Rapid Chess Improvement

Hello everyone

 My first post to these forums and I'm interested in a little feedback if I could.

 I'm an adult beginner with Chess and looking to improve my game.  I've been playing now for about 3 months and in that time I've joined a local Chess club and played in my first event (and received my first rating in the mid 600s).

 I've been reading the basic dummies guides and watched videos by both Sierwan and Roman's Labs and have been looking at ways to improve my game.

 Recently I stumbled across the 7 Circles program inspired by the book Rapid Chess Improvement (Michael de la Maza) and although I've seen some fairly negative reviews of the work (this one by Jeremy Silman was really critical!) I still strongly believe that at the lower levels, a training regime with drills based around tactics will definitely help my play.

 As such, I'm looking to join the ranks of the Knights Errant  and really devote myself to the rigorous training program but need some advice.

 For those who are not up to speed on this program, it's summarised pretty well in two online PDFs here and here.  The program runs over 127 days and is broken up basically as follows :

 Step 1 (Days 0 - 28) - Chess Vision Improvement through Micro Drills & Concentric Square theory

Days 0-14 : Forks and Skewers

Days 15-28 : Knight Sight  drills

 Step 2 (Days 28 - 155) - Improving Calculation Ability with the 7 Circles

Solving a collection of 1000 tactical problems in order of difficulty in ever increasingly shortened periods of time.

 ie The first run through the problem set is done in 64 days - and then it's halved as you go through again and again until you complete the entire problem set in one single day.

Each run through the the set of problems constitutes a 'circle'.  So the 7th Circle is 64 Days, the 6th is 32 days, 5th is 16 days, 4th is 8 days, 3rd is 4 days, 2nd is 2 days and the first Circle is the last day - a total of 127 days.

 Step 3 - Learning how to Think

This is the process of adjusting the thought process in how you address your tactical play.  A series of steps designed to analyze your situation and come up with a consistent and repeatable pattern for playing your moves at the table.  There is no time frame for this step and I personally see this process as a more personal and adaptive approach to implementing your tactical drilling into practise.

 Sounds like quite a mouthful and there's a decent amount of discussion about the real benefits of doing such exercises.  As some who's really just a newcomer to the game, I've found that most of my losses at the table have been in the middle game and losing material which makes the end game just another process for me on the way to a loss.  I lack any real strength in the mid game at the moment which is why I am looking to commit to this training regime!

 So getting back to the point, I'm after some advice.

In the first stage of the program, you need to study concentric exercises.  Now whilst there's plenty of software for doing the actual circles themselves (I'm using CTB myself) - I am yet to get advice or a recommendation on software to do the first 28 day drills.

 Can anyone please advise of what would be a good software package to do this.

At present I have access to :

 CTB, CTB (intermediate), CT Art 3.0, Total Chess Training, Chessmaster 10 and Fritz 10.

For those wishing to follow my progress, please check out my blog.

 Cheers and thanks everyone for looking.

If your rating is only 600, then you're not even good enough to start such a program. It's really for people in the 1200-1400 range trying to hit the 1800 range (and then hitting a wall there, because they don't know anything about endgames, positional play, openings, etc). Instead of getting a set of 1000 intermediate level puzzles and going over them that much, I'd say you'll probably benefit more from 300-400 easy puzzles. You have to get used to spotting 1-2 move tactics before you start working on more complex patterns. 

My recommendation is to skip this method for now. Instead, head to chesscafe.com, click on the "archives" link, and head to Dan Heisman's Novice Nook column. There's one particular column about a generic improvement plan, which includes lots of tactical study as a primary focus (including book recommendations), but also involves some other stuff.

And ignore Batgirl. She's just grumpy because Batman won't let her hang out in the cave.

--Fromper

Thanks guys and gals.  My rating is that low because it's my first tournament and it was a rapid event which I normally don't play.

 I am familiar with Dan's work, I have all 70 something PDFs on file and read them regularly.

I was hoping to get a little more specific advice to my question however.

Perhaps I am better off asking those who have already completed the program.

Cheers 

Welcome! Why don't you drop a note to Blue Devil so he can officially announce you to the other knights and add you to the blog roll?

 Also, don't forget to visit loomis, dktransform, and my blog.  :)

I find a physical board is the easiest. Knight vision drills are useful, because they help you to avoid those dreaded knight forks and perhaps score some yourself! Da La Maza is not the first person to recommend them. Seirawan has recommended them for years.

