Knowledge versus Skill

I wrote this post for reddit, and despite it getting little attention, I still really like the content so I will re-post it here. 

The inspiration for this post comes from these sources: 

Kostya Kavutskiy's chess.com blogpost

His video about the article  

and this Dan Heisman video  (mostly just the introduction)

Sidenote: Dan Heisman's videos lack the flash and production quality of most current streamers but he has a ton of very useful information and over 100 videos. They are very under-watched in my opinion.

Most aspects of chess improvement are either knowledge-based or skill-based

Chess knowledge would generally be things you learn from books and lectures. You might be able to pick up a lot of these things through passive learning. Skills are, as Kostya puts it, "simply your ability to actually play chess." This includes anything you do over the board that requires analytical thinking or concrete decision-making. Heisman says these take up a bigger percentage of how good you are and what it takes to improve.

Examples of Chess Knowledge:

• pattern recognition
• openings 
• book endgames (lucena position for example)
• principles, be it opening (control center and develop), middlegame (rooks like open files), or endgame (activate your king)
• general chess terms (definitions and practical applications of chess terms such as doubled pawns, minor exchange, bad bishops, initiative, etc)
• general chess wisdom (if you find a good move look for a better one)

Examples of Skills and Abilities:

• analytical ability
• visualization
• calculation
• evaluation abilities (includes some knowledge but it's also a skill)
• perseverance
• ability to learn from losses
• stamina
• determination
• focus
• handling your nerves
• time management

Heisman thinks skills and abilities are about two-thirds of "what you are" as a chess player and knowledge is about one-third. I think most will agree there is a partnership between skills and knowledge when making the thousands of considerations and decisions one might have to make during the course of a chess game. Your knowledge is correlated to your rating but so is your skill and Heisman says the correlation is more tilted towards your skills and abilities. They very often work together but it seems like his theory is that skill and ability is overall more important.

Game Report Cards

At risk of sounding arrogant, I think my knowledge is solid, or rather good enough for my level such that I can improve at a consistent rate towards my goal of a 2000 rating in certain time controls. More broadly--and with some arrogance filtered out--I feel confident in saying my knowledge outweighs my skill. I've done enough passive reading and lecture-watching to understand on a surface level a lot of chess ideas and knowledge (apart from opening theory which I do not know well). My skills to put that knowledge to practical use needs work. Imagine someone who can understand and explain the ins and outs of American Football strategies within each play. They can comfortably explain, using the right terms, all the movements of the eleven position-players and what the goal is. Now imagine the same person trying to be the offensive coordinator of that team. Without practice and skill to draw up and call the correct plays in the best situations, they'll probably fail miserably. I think I'd fall more in that category than I want to. 

As I said, my skills in applying my knowledge need work and for that I think that analysis of those skill attributes is required to get better. The following are skills of chess that I think I need to improve the most:

