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"A word about the many misguided fellows who think they know what they are talking about but don’t have a clue (yet they want to share their ignorance with anyone who will listen): Many of these people rave insanely about how players under 2000 should only study tactics and nothing else. This is simply wrong on many levels. The first problem is that if you don’t have any positional skills you won’t be able to enjoy (or understand) master games that feature anything other than basic sacrifices. The second problem is that chess strength is based on being well rounded – you need a bit of everything if you want success, and if you just focus on one thing you’ll find that you quickly reach a limit and never progress from there. The third problem is that tactical success is largely based on setting up a positionally sound game where tactics occur naturally. If you just play random moves and hope for a lucky knockout punch, you’ll find you’re going nowhere fast."
There is an extremely large subculture of street players out there who rely mainly on tactics and view positional players who understand tactics as magicians or having mysterious powers.
Fourth, in pure tactics you're never more than a weak computer program wanna-be, but in strategy and position play, you can at least aspire to transcend any machine.
There is an extremely large subculture of street players out there who rely mainly on tactics and view positional players who understand tactics as magicians or having mysterious powers.
They are largely influenced by the example of de la Maza and his book Rapid Chess Improvement which bases its tactic study on the CT-ART program and repeating the exercises until you develop pattern recognition and pounce when the opportunity presents itself. I think the process that de la Maza suggests is a prescription for quitting chess due to the sheer boredom of following his method. If you are going to work on tactics I think study of games which end with tactical solutions is the better way to go.
I have had many players who have achieved a 1200 rating on one server or another explain the importance of tactics to me when I suggested that a more balanced approach might lead to quicker improvement. Silman did an interview on www.chessvideos.tv where he suggested that an allocation of 25% of your time to endings, 25% to study of annotated master games, 25% to openings and 25% to tactics was the ideal allocation. That sounds reasonable to me.
They are largely influenced by the example of de la Maza and his book Rapid Chess Improvement which bases its tactic study on the CT-ART program and repeating the exercises until you develop pattern recognition and pounce when the opportunity presents itself. I think the process that de la Maza suggests is a prescription for quitting chess due to the sheer boredom of following his method. If you are going to work on tactics I think study of games which end with tactical solutions is the better way to go.
I have had many players who have achieved a 1200 rating on one server or another explain the importance of tactics to me when I suggested that a more balanced approach might lead to quicker improvement. Silman did an interview on www.chessvideos.tv where he suggested that an allocation of 25% of your time to endings, 25% to study of annotated master games, 25% to openings and 25% to tactics was the ideal allocation. That sounds reasonable to me.
I often find studying positional chess can be sheer bordedom (hence I'm only A class). Getting a pawn up and grinding a win can be alot of hard dull work.
I like to play for mate, double-edged positions, upsetting the "rigid" rules. Entering an unknown position is exciting. The rush. The concentration.
Positional stuff works when I see how it can become tactical: The open file to mate, breaking through the pawn defence to expose the king, exploiting the overworked or misplaced pieces.
Where does Silman find those people talking such things?
Only one thing to study should be - grandmasters' games :D
At the recent European Team Championship, I was an arbiter by day, and I would enter games online at night. There were only so many DGT boards. For example, on the Open (Men's) side, only the first 9 of the 19 matches each round were captured via the DGT boards. In other words, the games that I was entering were from the less successful teams. I can tell you that event though I entered many GM games, some of the misses were shocking. Hell, in one game I was arbiting, where they were not in time pressure, a GM missed a 1-move checkmate! It must be insanely grinding to play 9 GMs in 9 days, and I guess mistakes creep in. Anyway, all this to say that I am not sure that just because a GM played a game, that it should be studied. In my humble opinion, there is a tremendous value in studying games that have been SELECTED by an IM or GM author.
By the way, on a slightly different topic, related to the effect of playing many tough games consecutively, you could really see it on the faces and in the body language of many of the participants in Greece earlier this month. Some players seemed to turn into killing machines, while others seemed slightly weaker every day. It was fascinating, and reminded me of the gritty grind of the NHL playoffs. It makes one wonder though, just how tough it must be to play a long world championship match?! That must be wasting!
Anyway, all this to say that I am not sure that just because a GM played a game, that it should be studied. In my humble opinion, there is a tremendous value in studying games that have been SELECTED by an IM or GM author.
OK, more specific: Only one thing to study should be - champions' games selected by G.Kasparov, i.e., his predecessors series + (Revolution) + K vs K + Kasparov's games :D
I think each person has a different path to improvement in chess. Everyone has different mental blocks that they have to overcome - certain positions where they play badly because of gaps in their understanding. It's very dependent on the player. It's all about identifying your own weaknesses and trying to fix them.
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