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Novice Nook Dan Heisman
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The Mind Reading Fish Quote of the Month: Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. – Lao Tzu Most of my students are adults, but my three highest rated were juniors: Dan Benjamin, Matt Traldi, and Dan Yeager. Dan Benjamin and Matt both achieved a 2300 rating at age thirteen, but then moved on to other interests: Dan Benjamin got his PhD in Economics from Harvard and now is a professor at Cornell. I believe Matt got his degree in Music from Yale. In 2007-2008 Dan Yeager won both the National High School Championship and the Denker High School Tournament of Champions and will attend college this fall on a full chess scholarship. Like Dan Benjamin, Dan Yeager did not start serious play until the relatively late age of eleven, but quickly progressed. How Dan Yeager improved so quickly should be of interest to anyone who wishes to seriously improve. I have known Dan Yeager’s father Rick since before we had families – we lived nearby and both worked at the same place. Dan has just graduated from Hatboro-Horsham High School, the same school I graduated in 1968. But after my first wife passed away from cancer and before Dan started to play, I moved to the other end of the county – that made it much more difficult for Dan to get live lessons. Nevertheless, Rick would occasionally drive Dan to my house. With adults, I stress Lao Tzu’s idea: I am your guide, you have to do most of the work. My job is to teach you how to fish. Most of the learning takes place between lessons (see The Four Homeworks). However, with youngsters this idea is stressed somewhat less. Dan got the message, but I don’t remember making it a point. I taught him that in-between lessons he should
I gave Dan a few lessons and he seemed to be doing fine, but the length of the trip gradually resulted in increasing time between lessons. I kept close track of how Dan was doing on his USCF rating file. Dan was playing in tournaments on most weekends (especially at first) and his rating kept going up and up – great. Eventually I got curious about Dan’s relentless improvement without my further guidance, so at the next tournament I asked Rick: “Dan has been doing very well lately, but I have not seen him recently for a lesson – is he now taking lessons from someone else?” Rick seemed surprised and smiled “Oh no! You told Dan what to do and now he’s going out and doing it!” Dan had learned to fish very well. For example, at the recent 2009 Liberty Bell Open Dan lost to GM Alex Fishbein and afterwards I came across them in the skittles room. Alex was kindly reviewing the game and Dan was absorbing the feedback. I am sure I could help Dan more, but apparently he’s doing fine without my further guidance. Now let’s compare Dan’s experience with a recent lesson I had with an adult student. I had given him several phone/Internet lessons – ironically about the same number that I gave to Dan. I always begin and end a lesson by asking if a student has any questions. After our sixth or seventh lesson my student responded “I don’t have any questions, but would you mind some constructive criticism?” I replied “No, of course not. What do you have in mind?” “Well, Dan, you are supposed to be one of the best instructors and I have enjoyed our lessons, but when I started lessons from you I expected to learn X, Y, and Z, and after several lessons you have not taught me any of that stuff.” I knew the answer to that question: “Thanks, I appreciate that you think I am a good instructor, but I am a terrible mind reader. At the start of every lesson I asked if you had any questions, and you always answered “No.” You did not ask ‘Today, can you teach me X, or Y, or Z?’ We were diagnosing your needs and covering important instructional material, but if instead you wanted X, Y, and Z, why didn’t you ask when presented with the opportunity?” There was a pause on the other end of the line. “Oh, so that’s what that’s for?” Yes, that’s what that’s for. I will go so far as to state that the start of every lesson, when I ask “Do you have any questions?” is arguably the single most important part of any lesson. I have mentioned to several students “When I was starting out in chess, if I had access to a strong instructor I could have easily filled each lesson entirely with questions.” What kind of questions? There are many types, ranging from questions about homework, particular issues in a recent game, ideas behind an opening or pawn structure, etc. But there are more and less helpful ways to ask a similar question. For example, I often get asked open-ended questions, such as “I have trouble at the start of endgames. What should I do?” With so little information, the helper can’t really help unless he knows what is wrong. In the case of endgame transition the student’s problem may be due to
