Apologies for not posting a T-28 review two weeks ago as scheduled; I decided to hang on until now as it is the midpoint of my Road to 2100 year.

Ratings

FIDE standard: 1966-1973 (expected), +7 points
Other ratings: No change

I am expecting to gain 7 points this period from a win I had against an 1837-rated player in the 4NCL.  The 4NCL season continues to go well for both my team (West is Best) and me personally, and with 6 wins from as many matches the first team stands a good chance of promotion to the second division.  This would give me the chance to play some stronger players next season.  Whilst my rating is still creeping up, I have to earn a lot more points in the second half of the year than in the first if I am to have any hope of reaching my goal.  A provisional idea of where I plan to earn these points is given below (note that not all these events are confirmed yet):

13/3/16: French league, 1 game
19-20/3/16: 4NCL, 2 games
3/4/16: French league, 1 game
23-24/4/16: Hampstead Congress, 5 games
30/4-2/5/16: 4NCL, 2 games
14-15/6/16: Hampstead Congress, 5 games
27-30/5/16: Gatwick Congress, 7 games
11-12/6/16: Hampstead Congress, 5 games
2-3/7/16: Hampstead Congress, 5 games
4-8/7/16 St. Petersburg Railway Tournament, 6 games
23/7-6/8/16: British Championships, 11 games

In total that is 50 games, which, as calculated previously, would be enough for me to reach my goal if I performed at 2150 level.

Assessment: Red (cause for concern)

Study

I am pleased to report that I have once again met my study target of six hours’ deliberate, focused training per week, which now makes ten weeks in a row.  Having said that, not all of that time has been spent on the material I believe will make the most difference, as I frequently choose an easier option.  For example, ‘Calculation’ by Jacob Aagaard is a book I have been trying to work through for a long time now – it seems like an excellent book, with well selected problems, and I am sure that a careful reading of it would improve my chess – but I often do some quick tactics puzzles on ChessTempo or Chess24 rather than the more difficult problems in ‘Calculation’.  To counter this tendency I am introducing a set of ‘deliverables’, listed in a new tab on my study log spreadsheet, which I must spend at least six hours on per week.

There are currently 276 deliverables, split into three categories: calculation, opening and endgame.  My focus on calculation/thinking was explained here.  The opening and endgame items have been included because, whilst I feel I am making progress with my thought and decision-making process, it is not clear when that it going to translate into a big jump in practical play.  Given that it is now only 26 weeks until my deadline, I am taking no chances and intend to improve my openings and endgames as well (note that this is something of a throwback to an earlier plan).

Assessment: Amber (some cause for concern)

As usual, I would be interested to hear your thoughts in the ‘Comments’ section below.

I’ve done a lot of what I have decided to call ‘nodding along training’ in the past.  By this I mean listening to or reading an explanation of something, whilst nodding inwardly and thinking “that makes sense” or “I understand that”.  You may or may not be paying full attention to the explanation, but either way it’s not the most active form of training.

In my later years at secondary school, nodding along training was my main form of study for exams.  I would listen to an explanation of a method or concept in a maths lesson, think I understood it, but frequently fail to prove my ‘understanding’ in the exam.  Of course, the way to avoid this is to do plenty of practise exercises before the exam, to expose the areas you do not understand fully.

When it comes to chess, watching opening videos is a major form of nodding along training.  (If you watch them in a comfortable chair and with a beer in your hand, it can even become ‘nodding off training’!)  It is very easy to listen to Kasimdzhanov or Shirov explain the Nb1-d2-f1-g3 manouvre in the Giuoco Piano or Ruy Lopez and think that you have understood something profound about the game of chess.  However, when you have the opportunity to employ this deep new understanding in your next competitive game, you often find that you were mistaken.

By way of an example, consider the position below:

This is a position from my game against IM Alexandre Vuilleumier from the recent London Chess Classic.  White has just played h3, and with very little thought I mirrored him with h6, thinking something along the lines of “h6 will always be a useful move, and I’ll decide on a plan next move”.  White played Nh2, and I then decided to employ a plan which had been mentioned to me by my guest GM Tal Baron as playable in a similar position.  I played Nd7, the idea being to go f6, Re8, and usually either Nf8-e6 or Nc5(-e6) depending on circumstances.  This would have been an excellent idea on the previous move, but now that I have played h6, it makes very little sense to play f6, as the light squares around my king will be weak.

