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Chessville
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Study - Whose Games? by Tom Rose
Your own games When I sent my previous Rant (A Study Plan) for proof-reading Chessville's editor, Jens Madsen commented that "I never mention studying your own games to learn from mistakes. " and asked, " Is this intentional ? " Actually I did mention it. But in an earlier Rant (What Makes A Strong Player Strong?)! Not in A Study Plan which was supposed to describe my study programme. And the answer is: yes I do believe that studying your own games is essential to improving. That has always been the "received (or conventional) wisdom" even though I have not always believed it. Not if but how The really important question is how to go about studying your own games. And just as importantly, how not to study your games, because I also believe that if you do it the wrong way you will end up entrenching your bad habits. This would make the task of improving your play in the future even more difficult. I have resolved to study all my tournament games in depth, and the first step in each is to objectively figure out where the play could have been better. This can easily take several days per game. Fortunately almost all of us can see better and more objectively analyzing at home than in a game, so this process is not a complete waste of time. You can take as long as you need, including sleeping on an idea, you can move the pieces about to avoid mistakes in calculation, you can check tactics with the computer, and you can consult manuals and references on all stages of the game. If you are really stuck you can ask the opinion of a stronger player. The product of all this work is a detailed annotation of the game. But this objective analysis is only the first step. The next part is even more important. I have to find a way to avoid making the mistakes I did, and ways to see more quickly the new and improved possibilities that I have found. If I am lucky it is simply lack of knowledge, or the absence of the relevant patterns, so the problem is easily cured by study and drill with appropriate material. How studying your own games can do you harm But it is also possible that mistakes and lost opportunities result from deeper misunderstandings, incorrect perceptions, laziness, misplaced emotions, specific mental blocks, or some other kind of bad attitude or character defect, and then there is much harder work to do. The specific danger here is that in simply going over the moves of the game it is possible to mentally rehearse the very same subconscious processes that led to the weak play in the first place. What you give attention to becomes stronger. For a long time this bothered me so much that I held the heretical belief that maybe it is a mistake to study your own games. I still believe that if studying your games is going to entrench your weaknesses (rather than eliminate them) then you are better off ignoring your past play and using the time to study the games of masters that you admire. The right approach Eventually I figured out the right approach to the task of rooting out errors. What has to be done is to consciously construct a different way of seeing and approaching that particular game ... a way that would have led to stronger play. In doing this it is best to spend as little time as possible figuring out why you went wrong (which in itself makes you more likely to make the same mistakes) and much more time answering the more practical questions of what? ... what features need more prominence in my vision, what would it have been good to see that did not make it to conscious attention, what did I give attention to that could have been ignored, in what ways could my attitude or approach have been better, what was the correct assessment of some move or position that I assessed wrongly, and what factors support that revised assessment, ...would it have been preferable to calculate more variations, or to trust my feelings more? With these and similar questions answered the final and most important task is to mentally rehearse the different vision and attitude until it completely replaces the incorrect habits of perception and thought that preceded it. Some of this can be accomplished by playing over the revised game, as if I had found the improved play at a few critical points. If I can find a partner to practice playing out critical positions that is ideal, but failing that, for some time afterwards I will deliberately try to produce similar types of position in offhand and 5-minute games to get practice rehearsing the new approach. This I believe to be the core method for removing defects in your play. It is essential for old guys like me, but beginners who are well coached from the start can be spared. Is it easy? Absolutely not. It is slow, difficult, and painful. It is a subject about which I have a great deal more to say, but not right now. A Reminder However it might look, I am not trying to instruct anyone in chess itself. I am not strong enough for that. My