Category: Improvement

Don’t Blame the Opening

While you’re here, let me ask for your help. I want to keep this blog and journey going in perpetuity, but it’s not free to me.

If you feel like helping me out and can spare it, please click here and become a supporter. Even $1 a month can help me continue this project.

Last Thursday, I played against Allen Becker, a local 2000 player. Typically, when I have White against Allen, I play the 6.Be2 Najdorf. I planned to compile a file of all of the games in this line from 2023 in which both players were 2500 minimum, then work through them in preparation for this game.

My Chessbase had other ideas, and I had to spend some time deleting and recreating my search booster, along with some other maintenance work. So, I was thinking before the game that I had two choices.

First, I could play into what would likely be the 6.Be2 Najdorf. I assume Allen spent some time that day (and perhaps prior) looking at these lines to prepare.

Second, I could play 1.d4, and we would likely wind up in a Queen’s Indian.

Decisions needed to be made, and I ultimately went with Option 2. As I mentioned to Allen after the game, the problem here is that I have played the Najdorf as recently as he has, whereas I hadn’t played the White side of the QID in years.

First, let’s start with the game:

Now, let’s start with the excuses.

  • “I had to stay out of his prep.”
  • “I didn’t know the opening/I didn’t have time to memorize the lines/I’m not playing my normal stuff.”

Are those legit? Perhaps in their own way, but certainly not in relation to this game. Let’s look at why.

First, take this position:

This is where it’s easy to say stuff like, “Here, I went wrong with 13.Rc1 since 13.Ne5 has been played more than five times as often.” That is a 100% true statement, but let’s face it, it’s an excuse. The three most popular moves here, in order, according to my database, are 13.Ne5 (73 times); 13.Re1 (19 times); 13.Rc1 (14 times), and so there it is, right? The third most popular line equals didn’t know the opening well enough, and that’s why I lost!

However, Stockfish 16, at a depth of 40, gives the following as the top three moves in this order. 13.a3 (-0.09); 13.Qb1 (-0.09); 13.Rc1 (-0.13).

So, ultimately, I played the best move of the three shown in my database, according to the engine. Hmm… it must not be that I didn’t know the opening.

Now, let’s take this position:

Here, I play a move that has never appeared in my database, 13.Na4?. I can pretend as long and as loud as I like that the reason I played this move is that I didn’t know the opening, but you don’t have to know an opening to know enough not to make stupid moves.

My thought process here is that I want to fight for control of the c file, so I want to get the knight out of the way. Stockfish 16, again at a depth of 40, will tell you that the position here is -0.60. This is hardly the evaluation of a dead-lost position. In fact, it’s only slightly worse.

The problem isn’t the eval; it’s the lack of understanding. Here, I refuse to abide by solid chess principles. After all, my vague dream to “fight for control of the c file” is nonsense in this position. Allen can play 12..Ba3 13.Rc2 Qe7 and so much for any hope I have to control anything.

While Allen doesn’t play that line, what he plays is fine. This leads us five moves later, to this:

Here I know I need to get my knight back into the game. So I start calculating. I look at 18.Qb2 and 18.Nc3. I ultimately decide the Nc3 idea has the trappy little idea in it.

I look at the following:

13.Nc3 Rc8 14.Nex4 Rxc1 15.Nxd6 Rc6 16.Nxf7 Kxf7 and it seems a bit unclear  to me, but probably a little better. The engine will tell you it’s much, much better, but I did not know during the game if it was, just that it likely was a bit better, though unclear.

However, after 13.Nc3 Rc8 14.Nex4 Black doesn’t have to take the queen. He can play 14…dxe4 instead. But here, I can just play 15.Qxc8+ and then after 15…Nf8, I must be completely winning since I can save the knight on f3.

Oops. Do you see the fatal flaw? Give it some thought. It’s below my signature.

So here we are at the end of an important lesson. It’s easy to blame the lack of opening knowledge, but that wouldn’t be correct since that’s not what cost me the game. It was my lack of understanding in general, along with the utter oversight in calculation.

The good news is that this understanding means that the problem can be fixed, whereas taking the easy way out and blaming the opening would mean that I wouldn’t have identified the actual issue.

Til Next Time,

Chris Wainscot

.

.

.

.

Oops, the bishop on a6 will snap off the queen. I missed this entirely.

Some Thoughts About Improvement

While you’re here, let me ask for your help. I want to keep this blog and journey going in perpetuity, but it’s not free to me.

If you feel like helping me out and can spare it, please click here and become a supporter. Even $1 a month can help me continue this project.

A common theme that I continue to see in adult improvement content is that, for some unknown reason, many people have decided that improvement cannot be fun and must be a grind.

From my point of view, neither of those are necessarily true statements.

