I received Play the London and Chess Blueprints today. On first glance, I'm very pleased with these selections. As usual I've read and played through the introductions in both. Both authors claim to aim for the club player (1400-2000)although the author of Chess Blueprints perhaps has slightly unrealistic hopes that the club player will spend an hour a day per puzzle working out all the details before reviewing the solution.
I'm hoping to report back after the holiday weekend on my progress in these books.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Books, Books and a ratings bump.
Studying and playing has kept me away from posting. I have picked up a number of books lately including Win with the London System, Grandmaster Chess Strategy, Sacking the Citadel, Analyse your Chess, Scandinavian Defense: The Dynamic 3...Qd6, Judith Polgar The Princess of Chess, Calculate like a Grandmaster, The Modern Scandinavian, and currently winging their way to me now Play the London System and Chess Blueprints.
As usual, I've skimmed the first 10-15 pages of most of these and put them in the stack. A couple of exceptions are Win with the London System where I'm 100+ pages in, and Sacking the Citadel which I received most recently and I'm 45+ pages in.
I'm current on Chess Life magazine through the June issue.
I've managed to play in several one day events in addition to the club swisses and I've coaxed my rating up to 1856.
I'll try to go into more detail and make shorter, more frequent posts.
As usual, I've skimmed the first 10-15 pages of most of these and put them in the stack. A couple of exceptions are Win with the London System where I'm 100+ pages in, and Sacking the Citadel which I received most recently and I'm 45+ pages in.
I'm current on Chess Life magazine through the June issue.
I've managed to play in several one day events in addition to the club swisses and I've coaxed my rating up to 1856.
I'll try to go into more detail and make shorter, more frequent posts.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Book review: Improve Your Chess at any Age
Improve your Chess at any Age authored by Andres D. Hortillosa
I recently found this book at half-priced books for eight bucks and decided to give it a shot. The reviews on Amazon were split with either 5 stars or 1 star so it seems to be a love it or hate it type of book. I bought the book on February 17th and finished it on February 26th covering the 172 pages in 10 days which is fast for me. I found the author's style to be engaging and enjoyed the stories and the games. The major complaint in other reviews seemed to revolve around the fact that the author is merely a "club" player and that his system must not work because he himself has not shown significant ratings improvement over the last several years.
If I had bought the book based on the title and paid full price I might feel like it was a poor value especially if I expected a cure-all to my chess. Having plateaued at roughly 1700 give or take 100 points over the last 30 years I felt a certain sympatico for what the author was going through and trying to convey to the reader. The system is nothing more then a multistep thought process (a reminder, if you will) to try to eliminate blunders and/or recognize opportunities. It really falls into the nothing new under the sun category for me with his steps laid out as follows:
1. Reconnaissance of the position to gather key data elements.
2. Search for specific threats.
3. Rank the severity of the threats.
4. Focus your responses against the threat with the highest degree of harm if ignored or not prevented.
5. Search for candidate moves.
6. Execute the move in your head.
7. Conduct a post reconnaissance of the position after the move is mentally executed.
8. If post-recon yields a problem repeat steps 5-7 until a safe/correct move is found.
He then covers a variety of his games or game fragements from recent events to call attention to specific examples of his system. I didn't necessarily find any of this convincing but enjoyed seeing someone who is a regular "Joe" discuss the day-to-day concerns of the amateur tournament player.
I certainly didn't feel it was a waste of time and probably picked up a few hints and tips along the way. Overall it was an enjoyable way to spend an hour or so a day going through book and the games. The games themselves are annotated mainly in prose with breezy analysis that is easy to work through. You won't get lost in the tree of having to play through three branches and six sub-branches of detailed analysis after every move. It was also nice to be able to correctly "pick" the upcoming moves of the games (even the mistakes!?)versus some of the grandmaster games where I don't have a clue as to why the move was chosen. If you can find this book in the bargain bin give it a whirl!
I recently found this book at half-priced books for eight bucks and decided to give it a shot. The reviews on Amazon were split with either 5 stars or 1 star so it seems to be a love it or hate it type of book. I bought the book on February 17th and finished it on February 26th covering the 172 pages in 10 days which is fast for me. I found the author's style to be engaging and enjoyed the stories and the games. The major complaint in other reviews seemed to revolve around the fact that the author is merely a "club" player and that his system must not work because he himself has not shown significant ratings improvement over the last several years.
