Reduce The Problem

Going from a problem to completely solving it often does not take one step.

Let’s look thru two examples from different experience levels

1. Rook vs Pawn for new players
2. Trading Pieces for the 1200+ players

Rook vs Pawn 

Many students already know how to checkmate with a king and rook versus a king, which is usually covered during the their early lessons. 

A few weeks later, I would ask if they feel confident in winning the game if they had a king and rook versus king and a pawn. 

This technique opens the door for students to think about reducing the problem. 

1. Win the pawn first
2. Then checkmate with the rook, which has become second nature. 

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Trading pieces

When do we want to trade pieces and why?

Up in material is a popular answer.

As we trade down, we’ll be more confident that the extra material will lead us to an easier road.  

And trading is especially important in a position when we have more material but have to defend against a strong attack.

To reduce the problem

1. Aim to trade attacking pieces
2. Use our extra materials to consolidate.

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When contemplating a complex problem, ask the following question: If I can get to a simplified situation, will I be happy?  

If so, then we only need to think about how to get to the reduced problem, and not worry about the details of the next steps afterward. Because we can take care of it. 

Reduce the problem and simplify the chaos.

How to win in Winning Positions

The experience to lose half-point or even the full point here and there adds up, and it starts to rattle your head.

Whether it’s up a piece for the U1000 crowd or having small advantage for the sub-1500 players, it takes experience to develop winning techniques to finish games cleanly.

How can we practice to improve our technique?

Before we get to the answer, let’s drill in the number one focus to win a winning position.

SIMPLIFY

1. Trade Pieces
2. Reduce noise

Trade Pieces

For my U1000 students, trading pieces when up in material is a lesson we repeat a few times until it becomes second nature.

The reason is to avoid counter attacks and mistakes from our side to give back the ‘gift’.

In the position below what is the easiest way to trade the dark-square bishop?

Reduce Noise

For the more experienced players, trading pieces has become a second nature, and we’ll start to working more complicated positions.

We may not be winning, but rather tiny bit better in the position.

If we are defending when up in material, it is important to reduce the attack from our opponent.

In the position above, if white retreats the knight to f3, then black will play Ne4 trapping the rook and getting ready to attack on f2 as well.

There are lots of noise in the position, so white needs to reduce all of the problems on the king side.

The best move is to swing the rook to b3, attacking black’s queen and then retreat knight to f3.

After Rb3, the rook will be much safer than it is on g3, and then white can start to develop the rest of the pieces and march forward with the two extra pawns.

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Simplify is always the strategy when you are winning, and the way to do that is to trade more pieces and reduce noises.

Now you’ve learn the concept of simplify, it’s time to practice.

Setup a better position and try to play a computer level that is a bit more stronger than you, and see if you can simplify the position to get the full point!

Alexa – How Can I Improve in Chess?

In an earlier post, I talked about AI and Chess. An adjacent topic to AI is the advancement of Voice capability.

We will discuss a few ideas I had for developing Voice Product for Chess in this blog post and a not-so-surprising answer to my question in the title.

Vision: Voice Product for Chess

How can voice help for the following groups

1. Learn Chess for Kids
2. Improve chess for serious players
3. Play chess on the go as a hobby

Learn Chess for Kids

Learning chess visually is still by far the most effective way for kids to pick up the game. However, voice can supplement the learning steps.

Alexa Skills can remind kids to develop pieces and castle early for new players.

As a young player starts to playing tournaments, a good check-up would be to make sure they do not drop pieces easily.

Improve chess for serious players

For the more serious chess players, the integration between chess database, engine, and Alexa would be important.

Some powerful questions to leverage via Alexa:

a) What are the top novelties played today?

b) How many games played today by over ELO 2600 players used the Sicilian Dragon line

Play chess on the go as a hobby

Let’s get back to the chess hobbyist for a moment.

If given a chance, many people would glad to learn chess instead of playing candy crush to kill time.

The problem today is the friction and effort to pick up chess easily.

What if Alexa can combine historical chess facts together with the simple to digest chess rules and gamify the chess learning process.

We have the historical chess facts in Google.

And we have chess rules all over the internet.