subject is how to go about improving your skill at it in the face of real or imagined obstacles. It is how to formulate clear goals or at least a clear direction, and how to overcome the obstacles. In fact not to focus much on obstacles, but rather on the aim itself. You can apply these methods to any endeavour. The pure chess study material that I am using has been compiled and annotated by far stronger players - Alekhine, Nimzovich, Kasparov, Bronstein, Dvoretsky, Romero, Soltis, Baburin, Korchnoy, Psakhis, Sadler, Nunn, Davies, ... As for the methods themselves, I don't know for sure what has to be done to get much beyond Elo 2100 strength, because that is the best I have ever been. I simply have some ideas, and am trying them out in public. They are well thought through ideas, and they have worked for me in other areas of life, so I trust them. Also, I am approaching the task of chess improvement with proper commitment for the first time ever, after many false starts. If these ideas work for me, then I'll be better equipped to help take you from an average standard right up to master strength. If they don't, then it will be back to the "drawing board". So if you want to see a lot of games and instructive positions and analyses there are better parts of Chessville to consult, like IM Andrew Martin's columns. His judgments in purely chess matters will almost always be much better than mine. Other People's Games Watching weak play makes you weak There is a problem with showing you examples of the kind of work I am doing. Why is that a problem? I could easily show you my own games, my analyses and annotations, the introspective processes I've used to identify my errors, and the steps I have taken to improve my attitude, understanding, and vision. Well I could do that, but I shouldn't, because I expect that you also wish to play better chess than you do now ... and I believe that for weak and average players to be exposed to the play of other weak and average players does them no good at all. I believe this very strongly. For your own good, you really should not look at any of my games ... except perhaps the one in which John Littlewood demolished me in 16 moves. In fact even games between players who are very strong (say 2300-ish) by the standards of most of us are still generally unsuitable as models of how to play really well. These players may be just the sort of opponent that I need, as they are perfectly capable of punishing the bad mistakes that players like me are making all the time, but by international standards they are weak, and their chess is still full of bad misconceptions and serious errors. A dangerous trend There is a trend currently, in chess publications and instruction books, to use games between weak players as illustrative material. I don't have a problem with just one of the players being relatively weak ... just so long as he is being accurately and solidly crushed by a strong IM or GM at the top of his form. But to give a lot of attention to games where both of the players are relatively weak is quite wrong and almost certain to damage your development, because much of what we learn is picked up subconsciously or unconsciously. Witness the number of children with the identical bad posture to their parents - even though they have no inherited physical defects. If the material you are learning, or the people you are learning it from, illustrate deeply incorrect methods and understanding then that is what you will pick up, irrespective of the particular points to which the instructor draws attention. It is like the aversion to mathematics that so many people have ... almost certainly due to their early tuition by Primary School teachers that were near-illiterate in mathematics themselves and managed, despite the best of intentions, to transmit their own fear and incompetence. You don't learn to swim from someone that is terrified of the water. Back to chess. These amateur-amateur clashes are not like master games, where gross errors do not occur all that frequently, and the slips that *do* happen usually meet retribution at the board. In these contests between weak players the entire game is likely to be deeply misconceived, and it doesn't matter that the instructor points out the errors, and shows in each case what should have been played. The damage has already been done. It is better not to see such games in the first place. Studying your own games, and having your own errors pointed out, is something else entirely, but unless you are already an IM or stronger, it is probably better for the rest of us if the details remain private to you and your coach. The best games to study So if games between "weak" players are bad for you, and games between super GMs are at too high a level what games (apart from your own) should the middling player study to improve? I believe the most useful games are those where the stronger player is at least IM strength, and the loser is of a significantly, but not enormously, lower class. Then you will see mistakes clearly and accurately punished, and as the