Real Chess,Time Management and Care: Putting it all together

http://www.chesscafe.com/text/heisman10.pdf

Novice Nook
Novice Nook
Dan Heisman
Real Chess,Time Management and
Care:
Putting It All Together
“Your game is only as good as your worst move.” – Dan H. 2001
I commonly run across the sad case of a student who wants to show
me a game containing a new idea they found after careful study on the
9
th move of some variation of the Sicilian, but later lost because they
moved too quickly and overlooked the loss of a piece to a simple
double attack. In the non-chess world this misplaced priority is called
“penny wise and pound foolish.”
When I suggest reviewing the thought process that caused him to lose
the piece, he often brushes it off with a statement such as, “Oh, I just
moved too fast” or “Yeah, I just overlooked his check.” They are
much more interested in my opinion of their new 9th move. I try to
politely say “But you don’t get it! The reason you are 1200 and not
1600 has MUCH more to do with the carelessness or bad time
management that caused you to lose the piece than it does from your
lack of knowledge of the Sicilian.” Want proof? Take a 1600 player
and make him play an opening he never has before in his life – he still
plays close to 1600; take a 1200 and let him play his favorite opening
and he still usually plays like a 1200.
While it is true that most players under 1400 don’t know a great deal
about openings, endgames, or positional play, a great majority of their
games are (or could have been!) lost not because of some opening trap,
bad plan, endgame subtlety, or complex combination, but because of
some basic tactical oversight. That is why the repetitious practice of
basic tactical motifs, in all their guises, is by far the most important
thing you can do when first studying chess.
Learning new patterns is necessary for improvement, but not the only
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way to improve. Ask yourself the following question, “Of all the
games I have lost recently, what percent were lost because of
something I did not know, and what percent were lost due to
something I already knew, but were not careful to look for?”
If you are like most non-advanced players many, if not most, of your
losses are due to a tactical oversight on a pattern that you already
knew: putting a piece en prise, miscounting the safety of a piece,
missing a simple double attack or fork, allowing a back-rank mate, etc.
Since you already are familiar with those tactics, that means either that
you played carelessly, did not practice “Real Chess”, or have no
consistent thinking pattern.
Before I began Novice Nook I wrote an article for ChessCafe.com
titled “The Secrets to Real Chess”, which is available in the archives
(www.chesscafe.com/text/real.txt). I am proud to say this article was
awarded runner-up for Best Web Article of the Year by the Chess
Journalists of America, so if you have not read it, I highly recommend
it. Consequently I wrote another on Time Management
(www.chesscafe.com/text/time.txt), which also contained important
information about how to conduct a game. I will summarize each in a
paragraph below (but the following not contain the entire concepts, so
it will still be helpful to read these articles):
The key to Real Chess is, for the most positions, establishing a safe
Principal Variation (PV) of at least three half-moves (ply) until
quiescence: lack of checks, captures, or threats. A PV is what a chess
program displays in analysis mode: the “best play” for each side. In
order to practice Real Chess, on each move you must at least consider
all your opponent’s checks, captures, and threats on his next move (as
well as yours on this one), so that you can determine this move that
you can safely meet each next move. You never want to be “surprised”
by an opponent’s reply that contains a threat and then discover you
cannot meet it – the result is usually a losing position. So, for each
candidate move that you are considering, you have to put yourself in
your opponent’s shoes and find his best reply – if you can meet any
threats that reply generates, then you have a decent candidate move.
Put it in your pocket because “When you see a good move, look for a
better one.” (Tip: One good way to discover your opponent’s threats
are to assume that you “pass”- make no move – and see what he could
then do to you next move.)
Consider Time Management like the pacing of a marathon runner. A
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good marathon runner would never sprint a quarter mile and then drop
over, nor would he take baby steps to ensure never running short of
breath. Instead he will pace himself to cover the 26+ miles in as little
time as possible, while always preserving enough energy to finish the
race. A good chess player must do the same during slow (normal)
games: he must play slow enough to use almost all of his time, never
playing so fast that he has lots of left over time at the end, nor so slow
that he has to play half his game in the final minute. To play at either
of those wrong paces invites disaster via unnecessarily quick moves,
either sooner or later. Yes, some top players do get into habitual time
trouble, but often it is because their competition is so good that they
feel that on certain moves they need additional time to “stay in the
game.” But most of these top players would tell you they would rather
have more time at the end to play well then, too!
The interesting part about both Real Chess and Time Management is
that both have to be practiced 100% of the time – 98% does not nearly
work. For example, if on 98% of the moves (49/50) you play correctly,
but on one move you decide to just relax and “see what happens”, that
can be a disaster. By missing that one move each game you will
consistently play hundreds of points weaker than your strength would
have been if you had played every move carefully. It is similar with
time – if you play even one move fast that may be enough to cause you
to lose and, if you play too slowly and then have to play quickly
during time pressure (as many top players do), then again just one big
slip at the end may easily be enough to cost you the game.
Playing Real Chess and practicing good time management requires
being careful, but not pedantic. The ratings of two equally
knowledgeable players may be separated by hundreds of points if one
is more careful. A careful player need not be indecisive – those are two
different qualities. But a player who is naturally not careful at other
things may find that in chess that lack of care results in sudden
catastrophes. We all know players who say, “I am 1600 and I was
beating that 1900, but then he got lucky…” The explanation is that the
1600 may be better in all technical phases of the game, but the 1900
may have learned to be careful on all his moves every game, while the
1600 player is one of those 98% types. While this does not explain the
differences between many 1600 and 1900 players (or 1100 and 1400),
it definitely applies to some.
