Tournament Players PROTIP #7: NFL Player Edition

Watching the UMass-UF football game tonight (a dreary affair if one is a Gator), I heard an inspirational story. The announcers were discussing Florida player Brian Cox, Jr., who is the son of Brian Cox, Sr. (What a coincidence!)

Senior was an NFL player of note back in the 1990s & early 2000s. He played linebacker, a particularly violent position. Mr. Cox had a unique motivational tool. Before games he would have someone leave a ransom note in his locker, written on the opposing team's stationary, stating that the other team was holding his children hostage.

"Well," I thought, "chess is a very violent game, mentally and emotionally. Is this something I can apply to my tournament practice?" I don't have an opportunity to test this out any time soon, so if any of our reader(s) gets a chance to put this into practice, drop us a note!

A helpful bit of advice

Soon I'm going to take the plunge and apply for the Club Level Tournament Director title to start running quads and such at the club. To that end I'm starting to dig into USCF fora for tournament direction issues. I just saw some helpful advice for any tournament director. From one tmagchesspgh comes the following:

When I became a tournament director at age 18, the old gentlemen who showed me the ropes informed me that half of the job of a TD was public relations. You had to know your clientele and how to bring them back for future tournaments and maybe as members of the club. You never knew who might walk in to play. [emphasis added]

I will try to keep that in mind!

Sound advice from the immortals

Spassky takes Bronstein's cunning advice.
Spassky's 100 Best Games (1972), pp.182-3. pic.twitter.com/NYcG6UD91p

— Jonathan Manley (@KingpinEd) July 10, 2016

I feel good about this, because it's similar to something I had noticed on my own. "[A]n opponent already wasting time is likely to keep doing so." - see note to White's eleventh move.

Tournament Players PROTIP: The Gold Standard

Tournament Players PROTIPs have existed far longer than tournaments in the chess world. In fact, the earliest surviving book about the game, Luis Ramírez de Lucena's  (c. 1465 – c. 1530) Repetición de Amores y Arte de Ajedrez con 101 Juegos de Partido ("Repetition of Love and the Art of Playing Chess") from 1497*, contains advice on the practical matter of how to conduct a game of chess. And that advice set a standard yet to be surpassed.

If you play at night with a single candle, place it at your left-hand side, so that it does not disturb your eyes; if you play by day, place your opponent facing the light, which gives you a great advantage. Also, try to play your adversary when he has just eaten and drunk freely. For to play a long time it is best to have eaten lightly. To avoid getting dizzy during the game, you should drink water, but by no means wine. and play only short sessions, and for a stake small enough to avoid the possibility of the loss weighing on your mind.

Gold, baby, GOLD!

* From the Wiki entry linked above: "Commentators have suggested that much of the material was plagiarised from Francesc Vicent's now lost 1495 work Libre dels jochs partits dels schacs en nombre de 100." To my surprise, Edward Winter doesn't seem to have much on Lucena.

PS The full version of the quote (translated, obviously) was hard to track down, though I've seen the quote (both in part and complete) several times. Eventually, and strangely, I found the text above on a page from the South Australian Chess Association's old website, on a list of South Australian Chess Champions.

Tournament Players PROTIP #6: Appendix A

In response to the prior post, a reader adds a particularly devious twist:

Great advice. One thing to add: if you know that your opponent will go into anaphylactic shock, get a touch of the allergen on the pieces, watch them start choking, and use your convient Epi-pen, thus saving the day.

That's the most twisted thing I've read today, and I've been reading a lot of political coverage, so that's saying something!

Tournament Players PROTIP #6

More Dark Arts of The Dark Side

If you know an opponent has a mild allergy*, you can exploit this weakness by exposing them to said substance immediately before or during the game. A particularly useful (though highly improbable) allergy for an opponent to have would be an aloe allergy. In that case you could simply apply hand lotion with aloe before the handshake at the start of the game - and watch the uncontrollable sneezing begin! He might sneeze at a crucial moment and mix up the move order of his response to your Anti-Berlin variation, and instead of your emerging from the opening with an =, you get all the way to a +/= eval instead! Maybe apply some of the allergen to the opponent's pieces before hand if you have Black or can otherwise reliably sabotage the pieces or board. The possibilities are limited only by your imagination!

