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The Thematic And Dynamic Chess MethodThis is arguably the most important chess website on the Internet |
Chess is in the eye of the I, the innermost expression of the true self. In order to master chess you have to master yourself. As we improve in chess, we will also improve within ourselves. Concentration will be deepened, control over the self will be increased. As we need to learn to control ourselves in order to succeed in the world and in chess we also need to learn to control the chessboard while we play. Thus chess is both a meditation and a game. Chess is a lot of sound and fury signifying everything and everything is an illusion.
Before we sit down at the chess table we should have an overall view of what we intend to do with the specific openings--the repertoire-- we intend to play. These openings preset the theme--the overall idea of the game, or a specific part of the game--brought to life by ideas, strategies, endgames and so forth. Chess is a tree, the opening is the trunk, the middle game themes are the branches and those branches themselves branch out to strategies, tactics and endgames. The flowers and fruits of our tree of chess are our sweet victories. Throughout the game we encounter patterns that tell our practiced I what to play and the techniques we need to use. When we discuss "technique" we are talking about a spin without the top, technique is the way we do things. It is neither strategy nor tactic, nonetheless it is important to study although most chess players tend to neglect it. In addition to the studies mentioned above there is another dimension to chess that most people fail to grasp. It is the final secret of chess mastery--"Dynamic Chess." This is not a subject for the faint hearted. Once you have gained knowledge of everything else, once you have honed your tactical skills especially, you must learn to challenge your opponent with your every move. In this field of chess we study gambits and sacrifices and the tactical possibilities arising from them. We give up whole pieces in order to seize the initiative and gain control of the chessboard so that our opponent becomes our puppet who is forced to do as we tell him, a sort of Manchurian Candidate of chess. If you are faint of heart and if your rating is below 1500 do not enter this sanctum sancturum until you are ready for it. A chess master once wrote that if you have a solid position and there's no way you can be attacked you should just sit on your hands and do nothing, let you enemy come to you. This is a solid way of playing, especially if you are good at defending. But what if the clock is running out and your opponent moves faster than you. Or what if your opponent is a strong attacker and knows how to make mince meat of a mere mortal such as yourself? In practical chess you need an active, dynamic way to attack your opponent and do unto him before he does it to you! This method of attack is Dynamic Chess in which we realize that chess is a gambling game just like any other gambling game and we must put up or shut up. Money talks and bologna walks. Give until it hurts is our motto! Keep in mind Shelley's admonition,"If a man's reach is not greater than his grasp, then what is Heaven for?"
In the early 1930's a Russian psychologist did an amazing experiment. He took two groups of chess players, one strong and one weak, and showed them chess positions for a duration of two seconds. After the time was up the position was removed from view and the player was asked to reconstruct as much of the position as he could. Master and grandmaster strength players were able to reconstruct about 90% of the position, while weaker players were able to only place about 50% or less of the pieces correctly. At first blush this result could seem to stem from the fact that good chess players may have better memories than poor players. But in the second part of the experiment, position were shown that had been constructed by randomly placing pieces on the board. In this part of the experiment, the good players did not do any better than the poor ones. What this shows is that good chess players see some structure in a chess position. This structure aids in the way the position is perceived thus allowing the better player to perceive more of the position in terms of its "meaning" rather than as a set of individual pieces. The concept used in this website is based on this experiment. Positions are shown and explained and the student is then shown puzzles which he has to solve based on those positions.
The theory that technique in chess is derived from pattern recognition was put forth by Australian psychiatrist Professor Stewart Einfeld from the University of New South Wales, himself a competitive chess player."Intuition in chess masters may be linked to pattern recognition, something honed by years of practice. They've seen this pattern many times, so it may seem intuitive because they can immediately say the required move is going to be 'A' or 'B' and you may think it's intuitive because it's so quick," he said. International Grandmaster Murray Chandler agrees: "Chess analysis is a mixture of calculation of individual moves and pattern recognition. Inexperienced players use perhaps 95% calculation and 5% pattern recognition. For master strength players, the figure is more like 40% calculation and 60% pattern recognition. Logically, therefore, learning to recognize more key patterns could help dramatically improve your chess strength." Recent scientific research into the brain of Susan Polgar--the world's first female chess grandmaster--confirms the view of the importance of pattern recognition. Click here for a most interesting video detailing this research. See also this interesting article about the latest psychological theory concerning chess by Psychoneurologist David Small.
