J'adoube. . .the off-center Knight™

I picked up de La Maza's book a couple of weeks ago. It looked interesting and noted it had a novel systematic approach. I'm 46 now but I seriously started working on my chess skills about 6 months ago when I was 45, so I'm really starting late. I'm too beat up from years of karate, triathlons and other sports to keep at it at the same competitive level I did for years. . .getting old sucks but the alternative isn't so great either. Chess is something I can do for the rest of my life.

I actually play okay. . .meaning that I have played off and on for years and can dispatch your normal guy off the street with ease and even class players, but I want to play at a much higher level. For some time I looked for some type of systematic approach . A friend of mine who plays around a 2200 level recommended John Nunn's book. It's good - really good - but it teaches positional play and strategy and I found myself still losing to stupid tactical errors. My friend - the 2200 player - plays me usually 10-12 times a week and it's fun but frustrating. Once in a while I can give him a good game - just a week ago he blundered badly on the endgame and I actually made him sweat out a win. . .it was just like playing golf : that one good shot was enough to keep me coming back for more.

I thought learning more openings would prevent this, but against an experienced player, it's not much help the minute they go off book. I picked up a few tactics books and started working on them, but after reading through de la Maza'a book, I figured it was worth a try to use his schedule.

It makes sense. For years as a karate-ka, practising simple reverse punches is still de riguer - chess has to have it's equivalent.

I'm already through the Concentric Circles and the Knight Sight exercises - I'm working on the Pawn Grabs and Pawn Mines starting today. At the end of this first phase, I was doing all the circles in about 15 minutes - when I first started I think it took me 30 minutes to get through the Bishop, Knight and Rook drill.

I will probably do the Knight Flight drill, but I'm not ready to take a whole 5 hours just for the one exercise.

Like a lot of people, I've modified the de la Maza program just a little to suit me. For instance, I think it is absolutely necessary to be able to visualize the whole board and even play a blindfold game if you want to be able to challenge really good players. I bought Chess Eye and it has a great program of exercises. I've run the first exercise 500 times and plan on doing it 1000 times. The first 500 times was mainly to make sure I could name the color of any square instantly without thinking about it and trying to visualize it's position on the board. The second 500 times I will also try to visualize where the square is and the surrounding squares - especially the diagonal it is on. I also have my practice chess board in front of me so I can quickly look down at it to reinforce my mental image. Need to involve all those senses. . .which reminds me. . .

As long as you are doing the Concentric Circles, etc., make sure that when you touch the squares or move a piece, you quietly announce to yourself the squares involved. I emphacize quietly as you don't want folks around you to think you are mildly psychotic. . .sitting around studying chess boards is already going to flag you as an uber-geek as it is and we don't need to underline just how pathetic chess enthusiasts already are. . .

Back on subject: I think that if I go through the 11 sets of Chess Eye exercises simultaneously while doing de la Maza's program, I can really excel at the visualization.

I've also added some training onto the schedule for after the completion of de la Maza's program. I have a complete set of middlegame puzzles that I will drill on for another 4-5 months.

De la Maza's comments in the book tends to leave the reader with notion that getting to 2200 is an unknown path (probably because he didn't blaze one). I don't think so. I often lose games because I arrive at the end of the opening and don't often know what to do next. Against class players this isn't as much of a handicap as when playing higher rated players.

I think that studying as many lines from as many variations as possible gives you a rich database of positions to play from. GM's don't analyse all the lines OTB - they already have a lot of them committed to memory. They look for the pattern on the board and if it's recognizable, they can calculate based on their foundational knowledge. It reminds me of my job as a software engineer - a lot of the software achitecture designed can be taken straight from the patterns catalog (GOF, for instance). I believe my plan is the next logical step to becoming a better strategic, and overall, player. Tactics is but the foundation. When I became a black belt in karate, I understood that this was merely the beginning of my training, not the end. I had become an expert at fighting - the next levels of training would make me the master of my mind and body. Chess has it's similar analog. Tactics can make you an expert, but strategic play is what makes you the master.

Anyway, I have about another week of "Chess Vision" drills before I begin the Seven Circles with the tactics. That is the real reason I started this blog - to talk to myself about how I'm doing so I can track my progress, so it's off to the coffee shop to stare at a chess board and push pawns around. . .