If I had bought the book based on the title and paid full price I might feel like it was a poor value especially if I expected a cure-all to my chess. Having plateaued at roughly 1700 give or take 100 points over the last 30 years I felt a certain sympatico for what the author was going through and trying to convey to the reader. The system is nothing more then a multistep thought process (a reminder, if you will) to try to eliminate blunders and/or recognize opportunities. It really falls into the nothing new under the sun category for me with his steps laid out as follows:
1. Reconnaissance of the position to gather key data elements.
2. Search for specific threats.
3. Rank the severity of the threats.
4. Focus your responses against the threat with the highest degree of harm if ignored or not prevented.
5. Search for candidate moves.
6. Execute the move in your head.
7. Conduct a post reconnaissance of the position after the move is mentally executed.
8. If post-recon yields a problem repeat steps 5-7 until a safe/correct move is found.
He then covers a variety of his games or game fragements from recent events to call attention to specific examples of his system. I didn't necessarily find any of this convincing but enjoyed seeing someone who is a regular "Joe" discuss the day-to-day concerns of the amateur tournament player.
I certainly didn't feel it was a waste of time and probably picked up a few hints and tips along the way. Overall it was an enjoyable way to spend an hour or so a day going through book and the games. The games themselves are annotated mainly in prose with breezy analysis that is easy to work through. You won't get lost in the tree of having to play through three branches and six sub-branches of detailed analysis after every move. It was also nice to be able to correctly "pick" the upcoming moves of the games (even the mistakes!?)versus some of the grandmaster games where I don't have a clue as to why the move was chosen. If you can find this book in the bargain bin give it a whirl!
Thursday, January 27, 2011
January--the busiest chess month!
Lots of activity over the last few weeks. I have played 4 games in the GCC Swiss, 4 games (and a bye) in the Austin Chess Club Championship (Jan 7-9), 3 games at the Austin Kids tourney (Jan 15), and 3 games at the Temple Open (Jan 22). End result was a rating swing of a whopping 8 points starting the month at 1741 and ending at 1749.
I finished the December issue of Chess Life back in December and starting Jacob Aagaard's "Excelling at Chess" the ChessCafe.com 2002 book of the year. I had recently covered John Watson's Secrets of Modern Chess Strategy and loved the interplay involving GM Aagaard taking issue with some of the premises of Mr. Watson. I also enjoyed the general writing style, and while there were a lot of games to go through, there was also plenty of text to read through. I believe the reviews at Amazon cover it well but I would add that for strong club players between 1600-1900 this is an outstanding book.
Since the Temple Open was the newest tourney venue I've played at I thought I would cover it in some detail. A short 45 minute drive from Georgetown straight north on I35 made the travel easy and the venue easy to find. The Holiday Inn looked relatively new and the facilities were excellent. The tournament was held the same weekend as the Texas Team event up in Dallas but they still had a good turnout of 27 players. I hope they continue as planned with quarterly events as I plan to be a regular participant.
I caught the difficult end of the "Swiss" break getting paired up the first round against Matthew Liu who was rated 2055. I took a real hammering as black in a Caro Kann advance being dead lost after about 12 moves before going on a king walk and resigning on move 24 (9 of black's last 12 moves were with the king). Using very little of the Game\90 time control left me with about 2 1/2 hours till the next round. Matthew was kind enough to go over the game with me in the lobby. I feel I learned at least three good lessons from this debacle.
The next round saw me paired down against John De Vries rated 1411 who perplexed me with the seldom seen (for me) Albin counter gambit. Even though I played right into the Albin player's dream trap with the move 4. e3 I was able to pull out win down the road. John and I were able to review this game and consider other options in the post mortem analysis.
The event certainly drew a lot of familiar players from the GCC with the Nguyen family there in force along with the Manions, Vincent, Jonathan, Nate, and myself all having played at the GCC in the past. Twelve of the 27 players had attended a GCC event in the past.
The last round ended with a draw between myself and Chris Chen rated 1690. Chris played 4. Qc2 in the Slav and I was quickly out of book and on my own. However after several exchanges the position was quiet and at the end of a long day we split the point.