• Calculate fully. Don't stop calculating when I think I've gone to the end of the critical line.
• Manage my time better in the opening. In a 15+15 game for example, I'm often using 5 or 10 minutes in the first ten moves which is absurd. Try for an advantage in the middlegame without killing your clock and save time for the conversion in the late middlegame and endgame. Trust that I can tell when a move-choice is critical and when playing solid-looking and principled moves is good enough. Don't let the perfect move be the enemy of the good move.
• Develop a killer instinct and trust it. Use analytical ability more than lazy assumptions that my opponent's move was a killer. Sometimes they're garbage and it's okay to call them garbage. I think many times, they play a move I didn't consider and my first instinct is that it's winning, or it lets them squeak out a draw. That's the reactive and scared-puppy-dog-instinct taking over. The killer instinct says, "I didn't see that move and it's probably garbage. Why is it garbage?" Analyze moves as they are, not as if my opponent is a god and their moves always have merit.
• Keep Calculating in the late middlegame and endgame. Don't just stop when you have a won endgame.
• CCT Automation: Checks, Captures, Threats. I need to automate this thinking so every move I have I'm looking for checks, captures, and threats I can give my opponent as well as safety-checks for the move I want to make: making sure I'm not giving my opponent valuable CCT. As many tactics as I've done, I still don't have this thinking process automated in my games, especially in time pressure.
• Strategic Move Automation. Once I identify a position as non-critical (no tactics available), I need to have Aagard's three questions automatically appear in my mind: 1) Where are the weaknesses? 2) What is my opponent's plan? 3) What is the worse placed piece? 
• Simple Strategic Analysis after exchanges, such as after takes-takes-takes-takes, being able to picture what the board looks like and that there might be a simple strategic imbalance I or my opponent could take advantage of. Example: in a recent game I was up a pawn and I didn't consider an idea of sacrificing the pawn back and in return I'd get the semi-open a- and b-files for both my rooks that would come with tempo on opponent's queen. A lot of imbalances would have been in my favor.
• Applying nuggets of chess wisdom. Think "when facing a flank attack, counter-attack in the center" for example. I can recite tons of these nuggets or pass a fill-in-the-blank quiz, but they don't naturally come to me when I'm in the middle of an intense game. 

Using these categorizations in a game analysis setting would mean to analyze how effectively I used my "knowledge" as well as how effectively I used my "skills." A fabricated example of applying this in post-game analysis might be: 

• "At move 20, I was doing a good job of applying my knowledge of the minority attack, pushing my queenside pawns forward to create a weakness, but I did not appropriately use my tactical skills to see that my opponent had set up a battery and was about to skewer my queen on c2 to my rook on b1."
• Pros: Good use of knowledge of minority attack I had studied in master games.
• Cons: Poor use of skills in A) asking myself what my opponent's ideas are, and B) missing the simple skewer tactic.

Conclusion

Overall, I think a lot of my problems come with trust and confidence in my abilities and assuming far too much strength in the moves of my opponent. Lately, videos of IM Andras Toth's private lessons with his students has taught me to criticize this part of my chess game more. It's really criticizing my psyche which I had never thought about!

I really like the new framework this can give me as I analyze my games. As opposed to missing a backward knight move and then telling myself, "oh I need to see backward knight moves better," I would categorize the type of mistake I made whether it's knowledge-based or skills-based and go deeper from there. I think it can be beneficial since it would be an evaluation of myself as a chess player instead of regular game analysis which primarily focuses on whether I made the right moves or not. 

Edit:

Here is another great explanation of these ideas from GM R.B. Ramesh talking with Kostya in a Chess Dojo video.

Chess Improvement - General Advice

There are a lot of players looking for the right way to study, the best methods, book recommendations, the correct ratio of game-play to study-time, the perfect schedule, etc. They want to be told how to improve. I've always loved trying to find the best ways that I can maximize my improvement. I'm not always successful but I've found a few things that work for me. In this post, I'll try to outline some general aspects of chess improvement that I think have helped me stick with my study plans the best. Of course, everybody loves talking about how they improved so much. Well, it may have worked for them but it doesn't mean it'll necessarily work for everyone else! So keep that in mind!

Customize your training methods

This is the biggest one. I think the realization hit me when I decided to memorize 200 lichess puzzles. I don't know why I thought that was a good idea a few years ago, but I pulled up a puzzle, copied the URL to a document and then tried to solve it. After I got a chunk of 25 URLs in the document, I'd load them all again and go back over them. I made up some repetition schedule where I'd get a new chunk of 25 URLs some nights and other nights I'd review old chunks. Eventually I had a document with 200 URLs and after enough review, I solved them all in one evening with nearly 100% accuracy. 