The internet is full of folks who are several hundred (even 1,000+) points below whatever rating level is being discussed, but they are speaking definitively that “The only way to get to ____ is to ____.” e.g., “The only way to get to 2200 is to spend at least five hours a day studying for ten years.” or something along those lines.

The main problem here is how would they know.

Let’s use me as an example here. My rating is currently 1848, and I am trying to get to 2200. I can speak pretty definitively on what it took for me to get to 1800, but I can’t tell you a thing about what it takes to get to 2200. I can tell you what my plan is to get there, but I can’t tell you if it will work. Along the way, over the years of my journey, I have made several changes to what I am doing as I learn what works and what doesn’t for me.

The key takeaway in that sentence is the last two words. “For me.”

However, my journey started a dozen years ago. I was just under 1500, and my current peak rating is 1898. So I can speak about how I gained those 400 peak-to-trough points. Did I do it by grinding away for hours every single day on things that I hate? Absolutely not.

Mostly, what I have done to this point is just to spend *some* time on chess almost every single day. Sometimes that looks like me spending a couple of minutes on Chessable knocking on an opening line or some tactics. Sometimes it looks like me spending several hours on analyzing a game of mine or playing through GM games, etc.

The point is consistency, not pain. Sure, sometimes I spend a lot of time taking the pain. This has been illustrated in my recent work over the past year or so on openings. In general, I don’t like studying openings. But I will not consistently beat the players I need to beat to get to 2200 if I don’t stop getting horrible positions out of the opening. Yet, if I decided that I was going to grind openings to the detriment of everything else, then how would I possibly be able to keep my head in the game?

I don’t think I could. To study chess with an eye toward improving, I am convinced that it needs to be enjoyable. At least, that turns out to be the case when I am the improver.

Therefore, I split the time as best I can. Today, perhaps I will work on lines in the Caro. Tomorrow, maybe I solve some puzzles. Then, the day after, I could decide it’s time to play through some GM games or read a bit more of Reassess Your Chess.

Again, I can’t pretend to be able to speak with any authority on where I am trying to go. But I can speak that way with where I am now.

Since you made it this far, here’s a puzzle to solve. The solution is at the bottom.

Til Next Time,

Chris Wainscott

.

.

.

.

.

Solution

The Grind: Templin – Wainscott 1/2-1/2

While you’re here, let me ask for your help. I want to keep this blog and journey going in perpetuity, but it’s not free to me.

If you feel like helping me out and can spare it, please click here and become a supporter. Even $1 a month can help me continue this project.

This past Thursday, I had a chance to play someone I hadn’t played before. Since then, I have analyzed the game pretty thoroughly. I believe that if I analyze all of my games like this and do the work they show me I need, then improvement will continue.

Here is the game:

Til Next Time,

Chris Wainscott

Silman on Knights

While you’re here, let me ask for your help. I want to keep this blog and journey going in perpetuity, but it’s not free to me.

If you feel like helping me out and can spare it, please click here and become a supporter. Even $1 a month can help me continue this project.

As I mentioned in this post, I am working through Reassess Your Chess by Jeremy Silman. The idea is to learn a lot more about imbalances and strategic thinking.

This morning, while reading a bit of the chapter on knights, I am looking at this position.

The idea here is that the White knight has two interesting options for the knight. f5 and c6. White assesses that the knight would be better on c6, and so he plays:

12.e5

Then, after 12…Bxg2 13.Kxg2 Nd5 White can play the move they were angling for, 14.Nc6

Of course, the knight can’t be kicked with 14…Qd7 since 15.Qxd5 Qxd5 16.Nxe7+ wins on the spot.

With this octopus sitting on c6 and tearing into the position, Black quickly went wrong and was crushed.

Here is the entire game, with Roiz’s annotations.

Til Next Time,

Chris Wainscott

The Most Useful Puzzle I Have Ever Seen

While you’re here, let me ask for your help. I want to keep this blog and journey going in perpetuity, but it’s not free to me.

If you feel like helping me out and can spare it, please click here and become a supporter. Even $1 a month can help me continue this project.

I am curious to know if there are others like this out there. Do you remember the most useful puzzle or position you have ever seen?

For me, it’s this one:

The idea behind this puzzle was eye-opening and has helped me navigate many strategic ideas throughout my games in the five years since I first saw it.

The game is Donner – Smyslov from Havana 1967. This is the first position in the book Strategic Chess Exercises by Emmanuel Bricard.

I will spare you all of the analysis here (buy the book! Seriously, buy it now!) but the idea is that Black would like to own the d file. So how does the former world champion accomplish that?