play of at least one side is of a consistently high standard you will not unconsciously acquire bad style. Where do you find games like that? They do not generally figure in popular magazines or columns. They prefer incomprehensible masterpieces like the famous struggle between Kasparov and Topalov. Nor are there many anthologies of suitable games, but one that provides exactly what we need is The Road to Chess Mastery by Euwe and Meiden. Twenty five games pit a strong amateur against a master, and until the last few games in the book, he is instructively beaten. Euwe and Meiden tried to repeat the formula in Chess Master v. Grandmaster - with less success. Other good study materials are classic games from the late 19th and early 20th century. The very best players back then were genuine super grandmasters, but many of the lesser masters of the time played a lot like today's strong amateurs though, it appears to me, with better tactical vision and more skill in calculation. A good way to find suitable contemporary games to study is to look at entire international tournaments (not the really strong ones like Linares, but the sort that include some less exalted contestants). From these you can pick out the games between the winners (usually the strong IMs and GMs) and the tail-enders (often local experts and national masters rated in the 2100-2300 range). Although these players are quite a lot stronger than me, they still make similar kinds of mistake - just less often. Whom to play against? As with study, so with play. When I play mostly against strong players I get stronger, effortlessly. If I then play a few games against lower ranked players I find it very much easier to get good results. The mistakes they make seem so much more obvious and easier to exploit. But if I continue to play a lot against players significantly weaker than myself I get weaker again. Now partly this is due to a character defect. I think I can get away with playing sloppily and still win - so I do. My mistakes go unpunished. Missed chances don't matter because there will always be more chances. I can indulge in tempting but possibly unsound lines yet win anyway. There is no excuse for any of this. It is bad for my own chess, and disrespectful to my opponents who need to experience more accurate and stronger play for their own development. But I think that there is more to it than this. Being on the other side of all those weak moves and incorrect plans subtly and insidiously corrupts your understanding and judgment. Unless you are already extraordinarily strong, after a few dozen games with weaker players you no longer know what is good and what isn't. So a GM can play any number of games against players rated 1800 or less, and do himself little or no harm, because the gulf in quality is so huge. But the likes of me cannot. Enough! Can this man actually play chess, or does he just talk about it? So if, like Jens, you have been wondering why there have been none of my own games in this column all should now be clear. It is not only because so many of them are too embarrassing to reveal but also because I don't want to be responsible for crippling your development and contaminating your minds with my incorrect play! But to stop the questions, and prove that I can push the chess pieces around, as well as talk about them, I'll break this self-imposed ban. If you are as serious about improving your game as I am, now is the time to stop reading. One of my games Background The game I have chosen is from 20 years ago and it is a game with a story. It was played in the annual Open tournament in my home town. I had not played any tournament chess for a whole year (in fact the last time was in this very same tournament a year earlier, where I had scored a respectable but unimpressive 3.5/6) but I had never stopped studying. For many years the tournament had been organized by the well known character and my very good friend Eric Wandless-Renton. Eric was one of those interesting people that make life more fun. As an organizer he did a fantastic job, persuading many strong, or up-and-coming players to take part. A few years earlier Nigel Short had played in (and won) this tournament, and former Chessville columnist GM Nigel Davies (another GM from the NW of England!) scored one of his early successes in an Elo rated tournament that ran alongside the regular Chorley Open. As a chess player Eric was not especially strong, but he had good combinative vision, and he had some impressive wins against strong opponents. He enjoyed his chess, and his place in the chess world. A few months earlier Eric had been brutally murdered. Stabbed to death in his own home by a hitch-hiker who he had given a lift and a bed for the night. It breaks my heart when I think of kind, gentle, Eric dying that way. He was well over 6 feet tall, but gangling and unathletic, he would never have had a chance. I had known him since I was 15 years old. He would often call by, stay for a meal, and play a few games, or drag me away to some interesting chess event he had organized. I