My opponent immediately highlighted the potential weakness of the light squares with Qh5, and I was forced to abandon my plan halfway through and come up with another one.

So, how do we guard against ‘nodding along training’, and try to ensure we learn material well enough that we can usefully apply it in games?  Here are some suggestions:

1. Use material with built-in questions or tests.  The ‘move by move’ series of books by Everyman is a good example of this, and some ChessBase DVDs also include questions nowadays.
2. Ask yourself questions.  If done properly, I can see this being even more effective than answering questions which are provided by others, as it makes you really think about the material.  For example, you might ask yourself ‘Under what circumstances is Nd7/f6/Re8 a viable plan?’, ‘When would the knight go on to c5 and when would it go to f8?’ and ‘What are the indicators that this plan may be inadvisable?’ (One answer: ‘your pawn being on h6 rather than h7’).
3. Play out positions against a partner or the computer.  If you are studying an opening, you don’t necessarily have to play to the end, but playing some moves forces you to think and apply what you have learnt.

Have you been guilty of doing nodding along training yourself?  Do you have any other ideas for combating it?  Let me know in the comments sections below.

P.S.  For those interested in seeing the conclusion of the game quoted above, here it is:

With 32 weeks to go until my deadline for reaching 2100, it’s time for another T- review.  This period included a bit of a break over Christmas, but I have played some league chess, including FIDE-rated games in my debut in the French League and in the 4NCL.  On to the figures:

Ratings

FIDE standard: 1957-1969 (expected), +12 points

Other ratings: No change

I am expecting to gain 12 points this period from two FIDE-rated games.  The first was a win against a ~1700 player for Les Cavaliers de Neuilly, in the French League; the second a win against a ~1900 player for West is Best in the 4NCL.  I am undefeated in my four games so far in the 4NCL, and my team is doing similarly well, with both first and second team in the mix for the promotion spots.  The rating is moving in the right direction, but I still have a lot of points to gain and the missing points from Belgium have not materialised, which is reflected in the assessment below.

Assessment: Red (cause for concern)

Study

After a number of periods where I have not managed to achieve my study target, I am pleased to report that I have met or exceeded it in all four weeks this time (study log to be updated).  The difference has been made by using stickK.com, a website where you can set a goal, with the option of monetary penalties for failure.  Money can be donated either to a charity, or to an ‘anti-charity’ – an organisation you dislike.  I have committed to donate $200 for each failed week to an anti-charity, and so far the extra incentive is working brilliantly.  I still have a lot of missed study to catch up on from previous periods, which is reflected in the assessment below.

Assessment: Red (cause for concern)

In summary, a broadly successful period, though I am keeping my two indicators at red for now, until more progress has been made.  Please share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Following my post four weeks ago, here is the next in my series of ‘T- reviews’.

Ratings

FIDE standard: 1957 – 1962, +5 points

FIDE Arena rapid: 1920 – 1920, +0 points (no games)

FIDE Arena blitz: 1936 – 1944, +8 points

I picked up a few points at the first 4NCL weekend, where I drew with a 1989 after missing a chance to be considerably better, and beat an 1810-rated junior rather comfortably.  The 24 points I gained at the European Railway Chess tournament have yet to appear on the list, but assuming they do at some point I will be up to 1986.  I have played very few Arena games, so tracking those ratings remains of little importance.

Assessment: Green (little cause for concern)

Study

The amount of study I am managing to do remains well below target; I have now done 1010 minutes of deliberate practice against a target of 3600.  The same reporting issues remain as in the last report – i.e. I am still not recording time spent analysing my games or doing other chess activities as I am not convinced it meets a strict definition of deliberate practice.

The crumb of comfort in this area is that I may be having some success establishing a pre-work study habit.  Initial attempts to establish a post-work study habit in a coffee shop before going home proved unsuccessful, as I was tired and hungry after my long day and just wanted to get home.  Instead I have been trying to get into work a little earlier and do some study before starting my day, and I managed this in four of the last five working days in the period I am reporting on.  It has been an exceptionally busy time at work, so I have reason to hope that I will fit in more early morning study in the future.