(No, I have no known allergies. Why do you ask?)

* Remember, people, that we are talking about mild allergies here. If the opponent has a severe allergy, to say, peanut butter, and you put them into Anaphylactic Shock , you could well be brought up on murder charges latter - or worse, be expelled from the tournament. Sure, if it's only your fifth or sixth potential felony conviction you can probably plead it down to a littering fine, but do you really want to waste perfectly good money on a murder when that money could buy your seventh or eighth tournament worthy chess set instead? (Obviously I'm not including legal fees, as I'm assuming you're probably reliant on the auspices of a public defender, or that you keep an attorney on retainer for such occasions.)

Remember, kids, Force Choke Responsibly!

Added: Don't miss the appendix! 

Tournament Players PROTIP: Platinum Edition

The same reader that provided Tournament Players PROTIP 5(a) has also provided some other useful PROTIPs! He modestly calls them Bronze Rules, but here at Tournament Players PROTIP HQ, we feel they merit a better quality of metal.

1. Do not drink 8 cups of water per game. That is too much fluid.
2. If you feel severe nausea, notice the location of the closest restroom. This is critical if you ate food from Panda Express before the round. [ALWAYS make note of the TWO nearest restrooms! - ed.]
3. Bring a bottle on NSAIDs. This goes double if there are bright lights in the hall. Triple if it is the last round. Depending on how acute pain is, see the next note.
4. Bring Pepto-Bismol.
5. If you are sick, coffee. If that does not work, cough drops and coffee. Repeat until the end of the tournament. [Espresso is probably
6. Sleep is good. Three hours is NOT enough. Try melatonin if you need help at night, and coffee if you are not diurnal. 
7. Bring extra batteries for your clock, even if it is of the longlasting variety. [And bring the instruction manual for your clock, especially if it is a Chronos! - ed.]
8. Bring a coat. This sounds stupid in Florida, but we have our share of Ice Hotels here.
9. Don't take liquid antihistamine meds during the round. The same active ingredient is used in Zzzquil. [Methamphetamines would work in these situations, and are both Erdős and Lemmy approved, but not strictly legal. And by "not strictly legal" we mean you will go to jail, or worse, get fulminate of mercuried by an angry HS chemistry teacher. - ed.]
10. Don't let a teammate of your opponent pick up the clock and reset it if the opponent came late and had time run off.
11. Don't tell your opponent that the time control has not yet been reached. [Or that the time control HAS been reached! - ed.]
12. Most important, be honest to yourself. BCD behavior (Blame others, Complain about cirumstances, and Defend yourself) is the best way to keep yourself from ever improving.

I must be honest that I'm not sure about that last one, but to each their own!

Tournament Players PROTIP #5(a)

A reader makes the following suggestion:

Replace piece weights with fishing weights so they rattle. Do so only to opponent's pieces.

People have done the fish weight to me before.

Bloody brilliant!

Tournament Players PROTIP #5

The Dark Arts of The Dark Side: These are not the ProTips you are looking for....

Here's one from the Dark Side, pure gamesmanship to mess with an opponent's head.

Buy two identical sets of very heavily weighted pieces. Then remove the weights from one set. Use the weighted pieces for yourself, and give the opponent the light pieces. When he starts capturing your pieces he'll (subconsciously) realize just how solidly you've dug into your position, and his position will feel insubstantial by comparison.* It will plant the seeds of doubt in his head. And doubt leads to anger, and anger leads to hate, and hate leads to hanging pieces. (It goes something like that, I'm sure of it.)