miss him still. So I came out of retirement to play in Eric's tournament. Maybe it was the need to do my best in respect of his memory rather than for my own glory that explains how, for the first time in my chess career, I managed to string together six decent games in a row, took my chances when they came, and hung tough when things went against me. And I had a bit of luck too, when I needed it - like in the third round when Oliver Jackson allowed me to transpose from an inferior rook ending to a won pawn ending. Oliver has beaten many of Britain's strongest players, so losing to an ordinary player like me was upsetting. He took his revenge a few years later in a tournament at Derby. I had started well with three straight wins. That earned me a meeting with GM Mark Hebden and a thrashing in round 4, followed by a lesson in chess psychology from Oliver in round five. He put aside his usual direct attacking style, and played a waiting game, giving me every chance to commit hara-kiri - which I duly did. Oliver's greatest fame though is for his immortal remark as he sac'ed a knight to begin a king hunt in a 5-minute game against Eric Wandless-Renton at the Teeside chess festival in 1973. "And now, Wandless-Renton's king will go on a restless wander". Why this game? This is the last round game. Is it my best ever game? No!! It is not. I have played many better, including the games in the first two rounds of this same tournament. In fact overall it is rather poor. The finish is entertaining, but the opening is weak, the transition to the middlegame is worse, for most of the game I hadn't a clue what my opponent was up to, and when I finally began to play he missed opportunities and resources. Nevertheless I am proud of it because under the pressure of needing to win (else end up out of the prizes), and despite starting shakily, I managed to hold my nerve, play creatively and, when the ball was at my feet in front of an open goal, I put it in the back of the net. It is that cool finishing ability that I lacked a few weeks ago in the Rohde international tournament at Sautron, France. I was never in danger of challenging Fedorchuk for first place, but a last round win would have scored 6/9 and earned a respectable 12th place, in amongst the 16 IM's and GM's that were taking part. Instead I lost to rising star Axel Delorme, and finished in the pack. It is true that Axel outplayed me for much of the middle game, but when he made a tactical slip I failed to take the opportunity to wipe out his advantage and seize the initiative. The game Chorley Open Championship Round Six Three players were in contention for first place. Doherty was the clear leader, with P. Kane and I chasing, just a half point behind. I had beaten Kane in the first round, but he had gone on to score 4 straight wins, while I had conceded two draws. Doherty was one of a bunch of promising young players from nearby Bolton, which only a few years earlier had produced Nigel Short. At the time of this game he had a BCF grade of 190 - equivalent to about 2120 Elo and about the same as Kane. My rating then was 181 - about 2050 Elo. There were plenty of higher rated players in the tournament, but all had fallen out of contention. 1. c4 e5 2. Nc3 g6 3. g3 Nc6 4. Bg2 Bg7 5. e3 d6 6. Nge2 Back then I played the English all the time as White, and often adopted this set-up with a K-side fianchetto and the KN at e2. It looks innocuous, but leads to middle games of great variety. It is simple and sound, and I had excellent results with it, even though I never played it very accurately. White's best try for an advantage is to delay the development of the KN, and rush the b-pawn quickly to b5. For an example of doing this well, see Korchnoi's play against Seirawan, Lugano 1986. (1. c4 e5 2. g3 Nc6 3. Bg2 g6 4. Nc3 Bg7 5. d3 d6 6. Rb1 f5 7. b4 Nf6 8. b5 Ne7 9. Qb3 h6 10. e3 0-0 11. Nge2 Kh7 12. a4 Rb8 13. Ba3 Be6 14. 0-0 g5 15. d4! and White has the better prospects. White won in 56 moves after a typically exciting and highly tactical Korchnoi middle game.) 6 ... f5 7. d3 Nf6 8. O-O O-O 9. Rb1 Be6 10. b4 a6!? 11. Nd5 Rb8 12. Qb3? I recall moving rather hastily here, and the result is a poor move. Unlike the Korchnoi game, White has not achieved b5, so the Q is exposed to danger here for no good purpose. It will probably have to move again soon, with loss of time. 12. ... Ne7 13. Bd2 c6 14. Nxf6+ Bxf6 15. Qc2 b5 This was unexpected to me. I had only looked at 15. ... d5, which I thought was good for Black. His actual move seems to have less point now that the white Q is no longer in the line of fire of his bishop. This move also weakens c6, and as it happens that is what eventually loses the game. But that is only because Black failed to make the most of his chances. 16. c5 d5!? Again I was taken by surprise. This leaves the c5 pawn unassailable, and d6 weak. I had spent much more time looking into 16. ... dxc5 and all lines seemed to lead to Black's advantage. Be that as it may, White now has to do something about Black's imposing looking centre, and neither 17. d4 nor 17. e4 seemed any good, so ... 