I posted here ~ couple of months back that my student broke the USCF 1,000 rating barrier after a plateau. He worked hard in summer session when his school was closed = worked on tactics (on chesstempo.com, polgar puzzles, other popular chess puzzle books...), played practice games with computers, with me, and with other players = learnt quite a lot. As a result, his ability did improve. As we discussed before, ability does not always reflect in the ratings. But, in this day and age, there are tools to measure performance wisely. Some of the tools are, ofcourse again chesstempo.com tactics rating, chess.com standard rating, games with computer software etc. These tools will roughly provide an estimate of the players' performance even if the player does not play USCF OTB tournaments. So, even without playing USCF tournaments, I can say that his performance did improve a lot. However, he did play USCF tournaments in summer. His rating has risen to USCF 1254 and when the current tournament gets rated, his rating should be close to USCF 1,300. He will be rated in the Top 100 USCF players for his age group when USCF lists the players next time ~ October 1st. Which is quite an achievement for a player who started learning chess only ~ a year back. I expect him to plateau around this level for a while, but let's see. We never know...Sometimes a player's ability is less than OTB rating while at other times the players' perform lower than their ability OTB. Our next goal before his next Birthday is for him to break into the top 50 players for his age group.
I am rated @ USCF 1,500. Last year around this time, I used to win 80% of the matches between us. Right now, he wins 70% of them. I am finding it to be increasingly difficult to win against my student. I can see the day when he will never let me win, very soon in future. Now, let's focus on our this blog's title topic from here.
Select any sport; When a player finds something too easy, he will try to hasten things. Same goes in chess. When the player is not thinking too much, he tends to play fast. When the player is playing fast, mistakes do start to happen. But, didn't I say we solved the problem of playing too fast? Now, our player is playing too fast once again. Ofcourse, at a higher level of game/ tactics. As a result, his performance (eg: chesstempo) is falling about ~ 25 points lower. I don't just look at the performance. I told my student that irrespective of how higher he goes on the rating graphs, I am also looking at the aspect of him playing slowly. Regardless of the difficulty of the problem, my player is trying to rush solving those puzzles. If we ignore simple mistakes, those mistakes will cause the performance to slow/ drop at some time. Now, we need speed breaks to slow him down. I believe I can apply some tools to slow him down now. All my player needs is space to think. I believe I can apply 2 tools: the first one is checkmates exercise and another is from chessgym (find pieces under attack) which was suggested by AoxomoxoA wondering as well. I believe these 2 types of exercises will give some challenge to my player and get him to think = slow him down. I plan to let my student do these exercises for 15 mins each in the morning and evening. More on how this works in a few weeks time....
You can think of giving him a bit more challenging puzzles to gain a material. And make his task harder - I mean MUCH harder. Ask him to set up the position on the board, explain what kind of tactics he can see and is looking for and what variations he consider to "find material gain". After that - tell him to write his variation(s) at the workbook and if it is right - award him. If it is not - make some suggestions, hints to help him in finding his OWN mistakes. After that tell him to write corrected or new variations. If he says: it cannot be done (no matter what "it" means) - ask him to explain why. My student (10 years old) started solving chess puzzles (mate in 1) and now he solves mate in 2. At the beginning of this "step 2" he had quite difficulties, but after that I explained him how it should be done and directed his effort to correct solution... he "magically" started solving more puzzles correct. I reward him quite often and if his answer is really good - I give him A (or A+) grade for a very good solutions (solving). I try to follow his thinking and trace his mistakes, but I limit my (corrrect) answers to the problems. For example if he writes down the variation and says: it is mate in 2, I ask him to see the position (on the diagram or on the board) and tell me what all the move accomplish. If there is no mate next move - I ask him WHY there is no mate - how the side can defend. The more valuable suggestions and corrections you are going to apply (share with your student) - the faster he is going to play more solid tactical side of chess. And please take notice that most children (especially at such young age) are facing problems to play SLOW. Instead of forbiding to play "like that" or directly fighting this habit - you can make it more fun. Think of some races and chasing themselves. Ask him to tell all the pieces that are under attack, those attacked, but not defended, those standing on the longest dark (or light) squae diagonals, horizontal, vertical lines, etc. Make chess more fun and ask him to build a nice building on the adjancent squares with some restrictions (i.e. you cannot place more than 2 pieces of the same shape and colour one next to the other, etc.). I have found such activities give my students more fun and help to see (chess) things in a different perspective. I hope it can help somehow. Let me know if any of my ideas work with your student. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteTomasz, Thanks for your reply.
Delete"You can think of giving him a bit more challenging puzzles to gain a material. And make his task harder - I mean MUCH harder."
We do an array of puzzles ranging from 1200 rated to 2000 rated. So, we are doing what you suggested.
"Ask him to set up the position on the board, explain what kind of tactics he can see and is looking for and what variations he consider to "find material gain".
Now this is not something we do. We do revise the tactics but we don't do it on the board. Almost always never. Instead we either visualize the images or do it on the software. I am unsure if board is better or anything (like paper/ software) is also ok. We need to do enough research on this to know the concrete answer.
"I reward him quite often and if his answer is really good "
Rewards are always there, for motivation. For a target of USCF 1,200, he had a PC reward hanging for several months now. He got it recently. Likewise there are rewards set up for higher targets and goals.
"Ask him to tell all the pieces that are under attack, those attacked, but not defended, those standing on the longest dark (or light) squae diagonals, horizontal, vertical lines, etc. Make chess more fun "
Like I said in my blogpost, I am employing a variety of lessons using chessgym, chess.com, chesstempo.com etc. Just to make it interesting, fun and worthwhile instead of being boring.
Your ideas are great definitely, posting your ideas means providing some new ideas and confirming ideas that we are already employing. Thanks so much.