Some help for you ;) :
How to get a good tournament player?
There are 3 main pillars of a successfull training program:
1.Tournament games(Otb games)
You need to participate in chess tournaments to preserve your playing strength and to test the skills you have acquired with your homely analysis. Of course there are no obbjections to playing some relatively "weak" tournaments, but to many of them will at the very most increase your Ego, not your playing strength.How often and how much you should you play is contingent on your amont of time and your own preferences. An ideal cycle would be: 1 tournament, followed by 6/8 weeks rest, analysis of your played games and continued training. For most players 50 tournament games in a year are enough, but as I said, you have your own preferences so only play as much as you like and as much that you can analyse your games afterwards.It can sometimes happen that you played too much games and get tired, so you miss easy tactics. When that happens you should make a pause of chess for at least 2 weeks.
2.Analysis of the played games
Playing alone wont impove your game as much as possible. Everybody of us knows players who play and play in various clubs but never get better. They are stuck at one level because they only play chess but never learn anything from their mistakes. Its the same with swimming:When you never take steps to improve you will never make any progress and stuck at the same level where you learned swimming(probably as a kid).A good and thorough analysis of your games will prompt you to conclusions and eventually to an overhaul of your chosen opening lines. Middlegame-strategies and tactical possibilities will emerge. You should also consider psychological factors: Did you fell less then sterling during the game? Gow did your feelings change during the game? Do also think of other factors like time pressure and mental and physical tiredness as reasons for bad moves. A good analysis does not only reveal your (decisive) mistakes but improves also your analytical abilities. Take as much time for your game until you found important improvements and cleared all your questions. You should have a better understanding of the opening you played and of the plans that were availible in the middlegame.Of course I can help you as a stronger player with your analysis, but you should also give it a try for some of your games(whether online or OTB).
3.Homely training program
Unfortunately theres for no one, who wants to get a good chess player, an replacement for hard work. A good trainings program could be like the following one with 3 parts: Openings, Endgame and "chess learning".
a) openings:Every chessgame starts with the opening so its important to reach a reasonable position for the coming middlegame.But the study study of openings does not mean to memorize thousands of opening lines. That might even be contraproductive. Its much more important to understand the main ideas and plans behind an opening line. When you pick an opening you should first try to understand the ideas behind, look at many annotated master games about it and then learn some of the most important lines. You should also try to have middlegame plans in your opening line and not play without plan when the theory has finished. At your level you could also think about playing easy systems with white, for example the kingsindian attack after e4 or the colle-zukertort-system after d4. About both of this opening systems chessbase-dvds are availible on the chessbase shop, they are really imformative and good. When you like I can also help you with finding the right openings for you and with improving the lines you paly right now. John watson made some reallky good books about openings, I would recommend you his series " mastering the chess openings", which is very helpfull for every ambitious player.
b)the endgameThe endgame isnt important for every chess player because you reach it so often. You might even reach it not so often because most games finish after the middlegame or opening. The main importance of the endgame is that there are so few pieces on the board and by understanding the endgame you understand how this pieces work together and where they are exspecially strong. For example in the basic bishop and knight versus king endgame: You learn how in which corner the king has to be(which might be useful for mating nets and when you wanna go into an endgame.) and you learn how you have to coordinate the knight and the bishop that they dont let the king escape and how they work perfectly together. The same with basic pawn endgames: Often you can be able to keep lines closed with simple pawn moves so the opponents king cant get into your camp. You also learn about pawn structures and you might see in a middlegame position whether the endgame would be good or bad for you now) .
c) chess learning With chess learning I mean to improve your general knowledge about chess. You can easilily achieve that by reading games collection books where a strong master comments on his games and wins and show you how deep he was thinking during a game. A very good book is the book "understanding chess-move by move" by John Nunn.
Cheers
Hi all since it's the start of a new school year I am planning on setting some chess targets as well for me to have achieved by this time next year. In standard chess I hope to improve from my current standard rating to 1750 and for my blitz to improve to at least 1500. My strategy is basically to do around 5-10 tactics per day and playing online games intermittently.
Do any of you have any goals you are/have set in terms of your chess imrpovement? I'd be happy to hear and also whether you achieved them.