There are many good routines, but mine goes like this: 

“One involves placing pawns in different locations on the board and, using a clock or stopwatch, seeing how fast you can move a knight to certain squares without landing on a square occupied by or attacked by a pawn. The standard is putting black pawns on c3, c6, f3, f6 and moving the white knight from a1 to b1 to c1 (not as easy as it sounds: a1-c2-a3-b1*-a3-c2-d4-b3-c1*, etc., all along the rim of the board in sequence (h1, h2, etc.). If you can make it around to a8 in under 10 minutes you’re doing okay, under five doing very well. I can guarantee your “knight vision” will improve if you do this every once in a while (you should also lower your time). Don’t get depressed if it takes you 15 minutes or more, it’s tough.”

"Instead of getting a set of 1000 intermediate level puzzles and going over them that much, I'd say you'll probably benefit more from 300-400 easy puzzles."

That's why many knights now begin with Chess Tactics for Beginners. 

Cheers and thanks for that.

 Well I have my own board and I guess I could do the drills that way, it's just a shame I can't do them with software on the PC is all.

 That said, I was sure that Chessmaster 10 offered something like this in it's training program, I think I better go check!

 Oh btw, I've already dropped a line to  BlueDevil and updated my blog.  If I'm missing any of the Knights Errant, be sure to let me know!

Cheers 

I would strongly advise against your plan. Puzzles are great for your game, but they have their place.

If you want to get better at solving chess puzzles, solving thousands of puzzles ought to do it. If you want to get better at chess, you gotta play the game. My advice to a beginner is to play games against people at about the same strength as you and occasionally players a good deal better than you. Analyze your games and try to find improvements on your moves and plans. Along with this, you should definitely study tactics and strategy on your own. Do puzzles, read books, study openings, study endgames, study games of the greats. I believe the most rapid improvement will come from playing the game as well as studying the game in a variety of ways.

It seems as if someone introduced you to one area of chess study, and now you want to beat away at it until you hit a wall. Chess is a complex game, and there are many different things about the game that a player has to understand. Think about soccer, or rugby, or whatever. If you just do drills all the time, you are going to become a better athlete, but your game will only improve so much. If you want to get better at the game, you have to get out on the field and take some real shots at the goal while under pressure.

If someone told you that this will rapidly improve your chess, don't listen to them!  Please take my advice, or at least ask some more good chess players that you know what they think.

I wish I had seen this earlier!

 I have much experience with this, as I started the Circles when I was a true beginner in chess. 

To a true beginner I would recommend Wolff's book (Idiot's Guide to Chess). Don' let the name fool you. Work through that while playing a lot and going over your games with a person or computer. Play tons. Have someone better show you the missed tactics. This is better than studies from books as they are personal, more likely to stick. Play slow, fast, medium time control games, but go over all of them with your chess computer or friend. There will be opportunities for learning tactics in every one of your games, even your wins.

Once you have done all this, you will start to realize you suck at tactics, that you are just dropping pieces all the time. This isn't personal: all beginners suck at tactics. So in addition to playing, you'll probably also want to work on tactical problems. The Circles are one approach which I found helpful.

 Heisman has been recommending doing the Circles for quite a while (just not with CT-Art, as the problems are too complex). He recommends it in his most recent (October 2007) article, and in his tactics book (Back to Basics). You could say he is just being self-promotional because he has a new tactics book out, but that would be silly. He only needs you to work through his book once to make your money!

I have been a serious chess player/trainer all my life, whatever you do to improve your chess make sure you don't follow "Rapid chess improvement" by michael de la maza, I am telling you this from my heart, I am going to be plain and at front and say it, yes say it: Rapid chess improvement is the stupidest most absurd chess training plan/chess reasoning I have heard/seen in my life and I am sure I will never see something stupider than that, I am not going to tell you all the reasons why this rapid chess improvement method by michael de la maza is stupid, I am just going to tell you that a person training chess, beginner, intermidiate or above expert level should "never ever never ever" expend more than 20% if not less per centage of his chess training time solving chess problems or training tactics, you should study chess in a way which would let tactics " come to your training by itself " as you study chess books, chess DVDs, games from other players, your own games etc, you should never put emphasis on tactics, believe me it will drive you away from chess and it will make you into a chess problems solver which is a completely different sport,  I was a master by the age of 18 (back when to be a master FIDE rated was tough), nowdays i am an old man, I don't remember having solved more than 40 or less chess problems in my life, and I can say i have very good tactical skills, you will get your tactical knowledge "whether you like it or not" just by doing normal chess related activities like playing, reading chess books, checking games from great chess players etc, just like a fish learn to swim by just being in the water a chess player learn tactics by just being in chess, don't you let anybody tell you otherwise, telling you about: "you sould embed patterns in your head" and all that nonsense, there are infinite number of tactical conbinations that can happen in your games and they are all related to similar themes, don't even waste your time in learning how these tactical themes are called, a baby don't need to know water is called water to drink it....... 