I had read about spaced repetition and the woodpecker method but was too cheap to buy a book at the time so I just made something up myself. I wouldn't say it drastically helped me the way a better book would have, but it certainly ingrained some patterns in my mind. Was that the perfect way to boost my rating? Absolutely not. However, it certainly did change my outlook on how to go about improving in a larger sense. The point is that I developed a study routine that was enjoyable for me to come back to night after night. Another example is when I did 30 games in a month and carefully analyzed them all, and kept the analysis in a journal. People told me to analyze my games so I devised a way to do that in a way that would keep me consistently playing and analyzing.

Yet another is when I completed the entire 1001 Chess Exercises for Beginners book in one day. I read about de la Maza's 7 Circles of Hell method so I did that with that book but of course I altered it some. Instead of doing the entire book, then re-doing the entire book faster, then re-doing the entire book yet again, I broke the book down into sections so I could get some quicker feedback and see the spaced repetition process in action. Seeing the results for these smaller sections gave me more encouragement to continue doing the next section and then half the book, and eventually the entire book. I customized de la Maza's method for myself.

The major takeaway here is not "Make a chess journal" or "Memorize 200 puzzles." The takeaway should be, if some chess-related improvement plan crosses your mind and you think it'll help, give it a go and try to make it work for you by customizing and changing the methods as you go! Part of the effort should be making it work for you.

Track your progress (not your rating!)

This is the other big one for me. Some of my biggest achievements are directly linked to whether I found a good way to track progress. I've grown to really like using spreadsheets as I work through a task. Seeing the progress as I inch closer and closer towards finishing a big tactics book and seeing my accuracy and speed increase is encouraging. It holds me accountable, too. And remember, it's okay if it doesn't work out. Many times I've started spreadsheets with a big plan to finish something (such as the woodpecker intermediate problems most recently) and determined it was not quite what I was looking for. It's okay. And I should note that I'm sure there are apps that do something similar but I'm pretty quick with excel and I'll always maintain that having control over what data you're recording and how it is presented is preferred, at least for myself. Even if it takes a little more work, it will always keep me more on track and accountable than an automatic app.

Here's an example of a spreadsheet I just began for 1001 Chess Exercises for Club Players: 

I make the top rows always visible as I scroll so I have that constant reminder of progress. The top rows keep a running accuracy percentage, problems/day, and goals for the day. I really like this because it turns it into a game to some degree and helps me immediately see if my goals are being reached. You might be amazed how something like that "accuracy" stat will turn into your new "rating" that you obsess about. Any spreadsheet for any book or improvement task I'm tracking will look different depending on what I feel like tracking and what the content might allow. This fits in with the Customize aspect. You should customize your tracking methods based on the material and your own preferences! As I go, I'll add in new metrics such as the problems/day and the "# of problems needed to maintain 10 per day average" in this example. I added those metrics in after a few days of working through the book after I got a better idea of things I wanted to track. This gives me more motivation as I work towards completing the goal.

Be flexible

I mean this in the sense that you shouldn't be afraid to change your mid-term improvement goals if it will help you accomplish the bigger goal. A recent example (from the above image actually) is that I was trying to do exactly 20 tactics from a book every day while at work. After one session that took way longer than I anticipated to do 20, I only did 10 the next day, then 6 the day after. In response, I've now altered the goal such that I try to solve an average of 10 problems per session until I reach the end of the section in the book which is 120 problems. This is absolutely do-able and I have now got into a groove (massively important) where I can see that I should finish by next Friday as long as I keep it up. This is a far better solution than failing at my initial idea of 20 problems/session and giving up completely. 

Another recent example is my attempt to work through the Intermediate Tactics problems in The Woodpecker Method. After giving it a decent effort and trying to adjust and customize things, I decided to stop since my speed and accuracy were not where I wanted if I was going to try to complete a hefty chunk of the section before cycling through again. And you need to tell yourself that's okay, exercise some flexibility, and do something else that's similar. So I purchased 1001 Chess Tactics for Club Players and I am much more happy with my progress in that book. The puzzles are much closer to the level of difficulty I felt I needed for this method. I was flexible and I found a way that is working much better now.

