A Path to Chess Enlightenment - An Article by Sam Collins

Improving at chess is simply a matter of dedication. Everyone reading this article has the talent to go further in this game than they can imagine - the only question is who actually wants to put in the work to get there.

There's nothing wrong in not wanting to get any better at chess - you're freeing up a lot of valuable time to watch major league football or find solutions for world poverty. But if you do want to spend some of your time playing this game, and would like to play it well, I have some suggestions.



1. Playing

Without this, nothing can be accomplished. Playing competitive chess does more for your game than all other improvement routes put together - plus, it's fun. Competitive chess (that is, tournaments at reasonable time controls) is the only chess worth playing to improve - blitz and bughouse and so on are good fun but little more. Try to play as often as possible.

Before you sit down to play a game, decide that you're going to play the best game of your life over the next two hours. You have to play it sometime, it might as well be now. Stay seated for as long as you can - when it' s your opponent's move, try to consider the position in general terms (which pieces you would like to relocate, which endgames are favorable to you), so that you can spend more time on specific analysis when it's your turn. Chess players who switch off when their opponent's clock is running are like tennis players who walk off court as soon as they've hit the ball.

Analyze with your opponent after the game. During this period, time spent speaking can't be spent learning, so only open your mouth to ask your opponent what he thought of various ideas.

2. Analyzing your own games

You are currently making some recurring mistakes. These could include: overestimating the importance of attacks on the king, not paying sufficient attention to pawn structure, placing your knights poorly, not opening the position when you have two bishops, being too aggressive, not being aggressive enough, not contesting open files with your rooks, and so forth.

If you eliminate these mistakes (or just pay more attention to them and try to improve in your problem areas), you will gain 200 rating points. At this higher level you will be making different recurring mistakes, all of which
can again be remedied with work.

The only way you can know which mistakes you are making is be looking at your games - wins, draws and losses. For this, you will need:

• One complete scoresheet , containing all the moves played in a game
• One pad of A4 paper
• Two pens of different colour
• One folder for storage of your papers

Write down the moves played in the game in one colour, and look for improvements, comments, and anything at all which you can write and which you can learn from the game.  Write these next to the main moves, in a different colour. Once this task is completed, take the A4 page and put it in a folder. If you look at that page again in a month, congratulations, you just became one of the promising junior players.

3. Books

Everything you need to know to beat everyone on earth at chess has been written down on pages and can be purchased for a small fee. On the other hand, these pages exist on the same shelves as pages containing some of the least instructive trash ever to have been published. The trick is knowing which books are worth reading.  

• The Top 3 Chess Books in the Universe according to the Chesspundit:

Buy these, study them, cherish them, tuck them under your pillow and absorb their wisdom through the side of your head.

1. The Life and Games of Mikhail Tal by Mikhail Tal
2. My System by Aron Nimzowitsch
3. My 60 Memorable Games by Bobby Fischer

• Opening books:

Opening theory is a vast quagmire from which a few emerge unscathed. For you, the most important thing is to get a good general knowledge of most openings so you can decide which ones you want to play. My main
recommendation is Nunn's Chess Openings (NCO) by John Nunn, which will tell you all you need to know.

When Fischer was asked what training methods he would use were he a coach, he said,

"For the first lesson, I'd get them to read over every line of Modern Chess Openings, including footnotes [MCO has been through several editions since Fischer's day, and personally I think that NCO should be preferred. They're the same format, so it's up to you.]. For the second lesson, I'd make them do it again."

• Endgame books:

Most of the Junior players know less about the endgame than i do about the American Foreign policy. This
means that even a little knowledge goes a very long way in winning tournaments. Also endgame study is, I think, easier and more enjoyable than a lot of other chess work. There are lots of good endgame books: anything by Mednis is worth looking at, for instance. My two favorites are Practical Chess Endings by Paul
Keres and Essential Chess Endings by James Howell. Get one and read it.

• Coaching

A lot of great players have never had any coaching in their lives: World Champion Vishy Anand, for instance. So this isn't entirely necessary- if you work hard with books you don't need a coach. That said, coaches can
teach you a lot of stuff and give you some good advice.


Bottom line: if you want to get better at chess, it takes work, nothing more, nothing less. Most people don't want to do the work, and that's completely OK. But if you put in the work, improvement is guaranteed.

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