Assessment: Red (cause for concern)

The first big test of this phase of my project starts tomorrow: the London Classic.  I will be playing in the FIDE Open – nine gruelling rounds of classical chess over eight days – and following that with the ten round ‘Super Rapidplay’.  A post with some of my games will follow after the Classic, possibly incorporated into my T-36 review which is due on the 20th.

I recently read an interesting book called Make It Stick, subtitled ‘The Science of Successful Learning’. In it, the authors expound a number of ideas about effective learning, most of which are not particularly common practice, and discuss the science behind these ideas. Some , such as spaced repetition, I was already familiar with. Others, like ‘interleaving’ (the topic of today’s post), were new to me.

Interleaving means mixing up the practice of different types of problem in a single session. The first study cited is of children learning to throw beanbags into a bucket three feet away. One group’s practice is confined to a bucket three feet away; the other group practises throwing into buckets which are two and four feet distant (but not into a three foot bucket). In the test, which features only a bucket at three feet, the second group does markedly better, despite never having practised at that distance. Whilst this may be surprising, it is hard to see what relevance it might have for chess study.

In the second, more pertinent study, students were taught to calculate the volume of four different three dimensional shapes. One group practised solving all the exercises for one type, before moving on to the next type, solving all those exercises, and so on. The exercises for the other group were ordered randomly, so that a student could, for example, find herself solving one exercise for shape A, then one for shape C, then one for shape B and so on. Intuitively, I suspect most people would expect the first method to be more effective; it seems that it would allow the student to really master solving one type of exercise before turning her attention to the next type. Indeed, during practice the first group fared better. However, on the final test a week later, the first group averaged only 20%, while the second group eclipsed that score with an average of 63%. A possible explanation is that the effortful recall involved in remembering how to solve a particular type of exercise was very effective at strengthening the neural pathways for that particular skill; clearly this is something the second group had to do much more of during practice. The book goes into more detail, for those interested.

Another interesting book I own, but have yet to read very much of, is Calculation, from Jacob Aagaard’s highly acclaimed ‘Grandmaster Preparation’ series. In it, a few hundred difficult calculation exercises are presented, divided into themes such as ‘Candidate Moves’, ‘Comparison’ and ‘Elimination’ according to the calculation method most useful in solving them. Each theme has an explanation, which is followed immediately by exercises designed to reinforce that explanation in the student’s mind. I would imagine that Jacob intends students to read the book from start to end, following the same method as the first group in the volume calculation experiment presented above. I intend to use the second group’s method instead, and have used this tool to order the problems randomly. My hope is that the greater amount of effortful recall involved will result in far better retention of all methods after finishing the book, but of course with myself as the only experimental subject I will not be able to prove that it has worked. If any chess teachers out there would like to try an interleaving experiment with their students I would be very interested to hear the results!

P.S. For those of you coming here to read my ‘T-40 Review’, I have postponed this by a week and will be presenting a ‘T-39 Review’ next Sunday instead.

I have decided to appropriate an idea from my day job doing project management for Network Rail, and have a series of ‘T minus reviews’ leading up to my deadline for making 2100.  T- reviews give a snapshot of your progress towards a goal at a given point in time, and help you to identify any areas which require extra attention.  I propose to write the next one in three weeks (at ‘T-40’), and then every four weeks until the deadline (or until I hit my target).  Feel free to suggest changes to the format if there is additional information you would like to see.

Ratings

FIDE standard: 1957 – 1981 (expected), +24 points

FIDE arena rapid: 1920 – 1920, +0 points (no games)

FIDE arena blitz: ~1980 – 1936, -44 points

The main news here is that I gained (well, regained) a healthy number of points at the recent European rail industry team chess tournament in Belgium (and also picked up the board three prize).  For some reason these have yet to show up on the rating list, but I expect they will do so on the next list.  I am also tracking my FIDE online arena ratings, as they should align reasonably well with my over-the-board FIDE rating.  I have yet to play a rapid game online, so no change there from my default starting rating of 1920.  I have lost a number of blitz rating points (not sure exactly how many as I did not note my rating in the last list), but I am not overly concerned as some of these can be attributed to the poor internet connection in my last house.  I have now moved house, and will be looking to use my improved internet connection to regain these points for the next report.