Finish it

Whatever your mid-term improvement goal, be it "do 30 chess.com tactics a day for a month" or "read a chapter in this book every week", the important part is that you determine if it's helpful to your improvement and something you're ready to work through and YOU FINISH IT. Morale is important and getting bogged down in negative thoughts like "I have all these books that I've never finished" won't help anything. Finishing things and accomplishing goals, even if they might not be the absolute best thing for your chess improvement (see my 200 memorized lichess tactics as a perfect example), can do wonders for your attitude towards improvement.

Try something new 

...Until it sticks or you learn something. This could be a new book, a new opening, a new training method, etc. You don't need to pick up EVERYTHING from one book. People will say don't study openings until X rating or it's pointless to memorize the knight and bishop mating technique. Probably mostly true, but fuck it. It can't hurt too bad. It's still chess. I can't tell you how many times I started an opening repertoire spreadsheet, made notes in a huge word document on a huge playlist of ChessExplained videos on d4 repertoire, created tons of lines in studyopenings.com, and downloaded an opening rep app to help me memorize. It's a lot. And I still don't have a deep opening repertoire. I can say, however, that I probably learned at least a handful of things from each time I tried working on my openings. There is no single perfect way to get better at chess and most likely no book or program will lay out the absolute best course of study for you. You'll try some things and it will be a waste of time. You must accept that some ways will work out and some won't so you should try many and find what works best for you. Don't post on reddit or chess.com forums asking how to get better or what is the best schedule for improvement. That's lazy. Try something and customize how you study and practice it so it works for you. If that fails, keep trying other things!

Use your local library

Nearly everybody has bought books, read a half a chapter and for whatever reason, they realized it's not for them. Take advantage of your library if you are lucky enough to have a good one nearby. If the book doesn't speak to you and solve all your chess-problems as you'd hope, you return it at no cost. If it's a great book, even better. It's much preferred over buying a $25 book, not finishing it, then adding it to a towering stack of forgotten books whose formidable height only grows to taunt you more. Damn, that got dark. 

;)

Alternatively, buy used books on amazon or at your local book store. Pretty easily you can find books in perfectly good condition for a few bucks and if using amazon, the biggest cost is often the $3.99 shipping fee that smaller bookstores or previous owners might charge.

Take games seriously

I get nerves before I begin a game. Any game. I'm generally as nervous playing a casual 5+3 blitz game as I am playing a G/70 OTB game at the (da) club or a 45+45 lichess league game with 10 spectators. It doesn't matter to me. I put pressure on myself to play the best chess moves in any game. This is a natural thing so I can't direct you to "get nervous or amped up before your games" but you should most definitely be playing all your games with 100% effort! Do not hunt down a blitz game against a low-rated player just to fix the tilt you're dealing with. Don't play a 15+15 game and blitz out 25 moves, ending your game with 22 minutes on your clock. Take your time and put effort in everything.

Conclusion

I can combine all these tips into a cohesive thesis statement that could describe my chess improvement outlook:

Try new study techniques until you find something you like, customize the methods to your preferences, be flexible in altering your goals if necessary, remind yourself it's okay to try something new if you've exhausted customization, be creative in ways to track your progress, and work towards finding ways to finish what you started and accomplish the goals to give yourself encouragement and boost your morale.

It's a very do-it-yourself approach and it takes much more work than simply asking /r/chess strangers "How do I improve?" However, I'll always maintain it can be a very strong and enduring way to continually get better if you find the ways that work best for you!

P.S. - Develop a healthy attitude towards improvement

I keep thinking of more things before I publish, but I think this is an over-looked aspect of improving at chess. You need to realize you can spend a lot of time working on improvement but ultimately you will still fail once in a while. Chess is a game of mistakes, after all. And now you inevitably question all the effort you put forth, only to continue to make bad mistakes. I've fallen into this trap many times. I conclude a month-long tactics-related project that I think is going to jumpstart my rating, only to immediately play a game in which I miss the most obvious backwards knight move to capture a hanging piece. This is the definition of a rudimentary tactic. If you were to play puzzle rush, it'd be among the first two or three problems you'd see. Yet in the fog of war that is a chess game, I missed it. I'd just done hundreds and hundreds of 2-, 3-, 4-move combination tactics and I miss Nxf4?! 