When I first began playing - I just couldn't get enough of it. Perhaps I began at about 600 level but I don't know.  I learnt rapidly by playing stronger players than I and getting soundly beaten. If you love chess and have fun with it and don't let your ego get involved then you will improve rapidly simply by playing. I agree with Fromper that training regimes are pointless unless you hit a wall in your development. But this wont happen for a long time yet.

The only study I would recommend to players of any beginner level is - opening principles, understanding the importance of the center, mobility and keeping communication between your pieces (having your pieces look after each other) This will rapidly improve your game.

I completely agree...not necessarily about the book(I haven't read the book).  While I am no master I play about 17-1800 level chess and most of it came from playing games and a few opening books with practically no "puzzle work".  My suggestion for a complete beginner would be to first just work on things such as figuring out if you can lose a piece when it is being attacked and those types of things.  Someone who is a beginner won't SEE tactics.  They won't even see if they can lose a piece(like in instances where there is more than one attacker and they have one defending). 

So once you get all that down then I would suggest looking up an opening and playing just one.  After playing that same opening over and over again you will start to see tactics which come out of this type of position. 

That is pretty much how I improved (in addition to playing and watching better players play of course.  For gm games going over annotated games is best.  Even advanced players don't understand a lot of what goes on in gm games at times.).  Now tactics aren't something that I generally need to look for the position just tells me its there(although the move order for me personally is what I need to actually think about most of the time.)  Hope that was of some help     

Not that is a waste of time.  But, just that limited time should be spent on it and that the level of problems should be appropriate for the level the player is at.  Everything you do to improve your game should be appropriate to your specific situation.  A while back I was very strong at open games.  However I struggled in the closed games.  So I started playing a closed sicilian as white.  It really is as simple as recognizing what your weaknesses are(relative to your level of play at the time) and improving upon those, whether it be through puzzles, playing games, looking at gm games etc.  I just find it easier to make improvements from playing and looking at games/analysis.  THere may be some people who may actually learn better through doing puzzles.  But, I would suggest that it is probably a small percentage of players.   

Tactics really don't work until you've developed an opening repertoire. This is because in order to initiate combinations, your pieces have to be coordinated, and if you're not opening right, you'll never have that kind of coordination.

 What De La Maza mentions in passing is that he had several trainers that helped him through the months to develop his repertoire(s). This training, plus his devotion to tactics, plus the fact that he was financially independent with hours of time on his hands, allowed him to do so well, if it's factual.

I'm curious. Have you calculated the amount of hours he expects for you to practice each day/week? Go back through the book. Take notes of every time he says "practice this microdrill 2 hours a day" for example, and tally up the results. I think it's pretty high. I can't expect many adults new to chess have that much time to devote to it. De la Maza was a special case.

 I think that if you do the 7 circles too soon, then you'll burn out.

Lithium, I don't want to disparage any form of methodical study, because your desire and drive to improve should only be encouraged. But I feel like I should point out that the 7 Circles method was developed for experienced players who feel like they hit a plateau in their game, and want to break through to higher-level chess. It's not just learning, but unlearning--a lot of that grinding repetition is aimed at breaking bad habits. Habits which you may well have not developed yet.

Can I make a suggestion? Subscribe to one month of Chess Mentor on this site, and spend those hours going through the interactive exercises it throws at you. It's very well done: it adapts to your progress, allows you a number of ways to explore each position, and provides copious commentaries on all your moves, correct and incorrect. 

Go ahead and do the 7 Circles too, if you're so inclined. But after a month, you'll likely find that Chess Mentor is giving you a much more solid grounding in your game.

Really, it's worth a try. 

The only way to get smarter is by playing a smarter opponent - Fundamentals of Chess 1883

:)))

 Take care, and keep playing

kponds> He quit in December:

Yeah, he did chess vision drills for a week, but then decided to try other methods. Three months later, he wasn't happy with his progress, so he switched hobbies.