17. f4!? ... I felt that this had to be tried. 17 ... d4!? And yet again I failed to anticipate my opponent's move. As Black needs only a draw to get at least a share of first place, I was expecting the simple 17. ... e4 which gives him a solid position. But it slowly dawned on me that due to 17. ... d4 I was going to end up with weaknesses on the d-file. 18. fxe5 Bxe5 19. exd4 Bxd4+ In giving up his bishop so easily Black gives me the long-term advantage of two bishops and hopes of taking advantage of his weakened black squares. If he plays well he should have no problem, but he is creating many weaknesses in his position and that puts a lot of pressure on him to keep the initiative. If he lets it slip there is plenty for White to aim at. I had expected him to retreat his bishop, then bring the Knight from e7 to d5. Black would temporarily give up a pawn, but his position would have fewer weaknesses, and there is no way that White could hold on to the pawn long-term. For all that, the way Black actually played should be good enough. 20. Nxd4 Qxd4+ 21. Rf2 Now Black should really be looking to do something about the unfortunate line-up on the e-file, the weak black squares, and his near-useless white squared bishop. The natural 21. ... Nd5! would have removed the knight from danger, covered the weakness on c6, prevented Bc3, and put pressure on e3 and f4, with the prospect of eventually playing f5-f4 to activate his bishop. This would have made a real fight of it. It is very hard for White to co-ordinate his forces, and there may be nothing better than giving up the KB for the strong black knight: 22. Bxd5!? (or maybe ?!) Bxd5 23. Bc3 Qg5. White is then as weak on the white squares as Black is weak on the black ones. However, Black's f-pawn is a lot healthier than White's d-pawn. 24. ... f4! is a threat. I thought White was worse, but probably not lost. Maybe I could hold on and get a share of third place. About here quite a crowd had gathered around our board.
The local players from other sections of the event had sensed that the game
was in its critical stage. They were joined by half a dozen other
local players who (shame on them) were
21. ... Rbd8? Groans went around my fans, who did not realize right away that this is a bad mistake. "Tom's just losing a pawn!", someone blurted out in defiance of the rules governing spectator behavior. "Yes", whispered the better behaved (and stronger, and several times Chorley's Club Champion) Don Mottshaw, "but he's getting a lot for it". Don is right, and it was a fatal mistake for my opponent to go pawn grabbing so crudely. White's weak d-pawn is virtually permanent. It isn't going to run away in a hurry. Blinded by the prospect of material gain Black's sense of danger has deserted him here. It is true that in chess, just as in boxing, if you can punch with power you will always be in with a chance. As long as you can hang on without getting knocked out yourself there is always the chance that your opponent will lower his guard and stick his jaw out. In the introduction to these rants I described my play in this period as like a journeyman boxer: no class - but equipped with a big punch. Well ... 22. Re1 ... here is a solid jab to soften him up! 22. ... Kf7 22. Neither 22. ... Rf6 23. Bg5 nor 22. ... Qf6 23. Rfe2 is any better. 23. Bc3 Qxd3 24. Qe2!! ... and here is the real hay-maker.
I confess that I was pleased with myself for having foreseen the possibility of this pretty move when I played 21. Rf2 to block the Q-check, though I never expected to get the chance to make it on the board. 24. ... Qc4 But I was equally disappointed to be denied the chance to play the main variation in front of all my team-mates: 24.... Qxe2 25. Rfxe2 Nd5 26. Bxd5 (26. Rxe6? Nxc3 is not so clinical) 26. ... Bxd5 27. Re7+ Kg8 28. Rg7+ Kh8 29. Rxg6+ Rf6 30. Bxf6 mate. 25. Qe5 Rd7 26. Qf6+ Ke8 27. Qxe6 and Black threw in the towel. After 27... Qxc3 28. Bxc6 would be the knockout. 1-0 And so, with a tournament performance of about 2400, I became the first holder of the Wandless-Renton memorial trophy, and became a local hero for a week or two. The local paper printed a report that pictured me playing in an earlier round wearing a running vest. Hey, it was a hot summer! A friend of my father asked if I'd won any money. "Quite a bit I think," said my father. "Good. He'll be able to buy himself a proper shirt then!!" The sensible thing to do next would have been to build on this success. That is exactly what my co-winner (P Kane) did. He went on to attain a Candidate Master rating, and several more tournament successes, whereas I went into semi-retirement again for nearly 20 years. I don't know what happened to Mr. Doherty. I never saw his name again in the Chess world after this tournament. I hope I wasn't responsible for his giving up the game completely. Postface Now go away and read through half a dozen games from
Fischer's "60 Memorable Games" to wipe out the mental pollution of the game
you have just seen!
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