training aids
hey, what happened to
edwin, the artist formerly known as dutch defense?
i have a cool idea for a sandwich shop. i will serve the best, gourmet french dip sandwiches with the most kick ass crack laden addictive jus for dipping, (the term au jus means “with juice. jus is just the broth that you dip the stuff in) which i shall make using pork and duck, not just beef, and other special secret ingredients. and i shall call my awesome sandwich shoppe:
KING OF THE JUS
and my logo will have two baguettes in a cross type formation. of course there will be chess played there, and everyone will come by and eat my tasty sandwiches and play bad ass chess and it will be such a scene, all the gm’s will come by, and i can name sandwiches after them so people can come up and order a Morozevich, or a Shabalov.
so i was thinking…..if i play unprotected chess using chessboards of strangers i just met, what are the chances i could get training aids?
anyway, its not a new idea, i’m sure most people have already figured this out, but i finally realized how i could use the time i have standing around at work to study.
flash cards.
thanks 3rd grade for giving me the secret to learning. it worked on my times tables, it should work in chess. i’m gonna photocopy pages from the tactics book, cut out each puzzle, write the answer on the back, then laminate and BAM, i got a deck of flashcards that i can shuffle and go through whenever i have a moment. training, constant hardcore training.
this shit is gonna get embedded in my head like a cnn reporter on a special forces a-team in iraq. i’m gonna see tactics wherever i go. on the highway, i will see that if i take out this car, then the diagonal to that other car will be open and i will have a double attack on two different cars. perhaps i will look up at the sky at night, and while others see beautiful stars and feel insignificant compared to the whole universe (unless you are zaphod beeblebrox, but that’s another story) i will look at the constellation “orion” and think if his foot takes out the star on the left side of the belt, and the middle star retakes, then his other foot, Rigel, can take out the shoulder, Betelgeuse.
there is probably already some “tactics deck” out there with tactics flashcards, but its easier to just make my own (in my bizarro world the cutting and pasting and writing and laminating all is easier than just making a purchase).
it’s a beautiful day out, i think i shall get a mountain bike ride in before i return to the chessitorium and study some more.
Chris Harrington said,
March 18, 2008 at 12:37 pm
Chessloser,
The flashcards are an EXCELLENT idea!! In fact if you go over those enough it is a proven fact that you will have a stronger pattern recognition for tactics. It can get monotonous, just like memorizing for school, but it does kill time and WILL make you a better chess player.
I just cleared the 1600 mark (class B) in 14 months of playing chess and I can tell you that I would still be in the 1400s if not for doing tactic work. You will start getting the feelling in certain positions that a tactic exists…when you get this feeling spend ten or fifteen minutes to find if your feeling is correct, many times it is. This is because your brain, through muscle memory has picked up pattern recognition. The same way that your foot knows where a step is in a dark stairwell. Because you are used to the pattern of the staircase.
Great idea, great post, and good luck this weekend!!
blunderprone said,
March 18, 2008 at 1:44 pm
Rolf Wetzel’s Book, Chess master at any age ( hit master at age 50 and wrote a book on ho whe did it) … actually suggests the flash card thing. He further suggests to make them from your own games where you went wrong so as not to repeat them. Using catchy titles to label the puzzle and solutions on back.
the book is a worth it BTW, in case you haven’t bought it .
blunderprone said,
March 18, 2008 at 1:49 pm
Oh… and you mustn’t forget Jussapov’s sandwich;
http://mandelamaza.blogspot.com/2004/10/chess-commentary-of-gm-jussupovs.html
King of the Jus… nice…timely with the current religious holiday coming.
d! said,
March 18, 2008 at 4:40 pm
deliver me unto the promise land …
brilliant idea about the sandwiches.
unto i, was delivered duck, and it was good.
Soapstone said,
March 18, 2008 at 6:20 pm
I’ve had a similar, but much more cliched idea of opening a Chess Cafe (or Cafe Chess) with skittles everywhere and even a back room where serious tournaments could be played. The chess side would hemorrhage money, while the coffee, which is about as addictive as crack and nearly as profitable, would keep the books in the black. There would be nice wooden chess tables with squares of mocha and latte. But I’m trying to avoid complications in life so that I can finally get the time to knuckle down and study. A while back I wrote a computer program I used to generate printed flashcards for Wetzell’s method. The program works fine, but I abandoned the project a while back, due to laziness.
chessloser said,
March 19, 2008 at 7:42 am
chris - that is cool, i hope my rating goes up someday. see you there…
blunderprone - i’ve heard of him, not read the book….it does give me hope though…
d! - glad you like the idea, free sandwiches for you….
soapstone - coffee is a great profit, it’s marked up at least 200% and keeps most businesses in the black….laziness is my thing, i have great ideas, just no drive to make them happen. at least you actually wrote the program, which sounds cool….