Like this:

1…c6 with the idea to take away the b5 square. 2.Rfd1 preparing to double, but wait. 2…Be6 and now the queen must move. 3.Qe2 Bb3! and that’s it. The d file will now belong to Black.

I would imagine that most titled players likely think of ideas like this without much trouble, but to me, this was like a lightning bolt from the blue. The idea that I could use a bishop to hit a square on a file so that I could own the file was not something that instantly sprang to mind until I first read this one.

Have I said that you should buy the book? You should buy this book.

For those who would like to see the entire game, here you are: Jan Hein Donner vs Vasily Smyslov (1967) (chessgames.com)

Til Next Time,

Chris Wainscott

The Silman Project

While you’re here, let me ask for your help. I want to keep this blog and journey going in perpetuity, but it’s not free to me.

If you feel like helping me out and can spare it, please click here and become a supporter. Even $1 a month can help me continue this project.

Several years back, I did something that I called The Quality Chess Project. For a year, I read nothing at all other than books published by Quality Chess. The idea was that books by QC should be good enough that they are all one needs to become a master.

That may be true (and likely is), but one year was not enough time to get there from wherever I was in the 1700s. I knew this going in, but I wanted to see the results. The overall results weren’t great, but I would put that on the fact that I wasn’t exactly hitting the books hard. The artificiality of things like a one-year period didn’t help either.

With The Silman Project, my plan is quite different. I plan to ignore timelines and also to allow myself to read other materials, but for the next however long it takes, I will do the following:

  • Read the following books:
    • Reassess Your Chess 4th Edition
    • The Amateur’s Mind
    • Silman’s Complete Endgame Course
  • Play through 10,000 games in Chessbase.

The books are mostly self-explanatory, so let’s discuss the second point first.

Many times over the years, Silman would recommend playing through “tens of thousands” of master games as quickly as possible.

Here is a quote from a review he did of Agdestein’s book about Magnus:

“I always recommend playing over tens of thousands of games as quickly as you can, since the subconscious mind will absorb the pawn structures and how the pieces are placed when those structures arise. You’ll also absorb tactical patterns, opening patterns, and endgames too. Many tell me I’m wrong and get quite upset by this (everyone wants to be great, but few are willing to do the work). However, a quote from Agdestein will put this into perspective: ‘In Norway we say that it takes 10,000 hours to become world-class in something.'”

Here is an article where he goes a bit deeper on the “why” of the question.

For my game selection, I grabbed every game in my database from 1955 to 1985 as I was unsure how many games that would be. As it turns out, a bit over 55,000. So I trimmed it down by just grabbing 10,000 from 1970 to 1976.

To go through them, I will do precisely as Silman advises. 20-40 seconds per game, max. I will resist the urge to go through them in any detail.

Depending on how long it takes me to get through the 10,000, I may go back for more.

As for the books, I am starting with Reassess Your Chess. I would start with The Amateur’s Mind, but I can’t find my copy. I may need to order a new copy.

As I mentioned earlier, I will not be holding myself to any timeline for this project. Instead, I will post as I go and update on my progress. The fact is that I have been playing quite well lately, and I want to find what it takes to get over the next hump of 1900.

Let’s go on a journey here.

Til Next Time,

Chris Wainscott

Draw Offers Can be Strategic

While you’re here, let me ask for your help. I want to keep this blog and journey going in perpetuity, but it’s not free to me.

If you feel like helping me out and can spare it, please click here and become a supporter. Even $1 a month can help me continue this project.

Chess is war. However, there are some unwritten rules which are based on politeness. For instance, one should never offer a draw in a completely lost position. (As a side note, I don’t generally fault newer players or those with three-digit ratings, as they legitimately may not know that the position is lost.)

However, what about offering a higher-rated player a draw? Well, generally, the unwritten rule is that the higher-rated player should be the one to offer the draw. That’s a rule that I only believe in if the rating difference is extreme. For instance, I wouldn’t offer a draw against a GM since they’ll let me know when they think the position is drawn.

When it comes to offering draws against players who are within a few hundred points I have been known to use them as a strategy. Here’s an example from last Thursday.

Here I am Black, and I have been defending a worse position for some time. Here, however, I decide it’s level enough that I will offer a draw. I should point out that while Edgar and I are only about 70 points apart currently, historically he has outrated me by 200-300 points in most of our games.

My thought process is as follows:

  1. Edgar generally doesn’t like draws.
  2. Regardless of current rating, overall Edgar is the stronger player.
  3. Sometimes stronger players will overpress trying to prove that the position is not a draw.

Let’s go back a few moves.

As you can see, I was worse a bit earlier in the game.

After I play 19…Nxa5, Edgar recaptures with the pawn. Had he played 20.Rxa5 I think he has the better part of the game in perpetuity and I have to fight to hold essentially for the rest of the game.