Why the hell did I just spend untold hours working through a giant tactics book using spreadsheets, timers, graphs and entire Saturdays dedicated to looking at puzzles, only to miss a hanging piece tactic?!

This is going to happen to you. You need to learn how you best cope with this inevitable problem. Develop mantras you tell yourself: chess is hard, no one is perfect, training is a long-term payoff and there is no such thing as perfection, a single chess game might have hundreds of mini-tests and a backwards knight move you missed is just one failed test of many others you passed, etc. Learning how to reconcile the hard-work of study and training with the inevitable bumps in the road is crucial. As usual, when it comes to specifics, I leave it to you to determine how you can best deal with this. 

Good luck!

10/13/2020 Edit: I saw this on the coffee sub-reddit of all places but I thought it was another concise way of wording of my perspective on how to get better:

• Study one method, become a clone.
• Study two methods, become confused.
• Study ten methods, become yourself.

Chess Flashcards

Introduction

I've heard the advice from a few people now: "I made flashcards for my chess games/tactics and study them!" 

I always wondered how they did this, if they cut their chess books up and pasted positions on actual cards, if they had some software that did it automatically, if they drew pictures....

I heard Stacia Pugh on an episode of Perpetual Chess Podcast and that's when I finally decided to give it a try. Give that episode, and the podcast in general, a listen. It's great! She sold her method really well and it fits in with my "customize your training" perspective. I then saw a video on her chess.com blog of her running through a flashcard session and I began getting a picture of how it worked. After playing with Anki, which is a spaced repetition flashcard software, I settled on a system that's great for my learning style. 

If you just wanna learn how to set it up, skip to the bottom section.

Before going into the benefits I see in this training method, here's a quick example of what the setup looks like mid-session:

That should give you an idea. The board position in the flashcard is a static screenshot from a game of mine with a question--often it's a multi-part question--that I must answer before I move on. I cannot click anywhere and move any pieces even though there are anki add-ons and tools you can install to do such a thing (Side-note: They may not work on the newer version but that doesn't matter for this anyway). I wanted to stick with old school static images with an "essay question"-style prompt. When I click "Show Answer", the solution I provide usually consists of several sentences of text with the answer and other things to consider along with a link to the game for further analysis if I want. That comes in handy a lot.

I started off a deck of cards with all kinds of positions: opening mistakes, tactics, endgame technique, and middlegame strategy. After doing that for a week, I decided to focus on just openings so I made a deck just for that. You might want to consider grouping yours as well. Just note that the rest of my post will be regarding my Openings deck. 

