The Woodpecker Method

I first read about the Woodpecker Method in the book Pump Up Your Rating. 

The method is used to improve pattern recognition by solving a large number of puzzles in a row.

This book is now available in Chessable, where you can combine the Woodpecker Method with the advantages of reviewing by spaced repetition.

I am not telling you this because I am a kind of Mother Theresa. Chessable promised us to introduce a new feature after 1000 people purchase the book. Perhaps some of you would like to train with the book.

I am a rather weak player, and in the last months I came to the conclusion that the best way to improve my chess is to improve my tactical skills. Nothing new, most strong players will say the same. I am also doing exercises to improve visualisation, as proposed in the book Rapid Chess Improvment. I am also doing the same in my chess lessons for beginners: tactics, opening principles and visualisation, and some very basic endgames.

 Jeezz. I have seen dozens/ hundreds of OP posts in how to improve chess. What level of audience are you targetting?  My concern is that "did you already improve your rating by reading those books? ". 

 Some people read about 10 books and got 2000+. There are many aspects in chess (intution, deep calculation, precision in opening preparation, psychology of risk taking behaviour etc) rather than passive learning froom books. Some people read >100 books and they cant improve beyond 1500.

Frankly saying, some books are written for cherry pick presentations but doent really helpful practically. For example , a book I read in endgame mentioned very easy pattern in checkmating KBN vs K. KBN player checkmated another K player cos , K player played badly. But there is no explaination in difficulty pattern  if K player played very skillfully. I remembered that I had to figured out how to checkmate KBN v K  after analysing more than 3 hours by myself alone( it was in my teenage and my rating was about 1600 )

What I would like to say is that people can figure out the patterns by their own experience.Pattern recognition are very useful around 1000-1400  puzzles. But at 2600-3000 puzzles, it is more about how deep you can calculate and how many variations can you see. Try to use your pattern recognition methods and solve around 2600-3000 puzzles and let me know whether they work.

I think a rather large audience would profite from this book. Chapter 4 has 222 easy puzzles, the exercises 223 to 984 in chapters 5, 6 and 7 are for intermediate players. Only exercises 985 to 1128 from chapter 8 are for advanced players.

I try not only to do a lot of tactics, but I use the exercises to train calculation and visualisation.

It is anyway impressive how Hans Tikkanen achieved three GM norms within a seven-week period after an incredible intensive training on tactics. 

De La Maza also had an amazing improvement in his rating after doing a similar training (not only tactics, but also visualisation). I decided to use most part of my training to improve tactics and visualisation, and I only invest few minutes per day for pawn basic endgames and to review my repertoire for white (which I know already well).

What is the Woodpecker Method exactly? If it's just solving a large number of puzzles in a row, I think that existed before, without it being called the "Woodpecker Method"

Is it a lot of puzzles in a row with the same theme, or something similar?

The best explanation you will find in the book. Look, in Chessable you can purchase a book, have a look at it, and return he book within 30 days without any questions from the side of Chessable. My own summary of the method is: you will solve a certain amount of puzzles (let’s say 1000 or 2000), and after doing this, you go again through all exercises, but this time faster. After a break of a couple of days you do it again, faster. The idea is (after some sessions of hard work) be able to see imediatly the solution. This method is not easy, and the GM who used it did it only during a certain period of time. Axel Smith did once the same thing, as he described in the book, spending whole days with the training, with very short breaks from time to time. 

I am planning to invest some days doing this, from morning until evening during 3 or 4 days, just to see how my chess brain will react to this. 

If somebody will argue that’s to hard, just remember the thousand of bullet players playing every minute in their free time, often without reviewing the games. 

OK, thanks. I don't have a problem with that, it's just it seems a bit gimmicky for the author to call it the Woodpecker Method as if it's something new.

The idea of using a lot of tactics to improve is not new at all, it was for example recommended by de La Maza for adults who want to improve in a rather short time. Both authors didn't claim that the method is new - de La Maza's method was also not new, but has a own name. 

I think the name of the method is not that important, but the quality of the puzzles. And here you can be sure you will get only double-checked exercises (checked not only with engines but also by two players, so the authors were able to add some additional lines which are also possible).

But it is interesting to see that even strong players like Alex Smith and Hans Tikkanen were able to make an impressive jumps in their rating using this kind of method. 

Maybe not, but name it after an animal and it will sell - I suggest "GM in 3 months with the Dormouse Method".

You gave me the idea DeirdreSkye so you can have half the profits. We're onto a winner here.

That's better - bats are cool because of batman and "night bat" sounds tougher than "dormouse"

@torrubirubi, you might be interested in this:

http://empiricalrabbit.blogspot.com/2011/03/bain-experiment.html

This is a series of blogs written by someone who did sets of tactics with spaced repetition and analysed the results in a methodical manner.

I bought a copy of the Bain book and have cut it up ready to replicate his "Bain Experiment". Only trouble is the exercises in the Bain book look to be too easy, but we'll see what happens.

Ugh, what a missed opportunity! It is of course The Batman Method.

It's going to be difficult to fill a whole book which basically says not to play chess for 3 months. We're probably going to have to get Michael de La Maza on board, when it comes to filling pages without actually saying anything he is the best there is. 

I am always suspicious of any book, video, method, etc. That has to sell itself with something like:

"Win with the..."

"How to crush the..."

"Dominate with the..."

I was at first intrigued with this woodpecker method thing, and was going to purchase the book.  Unfortunately, I am a bad consumer, as i like to review things first.  I like to read up on things, and not just impulse buy.  While i like the idea, I can simply use my CT-Art 3.0 and go through each level of the tactics over and over and over, until i am getting them faster, and faster, and faster.  Maybe ot the exact same thing, but its close.

II think doing tactics helps a lot, but yeah, perhaps for some players it is better not do anything, as you wrote. 

The post for people who want to improve tactics, not for people interested in endgames or strategy.

I am also not advocating here that people should do only tactics, or that this specific method is the only one suited. It is only one among several others.

Yes, you are right, if you got the idea and if you have the discipline to do it, you can use a similar method with any book on tactics (it is what one of the co-authors did at the beginning, but he was annoyed about the mistakes that these books had - he checked every single exercise which seemed not convincing for him).

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess-equipment/chesscom-tactics-trainer---the-woodpecker-method

Thanks for the link. I also like to learn repeatedly a rather small number of puzzles (let's say 500 to 1000) instead of the agony of learning always different puzzles (and with an algorithm that punish you if you get something wrong).   

https://web.archive.org/web/20140708085005/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/review918.pdf

https://www.qualitychess.co.uk/ebooks/PumpUpYourRating-excerpt.pdf

https://www.qualitychess.co.uk/ebooks/WoodpeckerMethod-excerpt.pdf