What it's all about
Hi everyone, and thanks for visiting. As some of you may or may not know (well I guess all of you may or may not know) I am going to try to go to the World Open at the beginning of July, and there is a $10,000 First Prize in my section. Starting June 1st my rating is officially going to be 1597 thanks to a dreadful Amateur Team East, and Maryland Open. I feel like I am probably about a 1750 now in strength, and maybe even higher if I play more practically.
Chess is a game, and the object of course is to win. If you are in a tournament to win, this should obviously be your primary objective, with things like "finding the best move" secondary to winning. This is a huge problem I have. When there is a decision before me, that I know only matters a little bit, for example if I should develop my bishop to g4, f5, or d7, I often take forever making it because I am looking at 2937182 lines that all look about the same. I am trying my hardest to understand this, and to just make a move in these situations, so I do not get into time pressure later.
Now if you are playing mainly to improve, and winning is secondary, then perhaps finding the best move you can in the time available is the way to go, but getting into heinous time pressure absoutely kills your winning chances. Believe me, I know. In three DC Chess League matches in a row I had dead winning positions, and blundered a piece in time pressure at the end of the first time control. Luckily my positions were so good before this that I managed 1.5/3 in these games anyway, but if I had had plenty of time to think about my moves I would have gotten 3/3.
To improve on this aspect of my game, as well as my general understanding, I am going to play as much chess as I can in the next month, at all time controls. I am going to post some/all of the serious games I play here with some annotations, and I want you guys to tell me what you think. It will be good for me to go through each game and annotate them all, but it will be wonderful for you guys to look over them and post some opinions too. And if we work together maybe I can come home next July 4th with a nice check.
posted by Kyle @ 3:11 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
I generally agree with Todd; usually there is a general structural principle that allows you to decide without worrying too much about theory (if you have to decide, you don't know the theory :P).
For example, in the main lines of the Slav with dxc4, generally you play Bg4 if it is a pin and Qb3 doesn't work, and look to play ...c5. Otherwise, Bf5, and play to stop e2-e4. There are subtleties (Generally ...Bf5 + ...Na6 isn't too effective), but you don't have to spend time on that decision.
So theory does help, but it mostly ends up being a pattern-recognition tool; if you know the lines, you know the concepts. In classville the likelihood that your opponent is going to follow theory past move 8 is pretty low anyway; I used to know the Dragon 15-20 moves deep in every line, but it rarely helped except that I could recognize what types of positions the "standard" sacrifices worked in (Rxc3, Bx or Nxg4, etc).
Graham
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