Hey all,
If a Class A or B player, like myself, wants to improve, which is a good way to improve: Self-study, one-on-one with an instructor, or working with a chess school?
I assume most folks do the self study with books etc. Some clubs do mentoring (some free, some not)
The ICC lists instructors but it’s hard to know if the instructor is a good one (high rating doesn’t mean they can teach).
Having had a pile of music instrument lessons in my younger years, I can see how direct one on one instruction in chess is good since it points out direct problems and bad habits in thinking, etc. It also is the most expensive. But, again, how to find the good teacher that fits the students learning style?
Self-study works whether you choose any other option. It can be in-addition-to your other choices, as well. In other disciplines, I have found self-study to be a necessity no matter what else I do (if anything.)
Do you have an idea of your strengths and weaknesses? Or what areas of the game you’d like to improve in? At Class B/A I imagine you would. I think that would make the difference as to whether a school or a set curriculum would help you, or if you need an individualized teaching situation. At a minimum answer this question for yourself: What would constitute ‘success’ for your learning relationship? This will help define your learning objectives.
Alternatively, you probably could hire a coach to analyze your historical play and make suggestions as to what you need to do - classes or personal instruction. (If you’re clear with the coach that you’re looking to make that kind of decision, and not engaging the coach as an instructor.)
Can you really beat individual coaching, if you can afford it? As to will the teacher’s style fit you… there is no law against asking a teacher questions about their background, their coaching strengths / what their main foci are in teaching, and who else they have coached in your rating range. You may have to try several coaches to find one that truly meets your learning objectives. And you can always ask others at your club, etc. about a particular coach. Personal instruction can also help direct you to what type of self-study might be most helpful to engage in.
And measure your objectives periodically. The most friendly / highest rated / experienced coach in the universe, or best-made school curriculum, is not helpful if you are not reaching the objectives you set out for yourself. Contrariwise, you may need to adjust your objectives to something that can be helped - as opposed to unrealistic or unmeetable goals.
I hope my unrated ruminations helped you a little.
Try one, and if you’re not satisfied with the encounter, say, “O Great Master, if I am to benefit most from your experience and wisdom, whose advice and methods must I most scrupulously avoid?” Then try that guy next.
I recently started taking chess lessons from Dan Heisman. Dan is in Philadelphia and I live in Illinois so I don’t meet with him personally. The setup Dan has is that he calls you and you “meet” also on ICC. You “follow” him and you both see the same chess board on the computer screen while you are talking on the phone. It works very well.
Dan is the fellow that has written at least 9 chess books and writes a regular column for ChessCafe and also one for Jeremy Silman’s web site.
About a week or so ago, Dan told me that 95% of the work needs to be done individually as a “self study”. Lessons with him identify what you are doing right and wrong. He then directs you to do specific study things as well as activities to strengthen your weaknesses found.
So, it’s really a combination of both self study and taking lessons.
By the way, I found that now that I am in the midst of improving my game I have found problems that I didn’t have before, like since I don’t move too fast anymore, I just got into time trouble in my last 3 games. Of course my last lesson with Dan identified the why’s of this and I am working to fix that. I am playing better chess as well.
Dan’s right in that we shouldn’t focus on the rating by the quality of our game. If we play good chess the ratings will follow.
As an A/B player you no doubt have certain areas of your game that can be improved. You are likely either a tactical player or a positional player [if both, then you just need to cut down on the blunders]. If you are tactical, then start working on the positional play. There are good books out there on the subject and there are the games of positional masters [Petrosian, Korchnoi, etc.] to look at. If you are positional, then start working on tactics. Take up a tactical opening [and be prepared to get your brains beat in at least a few times], study tactics [problems and books], or games of tactical masters [Tal, Alekhine, etc.] can be looked at for insight.