Reasons I Think it's a Good Method

• It forces you to see games as opportunities to learn. After a loss, my morale might be a little down but once I start working on collecting a screenshot or two, the loss is less painful and I get excited about figuring out the reasons why my bad moves were bad and what I can change.
• The system requires you to analyze your games. If you want more flashcards, you have to go back through the game. If you often find yourself quickly going to the next game, this system slows you down if you are committed to making flashcards from the game that just happened. Alternatively, if you have ladder anxiety and have an urge to preserve your precious rating points or whatever, this system can help you frame games as an opportunity for a flashcard harvest: "Fuck I just lost three in a row...welp at least I got some fresh-ass positions to learn"
• If you play the same openings, you'll be surprised how often the positions from your flashcards make appearances in your games.
• It uses positions from your own personal games so it's going to be full of positions in openings you like to play featuring common moves that players at your level play!
• Customized learning methods work much better for me and I'm more likely to stick with them compared with downloading an app and using it for two days then forgetting about it. Although this method requires slightly more work and time investment, you'll learn to get pretty fast at it (see the section later where I briefly walk through making a deck)
• Explaining moves and concepts in your own words shows better understanding than simply making moves in an app. I'm interested in being able to explain the reasons why a move is good or bad in the opening and point out other key aspects in the position besides. For me, this is far better than: "What move do you play here?" that is prevalent in apps. 
• It's flexible. I can have questions about tactical tricks, common early queen moves, why a move is sub-optimal, common moves I play that are wrong and I have to answer why, etc. I can customize it to problems I see in my own games.
• It's adjustable. If I'm working through my deck and I notice something I didn't before, I can quickly edit the card or solution to reflect what I just noticed. Sometimes I make an entirely new card from the same position with a new prompt. This often involves adding in a visualization exercise: If I'm looking at an old card and I see a tricky tactic if black plays sub-optimally, I find that position in my image directory, copy it and replace the prompt with "Visualization exercise: What does black play if 1. Nc3 Nf6 2. Qa4+ Nbd7 3. Bg5?"

Reasons It's Not a Great Method

• It is time consuming. Let's say I'm going back over the game and you start a stopwatch from the time I notice a position I want to turn into a flashcard, I would guess that it takes 3 to 5 minutes to turn that into a final card imported into my Anki deck ready for study. So if I make three cards from a game, it might be 15 minutes of "paperwork" but in my opinion that is worth it for what I get in return. For others, that's not worth the time so that's to be considered. I want to add that you might be surprised how fast you develop a system of making cards, however.
• It's simply not for everyone. Some players might require or do better with dynamic boards where you can see engine evaluations, see the moves played on the board, and immediately see best-move continuations. Or they try it once and decide they're not gonna fuck with making these damn cards! Totally fair.
• . . .
• SHOCKING: there's only two items here for something I've invested a fair amount of time and effort in ;) I'll just say that if this method interests you, give it a shot and see what you think of it. 

Brief Tutorial on Setup (for Windows, but probably similar for Macs?)

Anki is awesome free software that a lot of college and grad students use to memorize things using a spaced repetition structure. It is widely used as a text-based study aid but there are ways to import images and even sound. I've found a simple method to import chess positions with a small amount of effort. I've lately wondered if, perhaps for someone with more time on their hands, they could work with the chessvision bot from /r/chess to automate more of this but my screenshot system is fine for me.

Essentially you screenshot the board position, crop it and add a prompt, save it to a particular directory, and finally set up an import file with the image pathname and a solution to the position. A few clicks in Anki and it'll be there for you!

I'll briefly outline how to do that but if any reader wants more specific information, I can try to help in comments or on reddit!

1. Take screenshot of position of interest.

2. Paste in MSPaint. Crop off any border and then add some whitespace at the bottom where you'll type in a question about the position that you want to test yourself on when you are studying.

3. Save the image in a folder called collection.media that Anki made during install. On my machine, the folder is located at C:\Users\_____\AppData\Roaming\Anki2\User 1\collection.media

4. I use a numbered system to save image, starting with 001.png. You'll want something easy to remember and put in order.

5. In collection.media, make a text file and call it importer.txt. Open importer.txt with notepad. This .txt is going to have paths to chess images and then answers that accompany each. In the import step, you'll direct Anki to this file.

6. In importer.txt, type out a line as below that points to your image and then type out an answer that you want displayed. For my image titled 001.png which has a solution of "White should play Bxe7" (my solutions are typically much more verbose), I would put the following in the importer.txt:

    "<img src=""/openings/001.png"">"; White should play Bxe7

--Notice the semi-colon. That's your separator/delimiter. That will tell Anki that after the semi-colon it is the beginning of a second field, i.e. your solution field that will display when you click "Show Answer" in the program. Make sure to not use semi-colons anywhere in your importer.txt except to separate fields. You can really use most any character I think. I tried commas for a while but that doesn't work well if you are a fan of using commas in your answer fields.

