Another terrific article, Nate. (The tennis was terrific, by the way.) One of the reasons I love watching IM John Bartholomew’s chess channel is how simple his moves are. It’s all very safe and logical, rarely exciting, almost boring in a certain sense, and yet he puts away opponent after opponent with ease. It’s absolutely fascinating to watch. In my profession, photography, I often tell amateur photographers that about 95% of what I’m doing is actually fairly routine, fairly straightforward -- you have to deliver a solid, professional job for your client, after all -- but about 5% of any given assignment is quite different. With the safe stuff out of the way, you allow yourself to be creatively risky, unpredictable, and a little dangerous. But that’s basically the ratio: 95/5. Seems to be similar with chess. Lock the basics down.
This: “...it’s often the case that the things they’re learning are far more advanced than what’s actually holding back their results.” Great piece. It just gave me something concrete to work on.
I’ve been taking lessons with an IM for almost a year. She has insisted from our first lesson that you always look at capture’s first. Your opponents and yours. Even ahead of checks captures come first.
Against players under 2000 this simple approach saves time and wins me a lot of games.
What a great article. Kind of summarizes a lot of what I feel and need to focus on at my level. Another excellent point you made a while back in a post is working of hanging pieces puzzles which has proven to be very helpful as well.
Thanks for an excellent post. This needs to be preached more for sub-1600 players like myself. With all the chess content out there, it can be tempting to get sucked into learning fancy traps and openings before being rock-solid on fundamentals. I appreciate this message a lot!
Good article. It reminds me of what Tim Brennan wrote in his Tactics Time books: the key to improvement is doing the basic things very well.
NFL players: it is taken for granted that they are all incredibly fit and strong.
Pro ice hockey players: it is taken for granted that they all know how to skate. Without that ability, all subtle and complicated game plays, etc are useless.
Another terrific article, Nate. (The tennis was terrific, by the way.) One of the reasons I love watching IM John Bartholomew’s chess channel is how simple his moves are. It’s all very safe and logical, rarely exciting, almost boring in a certain sense, and yet he puts away opponent after opponent with ease. It’s absolutely fascinating to watch. In my profession, photography, I often tell amateur photographers that about 95% of what I’m doing is actually fairly routine, fairly straightforward -- you have to deliver a solid, professional job for your client, after all -- but about 5% of any given assignment is quite different. With the safe stuff out of the way, you allow yourself to be creatively risky, unpredictable, and a little dangerous. But that’s basically the ratio: 95/5. Seems to be similar with chess. Lock the basics down.
Thanks! Interesting that this applies to photography as well!
This: “...it’s often the case that the things they’re learning are far more advanced than what’s actually holding back their results.” Great piece. It just gave me something concrete to work on.
I’ve been taking lessons with an IM for almost a year. She has insisted from our first lesson that you always look at capture’s first. Your opponents and yours. Even ahead of checks captures come first.
Against players under 2000 this simple approach saves time and wins me a lot of games.
What a great article. Kind of summarizes a lot of what I feel and need to focus on at my level. Another excellent point you made a while back in a post is working of hanging pieces puzzles which has proven to be very helpful as well.
Thanks for an excellent post. This needs to be preached more for sub-1600 players like myself. With all the chess content out there, it can be tempting to get sucked into learning fancy traps and openings before being rock-solid on fundamentals. I appreciate this message a lot!
Good article. It reminds me of what Tim Brennan wrote in his Tactics Time books: the key to improvement is doing the basic things very well.
NFL players: it is taken for granted that they are all incredibly fit and strong.
Pro ice hockey players: it is taken for granted that they all know how to skate. Without that ability, all subtle and complicated game plays, etc are useless.