I once was fortunate enough to witness a post mortem between Timman (at that moment ranked third in the world) and Kasparov. Kasparov won that game in which the following unusual ending ocurred:
In this position it was White (Timman) to move. Kasparov (with the black pieces) won this game even though almost everbody thought it was a draw. During the post mortem it was stunning to see the difference between kasparov and Timman. Kasparov gave one variation after another in an amazing speed. Immediately rebuffing almost every suggestion Timman made to improve upon the game.
Witnessing this I strongly felt that Kasparov brains just worked much faster than Timmans, and that the only thing that could compensate Timman for this disadvantage was maybe experience and knowledge (read patterns). Unfortunately for his Dutch fans however, Timman never could prove that his experience and knowledge were superior to Kasparovs, and after this match he never again was able to seriously challenge Kasparov again.
Nevertheless, Timman of course was a world class player. So it is possible to be good at chess, even if your main strength is not calculation and/or visualization. And I think that this explains my progress from a steady 1900 player to a steady 2000+ player. The period in which I accomplished this, is the period in which I mainly concentrated on improving my pattern recognition. I started to calculate less, but the variations I calculated were much more relevant than before.
And up to this day I still think that the road for improvement for me is to work on my pattern recognition. I do step 6 of the stepsmethod now for almost a year. I have nearly completed the workbook. My succes rate is about 75%. There is hardly a solution in the book that is deeper than 11 ply, and neither will you find solutions with more than 3 to 4 variations. As long as I keep missing 25% of the patterns within this horizon, there seems to be little reason for me to try to improve my abbility to look deeper.
And besides, before I started to concentrate on pattern recognition, I have tried a lot to improve my visualization and calculation skills. It did not improve my rating, and neither did I have any other indication that it brought me significant gains. But maybe this is caused by the fact that I did not use an effective method. So for now I focus on patterns. The question remains however what to do when I have finished step 6.
7 opmerkingen:
Maybe you are hindered by things you learned in the past and this may lead to your problems today since i know of youth players who learned chess via the stepsmethode and nothing else.
The good ones easily reach a rating of 2100+ (i think i know atleast 6 persons who did so). So maybe it's your old bagage so to say that hinders you to progress quicker. So find a way to throw off that is hindering your progress and try to implement the (for you) right way.
CT,
You are so right. The garbage I learned in the past hindered me a lot. But less so nowadays. I am approaching 2100 now, but do not expect that I can improve and up to a 2200 level. But who Knows. I had pretty much given up on 2000 twelve years ago, and thought years ago that 2100 was beyond my capabilities.
Given the pessimistic approach towards your own potential this is the best way to go by far. And I like it because it is an extreme idea to get better in the area that you are already good at. If I was wise I would choose the same approach (improve pattern recognition).
The fact that the best correspondence-games by non-OTB players are worse than the best OTB games shows that skill isn't paramount. Since correspondence players level out the difference in skill by thinking longer and with the aid of an analysis board. But they can't emulate the ability to evalute the position so well.
"The question remains however what to do when I have finished step 6."
Start over and do it again and wait for step 7 ;)
TS,
Thank you for this comment. Your comment reinforces me to keep on track.
CMoB,
finishing step 6 is not just trying to solve every position, but after this trying to solve every position that I missed in this first round. These position are most significant. They tell you which patterns are the hardest to store for you. Step 6 has about 1350 positions. I score about 75% so after finishing this first round I have a second one with about 350/400 positions that I could not solve in the first round. This round should be even more effective than the first one.
But as soon as I have mastered step 6 the question remains what to do next. Alas there is no step 7 yet. So something else has to be done. I have some ideas, but will share these with the blogosphere later.
There are steps 7 to 10, but those aren't available to the public.
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