David's Dojo Journey - Installment 4

Here are some highlights from this week's journey:

Graduation: 800-900 to 900-1000

This week started with a graduation from the 800-900 cohort to the 900-1000 cohort! A couple of highlights of this cohort:

• increased cadence of sparring (this is proving to be such a powerful practice that I never would have thought of without being part of the Dojo)
• doing a post-mortem in connection with the Dojo Classical Tournament (even though I lost the game)
• working through the Polgar defensive puzzle book (really unique take on puzzles given that most are offensive in nature)
• learning the two bishop mate (that took some work!)
• continuing to work on playing long games and growing in my analysis of same. I am starting to enjoy thinking more deeply and annotating my games, looking at more variations and learning through that process. As Jesse says, if you don't do it in your annotations you aren't doing it in your games!
• Above all, the Dojo community continues to be a great and encouraging place as I journey towards chess growth. If anyone is interested, I have a Lichess blog where I chronicle my journey.

Graduation: 900-1000 to 1000-1100 and then from 1000-1100 to 1100-1200

This will likely be the only week where I have three graduations! I'm going to go back and finish the tactics work, but wanted to finally get to where my score actually placed me. My guess is that I will be in 1100-1200 for a while!

Polgar Mates in 2: Visualization and the Question for Truth

Getting back into the Polgar Mates in 2, two insights have started to be engrained into the way I approach playing: (1) visualizing squares and (2) seeking the truth of the position.

In the exercises, I begin by noting which squares around the King are guarded (and by what pieces) and any escape squares. I then analyze how that status quo would change with any given move. That visualization, and focus on squares rather than pieces, has started to trickle into my games and I'm hoping will continue to do so on an increasing basis.

In the exercises, every piece is intentionally placed for a specific purpose. Understanding the purpose and impact of each piece helps me think more deeply about the truth of the position and reminds of of the importance of each move. In the context of the exercises, the truth of the position means the path towards mating the king in 2. In the game, the truth of the position is much deeper, of course, and can have a myriad of meanings depending on the stage of the game. But, as I am currently thinking about the concept, the truth of the position in any stage, at its core, is an accurate evaluation of the position and calculation that leads to a move that improves your position or worsens the position of your opponent.

In listening to Episode 204 of Perpetual Chess where Ben interviews FM Nathan Resika (a very interesting interview on several levels, including ending with Nathan singing opera - yep, its true - here is a link), there was a quote from one of the greats to the effect of "If you play Blitz you start to think that moves don't matter." That quote really hit me as I often move without sufficient calculation and thought because I don't let the significance of moving a piece really strike me. The Mates in 2 are a great way to engrain the importance of every move and been helping me think more before I move.

Tactics Time Quotes

A new book in the 1000-1100 cohort is Tactics Time. I can already tell that I am going to love this book with the wisdom that saturates the opening pages. Here are some gems:

• “Comparing Grandmaster games to amateur games is like comparing the 100-meter dash at the Olympics to a bunch of third graders playing tag at recess!”
• "The 'I already know that' problem is one of the biggest things that prevents chess players from getting better and winning more."
• "There is a difference between knowing something, and being able to apply that knowledge."
• "Learning = Behavior Change. If your behavior doesn’t change, you didn’t learn anything."
• “The greatest enemy of learning is the belief that we already know. When you feel like you get something, but you don’t, that’s when you’re in danger.
• "The challenge with chess tactics is that the basic ideas are fairly simple. There are only a few basic tactical ideas. So it is easy for a chess player to think, 'I know that.' But to understand something well enough to use it, you have to know it inside and out, backwards and forwards.
• "You want the chess tactics in your game to just pop out at you! And once you’re at that level, you can apply two or more ideas together, making them really powerful-like combining a pin and a back rank mate threat or a fork and an overloaded piece."

Game of the Week

I won't play the next Lichess Classical tournament game until after this blog is posted, but here is a game from this week that was just fun. I want to at least share one game a week that I have annotated to hopefully show the progress in both play and the annotations (still early days on both!) or just to show a fun game. While my opponent played very poorly in this game, the checkmating sequence was a lot of fun to play through and evidences some growth in my calculation becoming more forcing in nature:

A New Year

My chess journey started in May of 2022, so 2023 was the first full year of my journey. This week saw the sunset of my first full year of chess and the beginning of my second full year. 2023 saw a lot of growth, a lot of roaming around inefficiently trying to figure out what to study and several different changes of approach and underlying philosophies. December 2023 brought significant changes that I believe will change the trajectory of my journey: (1) joining Chess Dojo, (2) hiring an amazing coach and doing weekly lessons and (3) fundamentally changing my underlying goal from an arbitrary number to a focus on constant progress and broader purpose.

Here's to an amazing year of chess in 2024! Happy New Year!

The Power of Encouragement

I wanted to spend a few moments thanking everyone who has sent me notes of encouragement in response to my posts. The power of a word of encouragement is real, so thank you. The chess journey can be a lonely one, but the community that is building up around me makes this journey infinitely more meaningful and powerful.

THANK YOU!!

Dojo Booklist

Given the number of books that I am going through in the Dojo, I thought it would be helpful to create a list, so I can quickly recall that part of the journey!

• Polgar; Chess:5334 Problems (in process)
• Giannatos, Everyone's First Chess Workbook (completed)
• Polgar S., Learning Chess the Right Way (Vol. 3) (completed)
• del Rosario, First Book of Morphy (in process)
• Brennan and Carson, Tactics Time (in process)
• Chernev, Logical Chess Move by Move (in process)
• Chernev, Most Instructive Games (not yet started)
• Silman, Complete Endgame Course (in process)

Until the next installment!