First let me say I have “played” chess for several years but now want to get more serious. I am wondering how I can use PGN files to learn how to get better. I also would like to know a basic way to study chess and get better with a busy schedule.
Thanks.
I don’t know about using PGN files. However, depending on how busy you are there are some things you can do. There are the 5 free daily problems you can do on Chess.com with the “Tactics” under the learning tab. Also, you could try what I think of as postal chess on the internet. The web site chessworld.net has tournaments that run 1 move every 3 days. I do this occasionally, and I have noticed that most players will actually do 1 move a day. Likely they log in daily, check to see if an opponent moved, look over the position & make a move themselves. I am sure there are other way for a busy person to improve.
Larry Cohen
Thanks for the suggestions. I will give them a try and see what happens.
PGN files, in and by themselves, may not be all that useful for studying.
The key to studying is learning WHY moves are good or bad, which means knowing the reasoning behind them, how they relate to strategic or tactical thinking. That may not be in the PGN file itself.
Perhaps I’m confused. Why pgn files?
Alex Relyea
I was thinking if I used great players pgn files I might figure out why they make certain moves. I have tried reading several chess books but the problem is that most of the ones I have seen or used don’t really explain why a move is better than another one. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Keep looking for books. One type of book that is good for this is a “best games” collection. For example there is a book called “My Best Games of Chess” by Anand, in which Anand writes the commentary himself. Unfortunately it was written before he became world champion and hasn’t been updated (yet), but I’m sure it’s pretty good. There isn’t yet a book like that about Carlsen (that I know of), but there is at least one good collection of Kasparov’s games.
Kasparov wrote a series of books called “My Great Predecessors”, with lots of games by previous world champions, annotated by Kasparov. I am very much enjoying a couple of those volumes right now. You might find them somewhat advanced, but they should be good for years of use.
BTW you might be interested in following the games of recent grandmaster tournaments, not to mention the ongoing world championship between Carlsen and Caruana, and the women’s world championship between Wenjun Ju and Kateryna Lagno. At the chess24 websites, you can see live commentators, chat, computer analysis, etc.
Thanks for the suggestions. I am following the Mens WCC, unfortunately at work, so I can’t listen to the commentators. Maybe someone will have an archive of the commentary along with the games to download and listen to later.
I will look for some of those books and see if I can find them.
PGN files tend to be usually just the raw game scores. They are less likely to be helpful than almost any book. Not sure how best to help you, but perhaps one of the versions of Logical Chess Move by Move? You might also try Twenty-Five Annotated Games by Robert Hübner. Never worked through it myself, but 25 games taking over 400 pages implies a lot of detail.
Alex Relyea
I had a math professor in college who was infamous for stopping about half way through a proof, saying, “The rest is obvious”. Well, it sure wasn’t obvious to ME.
I asked one of his grad students, who graded our homework, about this once. He said, “About a third of the time, they aren’t obvious to me, either.”
You don’t have a published rating, just a few online quick games, so I can’t infer much about your chess strength.
The challenge with chess books is that they’re often written for a specific audience. Some authors are better at explaining things to less skilled players (including me), others seem to be writing mostly for their peers. Some of these books seem to go “Blah, blah blah, and obviously Black is better here.” But much of the time that’s not obvious to me, either.
To piggyback on Mr. Nolan, it is frequently confusing to me when looking at a game between two GMs, and I have no idea why the loser resigned.
Alex Relyea
I remember going over an analysis of one of Botvinnik’s games once. Early in the middle game he moves his QR to D1. The center is still pretty solidly blocked up, and the move looks innocuous, what Larry Christiansen would call a ‘random’ move. (Larry divided moves into 3 categories, good, bad and random. Most moves fall into the random category.)
But about 20 moves later, that rook is EXACTLY where it needs to be.
A chess writer once wrote of one of Botvinnik’s games, possibly that same game, “This move accomplishes nothing. But Botvinnik was so much better at doing nothing than the rest of us.”
I have the same problem, can’t listen to the commentary at my office.
For this particular match (Caruana vs. Carlsen), you’re (we’re) in luck: go to uschess.org and find the article about the most recent game, and there will be a game score, annotated by (most recently) Kostya Kavutskiy. You can actually click through it, and click through the side variations if you want to. It’s not always so easy to find annotated games on line, but the chessbase website sometimes has them, for instance.
I do have a suggestion.
Try to get a small but usable opening repertoire, and get some software and do lots and lots and lots of mate-in-2 puzzles. Tactical puzzles, but not mate-in-2 or more is useful too, if only to get you looking for tactical combination that doesn’t include mating the opponent.
A beginner’s book on endings is also useful.
For myself, I find the mate-in-2’s to be very helpful in getting me to look at the board and not only finding tactics against the opponent, but also it helps me to visualize defensive moves.
Here’s a position from a game I had last night. Black to move and is on the bottom. That is, h8 is lower left corner.
Black to move (defense move). According to Stockfish 9, I chose the 2nd best move, but clearly the 2nd best move is playable. It only looked at 2 options. It’s a defensive move, but I think doing tons of Mate-in-2 problems helps me visualize the board better.
I think a C player should be able to spot either move easily and a D player with some difficulty.
Even though the 2nd best move is playable, it’s much more equal than the best move. The best move was considered over a pawn advantage. But considering I was on a clock in a casual internet game, I thought what I played was doable. Humans don’t have the advantage of knowing every possible move for several ply.
I recently came across a book that might be of use. “A Fresh Look At Chess” by Lev Alburt is a collection of 40 games by non-master players that is heavily annotated. If you are below 1800 this will likely help you out. It appears to be a bit of a collection of games submitted into Alburt’s Chess Life column. I remember years ago finding and purchasing a similar book that was a collection of the endgame columns from Chess Life.
Larry S. Cohen
Thanks to everyone for the suggestions. I will take them all and look into them. I’m not a very strong player and am wanting to improve. Maybe these will help.