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Re: How do masters improve?
IM David Pruess wrote some good advices on the the chess.com forum. I just read it and it made me realize that I am guilty of spending too much time on some puzzles. I want to solve all of them. I plan to limit my time spent on a puzzle to 1-2 minutes. I have put in bold his comments on this. I have included his whole article as he has other thought-provoking comments.
Jean
As a teacher, my impression is that there is precious little advice the student actually wants to hear. Almost anything about how you need to work to improve is disregarded. For example people write in to Jeremy Silman's column and ask him how to become a master. He'll list many things including "playing over 10 000 games" (I forget the exact number). Rather than starting to look over games, they'll reply in the comments section that he's lying, making it up.
"You should analyze your own games: losses and draws particularly." So, I've been doing this program "your games analyzed" for over 20 weeks now, in which a chess.com member has the opportunity to select any game of theirs and show it to me, and i'll go over it, ask about their thought process, and give my comments and feedback on the game. I believe I have seen 1 loss and 1 draw submitted out of ~25 games.
"Don't use computer engines until you are over 2400." but you see, a computer can "analyze" a game in a few minutes without any effort from the player-- who cares if they won't learn A SINGLE THING? and it's cheaper to ask a computer what you did wrong than hiring a master-- never mind that after the computer affixes a ? (or two) to one of your moves and provides an alternative, you'll be none the wiser as to why your move is not best, why the suggestion is better, what principle(s) is in operation, why you made the mistake you made, or what you'd have to do to produce the computer's move in a future game.
or when i give players in the 1000-1800 range advice on improving their tactics, viz: 10-15 min per day of solving simple tactical puzzles. the goal is to increase your store of basic patterns, not to work on your visualization, deep calculation. remember that is your goal. you are not trying to prove that you can solve every problem. if you don't solve a problem within 1 minute, stop. it's probably a new pattern or you would have gotten it by now. (with private students i'll take the time to demonstrate this to them: show them through examples that they can find a 3-4 move problem in 10 seconds if they know the pattern, and that they can fail to find a mate in 2 for 10 minutes if they don't know the pattern). look at the answer, and now go over the answer 3 more times in your head to help the pattern take hold. your brain can probably take on 2-3 new patterns between sleeping, so you should stop once you've been stumped by 2 or 3 problems (usually will take about 10-15 min). there is no point in doing more than that in one day. and any day you miss, you can't make up for. a semi-random estimate on my part is that you need about 2000 of these patterns to become a master. so you need to do this for 2 years or more.
i would guess that less than 1 in 100 of the people i have given this advice to have followed it to the letter. if they enjoy it, they'll waste their time doing it for 1.5 hours in a day, choosing to ignore that it's not helping them [after 15 min]. or some with ego issues will insist on trying to solve every single position (if only they linked their ego to their self-discipline ).
i could go on and on. from my experience, there are exactly two kinds of advice players *do* like to get:
- "you don't need to do x." Love, love, love, love that!! eg: "you don't actually need to memorize openings to be a master;" or "you don't need to calculate in positions like this, you can just move your pieces towards the best squares;" or "you don't need to study the endgame until your games are balanced enough to reach a lot of even endgames." people really drink that stuff up. sort of related is #2
- "see, this principle explains the entire position." provided the principle was well-explained, people love this too. well, on the one hand, powerful principles can often be pure gold; but i can't help but jadedly suspect that part of it may be that it is another pass for playing without working. playing according to principles is so much easier than employing painstaking analysis.
but anyway, chess is supposed to be fun, so have fun. you don't need to calculate if you don't like to. you don't need to revisit your losses if they are painful. you all have my not-even-one-iota-of-sarcasm-or-irony blessing to keep playing as you do. it's even fine with me if you ask me for advice and then ignore it as long as we all have fun in the process.
besides, people with an extremely strong desire to improve (in any field) pretty much all do put in serious work, and take pains to make sure they incorporate messages they are instinctively resistant to into their thoughts. when other masters tell me: "david, you aren't going to like hearing this, but here's what i think your problem is," i perk up. but currently i'm not doing the work to take advantage of that advice. i just enjoy playing
IM David Pruess wrote some good advices on the the chess.com forum. I just read it and it made me realize that I am guilty of spending too much time on some puzzles. I want to solve all of them. I plan to limit my time spent on a puzzle to 1-2 minutes. I have put in bold his comments on this. I have included his whole article as he has other thought-provoking comments.
