Training Techniques

I’ve beaten a few, so I should know, right?

It used to be so easy. I would go on an open tournament and breeze through the first several rounds, without preparation or anything. Those days were only a bit more busy than a rest day.

In the 1990s club players didn’t know anything. They didn’t know openings, they didn’t know middlegame plans, they had no positional understanding, they didn’t know endgames. Beating them was basically a matter of showing up and waiting for them to mess up, sooner rather than later. Things slowly started to change in the new millennium…

Chess is tactics. More than one strong player has said some variation of this truth. What does that mean? In simple words, it means that if you are not careful you will lose a pawn or a piece.

How do you become careful then? It all starts with board awareness. At all times you should know what is happening on the board. Where the pieces are, how they interact with each other. This awareness should be “on” at all times – don’t “forget” a piece or a pawn just because you’re calculating a sequence of moves on the other side of the board.

A game of chess is a complex affair. It starts long before the first move has been played. It starts at home. For chess, the wise words of Benjamin Franklin, “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail” are applicable to the fullest. But how do you prepare?

For now we will leave the psychological aspect out (and for those needing a shortcut here’s another famous quote, this time from Bobby Fischer: “All things being equal, confidence wins games.”) and we shall concentrate on the more technical aspects of training concerning the three main phases of the game – the opening, the middlegame, and the endgame.

The daily chess training is something every ambitious player should take seriously. No matter what your rating is, if your goal is to become a better player within a short period of time you must train regularly and actively. This is, of course, an obvious observation, the question is how? What exactly should you be doing in order to achieve your goal?

Known as one of the best coaches of our times, Mark Dvoretsky left us a valuable legacy to help chess players improve their training technique and take that much-awaited leap forward. His books are a great source of inspiration and help for every aspiring chess player.

Mark Dvoretsky learned how to play chess before elementary school, but back then he was mostly interested in mathematics, so the game wasn’t given that much importance. He started to take chess seriously and began going to the district’s chess club and studying only when he was in the fifth grade.

Every chess player trains hard in order to see improvement in their play and, after all the hours invested, the accumulated knowledge is tested in tournaments. As we have mentioned in some of our previous articles, it is important that you choose strong tournaments where you are able to measure your forces with players who are stronger than you.

Improving at chess takes a lot of work and patience.

It cannot happen overnight, but only after investing many hours of training and practicing the newly learned elements. With the development of technology, there are many more materials that can now be easily accessed for study. There are a lot of books, video lessons, articles and databases that are available to any chess enthusiast.

However, creating and following a thorough training plan requires time and we know that there are many chess players out there who are not fully dedicated to playing chess but would nevertheless like to keep improving and squeeze studying in their busy schedule.

Many club players feel that after a long time of studying chess they don’t see enough progress in their chess. This brings a feeling of depression and it sometimes leads to quitting the usual training plan or the idea of making progress in chess. However, thinking that you are not good enough or that you are not going to make it and deciding to settle for club play only is not the answer. You should review your training schedule, look for any mistakes you are making or just keep training harder; the results will most certainly show.

“I am planning to play in the Open section of the Las Vegas International next month, what should I do?” Replace Vegas International and there is a question that as a professional trainer I get asked a lot. How to prepare for a tournament? Generally, those who ask me this are not dedicating plenty of time to chess. They practice and study in their spare time but when the tournament is approaching they look for a magical potion that will turn them into competitive mode quickly.

Of course, there is no magic formula and only hard work pays off in the end. Sadly, I must add. Ideally, the best for an active chess player is to make training a part of your everyday life; it’s easier to memorize and practice one opening at a time than having to prepare 2 or 3 in 15 days before being tested over the board.

Studying chess can prove a difficult task sometimes and, as much as you like to study by yourself, you might realize at some point that you need some guidance. It could be that you reach a moment when you can no longer see any improvement, regardless of the time you invest in studying or that you need help and advice creating a suitable repertoire or that you simply need a stronger and more experienced player to explain some important chess concepts. In any case, the help of a coach can be enormous.

An outside person with a good chess understanding can help you identify the weaknesses in your play and tell you what you need to study, can provide you material or indicate model games.