Studying Masters' Games? Useful at What Level and How?

3rd Topic of discussion on Chess.com/TV's "Pardon Our Blunders" with IMs Rensch and Pruess!

At what point in someone's "chess level/career" does it become useful to study the games of Grandmasters? And how should this study be conducted?

We both agreed that this type of work can almost NEVER be harmful or a waste of time, but at different levels -- it is probably more beneficial to study the games in different ways. Example:

At Expert to Master levels, it starts to make sense to apply the "Solitaire Chess" method, in which you would try to guess the moves of a Grandmaster BEFORE you see the whole game. Making an effort to REALLY apply yourself and insert your own thought process into the given position -- only to find out you were totally wrong about the plan chosen .

However, at the beginning to intermediate levels, it makes a lot more sense to simply search and create a large list of games (perhaps on a specific topic -- ie an Opening, Pawn Structure, Type of Player, etc) and simply go over as many as you can -- NOT spending more than 45 secs- 1 and 1/2 minutes on ANY game. In this way, a player can, over time, begin to improve their intuition and "sub-conscious" approach to the game...

Watcha think?

I have never tried the zip through 100 games in 30minutes approach except to study opening plans. However, I think the solitaire method can be effective at any strength, the key is which master games you are looking at IMO.

1000-1600 - Heavily annotated games of old masters. Capablanca, Alekhine, Morphy etc. Ignore openings, focus on opening development, tactics etc.

1600-1800 - Graduate to the 1940's-50's - Botvinnik, Bronstein's Zurich 1953 etc. Start to see the evolution to modern chess. Focus on pawn structure, strategy etc.

1800-2000 Fischer, Spassky, Tal  etc.

2000+ Karpov, Kaspy, Kramnik etc.

   I went to this site a while back:

    http://www.pgnmentor.com/files.html

    It has the complete careers of some of the greatest chess players ever.(Alekhine, Morphy, Fischer, Tal..etc.) and downloaded just about 60% of the player PGNs. Plus, while going to the tournament sites, i get all the PGNs as well, and I even do the same for the USCL(got all those too.)  Depending on my mood and what I want to focus on, I'll load up Fritz or Chessmaster and go through the games with my black and white chess set at my side too and try to pick up and variations through the game and study the analysis afterwards and compare that analysis to my moves.

   Kasparov has always been my favorite, so one day I'll load up 10 games at varying stages in his career and I'll watch and study them and the analysis. I haven't played much OTB and I'm rating 1520 on this site in Online Chess but still have a high Glicko, so I can't base my skill level on that, but it has helped me quite a bit. I haven't lost in my last 11 or 12 Fritz games and I am playing better and more focused on the board, one of the reasons being from studying Master level games. My opening seems to be pretty solid but I lose it towards the middle and make stupid moves. I focus on the weak spots of my play and try to take examples from some of the Masters I watch and try to increase my tactical play.

   It might not be the best way or the most productive, but it has worked quite well over the last few months.

   -Mark

Better for me at the moment is a structured course given by books such as silman's "the amateur's mind". The instruction there is invaluable and I can go through the same thought process by writing down my own thoughts about a position before looking at Silman's analysis.

At any level, especially beginner to medium, I think the ideal learning book would be one of the games of the GM you prefer written with annotations or commnts about not more than 3 or 4 (at the most) moves ahead. So you can visualize the board easily.

Explaining each move rather, than conjecturing about possible future moves.

The comments should be short an explain the reason of its posting.

And, most important, forget about that type of comment that goes like. . ."for in 19xx in the ZXY tournament playing against XZYU he played. . ., a method used by HGYT en 18xx in. . . "

"Logical Chess Move by Move" by Chernev Irving is a very good example. (It has been translated to various idioms)

@tabor -- The Seirawan Series, Understanding Chess Move by Move by Nunn, and Modern Chess Strategy by Watson are also great.

Yermolinsky's "Road to Chess Improvement" is perhaps one of the best books "in that style" ever...

On one hand, I'm very skeptical of any sub-conscious approach type things. Seems like a LOT slips through the cracks, and how would anyone confirm that this sort of thing really works?

