How do masters improve?

[Craig Sadler]

Re: How do masters improve?

Hey everyone,

Does anyone have any insight into how and what masters study to improve?

Most books are written for maybe up to 2200, so what do 2200 players study to get better?

Tom O told me when he was in university he would get up and study rook endgames before breakfast...

[Denton Cockburn]

Re: Current study habits?

May I ask-What are you doing now?(how many hours/week?)

Michael Yip

I live and breath chess (my wife's not pleased).

I always have at least one book I'm working on (Currently Zurich 1953 tournament book).

I'm still working to beef up my endgame knowledge (just finished 101 Chess Tips). I think I still want to spend more time on this topic. I think this is my weakest area as I can't play it by instinct yet.

I play a lot of blitz games at the Windsor Chess Club and online. Which is what's helping me to see that my endgames still need work. I also play a good amount of 15 0 online. Finally, I play a lot of slow games per year. I played about 50 in 2010, almost all against 1900-2250 players (including Vlad).

Finally, I manage to read through quite a few annotated games. I have a giant database with many commented games. In addition I follow a lot of the new annotated games on chess.com and chessbase.com.

[Denton Cockburn]

Re: How do masters improve?

Hi Denton

I wrote about the subject of how I got to be 2300 decades ago (I wrote it about 1985 or 1986, in the CFC's magazine). I imagine from your post that you've already learned more or less what you might need to know from instructional books in order to be a truly 2200 strength player. At that stage in my chess career, I made the jump to 2300 strength after participating in Toronto Closed round-robin events in the 1980s.

Not only can playing such higher rated opponents raise your strength by forcing you to concentrate harder, but also I found that rivals sometimes gave me advice on how to play against any of my other given competitors, in light of their perceived playing weaknesses. Thus learning about tournament preparation, such as choice of openings, occured. As well, all you have to do is break even against a stronger field, and your rating climbs.

While nowadays I play just about exclusively in Ottawa, where I can't consistently play higher rated players, there are sectional round-robins in my club, where players of about the same strength are pitted together. If I do well in those, I gain lots of rating points in a smaller number of games than it might take in swisses. These days there are also Ottawa weekend swisses where the top section is 2200+, but I have yet to solve how to consistently do well against the titled opponents whom I play only once or twice a tournament if I am lucky.

Regarding what to study, look at tactical exercises every day if you can. I did that on my way to becoming 2200 from 2000+ (I've heard of at least one GM who studies such exercises daily, before breakfast). I also studied games collections of world class players or champions, as has been recommended by other posters. Simply playing over lots of one player's games quickly, even, can help by introducing more plans and patterns to you than several instructional books combined would have room for. Unfortunately I have slacked off from such studies and perhaps this is why I do not advance much anymore (I made it to 2400 last year after a streak of good preparation and luck, but slumped when I began to be preoccupied with non-chess-playing matters).

You asked elsewhere how to "put your pieces on the right squares" (an unfortunately insubstantial expression). Well, there are so many chess principles that they are not all neatly compiled in a single book. Sometimes you catch them as stray pieces of advice found anywhere, e.g. in magazines, articles, annotated game collections. Sometimes you just realize them consciously or unconsciously, through seeing the games of strong players. One piece of advice that may help is a rule of Blumenfeld's, namely that when there is nothing much going on, improve the position of your worst piece first.

Then there is the principle that in closed positions there is often time to move a piece more than once in order to bring it to its best square (which square is that you may ask? - well that's where your imagination, or principles or a plan comes in). In open positions there is often little time to move a piece more than once before developing the rest, but calculation is important too. One principle I learned from a friend, who read it somewhere, is that an Exchange is worth a pawn plus one uncompensated advantage. Can't recall where he said he learned it, but it often seems to hold true.

Thanks for the advice Kevin.

I saw that exchange idea in Secrets of Modern Chess Strategy.
That pieces on the right squares thing was more tongue in cheek.

I don't spend a lot of time on tactics puzzles, even though I should.

I know another problem I have is laziness calculating. I often will stop after 2-3 moves ahead and just go with my intuition at that point. The problem is I often find later that if I had checked 1 or 2 more moves, I would have seen why the move worked. It's not that I walk into a lot of blind moves, it's just that I tend to play more conservatively (Karpov had the same problem, but he saw insanely good little moves).

[Denton Cockburn]

Re: How do masters improve?

Tom O told me when he was in university he would get up and study rook endgames before breakfast...

Those are the absolute worst ones to get to stick.
There are so many of them and each with their own peculiarities.

I just saw recently that it's possible to draw in quite a few cases even in R+2P vs R endgames. That's just nuts...

[Egidijus Zeromskis]

Re: How do masters improve?

I don't spend a lot of time on tactics puzzles, even though I should.

