Jerome asks:

Hello,

first of all, thanks for your very nice website and your very instructive videos.

I have a question about studying chess games. What do you think is the best method ?

– go quickly through a lot of games, just to get a feeling of where the pieces go (and maybe improve your intuition).

– go through commented games and try to follow the comments (preferably without moving the pieces on the board)

– look at the game from the point of view of the winning player, and try to guess each of his moves. This is bit difficult to do with printed games, because your eyes may slip to the answer, but it can be done with computer softwares by hiding the next moves.

I guess one could or should do all of them, but what do you think ? How are you doing to prepare your commented game videos ?

A side question: I like very much to watch live games, for two reasons:
– because there I have no choice then trying to guess the next move
– because I find very instructive to see how quickly / slowly the players play, depending on the situation. One can really follow the “tempo” of the games when looking at live games.

Do you know if there exists games recorded with “time tags” and a tool able to replay a game at the real speed ?

Thanks

Jerome

Hi Jerome,

Thanks for the question. I will first address your questions and then make some general remarks.

I think it would be good if you create a mix of your methods and treat the mix as a way of studying chess games.

You can do the first method, but you also need to follow it with understanding (which is fundamentally different) why the pieces go where they go. In my opinion, intuition builds more on prior understanding than on feeling. If you do it like this, you already need more time per game.

The second method you describe is normally very good if you have indeed the discipline to stay away from the the pieces and try to visualize everything until your mind’s eye completely understands what is going on. This is where you can really train your visualization skills. Be sure to adopt a proper study posture and environment at your chess set.

The third method you describe is also cool. I have done that myself in the past. There are books to do that. Have you heard of “The Chess Combat Simulator” by Dutch IM Jeroen Bosch? Former WCC Max Euwe was the first to make such books. I think Jeroen Bosch’ book is the same.

The way I prepare games is roughly as follows:

1. I play over the game (or have played it myself before, or followed it during the day)
2. I normally have an idea about what I want to communicate about it.
3. I am critical of moves and ask myself questions about why a move was played. I try to find out the reason. I have found that looking for threats is always an important clue. Understanding is the key word here. If  I still don’t understand something I check with an engine.
4. For me an important factor is verbalizing and making the material understandable for the public/members.
5. I edit everything in ChessBase

Unfortunately I do not have an answer to your side question. I don’t kow about the existance of such tools. I agree with you that seeing the tempo of a game is interesting.

Some general remarks:

As far as a mix of study methods is concerned (see above), I have described an example process that you can follow. It is somewhere on the Internet. Unfortunately I have been searching like crazy, but can’t find it at the moment. The moment I have, I will add it here.

Even though going over grandmaster games is useful, I also feel it is sometimes overrated and can be compared with looking at a nice movie. Equally important if not more, is the analysis of your own games! The benefits are obvious:

• you get to know the chess player in you and build “yourself”
• you get to know your strenghts and weaknesses and can act accordingly
• you study games relevant for your opening repertoire
• you can track your progress

You will find that there is a lot of relevance in analysing your own games!

Lastly: I wrote a general article on How To Study Chess. If you have not done so yet, I suggest you read it. You can find it on my public blog:

http://www.betteryourchess.com/2008/08/09/how-to-study-chess/

Good luck!

Waldemar