But then, practically everyone that's great at church (read 2400+ elo) that I've ever read/heard speak/write on this topic has confirmed it's a valuable approach.

So, I'm placing my skepticism aside and jumping on it. Listening and watching videos like Rensch's and Galofre's Live sessions shows a significant difference (amongst many others!) between the way I think and the way they think; when I see a board, I spend a lot of time working through ideas that end up not going anywhere, whereas Danny and Charles either mention them and immediately move on, or skip over them entirely. I suspect this is probably due to their intuition as to which moves are worth considering; an intuition which I completely lack.

I wish there were a tangible way to mark how this will improve my rating. I'll just have to see if I can feel it. But even if I can't, I'm convinced (despite my skepticism) that this is worthwhile, and I'm rolling on it.

 Yermo's book is one of the best.

Here are a few more books with annotated games ala "Logical Chess: Move by Move" and their target readers:

1. Chess: The Art of Logical Thinking - intermediate
2. The Art of Planning in Chess - int.
3. Understanding Chess Move by Move - advanced
4. Chess Success: Planning After the Opening - int.
5. Unbeatabale Chess Lessons - beginner
6. More Unbeatable Chess Lessons - int.
7. 50 Essential Chess Lessons - begin.
8. 50 Ways to Win at Chess - int.
9. Grandmaster Meets Chess Amateur - begin.
10. Winning Chess Brilliancies - begin.
11. Chess Self-Improvement - adv.
12. Winning Chess Explained - int.
13. Best Lessons of a Chess Coach - begin.

All you need to do now is choose your style of writing.

FYI: I only included one of John Nunn's instructive annotated games, but it's the highest acclaimed title among his similar works.

In the tradition of Chernev's "Logical Chess," here is the classic three-volume by Euwe and Meiden that has not been revised to algebraic edition until now:

1. Chess Master vs Chess Amateur - beginner
2. The Road to Chess Improvement - intermediate
3. Chess Master vs Chess Master - advanced

This is exactly what I think.  I tried Silman's recommendation of solitaire chess at the 1300 level and it was a waste of time and frustrating.  I'm trying solitaire chess now and I find it very useful (and somewhat exciting/fun even).

I know a coach who will take a complete beginner and one of the first lessons after learning notation he will have them pick 1 out of a few GM games and tell them to have it memorized before they meet again next week.  Memorizing itself at that level is of course fairly useless, but as you said the subconscious mind picks up how chess is "supposed" to look, instead of, for example, a never ending stream of meaningless checks.

I think studying master games in any form should become a habit early on. I wish I'd started earlier instead of spending years using my own mediocre ideas. Lately I've been trying the "go over it fast" subconcious method as well as the very slow, detail method. I find the latter feels like it teaches me more. One method that takes a lot of work but really shows you your mistakes:

Play solitaire style and write down all your guesses. After you finish, play through the game again and compare your moves to the master's moves. I did this twice and it was very hard but I was able to identify my tactical blunders and see the difference between a forceful, purposeful move and a lifeless one.

That course was published in 2 volumes titled, "Test Your Opening, Middlegame and Endgame Play."

i have been playing for a year and four months, and am around 1600 live standard, and have beatn a FM in blitz:) but in my opionen i think strategy of opening as well as strategy in a minor peices endgame is what will work best. try to look, in the subconcious approach there strategy masters such as capablanca implement in the endgame. chess is the art of carrying out a eventual long or short plan, make a pllan that is logical and peruse it, i think it makes it more enjoyable to learn in that sense and has helped me substanially

Have your ideas toward how to study master games changed over the years?

Thanks for this link!

Where can I find good Gm games besides books? I'm rated around 1250 and am starting to study players like Alekhine and Carlsen. Thanks!

Aidan, a good database of games online may be useful.  There are also chess databases that can be useful for sorting out games by various methods.  Opening, pawn structure, rating, player, etc.  Databases such as chessbase, chess assistant, nicbase have been around for awhile.  There are also free online chess databases.  The pgnmentor discussed above may also be useful and I will be checking into that as well.  Try not to get overwhelmed.

@chessroboto  Does your post mean that the Euwe and Meiden books are now available in algebraic notation?

From that sort of activity, I think that I get about as much as I would get from watching fish swim around in a tank.