What we’ll need is an Alexa Skill the integrate the information and design an gamify-version of the learning process

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We’re very early in Voice chess products development, and I’d say AI chess products are way ahead due to chess engine developments.

When I asked ‘How can I improve in chess?’ Alexa told me ‘I don’t know how to answer this question.’

Unfortunately no straightforward way to use Alexa yet today, but don’t bet against the concept.

Alexa and other voice products will soon change the way chess players’ improvement journey.

 

Why Tournament Matters

Have you traded stock with paper money before?

Most of the time, this is an exercise used in High School or College finance classes, and it’s an opportunity for the students to learn about financial literacy.

I’ve done that.

When I traded stock with paper money, I did not check the daily ups and downs of stock trend for months.

During a good market (2009, right after the 2008 crash), when I returned to check results nonchalantly six months later, paper money have risen over 20%. I wish I could turn the time back and put in some real money instead.

Now fast forward to the first time I put $100 of real money into the stock market. The market had ups and downs as usual, however, this time my psychology changed completely.

I was checking stock tickers over 10 times a day on my phone, and everytime there’s a $1-2 of movement in price, I wondered whether I made the right decision to buy and when should I sell.

What does this story has anything to do with chess tournaments?

The title of this post tells you.

Playing in rated chess tournament versus casual games is like trading stock with real versus paper money.

The difference is in a player’s psychology.  To truly improve in chess, you have to go thru the trials of tribulation in facing tough times from tournament games.

Whenever I talk to parents of new students, we discuss how to improve in chess (topic for another time) and when should a student start playing in tournaments.

My recommendation: once basic chess skills are developed and the student has played 1-2 unrated tournament to get a feel of the environment, it’s time to get into the action of rated games.

Sometimes I hear parents say I want my child to work more at home and be ready to play in tournaments where we know s/he will have a good showing.

I politely disagree.

Chess tournaments are not like school tests.

School teachers often give students study guide after study guide.  If the student is well versed in all the practice questions, s/he is ready for the test and getting an A or 100 is no problem.

In chess tournaments, doesn’t matter how prepared you’re, you may face any of the following circumstances

-Other player’s strength; Stronger than their rating indicates

It’s often hard to gauge exactly how strong is your opponent. They can come from a different country or state, or they took time out from chess and only came back recently.

-You’re own emotional response to meaningful games

The way you feel in a casual game is not the same as a meaningful game. The stock analogy earlier in the article covers this point. The oh-no moments will be much more painful than a skittle room’s game.

-Tournament Surroundings

There are tensions in the tournament room. In any given moment, the room is quiet, you can hear chess pieces move but nothing more. The nerves and the tension become less intimidating for the more experienced players.

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You can only get better in tournament chess by experiencing more.

And remember, you’ll never be 100% ready.

Treat chess tournaments as job interview instead of school test, there is no guarantee, but the best practice to improve your odds of success is to experience more and learn from these experiences.

Chess Training AI is Closer than We Think

My position just changed from +3.5 to -2.3. I often hear students say after analyzing a position with our silicon friends.

Have you ever wondered what all these numbers mean in the context of a game?

What if there is an English translation of the game analysis from the engines?

With growing AI advancement, the DecodeChess Team is putting the technology together to make translating chess engine language to English a reality.

Stockfish Analysis In English

For players U1500 and especially U1000, looking at the engine analysis feels reading an article in foreign language.

If there’s a brief English notation to go along the engine analysis, the experience of going over the Stockfish analysis will improve tremendously.

Let’s look thru a brief Demo of DecodeChess

Import the game

To get started, we’ll simply import a game using PGN format

Once the game is imported, users has the option to decode any move during the game.

After the the Decode: the app will provide a list of recommendation and notations

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We’re still in the early stage of the implementing AI into chess training.

However, with the hard work of DecodeChess team, we’re closer to have novice players utilize top-notch chess engines in a more effective way.

For anyone interested to try out DecodeChess, here is the link to the free trial experience.

 

 

Topics for Different Levels of Chess Players

A new player does not need to learn double pins.

A 1200-rated player does not need to analyze 20-moves deep Najdorf variations.

During each level of ratings, we should build out rough guidelines to improve based on our chess understanding.

