Saturday, March 31, 2007

Analysis improvement tips from the masters

Once you've selected some candidate moves, it is time to analyze them, to think through variations and decide which candidate is best. In a previous post I described what the masters have to say about when and how much analysis is needed.

What most of us want to know, however, is how to get better at analysis. Herein I include three different techniques recommended by three different authors. If anybody has other suggestions, please let us know!

A. Kotov: learn to analyze by analyzing
Kotov's suggestion, in Think like a grandmaster, is a natural one. To get better at something practice doing it!

Specifically, Kotov suggests picking a good annotated game collection and working through the moves in a game until the position becomes fairly complicated. He then puts the book away and "set myself the task of thinking long and hard so as to analyse all the possible variations. [...] I would sometimes write down the variations I had examined and then I would compare them with those of the annotator. At first there was a big discrepancy in favour of the latter, but then I leraned how to widen my scope and delineate each variation with considerable exactitude."

I am using this method, as it most closely resembles what I have to do in real games. I write down all the variations (I know this detracts somewhat from the "real game" goal, but it helps me to compare my analysis to the annotations).

B. Soltis: read through master games
Soltis' method is somewhat similar. He says:
A worthwhile exercise is to play over an annotated game [...] Stop at each point where there is a short comment, one that gives an alternative variation that runs one or two moves into the future. Once you visualize that note to its end, continue playing through the game until you rech the next short note and repeat the process. When you've gone through the entire game and exhausted all the short notes, go over the game again and try to visualize slightly longer notes. [...] Eventually work yourself up to the five-movers. But ignore the really long notes (unless you are a masochist).
This is a nice method which I have used a little bit. One shortcoming compared with the Kotov method is that in real games you don't just have to visualize, but visualize moves that spring from your own imagination.

C. Buckley: memorize the squares and visualize auras
Buckley, in his popular book Practical chess analysis recommends Kotov's method but recommends starting by memorizing the board. He also says that it is helpful during analysis to visualize lines of force emanating from the pieces, lines that pass through other material on the board, as this helps you avoid making blunders such as not correctly visualizing that a file has been opened by one of the variations.

I know a lot of blindfold experts say it is absolutely essential to have the board memorized, and I even posted about various software available for this skill. This technique seems more important if you are interested in blindfold chess. I have just begun visualizing lines of force (this is something my coach suggested as well), so it is too early to judge how helpful it is.

Thursday, March 29, 2007

New Knight and new puzzle

Another new Knight has begun his journey toward tactical monstrosity. Let's welcome and sidebar Rise and Shine. Check out his solutions manual to the concentric squares exercises. That could be useful to read while on lunch breaks.

Here is another nice problem from Phase 4 of CTB (white to move):I give the solution in the next paragraph. I like this problem because it really forces you to hone your counting skills.

The solution is 1. b8=Q Nxb8 2. Qc7+ Nd7 [or something else to get out of check] 3. Qxh2. You might think, hey but you just took a rook for a pawn when you could have effectively traded a knight for a queen with 1. Qxd7+ Kxd7 2. b8=Q (this is what I tried on my first attempt!). However, this "obvious" move is actually materially weaker if you count the material before and after both trades (for the correct move you go from being a pawn down to being three up, for the second you end up only one pawn up!). This initially seemed almost magical to me, showing that I have some kind of cognitive blinder blocking my vision of the truth in this exchange. Also note that the incorrect move leads you to a drawn endgame where the black rook protects the base of the pawn chain and the pawns protect the rook, whereas the correct move leads to a fairly easy win.

I'm sure there is even more to the position than I appreciate, but even with my limited chess knowledge I think this is a beautiful problem.

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Welcome to Sir Piño, and update on Circles

Welcome to the newest Knight Errant, Sir Piño. He is using the books upon which the program Tasc Chess Tutor are based. Please give him a Knight's welcome and update your sidebars!

For my circles, I'm doing 10 problems a day in Phase 4 of Chess Tactics for Beginners. The problems are significantly harder than Phase 3. Take this position, for instance (black to move):

I spent about 10 minutes on this problem, trying to figure out a way to use a check to do some plastic surgery on the position so I could get his queen. But it is a draw (solution below). Fritzing it confirms this. In a real game, I'm frankly not sure I'd try to draw in this position. I'd probably bomb by trying out some tactics. What cues are there that this should be a draw? Black is down a pawn, and white has some long-range pieces aimed kingside. But black has the Knight, which could be an advantage especially given that all the pawns are clustered on one side of the board. On the other hand, white's bishop is very active and can gobble up black's pawns if black isn't careful. Am I missing anything?