Or you can give him a set of pieces some of which are weighted, and some aren't. Vary the weights of similar pieces, so that one knight is very heavy and the other feels like a feather. That won't even be too different from some of the sets I've seen in use since returning to tournament action.

Hmm, I'm starting to suspect some opponents of trying to mess with my head. Ha, joke's on them! I lost my mind years ago, so even if they get inside it, it's got nothing to do with me!

* Note: Some players prefer lighter pieces, so you'll need to reverse the weights in those cases. I'll not mention names ***cough*** Jim McTigue ***cough***

The Value of Motivation

Every corpse on Everest was once an extremely motivated person.

— Rabbit KM (@BathysphereHat) June 1, 2016

Chess Tip of the Day: 2016 May 23rd Edition

"The knight is best on h8 - well-known rule!" https://t.co/KjgmecJYxg #c24live pic.twitter.com/7myLteD6VU

— chess24.com (@chess24com) May 23, 2016

The Big Leap

ChessBase has an interesting/inspirational article by Albert Silver, Chess Progress: making the big leap. He shares his tale of the time he made a 350 ELO leap in ability, and discusses what he believes are methods to pursue such leaps. I hope some of you find it as interesting as I did.

Capablanca's 1932 Chess Lecture

On May 25, 1932, Jose Raul Capablanca gave a lecture at the Club de Comunicaciones de Prado in Cuba. Edward Winter provides a translation of the lecture's transcript here. The reason this comes up now is because purportedly the original typed manuscript (with hand-written notes by The Man himself) is for sale on Ebay, so if you've got $5,000 burning a hole in your pocket....

I'm not that interested in the sale, but I did read Mr. Winter's translation of the lecture. It's a decent enough lecture, I suppose, but some lines near the end caught my attention:

I should like to conclude by recommending you to use your imagination as much as possible; a player has to lose many games if he is to progress. Many players sometimes become annoyed because they lose, but one learns more by losing than by winning. When winning a player thinks he is doing very well and he does not realize the mistakes he is making; but when he loses he appreciates that somewhere he was mistaken and he attempts not to make the same errors in the future.

Standard enough advice that we've all heard 1,000 times, it seems. One learns more from losing than from winning, and Capablanca provides a good rationale for why this is true. "When winning a player thinks he is doing very well and he does not realize the mistakes he is making; but when he loses he appreciates that somewhere he was mistaken and he attempts not to make the same errors in the future."

But is that still true? Speaking strictly of chess and the moves played, it might not be so any more. With the advent of powerful computer programs, a player can easily see which mistakes he made even in successful games. A player can take some time looking over any of his wins with Stockfish or Komodo (or the program of his choice), and he will likely find plenty of errors - hopefully the small kind, but probably some fairly significant evaluation swings too. (I speak from experience. I'm often surprised at my poor play in my winning games - it's between humbling and humiliating!)

So now it's possible, speaking purely from a chess perspective, to learn as much from one's victories as from one's losses. One merely has to take the time to examine the games.

However, there are still the non-chess factors to be considered, and there the old saw is probably still true - but only for players willing to examine their efforts with some semblance of objectivity!

Respect: When to Resign?

On my Twitter feed today someone linked to a piece by a young Kayden Troff from 2010 on the ChessKids.Com site. In the piece he explains when, in his opinion at that time, a player should play on as opposed to resign in a bad position. Mostly it comes down to, "If you think you can learn something from the other player's technique, or if you think you've still got some chances, play on. Else, resign."

Certainly that's not bad advice. He mentions cases in which players get annoyed or upset when someone failed to resign at the "proper" time.

What's the best material to study to improve? UPDATED

I saw an interesting discussion on Twitter today regarding what level of study material is best for player improvement. It started with this tweet from Richard James of the Chess Improver blog:

https://t.co/5bEIQTi4YA My latest Chess Improver blog post: 9 lessons from a 9 move game between two kids.

