Tips for better play from a friend!

I do not consider myself a strong player, but such things are always relative. I’m in the process of building myself back up to playing form since I took a hiatus from chess early this year. I’ve compiled the following general tips that should be helpful to anyone under 1800ish who wants to improve. None of the ideas are original, and I’ve borrowed very liberally from players as genius as Karpov to online patzers who said something that just made sense to me (and everyone in between). There’s no way for me to give proper credit to everyone I copied from, so let me just say that I didn’t come up with all this stuff, but I did use it. A Planning Method will be added shortly. I welcome anyone who thinks it is useful to use it and pass it along, and I also welcome any strong players to critique it and offer constructive criticism. Better Chess for all!

Shenandoah’s General Tips for playing better:

1. Use a Database:

a. There are free online DB’s at chesslab.com and shredderchess.com. Stay away from the endgame tablebase on the shredder site, it’s good for research and practice, but it is against the rules of Corr. Chess (CC) to use that during a game because it is computer generated.

b. You can download SCID or ChessBase Light from the internet and populate a good reference dB with Master level and above games in PGN format.

c. The Chess.com Game Explorer is also a very good resource for openings. Look to see what Masters have played in your position (not chess computers, real human beings) to help you better understand the ideas and plans for your position.

d. Build an opening repertoire. Study each opening position only once, and decide what the best move is based on your research. Record your move choice somewhere and you never have to rethink that particular position (unless you move turns out to be a real bad one). There’s a really handy piece of free software to help you build your repertoire named Chess Position Trainer. You plug in your repertoire, and then it will test you on it systematically to make sure you have it down. Highly recommended (even though I really don’t use it, I am inherently lazy). You can use the opening tree feature in most DB programs to accomplish a similar thing.

2. Use the Analysis Board:

a. Before moving, or doing anything else, replay over the last several moves of the game to remind yourself what’s going on.

b. If you have used the notepad feature to record your thoughts, look at it.

c. If you haven’t used the notepad feature…start using it. Record key ideas of the position, as well as the Primary Variation that you expect your opponent to play. Keeping this in a separate notebook is a great training tool recommended by Dan Heisman, it allows you to go over the game later and start to see where the holes are in your planning and thought process.

d. Flip the board and look at it from your opponent’s perspective. This is extremely useful in helping to figure out what their threat or plan is.

3. Study Smarter:

a. Do between 10 and 30 tactical puzzles a day as often as you can. Nothing equals improvement better than better tactics. There’s no need to get involved in 8-10 move combinations played in old Russian Championships unless you are already very strong. Stick to 2-3 move combo’s to start with, and progress to 4-6 movers after you have the easier ones down pat. These are the types of puzzles that will build that mystical “pattern recognition” that people like Michael de la Maza write about.

b. Learn basic endgames. I know that endgame study is about as exciting as listening to phones ring, but it is important. Pandolfini’s Endgame Course is a great place to start if you have no endgame knowledge. Silman’s Complete Endgame Course is phenomenal because the material is sorted in order of difficulty. Very helpful.

c. Build an opening repertoire one move at a time. Each time you play a new game, if you come across a move that is outside of your repertoire, run it through an engine after the game is over. Find out if the move you chose is any good, or what you could have done better. Learn, and move on.

4. Use a structured planning process:

a. This is really the hardest part to reduce to writing. Many books have been written by smarter people than me on how to make a plan. I promised in another thread months ago to write down my process, and I learned quickly that it isn’t an easy thing to do. I’m working on it again, and hope to have something that I can post within a week.

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