The Key to Chess Improvement....I think.

How does one get better at chess?  By now the answer should be clear.  After all there are more books written about chess than about all other games combined.  And yet, with hundreds of books coming out every year as well as an ever growing deluge of dvd,s training programs, forums as well as numerous titled players who will coach you for a fee, the gap between the typical club player and experts and masters (let alone professionals) remains huge.  We have more information than ever before and yet most of us are still wood pushers.  Why?

I believe that the reason is that we fall into the trap of focusing on getting new information all of the time instead of learning how to use what we already know effectively.  I will use myself as an example.  I have a chess library that, at its peak, numbered close to 800 volumes.  At the risk of sounding immodest I believe that my knowledge of chess history and culture is at a high level.  In addition I am well versed in most modern opening systems and have a solid knowledge of the classical players.  In spite of this, I have lost hundreds of games by making very large crude blunders. Often I have given away my queen for nothing.  Why does this happen?  I clearly know enough to realize that I can't win games by giving away my most powerful piece for free.  Why does this happen to me when I know so much about chess?

I think it happens because I don't effectively use the information that I have in game situations.  I need to improve my thought process in practical situations when the clock is ticking and the person on the other side of the board has bad intentions.  The key isn't learning new things all of the time but instead learning how to use what I already know effectively.

Now as much as I would like to take credit for this insight, alas, I cannot.  Grandmster Igor Smirnov of Ukraine is an experienced chess teacher who preaches the point of avoiding "useless knowledge" constantly. GM Smirnov has a series of both free and commercial products that I have found very helpful in actually improving my play. You can check out GM Smirnov's blog here.  His youtube page has a ton of free videos that you can see here.
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Next post we will get into the details of the thought process that I am trying to use and talk about my early results.  To close for now, here's a sample of GM Smirnov's  chess lessons: enjoy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVqgKnv37m4

How To Master Anything. Part 2`

So, its been awhile since my last post.  To be honest I was spending a lot of time watching the candidates tournament to determine a challenger to World Chess Champion Vishy Anand.  Magnus Carlsen won the event.  We will talk about that later but first...

When last we left you we had reviewed ideas about how to be excellent.  How to learn new things and achieve at a high level.  If you need a refresher you can read about it here.  If you recall, the main problem is that while you can master anything, conventional, wisdom tells us that it takes a long time.  10,000 hours or approximately ten years.  Now I'm guessing that you're sitting there thinking:

 "Well, Bill this is nice and all but I don't have ten years to master something.  Hell, I'm lucky if I get an hour or two to my self most nights and maybe a free day on the weekend.  I guess if I didn't start when I was twelve, I'm just out of luck."

What if I told you that you could master something to a high level, not in ten years, not in 10,000 hours but in six months?  Would that interest you?

New York Times best selling author Tim Ferriss's latest book "The Four Hour Chef" teaches you the secrets to rapid learning.  Tim has mastered languages in months, competed at a world championship level in Tango dancing shortly after taking it up, started multiple businesses and written best selling books at breakneck speed. If you go to his blog, he will teach you how to learn to speed read in under an hour, how to enhance your memory and even, how to lose weight, all at the speed of light.  What's the trick?

DiSSS.

Deconstruct: Break a task down to the smallest building blocks that you can work with.

Select:  Chose the 20% of critical information that gets you 80% of the results

Sequence: Learn the material in an order that generates early success. Build momentum by setting yourself up for early success that leads into the more challenging material.

Stakes: As much as we like to focus on rewards, the stick is often more powerful than the carrot.  Create a cost for failure.  An example could be, If you fail to reach your goal, then you have to donate money to a cause that you don't support.

You know what?  I think that its time to let Tim explain this to us himself:

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How to Master Anything. Part One

Until recently the prevailing view on developing skill in an activity such as music, math, art, or, what's this blog about again, oh yeah, chess was that you'd better have talent. What's that? You say you weren't born humming Broadway tunes? Oh well, no musical career for you. You weren't doing calculus in preschool? Give it up kid. But hey, Mc'Donalds is hiring. You weren't playing master level chess by twelve? No hope for you.

Starting in the 1970's Professor Anders Ericcsson began to question that model. After all, no one has ever identified a "music gene" or a "math gene". As far as anyone can tell we are in no way pre programmed to perform some random, human created activity. On the other hand it is clear that some people reach astounding heights. How do they do it? Well, I'm sure that you've heard the old story where the tourist asks the street musician,

 "How do I get to Carnegie Hall?"

 "Practice man. Practice."

 Professor Ericsson postulates that it takes 10,000 hours of "deliberate practice" As the link explains, deliberate practice isn't just going out and hitting a few buckets of golf balls on the range or playing a few casual games of blitz and calling it practice. No, deliberate practice is the process of pushing yourself to the limit, getting feedback from failure and correcting constantly.  Its hard and exhausting.  That makes sense though, if it were easy we'd all be world class. These ideas were popularized by Malcolm Gladwell, in his bestseller "Outliers" as well as books such as "Talent is Overrated" by Geoff Colvin and "The Talent Code" by Daniel Coyle. Below is a video profile of Coyle that explains the concept well:

So, this all constitutes a leap forward in the understanding of how we learn, but there is one catch. What if you're all grown up in your 30's or 40's and just finding this out now?  You don't have time to spend 10 years learning something and "everyone knows" that kids learn things faster than adults. Right?  Welll.....

What if I told you that there's at least one pretty successful person out there who thinks that you can cut that time down to a fraction of what most people think that you need?   What if I told you that he believes that you can reach an extremely high level in as little as six months in disciplines as varied as speaking Spanish, doing the tango, or learning to cook like a gourmet? Does that sound like something that you would like to hear about?  Well, than you had better book mark this blog and keep checking back because we are going to find out how to master anything quickly in part 2.

To Be Continued.....

Beer, Pizza,...and Chess?

Okay, so hopefully some of my facebook friends followed the link over here to check this out. Most of my friends will know that I'm a chess player. I love chess kind of like how the pope digs prayer. I've played for years in various tournaments large and small and own a large collection of chess literature. You would think, after all of this time, that I might be pretty good at the game. Sadly, the truth is, I suck. However, that is about to change.


I've created a six month challenge. For those of you who don't know,a chess players strength is measured by a numerical rating system. The higher the rating, the better. My current rating on the site chess.com is 1430. By the end of August, 2013 I will have that rating up to 1800. I'll be using this blog to track my progress, write about things that I've been studying and learning about chess as well as writing about the learning process in general.


But wait! You are all saying, "I clicked on this link for pizza and beer. Where the hell is the PIZZA and BEER?"


Here's the deal. At the end of August, I'm going to throw a bash with pizza and beer at a location to be determined. I'm buying the pizza and at least the first couple of rounds of beverages. All any of you have to do to get invited to this fabulous happening is to check this blog out and leave some comments on a somewhat regular basis. If you are a fellow chess player (you know who you are) by all means feel free to offer advice. If your not a chess player, just say hi, tell me to go jump in a lake, post a link back to your site. Whatever. I just want to make sure I'm not doing this in a vacuum. For those of you who aren't in Alaska and can't join in on the festivities, well I can't airmail pizza and beer but I'll be posting videos, links to cool sites, funny pictures and anything else that I can do in order to make me your favorite attention whore.


I'll be back in a day or so with more details and some cool links but I've typed too much. We need some kittens and music.


Chess cat photo by Jim Duyn, Oakland California


Source: http://www.ibabuzz.com/garybogue/2008/11/14/whos-smarter-humans-or-cats-and-the-winner-is/

Of course, we have to have this: