Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Reassessing my Chess (PART ONE)

Last Friday I got together with Jamin for a few quick games and to borrow his copy of "How to Reassess Your Chess" by Jeremy Silman. Jamin highly recommended the book for me and told me it would improve my play. Although I am a skeptic at heart, I plan on reading it thoroughly and I do expect to see some significant improvement. I will track my progress here a section at a time.


INTRODUCTION:
Explanation of the purpose of the book and who it aimed for. The targeted reader description seems to describe me to a tee. It states that if I want to improve, I will have to destroy and then rebuild from scratch my chess foundation. It also states I might get worse before I get better!

PART ONE: BASIC ENDGAMES
Review of the most important endgame theories.
Chapter 1 Understanding the King: Opposition, Outflanking.
Chapter 2 King and Pawn Endgames: Basic K + 1p vs. K positions
Chapter 3 Rook and Pawn Endgames: Lucena & Philidor positions
Overall Part One was rather basic with nothing that I haven't already seen and learned elsewhere.

Coming next: Part Two. This looks more interesting.

ps. If your wondering about the games we played, Jamin skunked me 4-0 even though he had 10 min to my 15 min. None of the games were very close but in the 3rd, after blundering a pawn, I thought I had a piece winning combination but missed a queen check that recaptured the lost piece after trading many pieces. I guess I need to read more.

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