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1. Eliminate blunders.
2. Become proficient at finding offensive and defensive tactics.
3. Stop playing “hope chess”. Analyze at least 4 ply deep, and make sure that your move improves your position and does not lead to #1 & 2 above.
4.... | Read More
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You see a tactical combination on the board and you have the opportunity to play it…you become excited, after all this is your moment to play like Tal, but chances are that you do not play like Tal. While you have spotted a tactical opport... | Read More
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In his classic Novice Nook The Theory of Chess Improvement Dan Heisman points out the following common chess errors, which I keep running up against.
Playing too fast or too slow.
Having bad thought processes – such as playing “Hope Chess”(... | Read More
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According to experts it takes approximately 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert in any field. So the following is my attempt to gauge my chess progress based on the 10,000 hour rule.
Assumptions
10,000 hours of practice = expert
A che... | Read More
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There is no doubt that reviewing master games is one of the best methods to improve your chess. The question for me has always been which master’s games do I study first? There are schools of thought that answer this by stating that you should r... | Read More
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I wasn’t planning on making this a series of posts on threats, but I feel I’m on to something. My chess has improved since I have restructured my thought process to incorporate threat analysis .
Threat Based Evaluation Process1. What are my o... | Read More
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I have been away for a few months, in which time I have been through a long plateau and a bout of chess related self-doubt. The reason for the self-doubt is that I feel that I should be at a different playing level than that which I am (1300 USCF)... | Read More
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The path to chess improvement lies in finding your weakest area of knowledge and placing all of your effort into converting it into a strength. My greatest weakness is an apprehension, bordering on fear, of delving into deep calculations and anal... | Read More
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In Kotov's great book "Think Like a Grandmaster" he taught the average chess player the inner workings of how a chess master thinks about a position by creating a tree of candidates and then proceeding along the tree. While there is much to learn ... | Read More
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I have created a PDF document that is based on Karpov and Mazukevich's thought process guidelines, and includes Herman Grooten's modifications. You can download it here. The idea is to use it when going over annotated games, or when performing Sto... | Read More