If you’re just starting to play chess, learning complicated topics that does not apply to your games will only overwhelm and provide more anxieties than enjoyments.

So what should students learn at different levels.

Let’s separate player strength into three groups based on USCF ratings.

1. Under 500
2. Under 1000
3. Under 1500

I’ve been working with many U1000 and a few U1500 players, and the important themes that I’m seeing are as follow:

U500

-Reduce blunders, especially giving up free piece

-Learn basic tactics and checkmate patterns (1 move)

-Pay attention to captures, make sure you see two on one opportunities

U1000

–Looking at the whole board

-Elimination of defenders

-Prepare mate and tactics (2+ moves)

U1500

-Activate pieces

-Space advantage

-Focus on important targets

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As you can see, there are more strategic themes for U1500 then the lower rating groups.

Tactics is still very important for U1500 players. however, the opponents they are playing against will have just as much tactical prowess, therefore learning more strategic knowledge will be advantageous.

Let’s discuss Focus on important targets briefly here.

Many newly-1000 players would play the passive looking move Rab8, protecting the b7-pawn.

For stronger players, b7-pawn here is not important. The main focus now is to activate one or both of black’s rooks.

After scanning the board for 10 seconds or so, a stronger player would immediately see Rad8 and then Rxd2 taking control of the 2nd rank will soon take control of the game.

On the other hand, for the U500 players, even if they did play Rad8, the game may still take a few twist and turns to get to an unknown outcome

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To summarize: players at each level should focus and improve on certain themes.

It’s good for newer players to see the the higher-level topics, but it’s much more important to hammer down the fundamentals.

Play Chess With Energy

Have you had afternoons when you feel like napping for the rest of the work day in the office after lunch?

It’s not a pleasant feel when there are 10 more important tasks to take care of.

Similarly in chess, we want to bring our optimized energy into each game to play the best chess and also provide entertainment value to the spectators.

Which means nutrition is an important aspect, and many tournament surroundings does not have the most energy-boosting food options. But that’s for another article.

Back to chess. I played in the early April’s Titled Tuesday and had a sub-par overall result.

While comparing the games, I can see where I played with energy, and where my pieces were being hit left and right due to lack of energy.

Hope you’ll enjoy the games below and remember to bring more energy into you games!

No Energy

https://www.chess.com/analysis-board-editor?diagram_id=3986616

Energized

https://www.chess.com/analysis-board-editor?diagram_id=3986616

 

Chess Side Hustle

I made this tweet in early 2017…

#chess players: listen to this podcast and think about ways to go from
No business->Side hustle->Full time chess gig https://t.co/VUM4mUqXkM

— Xiao (@simplerxiao) January 4, 2017

…and yesterday (April of 2018), I had the great opportunity to be featured on the Side Hustle School podcast.

Since we’re on the Chess^Summit journey, let’s compare the process of building a side hustle and chess improvements in the following three bullet points.

1. The Journey is a Marathon
2. Find a way to Get Started
3. Appreciate How Far You’ve Gone

The Journey is a Marathon

Whenever you start a new adventure, there is a certain amount of excitement.

But after a period of extended work with little or no reward, a tiny voice of ‘why bother’ frequently starts to cloud our minds.

This is the moment to see how much energy you have for the LONG RUN, and it feels like the mile-10 mark of a full 26-mile marathon.

No one can build a sustainable side hustle in one weekend, and no one can improve 500 rating points in one weekend.

There will be many ups and even more downs, but it’s always about the process of getting back our energy and excitement when the moments are tough to get through.

Whether it’s teaching chess or improving chess yourself. As Jack Ma said: Don’t give up ‘tomorrow evening’.

 

Get Started

In teaching chess side hustle: there is the website, then you have to talk customers, and there are contents you’ll need to create. These are just 10 percent of the efforts to build the business.

It’s not different in improving chess: you have to keep up-to-date in opening preparations, the endgame to study again, and your recent games to review.

One word describes both scenarios: Overwhelming.

The way to overcome is to START one thing. Immerse your mind to that task and not worry about all the other to-dos. Get started and continue to build momentum.

