More Coffee House Chess At Hamilton Chess Quads June 20, 2009

The two games posted on this blog post are: Diamondback vs John Lekocevich, John is an upcoming Class D player , who is stronger than his game posted here.

The second game is of Dion Callaghan, who plays black, using the Dutch Defense.

As always , the games are playable using Chess Flash.


Today on Saturday, I played at Hamilton Chess Quads in Groveville, New Jersey after I told myself and others several weeks ago , that I was hanging up my chess board and use it for practicing throwing darts.

In order to be "Chess Free" one has to undergo massive deprogrmaming , since all chess players, I know, Chess is part of their personality, and for those, including myself , to leave chess behind would cause psyschological withdrawal symptons, since Chess is not a physcical addiction but a mental one.

After you play over my last round game, one has to agree, that I am not using my complete thought process in the game itself.

I have to train myself in using a complete thought process by using the "Steve Stoyko Training Method is chess thought processing.

More on the "Steve Stoyko Training Method " listed after these two Chess Flash Games.

Pics from 6/20/2009 Hamilton Chess Quads in Groveville, New Jersey can be found at this link :
Jim West On Chess.


The first Chess Flash Game is Diamondback vs John L. Reti Opening.
This game is being placed in my "Hall Of Shame" as a reminder that I have
to Think before touching a chess piece. By that , I mean total board vision and going thru candidates moves per Dan Heisman , chess teacher in Philadelphia,PA .

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The next game below features two knight versus lone rook endgame played out by Chessmaster 10th edition, with black to move based on the game above, diamondback vs. John L.

diamondbackvsJohnl.PGN




The second Chess Flash game is between Dion Callaghan and Ben B. Dion is a strong Class D player. Dutch Defense

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Note: This third game was added to this orignal post on Sunday , June 21, 2009, the date of the orignal post was yesterday , Saturday , June 20, 2009.....diamondback

The third game below is between myself and Scott R Andreacchi, Scott is a part time student of Dan Heisman, NM who teaches chess and Scott utilizes the Steve Stoyko Training Method for self study.

Anaylysis is by Fritz 8 and Fritz is showing somewhat drawish based on that anaylsis.
I took black's knight on F6 knowing that Black must take back with his G pawn , the reason for my taking on the f6 square was to expose Black's King , but I could not muster a king side attack.


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A very nice fellow amateur chess player Scot A mentioned after we did our post mortem on our game today ,about a training method endorsed by Steve Stoyko, which was recommended by Dan Heisman to his student Scott A. Some more detail about "Steve Stoyko training method is listed below: I believe Atomic Patzer is using something similar in his thought process training methods.

Advanced Exercises:
A1. Stoyko Exercise
FM Steve Stoyko suggested to me this very helpful exercise. First the reader
should find a rich middlegame position. You can find them in many Kasparov,
Shirov, or Speelman games, or in the books The Magic of Tactics, Genius in
Chess, or How to Think in Chess. Take out a couple sheets of paper and a pen or
pencil.

The idea is to write everything you can possibly visualize from the position, like
you were playing the game without a clock and you had to see and record
everything before you move.

Write down every line that you look at (no matter
how bad!), along with that line's evaluation. This should fill up several sheets of
paper and take 45 minutes up to 2+ hours! If you chose a sufficiently complex
positions dozens of variations should be considered. Consider lines to as much
depth as you think is significant.

You can show your judgment of the evaluation (who stands better and by how
much – you don’t always have to say why) with any number of methods:
l A) Traditional: =, ±, ¥, …
l B) Computer - In pawns; negative means Black is better: +0.3, -1.2, …
l C) English: White is a little better, Black has compensation for his lost
pawn, etc.

When you are done, take your analysis to a good instructor, player, or software
program. Look at each line to see how well you visualized the position (any
retained images, illegal moves, etc.?), and also compare your logic (was that move
really forced?) and your evaluation.
In general the Stoyko exercise, if done properly, should help you practice and
evaluate the following skills:
l A) Analysis
l B) Visualization
l C) Evaluation

file:///C|/cafe/heisman/heisman.htm (5 of 8) [09/14/2003 2:35:12 PM]
Novice Nook

Steve claimed that each time he did this exercise he gained about 100 rating
points!

Someone asked me the following question about the evaluation aspect of the
Stoyko exercise:
"I don't understand your point: 'The key is the amateur's evaluation of every line...
you will have your instructor (or Fritz or whatever) compare your evaluation of
every line, resulting in a really good evaluation test.' How is it a 'really good
evaluation test' to analyze a single position from a Kasparov or Shirov type game
for an hour or so?
"I can see how it's a good calculation/visualization exercise - totally agreed. I've
done it in the past for this benefit and I'd do it again. But I'm just not understanding
the evaluation benefit?!"


Answer: Your question is very good (If you misunderstand that purpose of the
exercise, that would help explain my observation as to why so many players are
missing out on using this valuable resource!).
Most players are very poor at even-material evaluation. Therefore they make bad
moves because, assuming they evaluate potential outcomes of various candidate
moves, they choose a move that is not best because they erroneously think the
resultant position(s) from their chosen move are better.

The second (non-analysis) aspect of the Stoyko exercise is to evaluate every line
that you examine in the tree - that could be dozens or even possibly hundreds of
lines for one position since the Stoyko position has unlimited time. By comparing
your evaluations of these hundreds of lines with your instructors' evaluation, you
learn to improve one of the most critical skills you have - what is good and what is
bad and why and how much. It also helps you identify the all-too-common
quiescence errors where weak players stop their line too soon and therefore misevaluate because they did not look to see what might happen with further checks,
captures, and threats.

This capability is so important and its failure so critical that you would think
everyone would want to work on it, especially since the amount of work is an hour
or two, plus additional time for going over it with someone (or even at worst via
computer evaluation).
A2. PV