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If you are reading this, you are probably one of those players who wish to become a better chess player and to win games (or at least not to lose). I’m sure that there is no need to tell you that becoming a better chess player is a huge job, which requires many things such as:

Desire (you really must want to become a better chess player, no matter what it takes)

Time (you must have a free time for your chess education)

Appropriate Training Program (it’s a lot better to have some training program than none, if you’re serious about chess)

Money (it is useful to have some sort of recourses you can invest to hire a coach, buy books and other chess supplies)

This article is mostly intended for inexperienced chess players, who decided to play competitive chess and looking for some hints. However, even an “occasional” tournament chess player may find some of the ideas discussed and things advised here useful for their chess careers.

A very first thing a player needs to understand before he goes to a chess tournament that it’s a huge challenge, both mentally and physically. A player who only played a semi-competitive game of chess with his friends, no clock and no real pressure don’t know what he is about to face in a real tournament.

Here is a small collection of unique chess clocks. Some of the clocks are so beautiful that players using them are in danger of getting into time trouble. Since today’s post doesn’t have any “chess education” linked to it I would like to check the viewer’s observance (it is surely an important skill for a chess player) by asking to identify the object below which is not a chess clock?

What are the problematic opponents? Problematic opponents are those opponents who are about your strength or weaker, but against which you’re unable to show good results. For example, we know that if a rating difference between you and your opponent is 0 points; you are expected to win about 50% of the games. Of course, there will be some draws, but if you play 10 games, hypothetically you should get 5 points. Now, what if you get only 2 or 3 or even 1 point? That means you are facing a problematic opponent. Even though your chess strength is about the same as his, you’re still unable to get your well deserved wins.

The previous two articles talk about how to play chess in won and in lost positions. The today’s reading is a logical continuation of the series. You must know how to play in a drawn position to be a well rounded chess player. You may ask “what’s so hard about playing in the drawn position isn’t it straightforward”? Well, yes it is straightforward and simple to play in a dead drawn position, but how do you know if you have one on the board? A lot of “drawn” positions just assumed to be drawn but they are really aren’t and have plenty of play in it.

Last week I was writing about playing chess in the lost positions. This week’s topic maybe sounding more straightforward, since most players assume (quiet incorrectly) that once position is winning it will stay so forever. These naive players think if their position is winning they are going to win the game automatically. It’s a real world, not an imaginary perfect-world model of a textbook where Bishop and Knight vs. King is a guaranteed win. Nope. In real life, especially on amateur level, this endgame is pretty far from being won. I can say more, some players in a “very lost position” trade down to this endgame, hoping their opponent won’t know how to mate with two minor pieces. It’s a gamble: sometimes they draw sometimes they lose. The point should be clear: even in the “won” position there are plenty of possibilities to get a draw or even to lose. All chess players know that it’s the most painful to lose a won game.

If you play chess regularly, there is a high possibility that you would have to play a game in the lost position. Does not matter how strong or weak chess player you are, you will have to defend the “weak” end of the board one day. There are plenty of information available (in various chess bibles and online recourses) on how to play chess, but they rarely talk about playing chess in the lost positions. They assume that if position is lost the game is over. It’s not quite true. The point of my little writing is to prove that there are exceptions to this rule. If you apply some basic principles you may be able to join that “exception” group, replacing you “0” with “1/2” or even “1” on the score sheet.

As you can see from the title, today’s topic of our discussion is a bit unusual. First of all, what do I mean by coming back from a chess vacation? It means, you haven’t played chess for some significant amount of time but decided to change your life and come back. Sometimes people have to take a break from playing/improving their chess.

There is an infinite number of reasons why that may happen: exotic vocation, job schedule, school work, travels arrangements, winning a million dollars lottery (some people would play more in this case) may interfere with chess. After we’re done with all these “important” things we may feel that it is a good time to start playing our favorite sport again. How to do it again?

I already talked about the subject of elo rating but decided to expend previous article with more information and some technical details about elo chess rating system. This article is not recommended for people who take statistics/predictions way too seriously since this information can ruin their chess results. So read it at your own risk!

The ELO chess rating system is a method of estimating the strength of two players. ELO system isn’t an IQ score. ELO rating does not show how smart you are, how well your memory is, how fast can you calculate chess variations or recognize chess patterns (it is a topic of a separate discussion, how well the IQ score reflects all of the above).

I have written previously about 7 deadly mistakes every novice player makes. Today I have decided to extend this list even further and to add 5 other typical “problematic choices” that amateur chess players make to have their chess life more difficult and stressful.

If you find yourself in some of these how-not-to-play examples you should feel good since by fixing it you can improve your play and win more games. I should feel accomplished, since the time I spend writing it is worthwhile and I helped other players to get better at chess.