow the first advice and play those 400 points stronger than yourself you will
lose about 95% of the games. That's more than 9/10 lost games. You'd be lucky to draw 1 game out of 10.
That shouldn't discourage you though.

You should think that every failure brings you one step closer to your success. If you will learn to get
motivated and work harder by your defeats, you will become a very strong player.

"If you wish to succeed, you must brave the risk of failure". - Garry Kasparov

4. Communicate with stronger players more often

If you want to be 1200 rated, talk about chess with those who are 1200 rated. If you want to be 1500
rated, talk about chess with 1500 rated players. If you want to become a master, discuss chess with the
masters.
Once you do that, you will be surprised how your thinking process will change.

5. Observe weaker players' games and... don't do what they

do
That maybe difficult sometimes to observe the stronger players play and to discuss their games with
them in person. Least you can do, is to observe the weaker players play and analyze their games.

Learn from their mistakes and don't think how they think.

11 Mistakes You Don’t Want To Make In Your Chess

Written by Yury Markushin
Wednesday, 13 November 2013 00:54

We all love the game of chess. Some love it because of its infinite possibilities
that even computers cannot calculate. Some love it because of its very competitive nature. Some love it
because most of the games are decided by skill and not by luck.

Regardless of that 'why' these are the 11 mistakes you don't want to make in your chess.

11. Playing chess to win prize money

I've met people that honestly think that they can spend a few hours on chess, enter a Big Open
Tournament and BOOM win $10,000. Wrong. Unless you have a passion for chess, spend a lot of your time
to study and practice chess you cannot succeed at any chess tournament. The tournaments with a big
prize fund are especially competitive. Don't do it, if you want to save yourself a big disappointment and
time. Money shouldn't be a motivation at whatever you do, chess included.
10. Quitting playing chess after a lose
It's not a good habit to quit anything (except for smoking) if you fail once. All players, big and small have
lost games. It's normal. If they had quit, there would have been no Fischer, Kasparov or Carlsen as we
know them today. Loss in chess should be a signal to you that more training is necessary. It should
motivate you to work harder and to play better in the next game. If you think about a loss from this
perspective, you will succeed.

9.Stressing out too much about a chess game

Some players get extremely stressed out before and during chess games. Stress is a negative, disruptive
factor which will not do anything good to your cool head and logical thinking. In a state of stress, you
would waste extra time double checking variations and will not be able to completely focus on the
position. In order to play high level chess, you need to stop caring about the outcome and just to play your
game. If you take a serious tournament game with the same ease you play a friendly game you will relax
and your results will improve. Give it a try.

8. Blaming somebody else for your failures

In order to improve at chess you need to be honest with yourself and take full responsibility for your
actions (moves). That means if you lose a game, you shouldn't say something like 'that's because of the
stupid blunder on move 20' or 'I did not get enough sleep, so couldn't concentrate', etc. By finding a true
cause of your loss, you will benefit much more than if you come up with some common excuse. You may
want to read about identifying strengths and weaknesses of your game here.

7. Not learning from your own mistakes

Of course it would be perfect if we could learn from somebody else's mistakes. Unfortunately, that's not
how it works at chess. In most cases, we need to actually lose a game or two by getting back-rank mated
in order to start being aware of certain dangers. Use this extremely powerful learning tool to your
advantage. You can learn much better from things if you have experienced it yourself. Read 7 deadly
mistakes every novice player makes and... avoid it.
6. Putting chess in front of everything else
Some people get involved with chess so much that they forget everything else: work, family,
responsibilities, health, etc. Of course, it is good for your chess career to concentrate only on chess. But
be careful, you may lose motivation and get 'burned out' by chess. The best strategy is to study chess by
little bits during a long period of time. Remember, chess is a marathon, not a sprint. Read about chess
time management in 10 Chess Improvement Rules Most Players Forget.

5. Spending too much time accumulating knowledge you

would never use in a real game
It's is true that if you study chess more, you will become better at it. But the key is to study the right
things. For example, reading about the history of chess will not help you much in your next 1.d4 game.
Memorizing 25 different variations of Sicilian defense 20 moves deep will not help you to become a better
chess player. In fact, if your opponent plays Queen's Gambit Declined, it won't help you at all. If you just
spend a quarter of this time solving tactics, working on endgames and analyzing your own games you will
progress much faster, and all the work will pay off quickly. You can check the following things about
improving at chess: thisand this.

4. Buying many chess books and never reading them

The point of chess books is that they possess knowledge that can make you a better chess player. That is
only true with one condition: you actually need to read study them. Chess books are no good if they are
just sitting on the shelf. Studying of a chess book includes reading it, thinking about the ideas presented
and going over the positions presented on a chess board. Many people just read chess books, instead of
studying them, skipping diagrams and notations. It may be good from the entertainment point of view, but
does little good for the training process.

3. Worrying about rating points more than the game itself

Some player get more worried about losing rating points, than about the game of chess in general. Points
are just given to you for an estimation of your strength purpose. Rating should not act as a disrupting
factor, especially during the game.
2. Having "I'm always right" attitude
This is a kind of attitude that would prevent you from making progress at chess or significantly slow it
down. In order to improve, you need to be self-critical and to admit your own mistakes. If you lost because
of the badly played opening, you should analyze the lines and make corresponding corrections in your
repertoire. If you lost due to some other reason you need to work on that, it's probably your weak side of
chess.

1. Pursuing chess as a professional career

While playing chess may seem like an amazing opportunity to be turned into a professional career you
should consider all pros and cons. There are only about 1300 grandmasters in the world. Their rating
varies from about 2500 to 2800 something. These are considered "professional chess players", meaning
they are making most of their living playing chess. Peter Zhdanov of Pogonina.com published a list of
highest earning chess players of 2012 from which it's clear that only 2-3 players made more than
$1,000,000 in year 2012. The number 10 player made about $150,000 the same year. Just think about it
#10 player in the world is about 2730 ELO. What about those who are 2500-2600. How much you think they
make? You've got the idea.

The point is simple, unless you are in the top 100, it's not easy to make decent leaving from playing chess,
especially if you need to play opens instead of invitational tournaments with appearance fees which are
only available for top GMs.

5 Myths about Getting Better at Chess Most Players

Believe
Written by Yury Markushin
Friday, 10 January 2014 00:00
 Today I will present you 5 the most common chess myths about
getting better at chess.
Is it true that reading chess books will increase your ELO?
Do you think playing enormous number of chess games will make you a master strength
player? Let's find out!

Myth 1: If you play chess as much as you can, you will

become a master
Although playing regular chess games is one of the elements of success , it is definitely not the only one.
Maybe not even the most important one. It does not matter how many games you play, it matters how well
you play: quality over quantity concept.

Playing many games and making the same mistakes over and over again will not lead you to becoming a
better player. Maybe you will learn a thing or two here and there but globally, quality of your chess will not
change just from playing games.

In order to improve at chess a systematic training approach is necessary, I have covered it here.

Myth 2: Reading chess books will increase your ELO

Chess books are a great source of information and are definitely very important for chess players of all
levels. The main problem with chess books or any chess materials for that matter is that there are so
many of them, it is hard to decide which one to study.

In order for your ELO to increase, you need not only to learn the information presented in the book, but
also to be able to apply it in your own games. If you cannot apply your knew knowledge in real games, the
book is no good for increasing your chess performance. This is what will increase your ELO.

Myth 3: Strongest chess engine will help you with game

analysis
The problem with chess engines is that many people are not using them in the right way. Many players

assume that plugging in the game into a chess engine and looking at changing + and - scores in the
analysis window after each move is a sufficient enough analysis, the one that will lead to learning from
your own mistakes and improving quickly.

Unfortunately, it's not the case. The only analysis that will help you to learn from your mistakes is your
own, move-by-move, scrupulous one. The point I'm trying to make is simple, chess engines should help
with the analysis not do it for you. After you finish with your own game analysis, you can check with the
engine for the things you might have missed.

Myth 4: Studying more openings is what most chess players

need to become stronger
Many chess players totally love studying openings. It's almost like training biceps in the gym (for the ones
who don't know, this is the most favorite muscle group to train for most people). Day by day, chess
players sit down and study long variations of their most favorite opening line 20 moves deep. They are
almost experts in these lines, if they manage to remember them. The problem comes if somebody does
not follow the line they have studied.

Then fiasco comes. One grandmaster said that a chess player needs to start studying chess openings
only when he reaches about 1800 ELO. Since most chess players are below that level, there is no need for
them to spend time on the initial phase of the game. If they want to improve, they should focus
on tactics, endgames and the attack.

Myth 5: Winning chess games is what makes you a stronger

player
We learn the most from lost games. The games that hurt us the most are the most effective teachers. We
remember won games for few days, but we can remember that game we lost for months. So actually,
losing games and learning from your mistakes is what makes us stronger chess player. One chess master
once said, I have lost more games that you have played in your life, after defeating his opponents.

It doesn't matter how many times you fall .. what matters is how many times you stand
up, shake it off, and moving forward. - Unknown
Chess Training Program Outline (for up to 2100 ELO)
Written by Yury Markushin
Wednesday, 08 August 2012 14:37

Today's article is somewhat a continuation of the last week's chess saga

about finding strengths and weaknesses of your chess. We will talk about developing a chess study
program that would suits individual needs for players it's designed for.

What is the most important in the chess program? Of course it needs to be effective, meaning that after
investing your time in it your chess strength should increase. It is very difficult to create a universal
study plan that will suit all chess players.

The plan should be based on two main parameters: players overall chess ability (rating) and player's
individual strengths and weaknesses. In order to evaluate which positions you understand the best and
what type of openings yield best performance I suggest reading finding strengths and weaknesses of
your chess.

I will show you detailed chess training program that is designed for a players up to 2100 rating. If your
rating is much below that you should not feel intimidated. Regardless of your current chess level you will
greatly improve your chess by following the themes presented below.

Chess Training Program (up to 2100 ELO)

1. TACTICS BASICS [20 hours]

This a very or maybe even the most important part of chess training. Surprisingly enough most chess
player don't like working on chess tactics puzzles and get very surprised why the miss easy tactics and
lose the game against those that do. Don't make this mistake and spend enough time on it. Chess
progress will come quick if you stick to daily tactics routine.

You can jump start your tactics training with simple exercises from here or here. For more serious training
I would recommend getting a specially designed software like CT-ART. Chess Master and Chess King
(review) have some solvable tactics problems as well.

The main idea of solving tactical problems is to improve your calculating ability, increase board
visualization ability and overall chess awareness.

2. STRATEGY BASICS [30 hours]

This are very fundamental middle game themes that every chess player should know. You should find
chess literature and study the following topics thoroughly. If you have an access to a chess database with
the ability to search games by themes (like ChessBase) you should select some of these themes and
study related masters/grandmaster games. If you have annotated game collection, it's even more useful.
After you read theory and study high level games, you should spend some time on analyzes of your own
games on these themes and solving tactics problems related to these themes.

List of topics to study:

- Pawn advantage on one side of the board

- Pawn chain
- Better pawn structure

- Blockade

- Isolated pawn in the center

- Weak pawns

- Closed center

3. ENDGAME BASICS [30 hours]

Endgame is another extremely important area of the game that needs to be studied thoroughly in order to
get consistently good results at chess. The method of studying endgames is similar to those of middle
games. You should first read some theory about the endgame themes below. For that I would recommend
using books such as Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual ,Pandolfini's Endgame Course or any other endgame
resource you wish to use. Then, again if you have an access to a chess database with ability to search by
themes, you can sort out high level games on the particular ending and go through it. You can practice
playing certain endgame positions against the computer and then check it with Nalimov's Tablebase.

List of topics to study:

- Bishop vs. pawns

- Opposite color bishops

- Same color bishops

- Knight vs. pawns

- Knight endgames

- Bishop vs. knight

- Rook vs. pawns

- Rook endgames

- Queen endgames

Good luck with training program. Remember if you stay dedicated to one thing, the results will come! If
you have any comments please share them below.