So a much more helpful question would be: “I have trouble transitioning from the middlegame to the endgame. I have selected three recent slow games, with time-stamping, which exemplify my problem. Can we start at that point of each game and try to determine what my problems are?” With those examples provided, we can fast-forward in the first game to move thirty-six, and examine the board and clock situation to see exactly what happened. Then we will do the same for the other games, and look for trends of misjudgments, time management problems, lack of understand of principles, or whatever. It may be that the student may different mistakes in each game or, more likely, that there were some common threads to his analysis or misunderstandings. And it is not uncommon that the student’s problem had nothing to do with transitioning to the endgame – he simply made errors in analysis, evaluation, or time management that occurred during, but not related to, that part of the game. In this sense problems that players have in the endgame are almost always critical because the endgame is the part of the game where errors are magnified – they are much more likely to have an effect on the outcome of the game. This is for two reasons: there is no time to recover, and the limited material means that the evaluation of positions is more concrete. For example, if you put the wrong rook on the d-file in the opening this may be a nuisance, but if you go the wrong way with your king in the endgame – or bring it out too late – this is much more likely to cost you the game. Let’s give additional examples of general vs. specific questions:
Notice that in each case the general question is a perfectly good question! But the instructor will have to guess what the student really needs. For example, when students complain they don’t know what to do when they get out of the opening it may be due to lack of planning expertise, but it is often unfamiliarity with pawn breaks (see Break Moves: Opening Lines to Create Mobility). Let’s list additional, common specific questions:
Sometimes a student can’t ask a specific question. That is also understandable, and the instructor should do his best to ask counter-questions to either narrow down the problem or elicit examples from recently played games. Let’s return to the question of learning how to fish. As I have noted in previous Novice Nooks, students who fail to do one of The Four Homeworks often suffer from clear maladies; e.g.,
Working with your instructor on how to fish is generally much more productive than getting fish from him (see Breaking Down Barriers). However, asking generic questions is acceptable and asking for fish is unavoidable. For example, most strong instructors understand their openings very well and are more than happy to show students not only the main lines, but the ideas behind them and any pertinent sidelines. Further, most strong instructors know many other opening and endgame patterns, which is why most strong players make good instructors – even if these strong players are not otherwise good teachers – if a student has a need to add “chess knowledge” (see Finding a Good Instructor). For the common problems involving time management or thought process, it is better to enlist the aid of a good instructor and not just a strong player. Along these same lines, working with the instructor to remove misconceptions and identify and eliminate errors you are making – subtracting negatives – is usually more efficient than receiving new knowledge – adding positives (see The Theory of Chess Improvement). The reason is simple: it is difficult to subtract negatives by yourself – the exception might be looking up an opening to see what you should do differently next time. Therefore, most homework, such as reading books, is almost fully geared toward adding new knowledge. But simply adding knowledge is never enough to make anyone a good player – they need a feedback loop to remove negatives, and the instructor is the focal point. So it may make the instructor look like more of a nag than he would like, but a good instructor should be focusing on the things you are doing wrong and trying to do anything possible to minimize their recurrence. In The Chess Instructor 2009, Dr. Anique de Bruin lists four characteristics of optimal deliberate practice:
This is virtually identical to The Improvement Feedback Loop and the student-instructor interaction (primarily to subtract negatives) is pinpointed in item three. Dan Yeager was unusually efficient at setting up this loop. He combined not only home study (including analysis of his games), but also frequent tournament play against the strongest competition and was not afraid to approach his opponents to review their games. In that sense young Dan was consistently getting good competition and good instruction at the same time. Add a large dose of talent and Dan was zooming up the charts. That brings us full circle on the theme of learning to fish and working with your instructor to not only get fish but learn how to fish better. A Final Example Let’s put the spotlight on my adult student who gained the most rating points in the shortest amount of time (from 1400+ to 2000+ ICC standard in one year), despite avoiding over-the-board events. Whenever I am asked what made this student special, my answer is “He was one of my best students at being the only student in the class.” In other words, he was not afraid to interrupt me with specific questions such as