Assessment: Green (little cause for concern)

Study

Though the rating gain is on track (if I gained 24 points for each review I would have crossed 2100 by T-24), the study is not.  My public study log reveals that I have done 590 minutes of deliberate practice since records began on the 20th of September against a target of 1800 minutes (three times as much).

Part of this shortfall may be unfairly caused by my strict recording of only ‘deliberate practice’.  Deliberate practice is a term coined by the psychologist K. Anders Ericsson to describe effortful, highly focused practice, carefully designed to bring about maximum performance improvement.  It seems clear to me that problem-solving type activities fit this description, but less clear that analysis of one’s games fits.  A lot of my game analysis is done on my tablet on the way back from a game, and is not particularly intense or effortful, so I have not included it, although I still think it is useful.  Had I included this my study time would probably have nearly doubled.

I am going to try to establish a post- or pre-work chess study habit by the next report, either going into work early and studying there before most people arrive, or going to a coffee shop to study before returning home.  I think this will be more successful than trying to do all my study at home.

Assessment: Red (cause for concern)

That’s all for this review, and I hope to have better news in the next.  Let me know your thoughts and anything else you would like to see in the next review (for example, a games section) in the comments below.

As I mentioned recently, I have been looking for a coach.  I am delighted to say that I have now found one, and will be working with IM Tom Rendle.  We have had two sessions together so far, which showed great promise, and I hope it will be a long and fruitful relationship.

So far we have been de-constructing my thought process, trying to find the reasons why I frequently either fail to find or fail to choose the right move, and working on calculation.  This was not part of my earlier ‘2100 Plan’ for the simple reason that I did not have the confidence to do this on my own, but knew that I could successfully work on openings and endings alone.  However, it seems clear that managing to improve my thought process would have a positive impact on all parts of my game; with Tom’s help I believe that I can do this, so for now that is what I will be focusing on.

Study schedule

Tom has told me that when he seriously trying to improve, he played around 100 competitive games of chess a year.  This seems like a reasonable figure to aim for; ambitious, but just about achievable whilst working full-time.  Estimating an average of 3 hours per game, that comes to 300 hours, which I will aim to match 1:1 with study, making a total of 600 serious chess hours over the year, or about 12 hours per week (6 hours of study).

In the past, too many of my hours have been dedicated to activities of questionable benefit, like nodding along to a DVD explanation but not really paying full attention, or playing online blitz games.  Going forward I will try to make my tracked hours of study as efficient as possible, doing something the pschologist K. Anders Ericsson called ‘deliberate practise’.  I intend to discuss that concept more in the future, but for now I will just note that it will probably involve a lot of problem solving.  I will no doubt continue to do ‘softer’ chess activities, but these will be in addition to the 6 hours of hard study per week.

Accountability

I have set up a Google spreadsheet to record my training on, and hope this will be a better way of sharing it than my old weekly progress reports.  If you would like an invitation to view and edit this spreadsheet, pop your email address in the form in the sidebar at the top right of your screen (no need to do so again if you have done so in the past).  Feel free to add your own tab to the spreadsheet if you have your own training goals you would like to be held accountable to.  I will also be doing progress updates on the blog, perhaps every four weeks, and am thinking about other metrics such as online ratings to track for these.

Games

As stated above, I will be aiming to play 100 serious games by September 2016.  Of these, I would like at least half to be FIDE-rated.  I have created another Google spreadsheet to calculate how many FIDE-rated games I would need to play at various rating performances to reach 2100, and this indicates that I would need 49 games at an average performance of 2150 to hit the goal.  (This sheet may be of interest to people as well, since it can easily be modified for your own calculations, so I will also share this with people who sign up above.)

I am intending to play in the ‘Four Nations Chess League’ and the London Chess Classic this season, which together will give me around 20 FIDE-rated games.  That still leaves me 30+ to find, so tournament suggestions or invitations are welcome.

That’s it for now, and please do let me know your thoughts on anything I have written in the comments below.

