A Decade of Novice Nook

Quote of the Month: I put in more than a hundred hours rearranging,

adding, updating, and correcting the material.

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This is the 120th Novice Nook, so happy anniversary! Technically though, the
tenth anniversary comes with the 121st Novice Nook, but I won't tell.
The principal Novice Nooks that offer an overview of the last decade are as
follows:

Novice Nook

Dan Heisman
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The Best Novice Nook Ideas

Novice Nook Quiz
Novice Nook's Chess Lists
Walk Before You Can Run

Also, my five most underrated columns (in alphabetical order) are as follows:

How to Reassess Your Chess

by Jeremy Silman

Accidental and Purposeful Errors

Chess, Learning and Fun
Odds and Ends
The Most Common and Important Use of Tactics
The Principle of Symmetry

I would like to use this month's column as an opportunity to promote my new

book A Guide to Chess Improvement: The Best of Novice Nook from
Everyman Chess. There are four major differences between the book and the
online, archived columns:
1) I wrote three entirely new columns just for the book:

Chess Secrets: The Giants

of Power Play
by Neil McDonald

a) "Is It Safe? Quiz" This consists of eighteen puzzles of varying difficulty,

primarily asking "Is It Safe?" about a particular candidate move. For example,
"If that move is made, does the opponent have a check, capture, or threat in
reply that would win material or force checkmate?"
b) "The Three Types of Visualization" Defines, discusses, differentiates,
and gives examples of board vision (the ability to look at a position and see
how all the pieces currently interact), tactical vision (the ability to look at a
position and see if the side to play can force the win of material or
checkmate), and visualization (the ability to keep track of where all the pieces
would be during analysis).
c) "Ask the Right Questions" How a good thought process should contain
appropriate questions to help identify opportunities, danger, imbalances, etc.
For instance, ask "What are all the things my opponent's move does?" rather
than "Why did my opponent make that move?" answering the latter with
one reason may miss a critical threat. It also contains examples of questions
you should not ask during the game, such as "Why did I make that mistake
back on move eighteen?"
I also appended a primer detailing the Closed Ruy Lopez tabia to Learning
Opening Lines and Ideas.
2) The book only had space for about thirty columns. One solution that served
multiple purposes was to concatenate material from columns that addressed
similar subjects, but were published at different times. For example, two of
my most advanced columns, The Two Move Triggers and The Room Full of

Coffeehouse Chess Tactics

by John Healy

Grandmasters, are meshed as one column within the chapter on Time

Management. When there were "cousin" columns such as these, the redundant
material (necessary in the online column in order to link ideas across columns,
but not necessary in a book, where the material is back-to-back) was removed,
so that the reader gets the full blend of the subject in one place. The result is
an integrated work where each chapter contains updated and enhanced
material on one subject, similar to the categorization used in my cross
reference of all Novice Nooks.
The chapters, with starting page number in parentheses, are as follows:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.

General Improvement (p.11)

Thought Process (71)
Time Management (149)
Skills and Psychology (168)
Tactics and Safety (193)
Openings (250)
Endgames and Technique (265)
Strategy and Positional Play (299)
Shorter, Lesson Material (355)

A potential buyer who does not wish to navigate 120 columns benefits from
my "selection process" and is presented with what I consider only the most
helpful topics. Despite my long hours revising the material, the book is still a
whopping 381 pages!
3) Each column's information was also updated, if possible. For example, a
helpful tactics book that did not exist when a column on learning tactics was
written in 2002 was now added to the list of recommended books. Newer
recommended websites were also included to bring suggestions up to date. All
references (and the occasional web URL) were checked and, where necessary,
updated. In addition, ideas that I fleshed out and clarified in subsequent years
were added where appropriate and reorganized whenever helpful. This made
material like the fundamental An Improvement Plan, originally written eight
years ago, noticeably different than in its first incarnation.
4) All analysis was checked by Mike Montgomery using Rybka. I owe Mike a
big thanks he found errors in the published material that no other reader had
ever mentioned! Most egregious was one case where there were less than
seven pieces on the board chess has been solved at that level via tablebases
and Mike easily identified that I had mistyped moves. Unfortunately, that
was not the only place where Mike's work spotted analytical issues, so readers
are getting the cleanest version Mike's extensive time could generate!
Not including Mike's contribution, I put in more than a hundred hours
rearranging, adding, updating, and correcting the material.
I hope that listing these extensive changes shows that the book is much more
than just a mirror of the online columns you will not be disappointed! When
I received my copy, I could not help browsing through the book over a period
of weeks, because I had not seen all the new material present in one place.
Mike said that he experienced the same compulsion.
To give a taste of the book and provide background about the origins of the
column you are reading you can read the entire introduction online at the
ChessCafe.com shop, along with an excerpt from the "Thought Process"
section.
I was able to exclude some material from A Guide to Chess Improvement
because it had been covered in three of my earlier books:

Thought Process in The Improving Chess Thinker.

Tactics in Back to Basics: Tactics.
Recognizing and dealing with threats in Looking for Trouble (the most
underrated of my ten books).

Nevertheless, thought process, tactics, and handling threats are three of the

most important aspects of a player's strength, so there is plenty of additional

coverage of these in A Guide to Chess Improvement, as you can see from the
table of contents.
Finally, I would like to thank the readers of Novice Nook. Without you there
would not be ten years of monthly columns, much less a best of book. So it's
your anniversary too.

Question I have been slowly working my way through your articles on

ChessCafe.com. I am curious as to your thoughts on Dr. Lasker's program of
chess instruction, as outlined in his outstanding book, Lasker's Manual of
Chess. He proposed to teach a student (with no knowledge of chess) enough
to reach the level where no master could give any odds without facing certain
defeat. The time period stipulated was 200 hours. In light of recent research
regarding 10,000 hours of focused practice to reach mastery of any subject, it
seems Dr. Lasker might have been a tad optimistic in his estimation. My
curiosity is aroused as to the specifics of such a training program and the
feasibility of creating such a program. If it is possible to be done, how would
one go about doing it?
Answer I agree that 200 hours is very small compared to the more reasonable
10,000 hours, as specified by Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers: The Story of
Success. To attain Lasker's stated goal, one would need to reach at least a
1900 rating level. As for a program, I have several Novice Nook's devoted to
that:

An Improvement Program
The Four Homeworks
The Improvement Feedback Loop
The Theory Of Chess Improvement

Incidentally, all of the above were updated for A Guide to Chess Improvement.

Question I am a club player with a FIDE rating of 1800. My problem is that

in dull and balanced positions, where neither side has an obvious weakness
and the level of dynamism approaches zero, I get bored. As the game drags
on, I often blunder and lose. I have seen quite a few 'annotated' top level
games of this type, but that's exactly where the annotator does not comment!
Could you please tell me about the mentality of playing such positions and
how to remedy the problem.
Answer By definition, no one likes dull positions; however, the definition
varies from player to player. Some players enjoy quiet positional maneuvering
and some don't. Some equal positions contain imbalances that each side can
work with, and some positions contain few imbalances, where good players
often agree to draws.
There is no way someone can talk you into enjoying positions you don't
enjoy. However, if you want to be a really good player, you have to be good
in most all types of positions, so take it as a personal challenge. You also have
to know how to create imbalances ("dynamic play"), which is generally
trading off one asset for another: bishop-pair, pawn structure, space, king
safety, etc. One way to do this is by playing many annotated games by
dynamic players and seeing how they imbalance the position: Shirov,
Kasparov, Marshall, Alekhine, and Topalov to name a few. One recent book
that may be of interest is Chess Secrets: Giants of Power Play by Neil
McDonald.
You might also consider reading Breaking Down Barriers, which is about
how to handle challenges in chess that are hindering or preventing your
improvement.

 2011 ChessCafe.com. All Rights Reserved.

Dan welcomes readers' questions; he is a full-time instructor on the ICC as

Phillytutor.

Yes, I have a question for Dan!

Comment on this month's column via our Contact Page! Pertinent responses
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