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Chessville
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A similar change has taken place in chess. In those years, BB (before Bobby), as a player I could get better by studying the games of the masters or by just plain playing (and playing and playing). Sure, Fred Reinfeld had introduced his two evergreens, 1001 Brilliant Chess Sacrifices and Combinations and 1001 Brilliant Ways to Checkmate to help me strengthen my tactical “muscles,” but I had to do most of the “heavy lifting” myself. Again, today there are many more specialized books – plus chess-playing software and databases, not to mention various CDs videos and DVDs. Into this arena steps Ian Anderson, armed with Book 1 of his Chess Visualization Course. The idea for this book came to him in a painful way:
Ouch. I know the feeling. I can vividly recall, 25 years ago, uncorking a “killer” combination in a tournament game, rattling off the moves as my opponent followed lock-step, and smiling silently when I’d completed the series. Then he reached across the board, made an additional move – and I resigned. He’d seen a tiny bit further that I had, but it had been enough to do me in. So – how far can you see? Would you like to be able to see further? This is what the Chess Visualization Course offers. At its core are 800 chess exercises, each position drawn from an actual chess game. They are laid out four to a page, and the comb-binding allows the book easily to lay flat, for easier study. The exercises are organized in several ways, helping support the assertion that it’s not just how far you see, but what you’re looking at that counts. There are 26 thematic chapters, divided in to six main sections. Anderson is pleased with how he arranged this:
For example:
SECTION 1. SERIES OF EXCHANGES ON A SINGLE SQUARE Within each chapter the exercises are presented according to an increasing depth of search, in plys (half-moves), that the reader is required to visualize. Following up on the above, Chapter 1, Even Exchanges, has 20 exercises, with the simplest requiring visualizing 4-ply and the most difficult requiring 10-ply. Here’s the simplest one:
4-ply E15
Can you see it? If you are used to planning exchanges out in your head, that was probably not much of a challenge. In the Answer Key in the back, there is this note: 1. Nikolic-Seirawan, Wijk aan Zee, 1995.
Here’s the last exercise in the chapter, though, and it should provide a greater test of your visualization skills:
10-ply E15
Okay – got the first one, struggled with the second? Then somewhere between 4-ply and 10-ply is what Anderson calls your ply depth barrier, the “depth at which you are unable to clearly visualize certain variations all the way through to the final position.” What to do about this ply depth barrier? The author suggests three ways: brute force (working all the exercises at that level), consolidation (working the exercises at a ply or two less) and stretching (working exercises that are a ply or two more than your ply depth barrier.) To help with these remedial methods each chapter lists how many exercises it contains of the different ply depths. Even better, at the front of the book there is a summary Ply Table that covers all 27 chapters. I note that the entire book contains 16 exercises at the 4-ply level and an impressive 98 at the 12+ ply level (mostly in the "Seeing Further" and "Longer Variations" chapters) with most scattered at levels in between. Each exercise is labeled with its ply level and its ECO opening code (use Appendix 1. Index of ECO Codes), should you want to practice exercises that arise from positions in your favorite openings. Conversely, you can track exercises back to the opening they came from, should you be particularly comfortable or adept at certain setups. Eight hundred is a lot of work if you do it diligently. (Anderson plans two more volumes, Attack on the King and Deeper Visualization, so get used to it.) Even if you slack off, and use the exercises as examples of what to do in this kind of situation, that’s a lot of instruction. I suspect the author would like you to stick with it, however, as would FIDE Master and USCF Life Master Paul Whitehead, who, in his Foreword, testified that visualizing further was a significant part of his chess improvement. I note, too, that the Chess Visualization Course is recommended for intermediate players by NM Dan Heisman on his website. I just know that there are readers out there, especially those who have been to my Chess Psychology Bookshelf, who are dying to make a couple of points. First, in the words of Adriaan de Groot in his 1965 Thought and Choice in Chess, “The master does not necessarily calculate deeper, but the variations that he does calculate are much more to the point; he sizes up positions more easily and, especially, more accurately.” Researchers still fuss over whether there is a significant difference between Grandmasters and club players in terms of how far they calculate, but if the comparison were a horse race, it is pretty clear where the overwhelming majority of the money would be laid. Also, this is rather academic to the player who has chosen, perhaps based on rude experience, to set improved depth of visualization as a personal goal; and for that the Chess Visualization Course fits the bill. Secondly is the question, what do you actually see when you “see” ahead in a chess position? Krogius quotes Reti who quotes Tarrasch:
Arriving at the
end of a sequence of visualized moves in one of the Chess Visualization
Course exercises, thus, it may be more important for the player to be
comfortable with whatever is seen and to be able to answer the
exercise’s question (“What is the material balance?”) rather than to measure
some sense of Kodak clarity of the image. Again, it doesn’t really
matter what exactly “it” is after you get crushed at the board and moan to a
companion “I didn’t see it! I didn’t see it!” Perhaps
after some extended visualization practice, you will see it.
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