Training games for chess improvement – Botvinnik’s method

Mikhail Botvinnik was a big supporter of training games as a tool for the chess improvement.  He himself played a number of such games and later published some in the collection of his games. He showed how ideas developed in training games helped him to win the competitive games. In fact, Jan Timman published an entire book dedicated to Botvinnik’s training games.

As for myself, about 10 years ago I played a match of 10 training games against an opponent of roughly my strength. I lost the match by 1 point and overall it was a good experience. Both me and my opponent noticed that we were willing to take more risks than in usual tournament games. It also helped my opening repertoire to include the Open Sicilian.

Here is my analysis of one of Botvinnik’s training games: Part 1

Part 2

How to Analyze a Chess Game - 10 Point Checklist

I already wrote about analyzing chess games, but would like to return to the subject, as I have recently re-evaluated the thoroughness with which this has to be done. Now I created a 10 point checklist, which repeats some of the previous ideas, but is more appropriate in the context of a single analyzed game:

1. Is the opening well annotated? Will you likely have problems in the same line ever again? Against the same opponent?
2. Do you have an evaluation graph of the game – in SCID or elsewhere? If not – do you have an idea of when advantage shifted from one side to another?
3. Is every blunder marked as “?” in your analysis?
4. Have you updated your opening repertoire (if you have it stored on a computer) based on this game?
5. Did you learn anything about chess in general from this game? Write it down!
6. Did you learn anything about yourself? Did it reveal your weakness in any area of the game – tactics, strategy, psychological issues (lack of confidence, nervousness, etc)?
7. Was your time management in this game appropriate? Would a grandmaster have to spend as much time on those moves as you did?
8. Did you write down your thoughts? Did you put down all the candidate moves you considered?
9. Are there any moves that you did not consider during the game – but now realize should have been on your mind?
10. Does it now feel like you spent way too much time going through this game??

Preparing for an Opponent in Scid – Player Report

This is a simple walkthrough of how to use SCID to prepare for a specific opponent in your future games.
In SCID Tools –> Player Report brings up the following window:

Clicking “OK” generates the report for the selected player. Moves and themes are looks particularly interesting:

But what we mostly care about is the opening, so that’s what it looks like:

This can be printed and analyzed with the board, or you can click links and load games into SCID.
Again, SCID proves out to be a very functional chess tool that gives you your chess database essentials.

Endgame: Bobby Fischer's Remarkable Rise and Fall – Book Review

I got an electronic copy of the Endgame from the library, and have been reading it on my Android Tablet. The book is very detailed on a lot of fragments of Fischer’s biography that I had been unaware of. In particular I was surprised to see Tal as being one who teased Fischer, rather than being his friend.
The book is written to be a accessible to a non-chess player, but there are still a lot of insights into the chess playing environment. It was also interesting to see Petrosian described as a “boring” player. Either the author never saw any of Petrosian’s best games, or he just really wants to dumb things down for non-chessplayers. To me that appears to be a result of bias against Soviet players, but I also see how the book busts a few myths around Fischer that existed in Soviet chess literature – that Fischer was uneducated. Some sources would make things appear as if he was of below average intelligence, which is hard to understand given that he learned many foreign languages and was reading a lot of books on his own as a child.
Overall – if you are interested in what it takes for a genius to grow in a rather difficult environment – a very interesting read.

Chess Strategy - Exchanging pieces to a favourable Bishop Vs. Knight endgame - Video

When playing against young players, the most reliable strategy in chess often is to trade off into an endgame. In this game White placed his pawns on dark squares, despite having traded off the light squared bishop. Those pawns became an easy target for my king and bishop once the heavy pieces came off the board.

Tactic in Najdorf Sicilian

In a rapid game played a few days ago, I missed this chance:

Chigorin Club – UBC Club, 2013

 White to move 

I took on f6, played Nd5, and the position got murky, as both kings lost the chance to castle.

12. Bb5+ ! gave White a great position. After 12… Nc6 13. Bxf6 gxf6 14. Nd5! makes it clear who’s in charge here:

White dominates the position and all the key squares.

Chess Strategy: Exchange Sacrifice in the endgame, power of two bishops

Here is an older video of the game I played 10 years ago, where the power of two bishops in the endgame is full revealed. A blog entry with the game analysis: http://roman-chess.blogspot.com/2009/06/paul-keres-memorial-2002-part-2-two.html