Definitely you should. Just don't cheat with easy ones and solutions :D

In a case you can not afford a coach, you may find a chess-partner with whom you could go through various games or positions, and would end a session with a blitz match :D

[Denton Cockburn]

Re: How do masters improve?

Definitely you should. Just don't cheat with easy ones and solutions :D

In a case you can not afford a coach, you may find a chess-partner with whom you could go through various games or positions, and would end a session with a blitz match :D

I'm thinking about getting a coach. Unfortunately, the only option I have where I live is an online coach. May do that in the next few months.

I rarely have time to just analyze games anymore. Playing too often.

[Kevin Pacey]

Re: How do masters improve?

I know another problem I have is laziness calculating. I often will stop after 2-3 moves ahead and just go with my intuition at that point. The problem is I often find later that if I had checked 1 or 2 more moves, I would have seen why the move worked. It's not that I walk into a lot of blind moves, it's just that I tend to play more conservatively (Karpov had the same problem, but he saw insanely good little moves).

Just before, or during at least one Toronto Closed event, each day I looked at one page worth of exercise positions in the Encyclopedia of Combinations (Informant); I even made a point of doing it before bedtime, when I was tired, to simulate being fatigued at the chessboard (as I often was in those days). I would try to figure out at least what the first move of the solution might be if I was stuck on a seemingly tough exercise position for too long, then I peeked at the solution to it (just seeing new tactical patterns can help).

At the board, like you, I may not always figure out exactly why a move should work tactically, but I often play it (and it works out!), in spite of my doubt. I guess as with you and I, that's similar to the difference between how Karpov and Tal would operate :). However most people may play more conservatively when they are playing higher rated or perhaps even peer strength opponents.

Personally, I think computers tend not to play rook endings so well (tablebase positions with 6 pieces or less excepted, of course). Also, if a human wants to beat a computer then closed positions from the opening seem the best way to go, to reduce the tactics if possible.

[Kevin Pacey]

Re: How do masters improve?

Now that I think of it, back in the 1980s IM Ray Stone (then living in Toronto) told me of one strong player (forget who) who gave the advice that to get up to 2400 from weak master level, a player should study endgame studies. I didn't listen, apparently, since I left the one massive studies book I had largely unread for years, then finally sold it. At least before I was a master, I solved at least some of the endgame studies found in other books that I had. However like tactical exercises, studying endgame studies should be done regularly.

One book for serious players, by Lars Bo Hansen, that I've seen recommends going through what, for example, Reuben Fine called basic endgames (e.g. mate with K+B+N vs. K, etc.) once a year.

[Josh Guo]

Re: How do masters improve?

I agree with Kevin. Endgames and Tactics or Strategy (depending on what type of player you are). For me, my tactics are decent so I just focus on Endgames and Strategy.

And dont just "read" books, solve problems! Simply reading books, regardless how well its written, is lazy and a waste of time :) If there are concepts you don't get after looking at the solution, then go back and read.

As for openings, one thing I discovered to is look at some of the opening ideas of our strong young players (Raja, Shiyam, Roman, Eric Henson..etc). I find their openings are clear, easy-to-play, fluid, and quite effective at beating 2300-2400 players. Also all of them have strong coaches who help them build their reportoire.

So I would do it in the following order:
1) Endgames & Tactics/Strategy: do exercises daily
2) Go over games of player who suits your style: try to guess their moves after the opening.
3) Opening reportoire: see above.

[Lucas Davies]

Re: How do masters improve?

I do not study. My rating's been around the same for the past six years.

[Vlad Drkulec]

Re: Current study habits?

Finally, I play a lot of slow games per year. I played about 50 in 2010, almost all against 1900-2250 players (including Vlad).

The tournaments that you organize certainly helped me in getting a lot of extra games of fairly high quality in last year. Hopefully we'll get even more of them in for 2011.

[Vlad Drkulec]

Re: How do masters improve?

Hey Mr. Drkulec,

I am so envious of you. You get to play 168 CFC slow games a year!

I probably won't get in that many this year. Denton and I had to postpone our game tonight because of weather.

Endgames are seriously under appreciated. Jeremy Silman commented that a lot of players really are weak in their endgames. I have salvaged many a half point against opposition that should have finished me off. Mind you I am not a master though. I am just stating what others have said

If you have another result like your last one, you will soon be a master. Congratulations, very impressive!

[Bindi Cheng]

Re: How do masters improve?

I would recommend ICC, just don't play too much on it, it's very addicting.

[Denton Cockburn]

Re: How do masters improve?

I would recommend ICC, just don't play too much on it, it's very addicting.

I play on FICS. As a student, I'm still too poor to afford ICC's membership fees :)

[John Henry]

Re: How do masters improve?

Dvoretsky's," Endgame Manual" is as good as it gets for improvement.I know a Master who uses it.A thorough study of it may take months,then re-read it again to get even more from it.Like a hard workout to get benefits,this book will pay dividends with a lot of sweat....