In August I played my first long tournament since last year’s Major Open, in sunny Kavala.  Kavala is a seaside town in eastern Greece, where the attractive beaches compete with the chessboard for players’ attention.  Fortunately, although my morning preparation may have suffered a little, they did not manage to prevent me from turning up at the board.

My preparation for the first round was sub-optimal, to put it mildly.  My Gatwick to Barcelona flight was delayed, which meant that I missed my connection to Thessaloniki.  Instead of putting me on the next direct flight, Vueling elected to send me first to Rome, then to Athens, and finally to Thessaloniki, which resulted in me reaching Kavala at around 2 am on the day of the first game, after a hellish 40-hour journey.  I was paired with an International Master, and after getting slightly the better of the opening, I miscalculated and lost quickly.

Round two saw me paired with an 1806-rated junior; always an unpredictable proposition, as they can easily be a couple of hundred points stronger than their published rating.  Despite still being tired, I played reasonably well and had good winning chances, but didn’t take them and only managed to draw.  The second day featured a double round, so after the long morning game I had to play again in the afternoon.  This did not go well, as can be seen below:

As seems to have become my habit recently, there has been a gap of many months since my last post.  This is not because I have not been playing chess; I have been continuing with London and UK league chess, and even travelled to Greece earlier this month to play in the Kavala Open (my first tournament abroad since Pardubice).  Nor is it because I lack ideas to post about; there are a number of chess-improvement topics I am quite excited about, and would like to share.  No – the lack of posts is because I have not been consistently working hard on my chess, and consequently have not been making progress. Without these things this blog has no reason to exist.  I could write about the ups and downs of club chess, or my untested training ideas, but many such blogs exist.  Without wishing to take anything away from those blogs, this one was supposed to be different.  It was supposed to be a test of what was possible for an average club player, with hard work and real commitment to getting stronger.  I know many of you share my frustration that I have not so far been able to realise this vision, and I recently received the following email from a reader:

“Hey. You had a nice goal, but not updating your website in a year or so and not leaving any comments about your progress is just cowardice. If you can’t reach your potential and have no improvement plans, you should make your viewers aware of that. Just admit that you were not up to the challenge – people will accept that – or make regular posts about your progress. Otherwise this site has nothing to provide.”

In light of the above, I have decided to set myself a deadline.  If I have not reached at least 2100 strength by the 1st of September 2016, I will set aside my goal to become a GM and discontinue this blog.  (A small disclaimer: by 2100 strength, I mean that ideally I would have passed 2100 ELO, but if it is abundantly clear that I have reached that level (e.g. I have performed well above it in my last few tournaments) but I haven’t been able to play enough games to gain the points, I may continue.)

This goal strikes me as very achievable, but given my previous failures to keep myself consistently motivated I will be taking no chances.  Einstein famously defined insanity as ‘doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results’, so I will go about things slightly differently this time.  To this end I am finally looking to hire a coach.  Suggestions/applications for this position are welcome, and I am open to working in person or online.  Ideally I would work with my coach at least a couple of times a week, but if the coach’s rates make this unaffordable I would consider other arrangements.

I will post details of my new training regime once I have found a coach.  Given my previous failures I would understand if not everyone chose to follow this time round, but I hope at least some of you will choose to stick with me for what could be the final year of this project.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more!

I’ve been settled into my new job and new life in London for a while now, and an update is long overdue.  I’ll share a game and a few words about London chess today, and update you all on my training in a week or two.

Chess in London is quite different from chess in rural Somerset.  I’ve joined two clubs – The Drunken Knights in the London League, and Muswell Hill in the Middlesex League.  Both are rather strong; I generally played board 1 for my Somerset club, but would play board thirty-something for the Drunken Knights if they were ever at full strength.  My hope is that playing stronger players on a regular basis will be good for my chess.

Evening chess after a long day at work is, unsurprisingly, proving more of a struggle than after the shorter days I have been used to.  Fortunately upgrading my habitual Diet Coke to a Red Bull seems to keep me relatively alert, and although my chess has not leapt to Nakamura‘s or Sachdev‘s level, I am so far more-or-less holding my own, with 1.5/4 against mostly stronger opposition.  My most interesting game so far, against a new Drunken Knights, Muswell Hill and West is Best (my 4NCL team) teammate, is given below with brief comments: