As described in my last post, I am currently doing two Stoyko Exercises every week. The aim of these exercises is to improve my calculation. I love doing the exercises, but there is a practical problem that I encounter in the search for suitable positions. How to find good positions without spoiling them?
I do not have a coach, so I have to rely on books as a reference for checking my calculations. Of course there is also the possibility of using a chess engine. But I very much prefer a human assessment of the lines I found as a reference. The main problem with engines is their evaluation of non tactical positions.
Because of this, I want to work with positions that are exhaustively analyzed in a book. But to find them, you have to look at them. And even a glance involuntary gives away moves and lines before you start exercising. I think I have found a few ways to get around this obstacle, but I would love to hear some suggestions from other players to tackle this problem.
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Interesting question.
I think an inadvertent glance at the position is okay as long as you don't glance at the annotations or analysis.
I don't think this would sully the integrity of the exercise at all.
What are your suggestions?
I play a lot of "turn-based" chess at Chess.com, so I am using those positions as Stoyko exercises because a) I am allowed to analyze it with pen and paper because it is correspondence chess, and b) I get an in game response to what I thought was the best move.
Then after the game is complete I can check it all my analysis in a post mortem review with an engine.
Tommyg,
Thank you for your input.
Glancing at the position is not enough, because I want to be sure that the position is analyzed well, so I have to look below the diagram.
Using the Stoyko method in turn based is a good idea to get your results up in turn based chess. But I think that the value of analyzing really complicated position is higher.
Hmm. I understand your issue. I don't know if its possible. But if you have chessbase and some sort of database like megabase or something, a lot of times they will have commented games from strong players on there. I am sure you could find a good one and then turn off the notation or just get rid of the window. It is a tough problem. BTW if you need mega base i have the 2009 version which I could get a copy to you no problem. Hope it helps.
Scheming,
Thanks for the hint. I don't have megabase, but do have bigbase 2007. I also have informator 1-100 as chessbase file. I will check this out to see if it is possible to select some positions. But I think the "glancing problem" remains.
Ask a knowledgeable friend to photocopy a few heavily human-annoted positions at a suitable level then he can separate the positions from the annotations (scissors) and send you both sets of material. Additionally, he would have to label like this: diagram 1, (and separately) annotations 1. You would receive two envelopes: the first containing diagrams, the second containing the annotations. Alastair
Alastair,
Good to see you again. Thank you for this advise. Especially since it is even simpler to do this electronically with a database of chess engine.
And of course I could do the same for him vice versa. I will probably post an ad in the ACIS group, to find a partner.
How about harvesting the positions and adding them to chessbase but not looking at them for several weeks. Since you didn't go through them in detail, a few weeks time should be sufficient time to forget what you saw.
I am very interested in reading the solution you came up with.
Manny,
Than you for your suggestion.
Just like most chessplayers, I tend to remember what I look a with an investigating mind. Its a gift and (sometimes) a curse.
I plan to write my next post about the way I handle the glancing problem at the moment.
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