The correct answer is 1...Qc6+ 2. Kf5 Ng7+ 3. Bxg7 Qg6+ and then whatever white does, it's a draw.

Thursday, March 22, 2007

Phase 3 complete!

It's late. Too late. A long day at work (6 hour surgical procedure on a rat's brain among other things). Here I am sitting at lab waiting for Mr Rat to wake up from anesthesia, and I completed 301 tactical problems on my eighth circle in Phase 3 of Chess Tactics for Beginners. Phase 3 (out of five total) is done!

Strangely, I needed fewer circles on this Phase before I was solving the problems 'by hand' rather than by thinking about them. Perhaps I am learning to learn tactics?

I can't wait to start Phase 4: it will be nice to see some new problems. Phase 3 was pretty tricky (for those who've done CT-Art, Phase 3 of CTB is about equivalent to level 10 of CT-Art, though a wee bit easier). I predict 83 percent correct in my first circle of Phase 4.

The above Escher piece is called 'Spirals or Circles?'. Which do you think it depicts?

# CirclesPercent Correct
Problem Set 11498-99-100-100-100-100-100
100-100-100-99-100-99-98
Problem Set 21590-93-96-99-99-99-99-99
99-99-99-99-99-99-100
Problem Set 3885-93-97-99-99-99-99-100
Problem Set 40
Problem Set 50
NOTE: Circles undertaken with CTB.

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

When and how much to analyze?

Analysis, or internally working through variations ("If I go here, and he goes there, and I go here,...") is a skill possessed aplenty by the grandmasters. In this post I examine what seems to be a consensus opinion on when analysis is necessary, and how far into the future one should analyze.

Soltis, in How to choose a chess move devotes Chapters 4 and 5 to the topic. His basic claim is that in positions with lots of potential forcing moves (tactics, checks, and the like) you simply must calculate the continuations for those forcing moves. In quiet positions, you shouldn't spend a lot of time on analysis because it is so hard to predict your opponent's replies anyway.

Here is a frankenquote from Soltis that I sewed together From Chapters 4 and 5 of his book:
In many quiet positions you can go ahead and play the candidate virtually without any calculation because there are no significant replies to worry about [he calls these 'low calc moves']. When the pawn structure is fairly static and enemy counterplay is limited, the calculating quotient declines sharply. The basic guideline is: You can afford to overlook most quiet moves because they're quiet. You must examine all forcing moves because they're forcing. In very sharp positions, low-calc options are rare. The price of failing to look two or three moves into the future can be high.
How many moves ahead should you calculate those branches of the tree with forcing moves? Soltis says (Chapter 5):
The minimum number usually depends on how far into the future one player can continue to make forcing moves. In sharp positions in which your opponent is doing the threatening, you should continue looking until his moves have run out of force. But bear in mind we are talking about a minimum number of moves to look ahead. If you have the clock time to spend, you should analyze the position until you run out of forcing moves--and then look one move further.
What of Kotov? His book Think like a grandmaster is often criticized for imposing unrealistic expectations on players, to think through dozens of variations on every move. However, this is an inaccurate picture of what he actually says. On the question of when to do a deep analysis, we find that Soltis is basically a mirror of Kotov. Kotov says, in Chapter 1:
When a position is closed and lacks direct contact between the opposing forces, then the choice of the best move is normally made based on positional factors and positional considerations predominante. Thinking will be based on general considerations without concrete analysis. When the opening leads to sharp hand-to-hand fighting then you analyze and analyze.

For the record, Soltis suggests alternatives to Kotov not about when to analyze, but in the best way to analyze. For Kotov, you must look at each branch of the tree for each candidate only once, then move on to the next candidate, and so on, to maximize cognitive efficiency. Soltis is more flexible, and discusses the benefits of other methods of analysis that Kotov would call inefficient.

My next post on analysis will describe what various authors have to say about how to get better at analysis. This is what we all want!


