Personal Coaching (General)

by workout, Monday, August 29, 2005, 13:27 (7173 days ago) @ paaneater

I've been extremely happy with my personal coaching so far. I'm graded around 1800 and playing regular over the board club and tournament games and I've been at this plateau for years.

I spent some time analysing recent games before sending them. This was very valuable since I did it without Fritz running in the background and without consulting my library (until after). I sent the games which I felt I understood least and that has so far meant draws and losses.

I've been fortunate that my coach is Richard Palliser, a stong IM and a player with a good and growing reputation as an author and analyst. His annotations were a revalation, despite or perhaps because of the time I had spent studying the games myself. The reason, because Fritz cannot remove my misconceptions and locate the places where my thinking is faulty. Richard has also pointed out the things I do well, made study suggestions, indicated openings which may suit my style better than what I've been playing and indicated areas where I was worrying needlessly.

This is an area in which you definitely get out very much what you put in. Keep the chess engine off until after you have completed your analysis which probably means at least as long as you spent playing the game. I would also advise not going back and correcting your analysis. Your coach can tell a lot from the things you missed and the analysis you performed incorrectly.

If you are still throwing pieces away in most of your games, you are probably better off studying tactics. If on the other hand you seriously want to improve (and especially if you have hit a plateau) this is about the only method which I believe stands a chance of producing significant results. I think it is going to require patience on my part, my bad habits and misconceptions have had many years to develop and become ingrained and it will take time and effort to change.