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Novice NookDan Heisman
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Intermediate Time Controls Hinder Improvement Quote of the Month: You need time to think. Whenever someone asks me a question about which chess activity the should focus on, my answer depends on their objectives: improve, have fun, or compete for money, titles, and prizes, etc. For players who wish to improve I suggest the following: Always play with a clock and record your games, but, until you are a strong player, avoid intermediate time controls (between ten and thirty minutes per player per game). One advantage I have as a long-time chess instructor is that I have seen thousands of games played by players of all levels. That range of experience was unnecessary when I was "only" a chess master; then I played and reviewed primarily master level games. Even though each individual gets to experience how his activities affect himself, I have the unique opportunity to see what works in general at almost all levels. One thing I noticed quite clearly is that weaker players who primarily play intermediate time limits online develop very bad analytical and time management habits. Many of them either never previously played with a clock and/or observe stronger players playing mostly fast, fun games. These newcomers conclude that fast chess is five minutes or less per side per game and slow chess is anything more than twenty minutes. Therefore, they also play their slow games at twenty minutes per side. The fact that many Internet playing servers rate fifteen minute games as standard (slow) only reinforces this misconception. Let's do a little math: fifteen minutes is 900 seconds, and there are roughly forty moves in an average game. So in a fifteen minute game, players have an average of about twenty-two seconds to make a move. A key maxim in chess is "If you see a good move, look for a better one." Let's ask, "What rating would have to be before you can even determine if a move is good in twenty-two seconds, much less look for a better one?" The answer is that a player has to be fairly high rated to accurately make this type of determination that fast. Most weaker players don't have sufficient board and tactical vision to determine all the safety issues so quickly, much less resolve the additional issues that would correctly identify a move as "good." Let's consider this issue from another angle. For students who play quickly, I sometimes perform the following exercise. We find a position from one of their games that is rich in possibilities, but not necessarily complicated with sharp forcing sequences. I ask the student to "list all the reasonable moves in this position." Let's define a reasonable move as one that might do something positive and at least superficially looks safe. It almost always takes the student much longer just to name the reasonable moves than they took for the move itself! And that's taking into consideration that what is reasonable is subjective, so a wide latitude must be granted for their answer. In The Fun of Pros and Cons, I noted that in order to improve, you have to find better chess moves, and in order to find better chess moves you need to compare alternative moves and try to pick the best one, using analytical skills and criteria that you hone as you gain experience. If weak players cannot see reasonable moves very quickly, and they only have twenty-two seconds to make a move, how many reasonable moves can they pick and how can they reasonably be expected to compare moves and decide which one might be best. They can't, of course. It takes an extremely strong player to consistently make reasonably good moves that quickly. We can conclude that if a player wants to improve, then the very process that will foster improvement – the selection of better moves from among reasonable candidates – cannot be practiced at anything approaching twenty-two seconds per move. Thus, unless you are already a strong player, playing games at a time limit in the fifteen minute range is not only going to make it difficult to improve, it may even help develop bad thinking habits that will slow, or even prevent, improvement. So, players rated below 1800 FIDE who are looking to improve should avoid games in the ten to twenty-five minute range. Of course, if a local organization or your online server is offering an event at that time control in which you wish to participate, by all means go ahead and play. It is not as if such games have no benefit – that is not a proper conclusion. Some of the issues are not clear cut. For example, playing chess at any speed promotes board vision to different degrees, and playing chess at any speed enables one to practice openings just about the same. However, Blitz games are almost impossible for beginners to play reasonably, because quick games require some decent board and tactical vision and can be very frustrating to those not yet possessing those skills. Once you get to about 1400 FIDE, fast games are practical and have a huge psychological benefit over ten to twenty-five minute games: almost all players feel that blitz chess is not "serious," and therefore any dangers from insufficient thought process are not ingrained as being "desirable" or "proper." In other words, once you are good enough to start playing fast chess, there is little chance that you will err by falsely convincing yourself that this is how serious chess should be played. Therefore, when you play much slower chess (say, sixty or more minutes per side), you would indeed be unwise to believe that you should play the same way you do in blitz. You should never play games that are too fast for your board vision (hence, the minimum rating suggestion above). However, as noted in several Novice Nooks, notably Getting the Edge, once you are able, there are several benefits from playing fast chess:
Many of these benefits are more or less available at ten to twenty-five minute games, but that's part of the point: Why play an intermediate time control when you can play a faster game and get the same, or better, benefits? (For example, more openings to practice per unit time, etc.) I strongly suggest you play almost all your speed games, or at least the ones where you set the time control, at the same increment that your federation requires for over-the-board slow games. You can adjust your initial number of minutes based on how much time you want a game to take: some players find two minutes with a five-second increment about the same as five-minute blitz. Others prefer five-minutes with a five-second increment. The idea is that any of these games clearly does not represent "serious" thinking, so that you don't feel too bad when you make a thought process mistake and lose a fast game. On the other hand, slow games are for developing good habits with your thought process, learning to visualize with minimal mistakes, resolving safety issues completely and correctly, etc. One local youth who became an international player was forbidden to play any "slow" games faster than 30/90 (three minutes per move) during their development years. The reason was that the coach did not want the student to develop sloppy or bad thinking habits from playing too fast (like thirty minute games). Unfortunately, this will not work for most readers because
In the long run you want to be able to play at any reasonable speed. Grandmasters have not only traditional 40/2 events, but also FIDE time limits (i.e., 40 moves in 75 minutes, 15 minutes for the remainder of the game, with an increment of 30 seconds per move from move one), rapid chess (thirty minute), and of course speed and everything in-between. Being able to adjust your thought process for different time controls is an advanced skill and not advisable until you have mastered – or at least developed – a good thought process for sufficiently slow chess. For example, have you ever started a game where the time control was too fast to play the entirety using the thought process you wanted to practice? Undoubtedly, you then also occasionally lost such games because of a fast move that was instigated by the diminishing time on your clock, causing you to abandon the very care you were trying to practice? And if you avoid this problem by playing consistently faster – especially in a game in the ten to twenty-five minute range – then the kind of serious thought needed to play quality games in events like the World or U.S. Opens is rarely practiced. Once you master a good slow process and how to flexibly adjust it for different time controls, those skills allow you to participate in all types of events. Since mastering the thought process for slow games should be the first step, avoiding intermediate time controls until you do helps speed up your learning curve and minimizes the development and ingraining of bad habits. If you are looking to improve, you should also avoid playing computers, even if they are "dumbed-down" to play at your level. There are a couple of reasons for this: computers don't play like humans nor make the same human-type mistakes, and computers don't pose the type of psychological problems that human opponents do. If you don't learn to deal with the problems that human opponents provide, you aren't going to fare well in serious games against humans. Therefore, you may as well play humans from the start. If your goal is to be a strong player against humans, then almost all your practice should be against humans. Save the games against computers for when it is absolutely impossible to find a human opponent. In these days with online chess servers, it should always be possible to find a human opponent within your rating range and is willing to play a game at the speed you want. Take a Draw vs. Higher Rated Player When Winning? I have seen many instances where a weaker player was winning, but, because he was playing a higher rated player took a draw so he could get rating points (yet another drawback to the way ratings are perceived; see Encouraging Tournament Participation). Next time you consider drawing with a higher rated player, especially from a clearly superior position, keep the following in mind: The basic USCF/Elo rating system is Rn = Ro + K*(W-We) + B, where Rn = Your new rating For the sake of simplicity, let's assume
When you play someone 100 points higher rated, We = 0.36 (you are expected to score 36 points out of 100) So if you draw, Rn = Ro + 32 (0.5-0.36) = .14 * 32 = you get about 4.5 rating points But if you win, you get Rn = Ro + 32 (1-0.36) = .64*32 = about 20.5 rating points So you get well over four times as many rating points for winning as you get for drawing! On the crosstable you only get twice as many points, but the effect on your rating is much greater. And if you are in bonus territory, each extra point is doubled, so you would get 2*(20.5-4.5) = 32 extra rating points. Therefore, playing for the win means you get greater than four to one rating odds over taking a draw. Moreover, you need to learn "technique" (how to win a won game). So allowing draws when you are winning slows down this learning process – and the confidence you get when it is attained. Even if you lose, and lose rating points, you still have learned something valuable. This is much more important than rating points, which only reflect your playing strength. By playing games out you become a better player faster. Artificial manipulation of your rating is always temporary; it is only the learning and improvement that really matters. So whether you look at it from a rating risk standpoint or from the more important learning aspect, playing for a win when you are winning is a win-win situation (no pun intended!). Keep in mind that Bobby Fischer would answer "No!" before his opponent could finish the question "Would you like a (draw)…" Question I see you sometimes use the term "weaker player." What exactly does that mean? Are you implying your readers are "weak"? Answer There is a marked difference between a "weaker player" and a "weak player." "Weaker" is a relative term that simply depends on the context. For example, if I write, "international players usually know their opponents in FIDE round robin events and thus can anticipate the opening for twenty moves, but weaker players don't usually have to do this," then the term "weaker" includes anyone who doesn't play in international round robin events. This includes the overwhelming majority of players around the world, myself included. It doesn't mean we are bad players. We are just lower rated than the ones to whom this refers. If I write, "most tournament players know how important it is to develop all their pieces, but weaker players often have trouble understanding that they need to get their entire army activated," then the term "weaker" pertains to a much lower rated group than in the previous example. The term "weak player" implies a certain rating class and below, and everyone's opinion on this differs. Therefore, while it is helpful and useful to use the term "weaker player" in many instances, it is not so easy to pinpoint what constitutes a weak player. As my friend Jerry Kolker, an expert, used to state (somewhat tongue-in-cheek, of course) "Chess starts at fifty points below you." Meaning that everyone thinks their chess is OK and only players with ratings fifty points below them and less are weak. Question You often write about the importance of learning from mistakes. Do you have any advice on how one can get better at learning from mistakes? Some people are good at learning from mistakes, is there something special they do? Or is it just pure determination. Answer No doubt determination is a large part. Of course recognition is also key – if you don't recognize the pattern next time, you can't attempt to improve. Further, if there are no strong players around to tell you it's a mistake, you might repeat it just through ignorance of the drawbacks. In addition, being open-minded and not stubborn is a big factor. Some players just want to do it "my way" until they get burned so many times they eventually become convinced. Or they rationalize their case is different, when in fact it is not different enough to be an exception. The fewer times you get burned before you realize that the advice should be followed, the better you are at learning from mistakes (see The Improvement Feedback Loop. Question When I was reading your column Odds and Ends with Crafty assisting me, I noticed your elementary school student was amazingly accurate during his attack. (I'm rated about 1400, so I defer to my computer.) It is not true that White had all the attacking chances after 16.Bxc3. The problem was that the black player missed simplifying with 16...Nc5. If he had found it, White's mating chances would be gone and Black would have had an easy game. I'm sure that the kid did not calculate through to 18...a6. It was unclear to him how the tactics were going to work out. But he saw the fork, couldn't find a refutation and he put the question to White, to prove the pawn was a sacrifice and not a blunder! And his hunch was correct, and he proved its correctness by finishing his attack with his extra material intact. He just didn't see the danger of Qh6. So I think the student should not be discouraged from taking material in that situation. If your opponent is weak and lets you play romantic, swashbuckling chess, take the chance to do so. Answer I always tell my students "When you have a choice between equal and unclear continuations, always choose unclear" so you can learn something. So I want them to play aggressively. However, in the game you cite my student, who had played almost perfectly to win a pawn, neglected his development to try to win further material, which is not playing aggressively, but rather shortsighted. As I explain in The Principle of Symmetry, when you have a lead in one area, you don't want a deficit in another – you just want the lead. So if you have a lead in material in the opening, you usually don't want to fall behind in development to win more material, especially just another pawn. That is not swashbuckling, it is just dangerous. And if you had a lead in development, then you can give it away if you get a lead in material, where you can swap one advantage for another. Finally, even if a computer says a move or idea is good, that does not make it easy to play. When you are winning, you generally want to keep things simple, as complications greatly favor the opponent, who essentially has nothing to lose. Question I'm intrigued by what you might offer as a coach. What would the format be for lessons for a student that could only afford a few hours of coaching every now and then? Answer For students who want only three or four lessons, I spend much less time trying to determine how they think or why they play too fast or too slow for the situation. I just go over as many of their games as possible (preferably time-stamped) and try to make as many constructive suggestions as I can. For long-term students, I give them lots of puzzles at first and try to see how they approach the puzzles, what they know, etc. Their roads to improvement may be the same, but I can much more personalize my suggestions and homework for someone who will be with me over the long haul. With long-term students, I can also monitor their "homework." Most students take lessons once every two weeks or so, as it takes time to play games and apply what is being learned, as well as study new material. © 2010 ChessCafe.com. All Rights Reserved. Dan welcomes readers' questions; he is a full-time instructor on the ICC as Phillytutor. Yes, I have a question for Dan! Comment on this month's column via our Contact Page! Pertinent responses will be posted below daily. |
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