I finished the December issue of Chess Life back in December and starting Jacob Aagaard's "Excelling at Chess" the ChessCafe.com 2002 book of the year. I had recently covered John Watson's Secrets of Modern Chess Strategy and loved the interplay involving GM Aagaard taking issue with some of the premises of Mr. Watson. I also enjoyed the general writing style, and while there were a lot of games to go through, there was also plenty of text to read through. I believe the reviews at Amazon cover it well but I would add that for strong club players between 1600-1900 this is an outstanding book.
Since the Temple Open was the newest tourney venue I've played at I thought I would cover it in some detail. A short 45 minute drive from Georgetown straight north on I35 made the travel easy and the venue easy to find. The Holiday Inn looked relatively new and the facilities were excellent. The tournament was held the same weekend as the Texas Team event up in Dallas but they still had a good turnout of 27 players. I hope they continue as planned with quarterly events as I plan to be a regular participant.
I caught the difficult end of the "Swiss" break getting paired up the first round against Matthew Liu who was rated 2055. I took a real hammering as black in a Caro Kann advance being dead lost after about 12 moves before going on a king walk and resigning on move 24 (9 of black's last 12 moves were with the king). Using very little of the Game\90 time control left me with about 2 1/2 hours till the next round. Matthew was kind enough to go over the game with me in the lobby. I feel I learned at least three good lessons from this debacle.
Matthew playing black in round two
The next round saw me paired down against John De Vries rated 1411 who perplexed me with the seldom seen (for me) Albin counter gambit. Even though I played right into the Albin player's dream trap with the move 4. e3 I was able to pull out win down the road. John and I were able to review this game and consider other options in the post mortem analysis.
Jonathan v. Khoa
Vince playing white
Steve (upper right) and Dang (lower left)
Nam had a nice tournament picking up 76 rating points in the process.
Jonathan v. Nam
The last round ended with a draw between myself and Chris Chen rated 1690. Chris played 4. Qc2 in the Slav and I was quickly out of book and on my own. However after several exchanges the position was quiet and at the end of a long day we split the point.
Duy v Chris (foregound) Emily v. Nate (background)
Let me express my thanks to the sponsors Forrest Marler and Wayne Sampson for hosting such a wonderful event. I would love to see more players take advantage of playing in a Grand Prix event at such a nice site.
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Magazine Month
November was a catch-up month for me and my last few issues of Chess Life. I played through every game and quiz in the July, August, September, October and November issues. It took about 5-6 days per issue and as usual I was able to make a little more progress on weekends than during the workweek. I eagerly await the Decmber issue and I'll try to tackle and finish that prior to mid-month.
I also managed to get through the roughly 268 pgaes of "How to Think Ahead in Chess" by Horowitz and Reinfeld. I bought it off a clearance rack in half price books for a buck and never really thought I'd actually read it. At heart it's a basic repetoire book based on the Stonewall Attack, the Sicilian Dragon and the Lasker variation of the QGD. For a book originally published 59 years ago in 1951, the surprise is that the Lasker is relatively the same. The Sicilian Dragon is somewhat recognizable. I hadn't seen anything on the Stonewall Attack since high school but I've been dabbling with the Dutch Stonewall with roughly identical themes. Under the eveything old is new again theory, I rolled out my attempt at the Stonewall Attack in my first game at the Austin Kids tourney today and managed to win in spite of it. I won my first two games against a 1365 and 1799 before losing in the final round to a 1950 player.
I'm making my New Year's plan for chess in 2011 and hope to finish roughly 18 books along with the 12 monthly issues of Chess Life next year. Right now I'm prepping for the Austin Club Championship on Jan 7-9th and the Temple Tourney on Jan 22nd. Happy Holidays to all!
I also managed to get through the roughly 268 pgaes of "How to Think Ahead in Chess" by Horowitz and Reinfeld. I bought it off a clearance rack in half price books for a buck and never really thought I'd actually read it. At heart it's a basic repetoire book based on the Stonewall Attack, the Sicilian Dragon and the Lasker variation of the QGD. For a book originally published 59 years ago in 1951, the surprise is that the Lasker is relatively the same. The Sicilian Dragon is somewhat recognizable. I hadn't seen anything on the Stonewall Attack since high school but I've been dabbling with the Dutch Stonewall with roughly identical themes. Under the eveything old is new again theory, I rolled out my attempt at the Stonewall Attack in my first game at the Austin Kids tourney today and managed to win in spite of it. I won my first two games against a 1365 and 1799 before losing in the final round to a 1950 player.