The biggest problem for many players [myself included] is that when you start to focus on one aspect of the game other aspects tend to become weaker and incorrectly less important. At all levels you should continue to work on the endgame. No matter what level you are at you need to study, although it is a question of just what you may need to study. If you ever had to watch someone unable to mate with King and Rook versus King you will understand. The problem is to keep working without losing any edge you feel you have. Computers are good for training games, but they really can’t tell you what you may be doing wrong. One on One can sometimes help with that, but again it is a question of what you may need most. The free articles and games available on the web are a good source for help. Again it becomes a question of what level you are at, what you need to work on, identifying what you need to work on, and finding the right fit of material and instruction for your needs, style, and personality.
Hope this helps you a little, and hopefully some others as well.
I think no matter what you need to work on the most, you should keep things reasonably balanced. Set a plan of what you need to do for improvement in endgames, tactics, positional play, and openings. You can pour more time into one area that you feel is weak, but don’t completely neglect the other areas either. I personally spent a lot of time on endgames in the last year or so, and it’s definitely helped, but I’ve also made sure to keep working on the other 3 areas.
A personal instructor will always be helpful, but only as a supplement to your own efforts of self-study.
Remember what Nimzowitsch said: “The simultaneous analysis of various types of positions leads only to a confusion of ideas, while the thorough examination of only one type does not fail to awaken positional understanding. If you, dear reader, with all your available powers, sat down to the study of positions of one type, let us say central files versus flank attack, then I would not be in the least surprised if, because of that, you reached a clearer judgement, for example, in the sphere of the end game. The process of study of whatever kinds of position occurring on the board has not only the aim of familiarizing one with the characteristic features of these positions but also serves simply as an improvement of positional feeling.” So, I say think of that when you are deciding about what and how to study.
One technique you don’t mention: study sessions with a player of roughly your own strength. Ideally, as you examine games and variations, you’ll keep each other honest and alert so you don’t slip into “TV watching mode” while going over a game. With a laptop handy to resolve the really difficult questions of tactics, I think you can make more progress than studying alone. Of course, a certain amount of compatibility is required between study partners.
This sounds like good advice. It’s well known that studying endgames improves most everything else, and he says the a similar principle applies in other ways. Nimzo was a very honest guy, sometimes too honest for his own good.
And my comment is: when you study a position, really study it, make sure you understand everything about it, figure out the most embarrassing question you could be asked about it and learn to answer that. Don’t let yourself off easy by going on to a different position or topic. What would your most hated opponent do if playing against you in that position? Learn to outplay that. If playing (say) open positions is your weak point, study them until they are your strong point, otherwise you didn’t learn enough about them yet. You will probably go through several such chess “personality changes” on the way to the desired personality change that you are now a much stronger player.
So I guess I disagree with the idea of studying a little of everything and keeping all areas of the game in perspective. At least it didn’t work that way for me. It’s more like a fractal: within each position one can find all areas of the game. But if you study a little of this and a little of that, you are not getting below the surface.
Also, one way or the other, you must learn to calculate accurately. When I look at the games of GMs, the one thing they have in common is that they are all incredibly good at pure calculation. They may write a lot about chess and have a lot of opinions and stories, but what they really do during games is calculate.
The instructor can help in finding embarrassing questions for you if you aren’t very introspective, and in finding errors in your analysis, but you have to learn to do it yourself after all. I never had a coach, but I did have several chess playing friends who were as good as me or slightly better, at least in areas I wanted to improve, whom I learned a lot from.
The hardest part of chess improvement is that there is no full-proof method that works for everyone. The balanced approach worked pretty well for me, but that was to move from 2000 → 2250. I suppose under 2000 I focused almost primarily on tactics with a little bit of opening study to go along with it.
And see I was the opposite. Early on I understood positions fairly well but I could not calculate at all. I needed to structure my knowledge and force myself to be concrete, as well as becoming more flexible in the application of positional concepts. That’s what got me from the 19’s to the 22’s, but it was a lot of work before it clicked.
Before that? Well, hanging out and 5-minute chess, in large part, and reading various chess books. I understood those positions because I had more or less seen them before, together with how GMs played from them.