— Richard James (@chesstutor) May 8, 2016

The post is worth reading as a jumping off point for the discussion. What followed on Twitter was a discussion of the topic between Richard James, Jonathan Bryant, and Matt Fletcher.

(Click image to expand view.)

Actually there's even more to the discussion, but the current version of Twitter makes it difficult to get all of a discussion captured in a few screen captures, unfortunately.

More to the point, does anyone else have an opinion on this? I have some of my own, but I'm still mulling them over.

UPDATE: Connor Eickelman writes:

The players above never mention what about their play they are trying to improve. What exactly is the goal of their training? Are they seeking a perfect panacea, able to cure every type of chess flaw? If so, I doubt they will get too much from low-rated games, unless said games are to prove a specific point (how to play against the IQP, for example).

If their goal is general improvement, they would be better off choosing a master from the past, preferably the opposite of your playing style, and go through a book of his best games, annotated by a good writer (500 Best Games of Chess is a good example, but that specific book is not limited to one player.) Then, go through the games, covering the next move with a note-card, and try to guess the next move. Act as though you are playing the game. If you want to be serious about it, get your clock out and set it for a long time control.

If they are trying to improve one specific component of their play, they should study that specific point in their play. If they are weak in theoretical endings, I fail to see how a book about class players slugging it out will help them in that regard. Even fifty games decided by a hanging piece or a two mover will not teach you the Lucena or Philidor! Just my $0.02.

Jonathan Bryant's rating would be a little under 2000, Matt Fletcher's rating would be in the 2000s, and Richard James rating would be in the 1900s. James also does a lot of tutoring and has written some books. I would hazard that none of them are particularly concerned, for a variety of reasons, about how to improve their own games. 

The question is, "How can weaker players improve efficiently?" Giving a 400 ELO player a book on Rubinstein probably won't help them much. Giving them one of Igor Stohl's books on modern chess masterpieces certainly wouldn't. However, going over games of players slightly stronger may help a lot. This is the topic at hand.

Tournament Players PROTIP #4

PROTIP #4: If you drink a lot of fluid during games (and who doesn't?), bring hand lotion.

[Insert Paul Leggett quip ... here.] [Insert Michael Scott quip ... here.] [Insert Garry Day amused chuckle ... here.] [Insert phony Todd Durham scolding about blog posting rules ... here.] [But seriously, folks, bring hand lotion. It prevents chapping from the frequent hand washing. And if you don't think the other guy is washing HIS hands after all those bathroom trips, disinfect your clock and pieces when you get home.] [Insert new Paul Leggett quip ... here. Lather, rinse, repeat as needed.]

Tournament Players PROTIP #3

PROTIP #3: Do NOT eat sushi, sashimi, or spicy foods during the tournament. If you do, see PROTIP #2.

Tournament Players PROTIP #2

PROTIP #2: Keep a supply of Imodium (Loperamide) in your tournament tote.

PROTIP #2a: Be prepared to pay the price the day AFTER the tournament.

Tournament Players PROTIP #1

PROTIP #1: If you bring jerky to the tournament to snack on during games (which is a good idea), also pack a NEW roll of dental floss in your tournament tote bag. This will save you from running to the hotel gift shop in the middle of a big money game to buy dental floss.

Useful advice, rendered usefully.

Three years ago FIDE Master Kostya Kavutskiy, working for Chess.com, released a YouTube video entitled "Calculate Like a Grandmaster". Despite its brevity (just under six minutes) it was well-received. As well it should have been! I now know what I'm doing wrong in the Half-Classic - I am not getting close enough to the board. I will not strive to emulate Fischer's near perfect form when using the Half-Classic method in the future.

Yesterday, Kavutskiy released a new video entitled "How to Blunder Like a Grandmaster". This one is also short, and is also destined to become a classic of chess instruction.

Don't be fooled by the release date of these videos: they provide extremely useful practical advice for all active tournament players. Don't miss them!