Jean
As a teacher, my impression is that there is precious little advice the student actually wants to hear. Almost anything about how you need to work to improve is disregarded. For example people write in to Jeremy Silman's column and ask him how to become a master. He'll list many things including "playing over 10 000 games" (I forget the exact number). Rather than starting to look over games, they'll reply in the comments section that he's lying, making it up.
"You should analyze your own games: losses and draws particularly." So, I've been doing this program "your games analyzed" for over 20 weeks now, in which a chess.com member has the opportunity to select any game of theirs and show it to me, and i'll go over it, ask about their thought process, and give my comments and feedback on the game. I believe I have seen 1 loss and 1 draw submitted out of ~25 games.
"Don't use computer engines until you are over 2400." but you see, a computer can "analyze" a game in a few minutes without any effort from the player-- who cares if they won't learn A SINGLE THING? and it's cheaper to ask a computer what you did wrong than hiring a master-- never mind that after the computer affixes a ? (or two) to one of your moves and provides an alternative, you'll be none the wiser as to why your move is not best, why the suggestion is better, what principle(s) is in operation, why you made the mistake you made, or what you'd have to do to produce the computer's move in a future game.
or when i give players in the 1000-1800 range advice on improving their tactics, viz: 10-15 min per day of solving simple tactical puzzles. the goal is to increase your store of basic patterns, not to work on your visualization, deep calculation. remember that is your goal. you are not trying to prove that you can solve every problem. if you don't solve a problem within 1 minute, stop. it's probably a new pattern or you would have gotten it by now. (with private students i'll take the time to demonstrate this to them: show them through examples that they can find a 3-4 move problem in 10 seconds if they know the pattern, and that they can fail to find a mate in 2 for 10 minutes if they don't know the pattern). look at the answer, and now go over the answer 3 more times in your head to help the pattern take hold. your brain can probably take on 2-3 new patterns between sleeping, so you should stop once you've been stumped by 2 or 3 problems (usually will take about 10-15 min). there is no point in doing more than that in one day. and any day you miss, you can't make up for. a semi-random estimate on my part is that you need about 2000 of these patterns to become a master. so you need to do this for 2 years or more.
i would guess that less than 1 in 100 of the people i have given this advice to have followed it to the letter. if they enjoy it, they'll waste their time doing it for 1.5 hours in a day, choosing to ignore that it's not helping them [after 15 min]. or some with ego issues will insist on trying to solve every single position (if only they linked their ego to their self-discipline ).
i could go on and on. from my experience, there are exactly two kinds of advice players *do* like to get:
- "you don't need to do x." Love, love, love, love that!! eg: "you don't actually need to memorize openings to be a master;" or "you don't need to calculate in positions like this, you can just move your pieces towards the best squares;" or "you don't need to study the endgame until your games are balanced enough to reach a lot of even endgames." people really drink that stuff up. sort of related is #2
- "see, this principle explains the entire position." provided the principle was well-explained, people love this too. well, on the one hand, powerful principles can often be pure gold; but i can't help but jadedly suspect that part of it may be that it is another pass for playing without working. playing according to principles is so much easier than employing painstaking analysis.
but anyway, chess is supposed to be fun, so have fun. you don't need to calculate if you don't like to. you don't need to revisit your losses if they are painful. you all have my not-even-one-iota-of-sarcasm-or-irony blessing to keep playing as you do. it's even fine with me if you ask me for advice and then ignore it as long as we all have fun in the process.
besides, people with an extremely strong desire to improve (in any field) pretty much all do put in serious work, and take pains to make sure they incorporate messages they are instinctively resistant to into their thoughts. when other masters tell me: "david, you aren't going to like hearing this, but here's what i think your problem is," i perk up. but currently i'm not doing the work to take advantage of that advice. i just enjoy playing
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