So if you are not the careful type or don’t know how to manage your
time, what can you do?” The following suggestions should help
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● 1. Think for a while about the advice in this column. If you do
not buy into the idea of being careful every move, you are
likely to remain below your potential. The first step to
improvement is usually recognizing the problem – a state of
denial won’t help. Open-minded bright players who realize they
are making mistakes and try to minimize/correct those mistakes
improve more rapidly than stubborn geniuses.
● 2. Learn to pace yourself. Figure out approximately how much
time you have for each move before the game starts. For
example, if you are playing an on-line game with a “30/30”
time limit (30 minutes with a 30 second increment), do the
following math: the average game takes about 35 moves, so use
40 to be conservative. In this case you have 30x60 + 30x40 =
3000 seconds to make 40 moves, or 75 seconds per move. In
reality, you should have more time than this for each “thinking”
move, because hopefully you will know a couple of moves in
the opening and sometimes you may have positions with only
one legal move, etc. Should you take 75 seconds on each of the
other moves? Of course not – some tactical positions may
require 5 or even (rarely) 10 minutes of thought, while a
developing move or recapture may only take 5-20 seconds. It is
important to take more time on moves which are likely to
decide the game – taking 3 minutes to decide which Rook to
move to d1 in the opening and then leaving yourself only 2
minutes to play the entire endgame is just silly. If it looks like
the game is going to be a long one, start speeding up; if the
game is sharp and it looks as though someone will probably be
up a piece at move 25, slow down and try to raise the
probability that it will be you up a piece – hopefully you can
play a little quicker and still win once you are way ahead (if
not, refer to last month’s Novice Nook). If you roughly estimate
the time per move a few times you probably never have to do it
again – you will learn to pace yourself just from experience. At
the very least, when playing over-the-board write down your
remaining time after each move: if it looks like you have lots of
time, slow down, and if looks as though you are running out of
time, start to speed up. Simple advice, but it works!
● 3. Your opponent’s previous move should never contain any
“secrets”! If you take your time and look around, sometimes
you might be surprised at how it changed the position and what
kind of measures you should be considering.
● 4. Play each move and each game with pride, care, and
optimism:
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Pride because your game represents your
accomplishment, and each move should be a
representation of the best thoughts you have about the
position, which you are hopefully proud to show
everyone.
Care because without care you probably won’t be so
proud. Examples of playing with care: taking your time,
looking for the total effect of your opponent’s moves,
creating a PV of at least 3 (on most moves) and, “If you
see a good move – look for a better one!”
Optimism because chess is a mental game and if you
feel you are going to make bad moves or play a bad
game you will probably make it a self-fulfilling
prophecy! In the first game that I ever played a master
my thoughts were not “I am probably going to lose,” but
rather “I’ll do the best I can and see what happens.” I
won.
● 5. Use a “Sanity Check” before making each move. A sanity
check is easily defined for over-the-board play: after you decide
on your move, write it down and take a deep breath or close
your eyes for a second. Then take a fresh look at the board and
say to yourself, “Is my planned move insane? Will the piece be
safe? Am I just missing an easy checkmate - for me or him?
Can someone just capture a Queen instead?” etc. If you then
still don’t see anything, make your move and hit your clock. On
the Internet, a similar thing can be tried – once you have
decided on your move, then close your eyes for second and
then do the sanity check.
● 6. Tactics is the science of chess safety. You can go a long way
being careful and just concentrating on two things: safety and
activity. And these two are really related because you keep
pieces safe so that they can do something and you if pieces are
not doing anything it is almost as if they were not safe and you
lost them. You will be surprised what your army can do when it
is safe and all the pieces are doing something.
● 7. Unless you are really good already, don’t fool yourself into
thinking you don’t need to do any of this. If you never make a
bad mistake in a slow game, maybe you are that good already.
But I have a hunch that a high percentage of my readers would
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be much better if they just paced themselves better and played
more carefully than if they study 100 more opening books.
After I wrote the initial “Secret to Real Chess” article I got email from all over the world saying things similar to, “Thanks!
In 20 years I never realized what it took to play good chess, and
now I do.” Of course, knowing what to do is not at all the same
as doing it.
A caveat: Will doing all the above make you an expert or master? Not
very likely! If it were that easy, then lots of players would be really
good. All that other stuff with openings, endgames, positional play,
planning, combinations, etc. is still required to attain high level play. It
is just that without instigating “real chess” and decent time
management, none of the other stuff will matter much. As logicians
like to say, “It is necessary but not sufficient.” Once you are
consistently careful and want to improve steadily, finding a good
instructor will help you learn the “good” stuff better and more
efficiently. No one ever got real good without any help – and no book
can look at a game you played and tell you what you are doing wrong
(but if it is a tactical mistake, using a software program can identify
those errors.)
Note to those who believe that learning opening lines is more
important than understanding opening principles: if your opponent
takes you out of your book and you first thought is not just to complete
your development – including castling – then maybe you should take a
couple of hours to review those principles instead of several dozen
hours to learn another opening line. Many of my students know their
openings better than I know them -and they must have spent a lot of
hours learning them - but then are at a complete loss when their
opponent inevitably varies. I got my rating up to 1900 before I learned
a great deal about specific opening lines and so did many other strong
players, but almost all of us knew quite a bit about tactics and general
opening principles, and we all played carefully on each move.
Last Month's Novice Nook: If someone asked me “What would be
your most likely 7th common chess state?” it would be a queenless
middlegame – can you think of some guidelines for that one?
Saavedra
Sometimes when I write a “talky” column, I like to throw in a problem
or a question from a reader (please e-mail!) to end on a lighter note. In
an early Novice Nook, I showed what might be the three most famous
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