The naming of each and every position whether it be a strategic or tactical position aids our minds by raising our awareness and understanding of that position and fixes its pattern in our minds and thus aids us in finding the appropriate idea to apply to the positions that arise in our games. For example if we are in an art museum and looking at a painting and someone says "Look at the dog in that picture." It may well have been that up until then we hadn't actually seen the dog but now we do. That, then, is the purpose of this website, to give ourselves a vocabulary for an internal dialog to use to raise our awareness and understanding of chess.
What do you do if your opponent makes an "anti-positional" move--a move that weakens or reduces the effectiveness of his position in some way? Most players know enough to put pressure on pinned pieces and backward pawns. But suppose your oppoent blocks his own Bishop? Or creates a weak square in his own position or leaves a line open? When do such conditions arise and how do we take advantage of them? These also are themes and are dealt with through technique. Our menu item "Bads" takes us to the section of the website dedicated to dealing with these positions. Don't naysay this section and go on to something else, remember even grandmasters on the highest levels make mistakes!
There appears to be a misunderstanding about thematic and positonal play. Many players believe that once an idea is conceived that idea becomes the be all and end all of the game. For example, the Back Rank Mate is a common theme in chess. Very often our opponent fails to provide breathing space for his King by lifting one of the Pawns standing in front of the King. This is the so-called "Luft" move which I just call "Ventillation." And so elaborate plans are laid to open up a file so that a Rook, or perhaps the Queen, could be brought down to deliver mate. During the course of this complex maneuvering our opponent gets religion and fearing the wrath of God he makes the ventillation move. Now the entire theme of play changes. Perhaps in the course of trying to open the file and attackour opponent's defense against this process, our opponent develops a weak pawn or leaves a piece hanging or whatever. It is now our job to go after this new weakness. The point is that in the process of play, the basic themes change often, the chessboard becomes a kaleidoscope of ideas, themes, positions that all must be dealt with if we want to win. A chess game is not a fixed set up that is to be analyzed once and then throughout the game that analysis is to be followed. Chess is dynamic, constantly changing and it changes move by move, like a conversation. We must pay attention to this move by move conversation, understand it and analyze it constantly, always being willing to change our plans based on the position as it is now not as it was last move or several moves ago. This is why the study of themes and positions are so important. We must be able to understand what it is our opponent is saying. If our opponent talks above our heads, introduces themes that we are not familiar with, we will quickly get into trouble and lose the game.
I am a 65 year old man and have worked hard all of my life in order to earn a living. I've played chess since I was 11 years old, at which time i beat the then US Checkers Champion at chess. Since that time I have had chess lessons from many chess masters including a local character who hangs out around Washington Square Park named Richard who said that I have the potential to be a master or grandmaster. But because of my situation in life I have not been able to live up to my potential in chess. Now that I am retired I've decided to dedicate my life to chess and to become a master chess player. In order to accomplish this I've developed the thematic theory of chess and have developed this website to publicize that theory and to enlist the help of the chess community in its further development. My idea for this site is that it should be a collective notebook of all of us who are trying to learn chess and thus should contain themes, ideas, positions, patterns that we have learned on our road to mastery in order to discover the actual concepts that separate the masters from the misters.
"Why do we play chess at all?" you might well ask. Besides being great fun and a great way to socialize, there is considerable evidence around that chess is beneficial to those who play it. It helps school children learn to concentrate, study and follow rules and for senior citizens it is believed that chess helps to delay the onset of senility, dementia and Alzheimers. One of our readers--John Saade, an expert in the field of education--has been kind enough to write an article for this website about the benefits of chess for school children. To access this article please click here. In the interest of honesty--and to prove once and for all that I am not a Canadian or a Republican--I must report that some people do not like chess and consider it to be sinful. "Chess The Devil's Pastime." If you are a person who does not know how to play chess at all or you do not understand what we are talking about in this website, I suggest you visit Magic Theater for a set of great flash movies showing the basics of chess.
