2/17/2010
ChessCafe.com just published my review of Zenon Franco's book: Counterattack!
Thanks to Matt Hassen, Mike Schulte, and James Sawaski for their invaluable and substantive review of my draft article. 2/14/2010
Stuck rating. Here's the rating chart for a talented fifteen year old chess player. For the last nine months, his rating has plateaued. Is it time for him to take up soccer?
In Seth Godin's best selling business book The Dip, he talks about the importance of knowing when to quit, and when to push through the inevitable dips that we encounter when we pursue anything that is worthwhile and challenging.
There are a lot of good reasons to quit chess--maybe the 15 year old above has decided to focus his efforts on soccer or music or math or writing... But quitting just because you've hit a plateau is quitting for the wrong reason.
When the going gets rough... I think this problem of wanting to give up when we stop improving comes from two sources:
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The Natural Genius Myth says that the abilities of a Bobby Fischer or a Tiger Woods or a Jerry Rice or a Mozart were doled out at birth. The reality is that all of these highest performers worked very hard on very challenging tasks over a long period of time to build the skills that made them world-class performers. Books like Talent is Overrated and The Talent Code show that this deliberate practice is the biggest factor, not talent.
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The Fixed Mindset Myth says that there are fixed limits to our ability, and hitting the plateau is how we know when we've reached our limit. Dr. Carol Dweck in her book Mindset argues for the importance of a growth mindset, where getting better is about effort and learning strategies. Fixed mindset people are often afraid to even try tough problems because doing so pushes them up against these defined--and defining--limits. Growth mindset people on the other hand see the brain as like a muscle, that "grows" with use. They see tough problems as challenges that help make them better.
The teenager whose rating chart is shown above is the now 19 year old Magnus Carlsen. Carlsen decided not to give up chess for soccer. Here's the updated rating chart for the world's #1 rated chess player.
2/1/2010
"Defense requires great courage and great self-control."
-- Emanuel Lasker, quoted in How to Play Chess Endgames
Here are two interesting positions that arose in a recent loss to Michael Dang that Grand Rapids Life Master Kevin Czuhai and I worked through together.
Catlin-Dang
Position after 23...Qxg7
Where should I drop my queen?
A question of style?! In this position, I played the reasonable 24 Qa5. Czuhai was adamant: "The king is over here," he said, not quietly, jerking his thumb at g8. "Kill the king!"
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Catlin-Dang
Position after 40...Re8-e2
I felt lost here. I lunged out in desperation with 41 g4?, and the game ended quickly in Black's favor. Czuhai pointed out that 41 Rc3! is much more tenacious. Frybka confirms that a draw should then have been the likely result.
In Muller and Pajeken's excellent How to Play Chess Endgames, the authors described my wounded mindset exactly:
"Normally [the defender] has to follow the path prescribed for him by his opponent and thus he often has to make forced moves and concessions. When a game follows this course it frequently leads, especially with young and inexperienced players, to a weakening of fighting spirit and concentration and thus errors are likely. It is no accident that in disadvantageous defensive positions that the most blunders are committed."
Here's the game:
12/5/2009
Over Thanksgiving, I got to sit down with Kevin Czuhai as he went through a number of his games.
It was of course a great opportunity for me to listen to a stronger player share his thoughts about games as they unfolded. I was amazed at Kevin's clarity of recall--he even described his opponents' facial expressions during games that were played in the early 80s.
What came through most loud and clear for me was Czuhai's uncompromising attitude. Czuhai's games embody the Nakamura claim that "There is no point of taking draws".
Across time. Czuhai showed me one of his rare draws--against Sammy Reshevsky in a simul. (Eric Fischvogt took down Reshevsky in that simul). The same Reshevsky that battled Lasker, Capablanca, and Alekhine.
Here are some of Kevin's games:
11/15/2009
I was telling my friend David Schock, the Grand Haven filmmaker (and non-chessplayer), about the new issue of Lake Effect Chess. “It’s mostly annotated games by local players,” I said. His eyes glazed a bit, making me realize that “annotated games” wasn’t a helpful description. I explained what an annotated game is, and David of course immediately got it. Then David surprised me with a very cool analogy. “It’s like those magazines filled with sheet music,” he said.
Exactly! It frustrates me that I can share out a fine chess game that I've seen--or on rare occasion helped create--only with other chess players. A magazine filled with sheet music must have similar restrictions in its audience appeal!
11/12/2009
In one of his game notes, Winning with the Stonewall Dutch co-author Simon Agdestein emphatically answers the question:
Q: At what point did you realize you were winning?
Agdestein: "Actually, one of the most stupid questions I get during games is 'How is it going?' How should I know? That depends on what I'm going to do on the next few moves, and if I should go around answering such silly questions I would definitely lose concentration and then probably the game as well. The moment you start thinking 'now I'm winning' or anything similar, it's time to pull yourself together and concentrate on the position."
"I often tell my students that good players are like monsters from horror movies. You can shoot them and stab them but they won't lie down and even after they are confirmed dead they keep coming after you. So never relax!"
11/9/2009
My golfer friend McNally once told me “I can go out, play eighteen holes, and have a terrible, terrible round. But every time I go out, there’s that one beautiful unexpected shot that keeps me coming back again.” I thought of that beautiful shot where everything goes right when James Sawaski shared this wonderful little game with me:
Randolph-Sawaski, ICCF, 2009
Position after 15 Ke1-f2
Black to Move
Solution here:
10/30/2009
Challenging and fun exercises? I help out at some local chess clubs, and try to find exercises that will be challenging and fun for some of the more ambitious “local class” (roughly USCF 800 to USCF 1100) kids. One exercise that I thought at the time had worked well was this:
Before you make your move, write down both your move and your best guess for your opponent’s reply. (You don’t need to let your opponent see what you’re writing down).