Note: the following is an ongoing list of relevant quotes I'm adding subsequent to publication of the original post.

Blumenfeld, Chapter 3 of the otherwise horrible book Attack and Defense:
In situations that are not sharp, where there cannot be any forced variations, your calculations should be confined to a few short lines which serve to bring out the characteristics of the position.
From the commentary on Game 1 in Euwe's Chess master vs chess amateur, an amazing book:
Analysis is the basis of all good chess play, especially when the position becomes tactical.

Monday, March 19, 2007

Soltis wisdom nugget #3

From page 207 of How to choose a chess move:
Clarity is more important to the player with the advantage than to his opponent. If you have the inferior position you usually want matters to be impossible to calculate because that increases the likelihood that your opponent will make a bad decision.

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Ugh

75 problems in Circle 3.5 after a tiring 13 hour work day. Luckily on this 5th circle, I am solving them pretty fast without thinking anyway. To my surprise I got 'em all right.

On the days in my program when I do lots of problems (>50) I start to make new mistakes: similar patterns emerge, but ever so slightly altered so I confuse them. This is helpful, as to avoid making mistakes I must look around the whole board to make sure the "recognized" pattern is really there. Hmm. I just remembered I posted about this phenomenon during circle 2.14, in a much more coherent post, probably written at an hour when people should be awake (post with an example of two patterns I confused is here).

Monday, March 12, 2007

Purdy's two candidate move criteria

1. Examine moves that smite.
2. Use inactive force.
Cecil Purdy, the first correspondence champion, is cool. I like his two criteria for coming up with candidate moves. First, look for smiting moves, moves that will simply crush. That is, mates and threats against material. Threatening moves give you the initiative, put the opponent on the defensive, let you control the flow of the game. This is almost always a good thing, so everything else being equal pick a threatening over a nonthreatening move. Second, fix inactive pieces. Otherwise, they may as well be off the board. Active pieces increase the likelihood that those crushing moves will appear.

Beginners like me need to be careful, though. Candidate moves born from general principles need to be analyzed concretely using the position in front of me.

Also, caveat emptor. There must be more than just two principles (?). For instance, the above two principles don't suggest what to do when there are no tactical possibilities and your pieces are all active, and there is no obvious way to limit the opponent's activity. Such situations are like one of Temposchlucker's tough positions. One thing is for sure. In such positions, and all positions, the first rule is DO NOT BLUNDER!

Friday, March 09, 2007

Knights Errant FAQ

For the most recent FAQ, please go to knightserrantfaq.blogspot.com.

The following FAQ answers questions about the Knights Errant, a group of chess enthusiasts blogging about their quest to improve at the game. If you are curious about the Knights, or want to be a Knight, this post should answer your questions. If you have a question that isn't answered, please leave it in the comments.


1. Who are the Knights Errant?
2. Who invented the Circles program of tactical study?
3. Who was the first Knight?
4. What is the meaning of the term 'Knight Errant'?
5. How can I become a Knight Errant?
6. As a Knight, what do I need to do?
7. How do I update my sidebar?
8. What software should I use for the Circles?
9. What if I want to do the Circles with a book?
10. What if I want to do Circles, but not with tactics?
11. Why do you repeat the same problems multiple times?
12. Do I have to do multiple circles of the same problems?
13. How can I stop being a Knight Errant?
14. This seems like a very narrow approach to chess. Isn't there more to chess than tactics?
15. Do the Circles actually work? Have your ratings improved?
16. I'm a Knight but I am not on your sidebar. What the heck?
17. Who is 'DG'?
18. Who are the 'Friends of the Knights'?
19. Is there a leader of the Knights Errant?

1. Who are the Knights Errant?
The Knights Errant are a group of bloggers that are trying to improve their tactical pattern recognition using a method known as The Circles. The Circles program involves working through a large (usually 1000+) set of tactical problems multiple times until they can be solved without a lot of thought. We became Knights because, while working through such a strenuous program, it is very helpful to have others out there to ask for advice, give encouragement, and generally foster comradarie. There are many Knights who have finished the Circles (Knights Victorious on my sidebar), and it is fun to read through their blogs to see how they fared.

2. Who invented the Circles program of tactical study?
Michael de la Maza, whose USCF rating went up over 600 points in two years while working through the Circles. He wrote about the method in two articles (here and here), and then expanded them into a book Rapid Chess Improvement. Note that the book contains very little information that is not already in the articles. The general idea, that to improve at tactics it helps to learn a large set of basic tactical positions extremely well, has been independently suggested by many chess instructors.

3. Who was the first Knight?
Man de la Maza was the first to begin blogging about his experiences with the Circles (in September 2004), and when Sancho Pawnza joined in the fun, they whimsically dubbed themselves the Knights Errant. The name stuck, and the ranks of the Knights grew.

4. What is the meaning of the term 'Knight Errant'?
It is an homage to Don Quixote, who calls himself a Knight Errant in Cervantes' master work. In Cervantes' day, the term invoked images of knights wandering in search of adventures, which was Don Quixotes' raison d’être. Now it tends to invoke images of a bumbling fool. We try not to take ourselves too seriously.

5. How can I become a Knight Errant?
If you are blogging about your Circles-inspired program of study, and want to be a Knight, just email me and let me know (my email address is on the sidebar). It is always fun when new voices enter the chorus.

6. As a Knight, what do I need to do?
To stay on the list of active Knights, just blog regularly (once a month or more) and maintain a list with all of the active Knights on your sidebar. The sidebar list allows new Knights to quickly become known amongst other Knights, and it provides a useful way to quickly navigate through the Knights' blogs to check in on everyone. It also guards against link-leeches trying to increase the "value" of their site.

7. How do I update my sidebar?
Blogger describes how to do this here.

8. What software should I use for the Circles?
There is a list of potential software here.

9. What if I want to do the Circles with a book?
This is great: it gives you freedom! A couple of Knights have done the Circles with books of tactical problems.

10. What if I want to do Circles, but not with tactics?
This is fine. You might want to apply the Circles to study endgame problems, master games, or even your favorite opening book.

11. Why do you repeat the same problems multiple times?
The repetition is meant to burn the patterns into your memory, so you can eventually do the problems quickly without thinking, the way you can multiply 2 and 3 or recognize a human face.

12. Do I have to do multiple circles of the same problems?
No, actually things are quite flexible (every Knight has modified de la Maza's original program in some way to suit their preferences). Some Knights have worked on huge problem sets defining their goal as doing N problems. One Knight, Temposchlucker, did 70,000 problems at Chess Tactics Server!

13. How can I stop being a Knight Errant?
There are a few ways to bow out of the Knights. You can email me, or blog, that you no longer wish to be a Knight. You can also simply let your blog go inactive by not posting for a month.

14. This seems like a very narrow approach to chess. Isn't there more to chess than tactics?
This is the most common criticism of the Circles. Jeremy Silman voices it quite stridently in a review of de la Maza's book here. Clearly, in practice chess involves more than tactics. Strategy, opening theory, and the endgame are important aspects of the game. The Circles are a kind of Intensive Care Unit for those of us who are especially challenged in the area of tactics. If you are dropping pieces every game, then studying the subtleties of an arcane opening is probably not the best remedy. However, the Circles are only one of many possible avenues to tactical competence, and we always enjoy a good discussion of alternative methods that we might incorporate into our study.

15. Do the Circles actually work? Have your ratings improved?
This is the big question, and deservedly so! Most who have finished the Circles say it has improved their tactical vision in games, and hence their rating. Quantitatively, the average rating increase amongst the 18 Knights who have finished the circles is 186 (with a standard deviation of 112). You can see the original data here. Note that de la Maza's rating jump is unusually high, especially for nonbeginners (he devoted himself to chess full time during the Circles). Based on the data, it is more realistic to expect your rating to go up by a bit under 200 points. Each individual must decide whether this justifies the amount of effort involved in the Circles.

16. I'm a Knight but I am not on your sidebar. What the heck?
Oops, sorry about that. Please email me or leave a comment here and I'll take a look.

17. Who is 'DG'?
DG, often called the 'Official Historian' of the Knights errant, is a blogger at the Boylston Chess Club in Boston. From the start, DG has supported and discussed the Knights Errant on his blog. His first post on the Knights can be found here. Incidentally, Michael de la Maza used to be a regular at the Boylston Chess Club.