Appreciate How Far You’ve Gone

 

No matter how far we go, we often only look forward to the next goals. And we will always find a more challenging problem to keep us busy but giving us headaches.

In chess improvement, you surpassed the goal of reaching 1500, now you start to look for 2000. And in chess teaching, you have one student, you’ll start to look for 5.

It’s good to have the desire to continue improve. However, find ways to remind yourself to turn your head backward once in a while and appreciate how far you have gone.

Remind yourself of the work you have accomplished will give you more confidence to go forward.

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Wherever is your journey – learn to look for small improvements to help you go forward.

The US Championships Sweepstakes!

Join Chess^Summit and compete in our US Championships Sweepstakes with chess.com!

Who will win this year’s US Championships and US Women’s Championships in St Louis? This year boasts one of the strongest editions of the tournament in both fields, so we’re excited to bring you another edition of our favorite game with five 3 month diamond memberships up for grabs!

We’ve put together a Fantasy Challenge with chess.com for the US Championships, and you can win a chess.com Diamond Membership if you can choose your players wisely. Enter Chess^Summit’s Sweepstakes now!

Here are the rules:

Speed Round (120 possible points): 

12 questions, 10 points a piece! Make your pick in this section, but don’t let it bust your entry! In this section, we ask you questions about players in both Championships. Will there be a playoff? How will the youngsters do? Will Irina beat Anna in their head-to-head match?

This is all fun and games, but this is only a prelude to…

You Pick’em – Predict the Championships!: You might be familiar with the rules from the Candidates, but we’ve added a twist! Not only will you need to rank the players in both the US Championships and US Women’s Championships, the scores of six different players will not count towards your final point total.

In this section, you’ll rank the players based on how you think they will finish in this year’s edition of the US Chess Championships and US Women’s Championships! But be careful – here’s the twist: the higher you rank a player, the more they will count towards your final score. Depending on your ranking, each player will have a different boost ranging from 0 to 9, and that boost multiplied by each player’s score will be added to your point total!

For example, if we picked Wesley to win the Championships, his final score is multiplied by 9. So if he scores 7/12, he would score 63 points (7×9) for our submission. Keep in mind, you’re only allowed to select a total of 9 players in each field, so choose them wisely! The total of all of our player contributions in each of the championships would be our score for this section!

In this sweepstakes, every game matters, so make sure to follow the US Chess Championships and round reports from chess.com!

Enter the Candidate Sweepstakes now!

Want to know where you stand? Follow the Live Results here.

Only one submission per account, and submissions are due at 1:59 PM EST on April 18th. Good luck!

What a difference 15 years makes

In 2003 – Columbus, Ohio welcomed the K-9 Junior High School Nationals.

This weekend – Atlanta, GA held the 2018 K-9 Junior High School Nationals.

 

Xiao Cheng blitzing #JHSChessChamps pic.twitter.com/2P4JnjqirF

— Davide Nastasio (@DavideNastasio) April 8, 2018

I can’t help myself playing a few blitz games.

There are many things that had changed for US Chess over the last 15 years.

One such exciting event is the triumph Berlin candidate win for Fabiano (participant of 2003 JHS edition), thus becoming the World Championship Challenger!

Back home in our JHS tournament, we also see many changes.

-Stronger Top Boards

As you can see, the top boards are stronger today with about twenty 2000+ players in each of the championship sections.

Earlier rounds are definitely not a walk in the park for the top boards anymore, and the physical stigma are more important now than ever to finish these events.

-Chess popularity is growing

Platforms such as chess.com and others are popularizing the game, and it gives many opportunities to learn and play against stronger players even at home.

Free education is abundant, all over the Internet. It's the desire to learn that's scarce.

— Naval (@naval) July 22, 2016

Here are my challenges to the active chess players and the chess educators (including myself).

Challenge to active players – Can you find a way to learn from a stronger player the next time you have a chance? And can you help a newer player improve the next time you have an opportunity.

Challenge to chess educators – Can you motivate one or more young player to gain the interest and continue his/her chess tourney towards 50th percentile or beyond?

The only blessings you own are the ones you share

-Frank Blake

Wherever you are in your chess journey, I hope you find a way bring more interest towards the game!