Exeter Chess Club: Assess Your Chess

I am occasionally asked, "What's the best way to improve my chess?". Other than practice, I warmed to Kenneth Sloan's reply to a similar query on the newsgroups:
[cool tip] Article 9288 in rec.games.chess.misc:
Subject: Re: Best Quick Study??
From: sloan@cis.uab.edu (Kenneth Sloan)
Date: 22 Jun 1996 15:00:58 -0500
Organization: Dept of CIS, Univ. of Al at Birmingham

Annotate your last 20 tournament games.
--
Kenneth Sloan

In a book by Dan Heisman called The Improving Annotator he attributes his success to self-study of this sort. If Kenneth's advice seems not enough to go on, here are some things to look for.

I think you must look at your games as a whole bunch. It's no use playing over your best games and looking to see what else needs to be improved, you have to look more at your losses. I know some players who will screw up a score sheet when they lose to a weaker player, when what they should do is go over it move by move, however painful. Soltis' classification of errors is given below.

You actually can get a lot of informal, qualitative evidence about your play from your opponent in a "post mortem" after a game. Don't ever use these to brag, or show how much more you saw - the idea is to learn, not play another game!

Even better is if you can persuade your local 'expert' to have a look at a couple of games that you really didn't understand - perhaps games where you were sure you were better at some stage but lost.

In Exeter we often use our own games as the basis for discussion in our coaching sessions - we aren't experts but a second or third opinion can be very illuminating.

  • Taking stock: openings, middlegames, endgames
  • A bestiary of errors
  • Point count chess

    Taking stock

    Simon Webb, in his excellent Chess for Tigers, has some helpful suggestions for looking at collections of games, by compiling some data to look for patterns. I have extended his account slightly below. The point is, by facing the facts in this way you don't get a chance to make excuses, and you may spot something that you hadn't realised before - e.g. that you don't do very well in an opening that you always thought was right up your street.

    Taking stock of your openings

    Draw up a table of your games, showing firstly, the outcome of the opening (e.g. +/- or =), and secondly, the outcome of the game (1-0, 1/2 etc.).
    _ Opening Game Result All
    _ +- = -+ 1-0 1/2 0-1
    Ruy Lopez 3 4 2 2 4 2 8
    Petroff 0 1 0 0 1 0 1
    Open Sicilian 2 5 3 5 3 2 10
    Closed Sicilian 0 2 0 0 1 1 2
    French 0 1 1 0 0 2 2
    Pirc/Modern 2 1 0 3 0 0 3
    Alekhine 0 1 0 0 1 0 1
    TOTAL 8 14 5 9 11 7 27

    Conclusions:

    1. Ruy Lopez not too successful - maybe try something sharper?
    2. Play well in open Sicilians but must learn more theory
    3. Don't understand French - must find decent line

    During middle-game


    type my position: improved a lot improved a bit remained about the same got a bit worse got much worse total
    Positional Open 1 2 5 2 2 12
    _ Semi-Open 4 7 17 4 1 33
    _ Closed 0 4 9 3 3 18
    Tactical Attack on King 5 9 7 6 6 33
    _ Defence of King 1 3 5 4 2 15
    _ Wild tactics 3 4 2 3 1 13
    Middle-game without Queens _ 0 2 7 1 0 10
    Late middle-game _ 1 4 9 7 3 24

    N.B. one game may feature as more than one type as it progresses

    Conclusions:

    1. Semi-Open positions and tactical positions in general seem to suit me: when there's an attack on the King or a melee I can often outplay my opponent.
    2. However, in simpler positions and positions without Queens I seem more likely to lose the plot; this is also true of closed positions.
    3. I must study the strategy of the closed positions I get into more thoroughly, and during play must not get complacent in apparently simple positions.

    Endgames


    _ Estimated theoretical result Actual game result
    _ 1-0 1/2 0-1 1-0 1/2 0-1 All
    King and Pawn 1 1 0 1 1 0 2
    Rook 3 1 1 3 2 0 5
    Rook and minor piece 2 2 2 1 2 3 6
    Knights only 1 0 0 1 0 0 1
    Bishops only 0 1 0 0 0 1 1
    Bishops and Knights 1 2 3 1 1 4 6
    Queen 0 1 0 0 0 1 1
    N=22

    Conclusions:

    The basic King and Rook endings seem handled well, but endings with minor pieces (with or without Rooks) look suspect. Moreover, half the Bishop/Knight endings were probably lost before I had a chance to play - I must see these situations coming earlier.

    time-trouble table:


    who what happened
    _ my position got worse normal result opponent's position got worse
    me 3 6 2
    opponent 4 2 2
    both 2 5 4
    N where i was in TT = 22

    Conclusions:

    I play OK in time-trouble and the % of games where I get in TT is not too bad. But I am not getting any benefit from my opponent's time trouble - am I trying to rush them into making mistakes, instead of paying attention to the position?
    I hope you get the idea.

    N.B.
    statistics like these can be enhanced by consideration of grades, if you have enough games. In BCF terms, you should turn in an extra 10% of avalable points for every 10 points your grade exceeds the average of your opposition. So, scoring 4/5 against 120-grade opposition is no more than a par performance for a player of grade 150. Equally, if you are outgraded by an average of 30 points a game, but make a 40% score, this is a very good performance, as you could have fairly expected only 20%.

    For ELO, I think a superiority of 400 points should yield a harvest of an extra 25% of points viz. 75%.


    Error analysis

    Without mistakes, there can be no brilliancies, said Lasker. Actually, without mistakes there wouldn't be any decisive games at all. What mistakes do you make? Vladimir Zak described "typical mistakes by young players": Andrew Soltis has classified mistakes in a more detailed way, as follows below: do you make some of these more than others? [I have collected a whole bunch of errors in the Canon.]

    Point Count Chess

    In assessing your games a checklist of points from Horowitz' Point Count Chess might be useful
    1. Plus Points
      1. Control of the centre
      2. Pawn on fourth rank vs. Pawn on third
      3. Mobile pawn wing
      4. Strong outpost station
      5. Superior development
      6. Greater space
      7. Bishop-pair
      8. Half-open file
      9. Control of useful open file
      10. Rook(s) on the seventh rank
      11. Passed Pawn
      12. Outside Passed Pawn
      13. Protected Passed Pawn
      14. Advanced Pawn
      15. Qualitative Pawn majority
      16. Advanced chain
      17. Advanced salient
      18. Better King position
      19. Offside Pawn majority
    2. Minus Points
      • Weak Pawns
        1. Backward Pawn
        2. Doubled pawn
        3. Isolated Pawn
        4. Hanging Pawns
        5. Hanging phalanx
        6. Crippled majority wing
      • Weak Squares
        1. "Weak square complex"
        2. Holes
        3. Compromised King's-side
        4. King held in the centre
        5. Cramped position
        6. Bad Bishop
    They also say that five points is a win!
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    This document (assess.html) was last modified on 2 May 97 by

    Dr. Dave