--And I believe the double quotes are necessary otherwise it won't import properly. 

7. Save the importer.txt.

8. In Anki, you should now be able to click File > Import > Select your importer.txt. Choose Fields separated by Semi-Colon (or whichever character you used). And check Allow HTML in fields. I wasn't doing that step at first and that's what got me. Make sure you have a front and back assigned properly and try importing it!

9. Study your deck and see if it works!

--To Troubleshoot where things might be going wrong, try things like importing simple text so instead of image pathnames, just trying a simple "What is your name?" and put in an answer and see if it imports. Also do what I did and google it ;) 

You obviously can and should put many images in your folder and your importer.txt will grow as you play more games and accumulate more flashcards. Presumably you can import a very large number of images, my current one has nearly fifty and I'm hoping for hundreds eventually. Simply beginning a new line with the next image pathname + solution is all you need. To help organize, I put my flashcards in a folder called "openings" within the collections.media folder.  Here's a basic example of importer.txt with three images in it:

    "<img src=""/openings/001.png"">"; White should play Bxe7

    "<img src=""/openings/002.png"">"; Long-winded solution

    "<img src=""/openings/003.png"">"; Blah-blah, yet another long-winded solution

Good luck!

General Chess Inspiration

This will be an ongoing post I'll continually add to as I come across chess quotes and inspiring advice that I like. Some are well-known, some are less popular, and some are from redditors.

"Chess lives from the constant succession of certainty and error."

--Bernd Rosen. My favorite chess quote of all time.

"The master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried." 

"None of us are going to be the next Carlsen, so an ego-centred approach won't lead to any sort of true enjoyment. We may get the occasional impressive win and feel good about ourselves (or shall I say, our ego feels good), but we will always face stronger and stronger opponents and spend most of the time suffering. There are Buddhist analogies here. I think the key is to focus on learning. To play a game as a test of your understanding of chess, not an exercise in anxiously trying to play to a level that you have pre-determined you should play at.

Every game is fundamentally a test of hundreds of small decisions, some more important than others, and whoever has the better understanding will make more correct decisions, and win the game. Sometimes we come out on top and sometimes we don't. Then we go back and look at which decisions were right and which were wrong, and how they can be adjusted for future."

 --Redditor /u/tomlit


"Chess is a sea in which a gnat may drink and an elephant may bathe"

"The passion for playing chess is one of the most unaccountable in the world. It slaps the theory of natural selection in the face. It is the most absorbing of occupations, the least satisfying of desires, an aimless excrescence upon life. It annihilates a man."
lol --H.G. Wells


"Time spent on any challenging chess work is far better than time spent planning the "perfect" chess study schedule."
--John Bartholomew


"The most powerful weapon in Chess is to have the next move."
--David Bronstein

"It's also really important to play. There are some aspects of chess that aren't necessarily knowledge-based or skill-based but can only come through actual playing and practical experience. So if you're someone who's doing a lot of reading and studying and you're solving a lot of puzzles and challenging yourself, you're definitely going to become a stronger player and a very balanced player overall but if you're not playing it's going to be very hard to gauge whether you're actually making progress and whether you're going to utilize what you've been working on."

--Kostya Kavutskiy

"Seeing much, suffering much, and studying much, are the three pillars of learning."

--Benjamin Disraeli (quoted by J. Tisdall at the beginning of Improve Your Chess Now