I'm making my New Year's plan for chess in 2011 and hope to finish roughly 18 books along with the 12 monthly issues of Chess Life next year. Right now I'm prepping for the Austin Club Championship on Jan 7-9th and the Temple Tourney on Jan 22nd. Happy Holidays to all!
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
US Game/60 Tournament
I had a little success this weekend in the US Game/60 Tourney scoring 3/4 to tie for third in the Reserve section (U1800). It's always nice to get a check at the end of a tournament. I went up to Illinois to visit the family and decided to spend a day playing. As a bonus I ran into a group of guys my age who spent some time reminiscing about all the old clubs and chess haunts of our youth. The tourney facilities were okay. I'm at that age where good lighting is getting more important. Right after the start of the 2nd round the folks in the banquet room next door to the tournament room started their "Tribute to Barry White" with a booming bass line. Perhaps the hotel personnel need a future reminder that chess tournaments and music festivals don't mix well. Best of all I picked up just enough rating points to sneak back over 1700 to 1701.
The Saturday before last I had played in the Austin Kids Tourney and flamed out badly. I dropped almost 40 points to 1690. Hopefully just an off day but they seem to be occurring more frequently as of late. Last year around this time I had just punched through the 1800 barrier and was sitting on 1803. My goal for 2011 is to play much more often, preferably in slower time control events and regain the 1800+ level.
I'm back to skipping between about half a dozen books and magazines instead of concentrating on my list. Time to buckle down and prepare for 2011.
The Saturday before last I had played in the Austin Kids Tourney and flamed out badly. I dropped almost 40 points to 1690. Hopefully just an off day but they seem to be occurring more frequently as of late. Last year around this time I had just punched through the 1800 barrier and was sitting on 1803. My goal for 2011 is to play much more often, preferably in slower time control events and regain the 1800+ level.
I'm back to skipping between about half a dozen books and magazines instead of concentrating on my list. Time to buckle down and prepare for 2011.
Monday, September 20, 2010
Book Review: "Studying Chess Made Easy"
I finished "Studying Chess Made Easy" by Andrew Soltis covering the last 70 pages over the last four-five days. I really like the ideas communicated to the reader in this book. For the most part I had heard the advice on improving before in many different sources and many different forms. Here it was especially digestable.
Soltis is also a believer of the every diagram is a lesson program. He talks about good authors of chess material choosing to use diagrams at critical/interesting/learning opportunity moments of the games they annotate. He expresses that improving players should have fun while studying. Although he knows that some areas of study will be hard and brutal work for the player that really wishes to achieve a high level he notes that choosing exciting games, practicing and analyzing with friends, and learning openings/endgames in increments can be done without draining all the fun out of chess.
I really like several of the reviews on Amazon regarding this book and feel those reviewers are spot on with their key points. This is a strong candidate for "Book of the Year."
In addition, the working through the book, since my last post I have finished the May and June issues of Chess Life leaving me July, August and September to work through. I have been playing on-line with some success and reviewing tactics diagrams daily. I just seem to lack the time for slow chess tournaments and weekend events. I will try to focus more on that over the next six months.
- Chapter 1: Chess Isn't School
- Chapter 2: Cultivating Your Chess Sense
- Chapter 3: The biggest Study myth
- Chapter 4: The Right Way to Study Openings
- Chapter 5: Two-an-a-half-move Chess
- Chapter 6: Overcoming Endgame Phobia
- Chapter 7: Learning to Live with TMI
- Chapter 8: How to Learn More from a Master Game
Soltis is also a believer of the every diagram is a lesson program. He talks about good authors of chess material choosing to use diagrams at critical/interesting/learning opportunity moments of the games they annotate. He expresses that improving players should have fun while studying. Although he knows that some areas of study will be hard and brutal work for the player that really wishes to achieve a high level he notes that choosing exciting games, practicing and analyzing with friends, and learning openings/endgames in increments can be done without draining all the fun out of chess.
I really like several of the reviews on Amazon regarding this book and feel those reviewers are spot on with their key points. This is a strong candidate for "Book of the Year."
In addition, the working through the book, since my last post I have finished the May and June issues of Chess Life leaving me July, August and September to work through. I have been playing on-line with some success and reviewing tactics diagrams daily. I just seem to lack the time for slow chess tournaments and weekend events. I will try to focus more on that over the next six months.
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