18. Who are the 'Friends of the Knights'?
Some of the Knights Errant have a 'Friends of the Knights' partition on their sidebar. It isn't an "official" list, but is used by some Knights to acknowledge those non-Knight chess bloggers who make positive contributions to the blogosphere.

19. Is there a leader of the Knights Errant?
No. Every Knight is an independent blogger whose posts on chess, the world, and everything represent only his (or her) perspective. There is one volunteer among the Knights who keeps the sidebars and FAQ up to date, and serves as a point of contact for people interested in the Knights. This is a secretarial rather than a leadership role. Once the secretary finishes his or her Circles, the responsibility is passed on to another Knight. Right now this job is filled by Blue Devil Knight.

Soltis Wisdom Nugget #2

From page 22 of How to choose a chess move:
Looking for a way to attack enemy pieces should come at the start of the hunt for candidates. This is because tactical vision carries with it a surprising law of diminishing returns: The more you study the position, the less you will see tactically.

One-move and two-move tricks often jump to your attention in the first several minutes you spend on a position. But if you don't see them during that time, it is unlikely you'll see them if you spend another 10 minutes on the position. For some reason we can't explain, the mind tends to block out relatively simple tactics that stare us in the face.

Thursday, March 08, 2007

Errant Scribe

It looks like I'm the new keeper of the list for the Knights Errant. Thanks, Temposchlucker for doing such a great job keeping things up-to-date and serving as the portal into the Knights. All this while supporting your million-problem-a-day tactics habit. Also, thanks for entrusting me with this responsibility.

I will organize things this weekend when I have some free time, reproducing (roughly) Tempo's 'How to be a Knight Errant' post for my site, and updating my sidebar. When I do, please let me know if I have missed you. I think I will maintain my tradition of having three sidebar sections for the Knights: Knights in the Heat of Battle, Knights Victorious (Active Blogs), and Knights Victorious (Inactive blogs). The Knights Victorious (i.e., those who have finished the Circles) will be in the active pane if they post once a month.

Chesswise, I finished circle 3.4. I'm nearly halfway through my circles!
# CirclesPercent Correct
Problem Set 11498-99-100-100-100-100-100
100-100-100-99-100-99-98
Problem Set 21590-93-96-99-99-99-99-99
99-99-99-99-99-99-100
Problem Set 3485-93-97-99
Problem Set 40
Problem Set 50
NOTE: Circles undertaken with CTB.

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

J'adoube's blog hibernating

In another major shift in the landscape of the Knights Errant, J'adoube is taking a break from blogging and has (temporarily?) taken down his blog. I confirmed this via email: his blog was not hijacked, it's in hibernation.

Update: Intrepid Knights reporter DG notes in the comments that he has found J'adoube's new blog here. Update your sidebars, the url has changed (when he temporarily shut down his blog, a spam bot stole it!).

Tuesday, March 06, 2007

The Knights Errant: Some reflections

It's been almost two years since my first post, and the changes around here have got me thinking about this whole Knights Errant thing.

A little over two years ago I found out about this crazy tactical training regimen from de la Maza's book, which was the first chess book I bought and read. It made sense to me. His basic thesis consists of basically three claims:
1. Tactics is a key to success in chess (especially for lower-rated players).
2. It is hard to calculate complicated tactics: good players have built up enough experience to quickly recognize tactical motifs without thinking.
3. One good way to build up such pattern-recognition ability is to work through a large (1000+) set of problems many times, until you can do them without thinking.

This argument made sense, and it still does (for this lower-rated player). I think he is essentially right (though when I am done with his program I am going to try an alternative method, suggested by my coach: play lots of blitz and analyze with blundercheck to learn the patterns in the context of real games (the PatrickTM method)).

I had no idea this was controversial (hell, I still didn't know how to castle correctly), and thought I wanted to give it a go. Imagine my excitement when I discovered King of the Spill's blog, which connected me with all these other blogs, consisting of people who were undertaking this quite demanding programme of study. This little group of bloggers who whimsically called themselves the Knights Errant were very friendly, encouraging, and patient with this ignorant newcomer.