However, after 20.bxa5 I can see a tiny ray of light ahead. This is what allows me to essentially equalize and offer the draw. Edgar had spent a lot of time to this point and continued to spend more. Eventually the overuse of time led him to blunder. The game continues for 15-20 moves past when we stop recording, but ends in a win on time for me in a completely winning position.

Here is the game. I still need to analyze it, but the idea of the strategic draw offer is a lesson in itself.

Til Next Time,

Chris Wainscott

My Best Game in Years

While you’re here, let me ask for your help. I want to keep this blog and journey going in perpetuity, but it’s not free to me.

If you feel like helping me out and can spare it, please click here and become a supporter. Even $1 a month can help me continue this project.

On Thursday, I  played my best game in the past several years. There was nothing flashy or explosive about this game; it was just a nice, technical win.

However, since I am currently very much in the mindset of being an adult improver rather than an adult enjoyer (see my article here for an explanation of this concept), it is through games like this, where I show a better understanding than I have previously, which gives me hope that I am verging on a breakthrough.

Here is the game.

Til Next Time,

Chris Wainscott

Fischer At His Best: Fischer – Panno 1-0

While you’re here, let me ask for your help. I want to keep this blog and journey going in perpetuity, but it’s not free to me.

If you feel like helping me out and can spare it, please click here and become a supporter. Even $1 a month can help me continue this project.

No, I’m not talking about this famous Fischer “win” from Palma when Panno didn’t play in protest:

Instead, we’re talking about his win in Buenos Aires in 1970. I am reading a new book I just got from New in Chess to review, and this is the first game in it. I’ll have a full review in the near future, but let’s take a look at this position:

It’s White to move. With a locked center, Fisher wants to attack on the kingside. He’s not quite ready as he needs to play a preparatory move. Take some time and try to figure out what he played. The answer is below.

Til Next Time,

Chris Wainscott

.

.

.

.

.

Bobby can’t just play 18.h4 as the attack would be stalled after 18…Nf5, so first Fischer stops the knight move by playing 18.g4

Here is the whole game.

Some Training Thoughts

While you’re here, let me ask for your help. I want to keep this blog and journey going in perpetuity, but it’s not free to me.

If you feel like helping me out and can spare it, please click here and become a supporter. Even $1 a month can help me continue this project.

Something I have been giving a lot of thought to lately is how I can expand and improve my training program.

Over the decade-plus I have been blogging, I have had many “plans” that have seen the light of day. Some are well thought out, some not.

Generally it’s some mix of trying to create the perfect storm of materials plus time expenditure. At the end of 2021, for instance, I had this plan.

That’s a plan that was reasonably well-designed with quite a bit of thought put into it. Yet I failed. Why? I believe the answer is because I focused on the “what” but not the “how and when” of things.

The what is easy. What do I need to do to get better? You can find many answers to this question, most of them valid and based on the experiences of others. You can spend time analyzing your games and trying to eradicate weaknesses. You can work on your tactics, your endings, or your openings. You can do those last three with a board and set, a website/app, or with books. Again, this is the easy part.

The hard and less discussed part is the how and when. How are you going to achieve your goals? When will you work on them? That is something I didn’t consider when I wrote the above plan.

While I have no children, I am married and have a full-time career that typically sees me putting in at least 43 hours weekly. So, the how and when factor in when considering these things. I can’t very well ignore either my career or my wife and expect life to continue as is.

Something I have seriously thought about is the idea of waking up early in the morning for training. I currently get time every morning to solve some tactics and review some lines on Chessable each morning with my coffee. On Monday and Wednesday, I work from home, so the time I would usually spend commuting can be repurposed for training.

I have been thinking, “Sure, but what if I get up at 4:00 a.m. and then train daily from 4:00-6:00 a.m.?” That’s one possibility, but what would happen on Thursday nights when I play? To routinely get up at 4:00 a.m. in a state of mind where it’s possible to train, I’d have to go to bed by 9:00 p.m. each night. Yet on Thursday, I routinely am at the chess club until 10:00 p.m. and often am not home until as late as 11:00 p.m. So what then?

Also, if I get up at 4:00 a.m. on Thursday, I will be tired when I start my 7:00 p.m. game. I also couldn’t get up early on Friday to train since I would be going to bed hours later than normal. This means we’re talking about getting up early to train three days a week instead of five. As it is, I get some time in on Mon-Wed, so would this only benefit me on Tuesday? Is it even worth it, then?

These are the quandaries of trying to train under the family life circumstances. It’s not a question of what you can achieve as much as it’s a question of what you are willing to give up to have the chance.

I welcome the readers’ opinions on this one.

Til Next Time,

Chris Wainscott