Studying GM Games

Hey, gang! I recently had an article published about how to best study chess using the published games of Grandmasters. Of course, there are endless ways to study those games, but I tried to highlight some of the best options.

Anyhow, give it a read and let me know what you think!

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2311909/chess_101_studying_grandmaster_games.html?cat=24

It's not bad.  I thought your first tip was best, but that's because, until recently, i had never heard of that idea before.  I guess i felt like i had heard of the other ideas before, but that's just an opinion thing.  My main issue regarding the study of GM games is i'm not sure what GM's to focus on.  I know what my style of play is, but i'm not sure what GM i should look at concerning this because, as you pointed out, 2500 is a GM, and there are many options.  Congrats on getting published. 

Thanks for the read!  What is your style of play, gimly?  :)

Nice article to start with. First of all "using software to study game" first study the game, guess the moves, make notes of it, ask yourself why was this good or bad move, was your guess good ? then you can check it with the software.

Good point, kco!  Indeed, that order of study will likely bring the most positive results!  :)

Good article. I found it very helpful.

Thanks!  :)

Nice article. It's also very helpful to find a reputable (preferably GM) commentary. Commentators will often give you the reasoning behind a particular line of play, while your engine only says "+0.14".  Useful commentaries for recent super-GM games can be found on sites like Chessbase, Chessvibes and Chessdom. The latter even provides live commentary.

Fischer for all round technique and endgame play and kasparov for tactics. These 2 are enough. Spassky and petrosian are the 2 most instructive soviet GMs. Dont study modern masters too much. Their styles are usually studied and borrowed and lack originality if u know what i mean

One law I abide by is to stay away from games annoted by Kasparov unless you are some sort of Einstein. I know many authors who prefer concrete variations over verbal comments, but Kasparov simply goes overboard! Kasparov would, at several junctures of a game - 'White should have played...' and then follow up with some 10 pages of analysis. Kasparov is a strong player, I know, but if I wanted that much analysis, I could've gone to Rybka and told him to crack up an 'a23142'.

I exaggerated a lot here I know, but hey, what am I, a club player of no great playing ability.

This is a good little article. My one, and only, criticism is the whole "find a grandmaster of your style" thing.

I've been playing chess for about a year and a half now, and only recently have I discovered that I'm more naturally suited to semi-open or closed positions than I am to open slugfests. Though I'd love to think of myself as a Tal, Fischer or Anand, I'm actually more of a Petrosian or Karpov.

My point being, that it may take a while before you can nail down what type of playing style you have - mainly because most beginners start out with 1 e4 and play open positions for a while. Though reading any annotated GM game will certainly help, I recommend buying Chernev's "Logical Chess" book, as this describes each move played in laymans terms...

Agreed on the style thing. Almost all of us are pretty low in the food chain and a well-articulated style doesn't come this low. Reb mentions this in his profile, quoting an anonymous source that under 2500 no one really has a style.

For us, we a pretty much either aggressive/risk takers or defensive/conservative, not equating aggresive with risk-taking, and ditto for defensive/conservative. One can play conservatively and still somewhat aggressively, for example.

I also would not want anyone to decide their style needs to be cemented by many years of study of, say, very positional players like Andersson. Instead pick up a player who demonstrates in his games something you want to learn more about, be it quiet positions or big kingside attacks.

For all practical purposes, you'd want to be proficient in all the basic stuff including attack, defense, quiet positional play, etcetera.

Hey those are good points!  I can see that.  How that slipped by me is beyond me lol.  Thanks for the criticism, though.  It will make future articles more concrete!

Chess.com rocks.  :)