Every now and then, there is a flare of heated argument. Sometimes they are external, such as someone attacking the whole program (remember Quandoman?). Quite often there are internal critiques, such as the many ways Knights have modified and improved upon de la Maza's original regimen. Often it is just your typical chess squabbles, such as whether the Blackmar-Diemer gambit is really a piece of crap. Such arguments have been frankly tame in comparison with those that can erupt at the newsgroups (go check out alt.atheism, for instance). I like to think that it is our collective love of the game, and desire to maintain this little group of people struggling to get better, that has kept such little skirmishes fairly innocuous.

I have seen a lot of help on these pages. For those struggling near the end of their circles, doing more than 300 problems a day, a little word of encouragement can mean everything. That's why I'm a Knight Errant: to give and receive such encouragement in the process of finishing the circles. Without that common kernel, the Knights Errant would not have started, and would no longer need to exist.

I think there are some things we need to be wary of to keep this great little group alive. First, we don't want to get all incestuous so that we are closed off to critiques and insights from people who are improving differently. I believe we have been exemplary in this, realizing that there are tons of ways to improve at chess, and we are using only one of them. Second, we can't take ourselves too seriously. This is a bloody game, after all. Nobody's life is at stake, and we are just moving little symbols around on a bunch of squares. It's not that important. Blogging is not that important. Third, those of us who have been here a while, and are representative of the Knights in the blogosphere need to be just a little more careful about how we present ourselves. We are not representing only ourselves, but what we do reflects on this weird little cult known as the Knights Errant.

These are just my opinions, but overall I think things have gone well, and while times are a changing (people finish, move on, etc), there is a fairly steady stream of people becoming Knights that want to give this crazy training program a shot. None of us started this training because we excelled at tactics, so in the course of working the Circles, I am always highly receptive to criticisms and modifications of this Quixotic quest for chess improvement. I have no idea what I'm doing, but I hope it works.

Monday, March 05, 2007

Range: another aspect of piece activity?

Update 3/6/07: Maybe I won't include range as another factor. While it is important, it can really be subsumed under mobility, in particular, the important proviso in mobility that you should aim for mobility in important parts of the board. The ability to gain such mobility can depend on piece range, but perhaps range doesn't deserve its own category...

Reading through Soltis' book Rethinking the chess pieces, I learned another aspect of piece activity that I didn't include in my previous list: range, or the distance a piece can travel on the board. This is different from mobility. A bishop. knight, and king might be able to move to eight squares in a given position (mobility), but the range of the bishop is much greater. Perhaps that's why they call the bishop a long-range piece :)

Soltis points out that in certain types of positions you should favor one type of piece over the other. For instance, in endgames where there is pawn action on both wings, the bishop should often be favored over the knight. If all the action is on one side of the board, then the knight should often be favored because it is not limited to one color.

Now my analysis of piece activity yields four different subdimensions:
1) Mobility (number of squares the piece can move to, especially important squares where threats are possible).
2) Freedom (number of squares to which a piece can move while carrying out its essential defensive roles).
3) Range (distance a piece can move across the board).
4) Coordination (multiple pieces working together toward a common goal).

Have I missed anything?

If only I were good enough with tactics to be able to really focus on all these cool positional ideas. Unfortunately, my biggest problem is still losing material. Since an inactive bishop is usually better than being down a bishop, I still need to focus on tactics!

Saturday, March 03, 2007

Recent lesson

I had a chess lesson Thursday night after two weeks off. It was nice to meet up with coach again. It seemed to reinvigorate my chess enthusiasm. We went over some games. Mostly I suffered from inactive play in the endgame. In the endgame, they say, it is especially important to have active pieces. Perhaps my newfound appreciation of activity (discussed in the previous two posts) will help me out.

When I told him about my definition of piece activity, he leant me Soltis' book Rethinking the chess pieces, which looks very cool. He found no major problems with my definition, and thought the book would help fill things out in my mind some.

We also spent quite a bit of time going over an anti-Tartakower system (from the black perspective), as I got crushed in one such system playing black.

I'm in the middle of Circle 3.4. I'm also doing 5 or so problems a day from CT-Art. There is actually a fair bit of overlap between CT-Art level 10 problems and CTB Stage 3.

# CirclesPercent Correct
Problem Set 11498-99-100-100-100-100-100
100-100-100-99-100-99-98
Problem Set 21590-93-96-99-99-99-99-99
99-99-99-99-99-99-100
Problem Set 3385-93-97
Problem Set 40
Problem Set 50
NOTE: Circles undertaken with CTB.