And yes, I did explain that this is a training exercise, and that what we were doing is considered “illegal notetaking” in a tournament game. I tried this exercise twice, and got these results:
- In both cases, the kids said after the game, “This is the best chess game that I’ve ever played!” Wow, I thought.
- And, in both cases, the student really, really didn’t want to repeat the experiment. "Too hard!--I just want to play speed chess." Uh oh, I thought.
So, I felt that I had succeeded in identifying a deliberate practice exercise. But it was also too much work (for these kids at this point in time), which called into question any value there might be in the exercise.
Of course, different kids have different tolerances for pushing out the limits of their comfort zone. I remember a year or so back, challenging my friend Peter Chen (then about an 11 year old USCF 1600 player) to a blindfold game. “1 e4”. I said. “1 e5!” he shot back. “2f4”. Pause. Two or three moves later he’d lost the thread. That wasn’t the end of the story. About four weeks later, I saw Peter again, and he said, “How about another blindfold game?” OK, so 12 or 15 moves in, I lost the thread. Peter took our first game as a challenge, something he needed to work on, and obviously, he had worked on it pretty hard during those four weeks.
Kids just want to have fun? Peter’s Coach Dr. Tony Palmer and I were having lunch last Saturday with West Michigan Chess Association’s Dr. Mike Riolo, and Mike and I were both talking about the importance of helping kids learn how to get better (at chess, at math, etc.) through hard work and improved learning strategies. Tony pointed out that juniors are less interested in structured learning (lessons, study) for the sake of improving; they are more interested in improving for the sake of winning.
So, there will always be that balancing act. Creating meaningful deliberate practice chess exercises is a necessary but not sufficient condition for helping kids to improve. It’s also necessary to make what we do fun for the kids.
Applied Deliberate Practice + Fun?! Tomorrow, we’re doing to have a short endgame workshop before a kids' invitational tournament that will serve as a warm-up for Jenny Skidmore’s Scholastic Club Championship. I want to have the kids try a couple of basic exercises, like a Trebuchet position, and KR and RP on the 7th versus K and Rook. I’m going to borrow a page from our Ben, and have them skittle each other (game in two minutes with a five second increment) with the positions before we talk about them. I'll report back on how it goes!
I’d also love to share out your ideas on challenging, fun exercises to help the kids that we work with get better at chess! Please send me an e-mail at westmichiganchess@gmail.com
10/17/2009
A couple years back, Kevin Czuhai was playing in a double round robin G/10 that Kent Quander hosted. Czuhai won most of his games, but what still stands out for me was watching him pull himself to his feet after a close game, sweat-soaked and wobbly. Czuhai looked down at his damp black t-shirt clinging to his torso and said, “My body’s just drenched in adrenaline.”
The question that I ask myself now is, “Does a chess player play his or her best game when they are that emotionally connected?”
I think that chess players can look for insight from sports psychologists—a group of cognitive psychologists that study (how to maximize) sports performance. In Friday’s Wall Street Journal, there’s an article that wonders if the New York Yankees are playing better baseball this year because they are more relaxed:
"Fun creates winning," [New York Yankee Nick] Swisher said earlier this season. "You're looser when you're having fun. Your true ability comes out, rather than being tense."
There is some scientific backing for this concept. Research shows that heightened anxiety causes athletes' muscles to tighten and decreases their mental focus. "The classic example is when someone freezes from stress," said Daniel Gould, a sports-psychology professor at Michigan State and co-author of "Understanding Psychological Preparation for Sport: Theory and Practice of Elite Performers." "In sports, you don't see people freeze, but an athlete that's a little tight might miss the plate by a hair."
Not all athletes play their best when they're relaxed. "It's like each of us has our own temperature we perform best at," Prof. Gould said, "and you have a thermostat. You learn to psych yourself up if you're not up enough, and you learn how to cool off a little if you're too hot." But for the most part, psychologists say, professional athletes need to keep stress levels down. "Having a relaxed clubhouse is good," Mr. Gould said.
So is Czuhai a strong player because he can get that worked up over a 10-minute game, or would he be even stronger if he was somewhat more detached?
9/28/2009
Alisher Sanetullaev is the Lansing team's resident nuclear physicist and 1 e4 player! |
On Sunday, the Lansing All Stars hosted the West Michigan Coast in a quick-rated double Scheveningen format at Michigan State University.
West Michigan Coast won 9.5 – 8.5, relying on the broad back of Grand Rapids Life Master Eric Fischvogt—Eric posted a terrific +3 performance to carry our day!
A selection of games from the event can be found here:
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 Catlin-Nichols, Round 2
Black to Move
Position after 26 Ba5-d2.
Tony now played 26...Bd3 27 Rd1 and Black went on to win, but 26…Rd1! ends White at once (27 Bc1 Bd3).
 Nichols-Catlin, Round 5
White to Move
Position after my too-greedy 18…Bf5xRb1?
Here, Tony continued with 19 Qe6+ with some advantage. But the win is there immediately with 19 Qc4+ (keeping e6 for the N on f3) 19…Kf8 20 Ng5 with the dual threats of 21 Nh7# and 21 Ne6+.
A selection of games from the event can be found here:
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