In that sense he understood that if there is only one person in the class you rarely have to take notes! Why stop to record information to study later if you can get the instructor to discuss it with you until you are satisfied you understand as well as possible. A discussion is much more efficient than note review, just as a phone conversation is almost always more efficient than back-and-forth emails. I understand when students want to write down which Novice Nooks to read, but otherwise my students who don’t take notes almost always learn faster than those who do. After that year of improvement we were chatting and he said “Dan, you remember how I used to fight you tooth and nail over every single point?” I replied that I did, and he said, “Well, now that I am a fairly good player myself I look back on that now and…” I was expecting him to say “You were right on most things but I think maybe you underemphasized or overemphasized certain points.” But instead he continued… “…you were right about everything!” I had to smile. There many not be many shortcuts to improvement, but there are longer and more difficult paths to take. By getting the maximum out of your homework, practice, lessons, and play (especially in the three critical areas of time management, safety, and activity), a student should see gradual and almost certain improvement. Question I started playing blitz chess about five years ago on the Internet. I recently decided it was time for the next step: I joined a chess club. Having read your columns about real chess and hope chess, I was aware that I should try to adopt a different thought process. I have played about seventy-five slow games and spent plenty of time studying chess. As a result I have progressed a lot as a player. However, my natural thinking process is still my speed chess pattern. Therefore, each slow game I actively have to switch to a real chess thinking pattern, often several times. If I do not, I risk overlooking moves, and my current opponents are usually attentive enough to spot and exploit my mistakes. Is there a way to make real chess my standard thinking process, or at least make it a more natural thinking process? Answer All thought processes must adapt to the current situation (board position, time control, move number, time remaining on the clock). There are many different possible situations, so being flexible and being able to adapt is an important part of chess skill. It all starts out with asking (when your opponent is thinking): “Based on the situation, am I playing too fast or too slow?” …and adapting accordingly. If you are playing a 3/0 game on the ICC, then you pretty much always have to play fast, although even then you play non-analytical moves instantly and take a little time for analytical moves. If you read Novice Nook, then you know a lot about that already. The rest is just a question as to whether you always want to play your best. I do, so in slow games I can’t help but play slowly – to do otherwise would be like handing in a one-hour essay test in ten minutes. No matter what speed I play, I start with basic questions such as “Is my opponent’s move safe?” and “Is my candidate move safe?”. See Making Chess Simple. You might try playing slow chess exclusively for a short while just to get into a good slow thinking habit. Then, once that habit is achieved, go back to playing both fast and slow games. Of course, you should look up your opening after your fast games (most weaker players do not) in order to become a better player. Question Until I started reading Back To Basics: Tactics I didn’t know what you meant by counting. I’m surprised at how unskilled I can be at figuring out problems that often go “If I take this and he takes that then I take this.” Do any of your other books have more counting exercises in them? Any other ways to get better at this rather fundamental skill? Answer I introduced Counting in Everyone’s 2nd Chess Book and four of my Novice Nooks (including some incorporated into Back To Basics: Tactics) are devoted to Counting: Finally, The Best Novice Nook Ideas reviews three more Counting examples. Tip of the Month On analytical moves, spend roughly fifteen percent of your time analyzing what your opponent can do after your move. Concentrate mostly upon his forcing moves: checks, captures, and threats, and make sure you have a safe answer for each. Whether or not you spend that fifteen percent, he will spend most of his time on that very position trying to beat you, so making sure he can’t succeed is an important goal. Dan welcomes readers’ questions; he is a full-time instructor on the ICC as Phillytutor. Yes, I have a question for Dan! |
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