As we have seen, the best way to learn chess is through the study of the patterns of the positions themselves--and the themes they incorporate--as they arise in a real game. Learning their names and the techniques and ideas for playing them. The game of chess is divided into three parts, opening, middlegame and endgame. The only creative part of the game is the middlegame and this is the part that is most extensively dealt with in this website. In the opening those who want to play well must follow preset opening lines worked out by masters in tournament play and given in books such as Modern Chess Openings. We have provided some repertoire information in this site so that the reader will see how to organize the information given in those books. When playing the endgames we follow specific techniques for each endgame type. Some of the more important techniques are given in this site and others are given in the endgame books that are available in bookstores and on line. For more detailed information you may want to consult The Endgame Table bases that are used by computers. In addition to this thematic study you need to learn how to maneuver tactically. Tactical opportunities arise when your position is superior in some way to your opponents either due to space or mobility or tempo. There are a number of tactics trainers on line. Work out by solving 10 problems per day and you will be surprised at how much your game will improve. Alternately you could use the tactics, puzzles and problems presented in our Books section or you could purchase a book such as Reinfeld's 1001 Brilliant Ways To Mate. To further enhance your understanding of patterns in chess and how to use them to improve your game, click here to view some very interesting videos. A good plan for learning chess is presented in this blog. My plan which I have worked out through research over the years is to achieve a rating level of about 1500 Elo through the study of the strategic and tactical ideas presented on this website. At that level all of the basic concepts are understood. Then we need to learn an extensive repertoire of openings. Here we do reach the point where some memorization is required. For the repertoire I suggest "Chess Openings For White Explained" and "Chess Openings For Black Explained." Both books written by Lev Alburt. Once all of this information is finally absorbed all that is needed is practice on the internet and in the parks, the clubs and where ever else chess is played. Over time this path should lead us to master level.. To further illustrate this concept of thematic play and in order to be able to put together all of this information in your mind and see how it is all incorporated in a chess game I suggest you study actual chess games, I have put together some games and placed them on the collections page of Chessgames.com. Check out these miscellaneous games,. There are also endless game collections available in books as well as on the Internet. I personally have been studying the games of Paul Morphy because I like his simple but aggressive style that combines position and tactics. The study of these games gives us skill in "open" tactical style games and shows us how these tactics arise. And by studying Morphy's games we can see how he took advantage of the mistakes made by chess players who in those days played less complex games than we play today. We see how to avoid those mistakes and how to take advantage of them. Here is a collection of such games played by Paul Morphy. We now have a new section devoted to reviews of books and also software and hardware. If you are an author or publisher and would like to have your book reviewed please send me a review copy. If you are the prime source of a software or hardware item you may also send me that item for review. For a physical mailing address please email me. Or if you have an ebook version you can email the ebook as an attachment--I suggest you use gmail since they allow very large attachments. If you are a visitor to this site and would like to send me a review of a chess book you recently read you may email it to me. To reach me by email just click the "Dove of Love" at the bottom of this page.
Your help is needed. Not only to send your bouquets and brickbats about the good, the bad, and the ugly features of this site but also to contribute ideas, examples, diagrams, games relating to chess patterns, strategies and techniques. And web designers are needed to provide designs and artwork to be used on this site, chess masters to go over the materials and provide comment and contributions, HTML experts to proofread and contribute to the work of constructing the site. Also I need you to tell your chess friends about this site. We have a handy email form below provided by Bravenet that enables you to email a link without leaving the comfort of this website. And last but not least I need web space and cash contributions to be able to continue this site. I have already filled up most of the web space that I can afford to pay for out of my own pocket so if you want to see more of my ideas about chess you gotta fork over the dough. Ultimately whether or not this website will continue is entirely up to you. Just the simple act of clicking my links will be very helpful. Before reading further I suggest you download and read this free pamphlet "Improve Your Chess."
Ye hypocrites! are those your pranks?
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"The more technique you have, the less you have to worry about it. The more technique there is, the less there is." - Pablo Picasso
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Is our greed for oil worth it?
To murder men and give God thanks!
Desist, for shame! – proceed no further;
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--Robert Burns
Do not accept authority as truth, accept only truth as authority.
This money could have been used to pay for health care, education, housing for the homeless and much more instead of for killing innocent people to steal their oil!
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Unsolicited CommentsThis is the best web site I have found on chess!!!!!!! I will be definately be telling everyone about this site!!!! Thank you Frank--CW I enjoy it every time I visit this site...there is always something of interest, something more I can learn--Liz I won a tournament using the ebooks found on this website--KY Great site! And I am definately sending you a donation via Pay Pal to help support your efforts!--RF
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