"Anyway if you ask me, there is one and only one ideal sort of chess training: The one that you are enthusiastic about. If it turns into "work", then - unless you have a hyper concrete goal in mind (prepare a specific opening in 1 hr for a specific opponent, get a title by next year, type thing) - you basically just won't do it, and when/if you start at all, are spending more time on thinking "when am I done" than on "wow cool, chess!" Some people can sit down with 10 random GM games and then spend a day fully in the zone, just trying to learn everything there is to learn about the games, assimilating 10 different openings and their ideas, recognising middlegame patterns and storing them somewhere, going through them in guess-the-move style to improve their own practical play, and using them as endgame lessons on top. Those people will then tell you, full GM game study, best thing ever invented. Other people will sit down with 10 GM games, then go "man i don't even play this opening", skip to the middlegame, go "well  I would play X.. but they played Y. seem equal to me, just different paths. eh. skip to some critical moment, miscalculate somewhere, go eh whatever again, go to the endgame, then laugh and say "yeah I'm totally gonna reach a Bpppp vs RN endgame ever in my life.. ok this is all pointless" and not feel like looking at the 9 other games. That's perfectly fine. If you aren't enthusiastic about analyzing GM game collections, just don't do it. Find something that you actually love about chess, and just do that! Maybe it's not 100% the best path to increasing rating the quickest if you were to be an unfeeling robot or w/e, but 100hrs of enjoyable work will always reap better rewards than 100hrs of slog."

--From IsaVulpes on Lichess4545 General Slack Channel

"On the chessboard, lies and hypocrisy do not survive long. The creative combination lays bare the presumption of a lie; the merciless fact, culminating in the checkmate, contradicts the hypocrite."

--Lasker

"You should keep in mind no names, nor numbers, nor isolated incidents, not even results, but only methods...The method produces numerous results; a few of these will remain in our memory, and as long as they remain few, they are useful to illustrate and to keep alive the rules which order a thousand results."

--Lasker

"He who wants to educate himself in Chess must evade what is dead in Chess...the habit of playing with inferior opponents; the custom of avoiding difficult tasks; the weakness of uncritically taking over variations or rules discovered by others; the vanity which is self-sufficient; the incapacity for admitting mistakes; in brief, everything that leads to standstill or to anarchy."

--Lasker

Goal: 1000 Games Played

I have a touch of ladder anxiety. Which is fine. I have a love for chess and improvement but mixed in is some amount of dread about losing. And I fully understand the illogical nature of it. I can see the truth in -isms like:

• The master has failed more times than the novice has tried.
• You learn so much more from losing.
• If you lose rating points, it's not like you can't get them back in the next game. And if you tilt and lose 200 points, they're only internet-chess-points anyway so who gives an F? 
• Rating points are only a measure of how good you are. You improve through study and effort and that will be reflected eventually by your rating. 

It sucks when I lose and I briefly question why I spend so much time studying and why I couldn't see the obvious error before I played it. But I get up, get some water, pet the dog, and that feeling goes away quickly. Then the constant voice in my head saying "PLAY MORE GAMES" takes over again. That should be the sign that I simply need to play more. I need to hyper-focus on game counts and not rating. I recommend readers who have similar problems do the same. At the end of working on my "Seven Circles..." blog-post, I did a quick inventory on how many games (lichess only) I've actually played. I will put my records here so I can track how they change with my new focus on tactics training.

As of 6/29/2020 (in the middle of the "1001 Chess Exercises..." book):

BLITZ +29 win differential
1426 Rating
184 wins (52%)
17 draws
155 losses
356 total games

RAPID +52 win differential
1584 Rating
128 wins (61%)
7 draws
76 losses
211 total games

CLASSICAL +32 win differential
1726 Rating
132 wins (53%)
16 draws
100 losses
248 total games

Note: I've played a very small amount of unrated games and those are included in these totals. From here on out I will only play rated games.

My middle-term goal is to reach 1000 games played on lichess by getting to 400 blitz games, 300 rapid, and 300 classical games played. Why those numbers? I dunno, why not! When I reach those numbers. I'll post an update...

PROGRESS - Games played:
TimeControl > GameStats > Total

401 Blitz - 0 remaining
266 Rapid - 34 remaining
300 Classical - 0 remaining

* * * * * * *

"Seven" Circles of 1001

Introduction
One of Dan Heisman's list of recommended books is Bain's Chess Tactics for Students. In the note, he provides a guide for completing that book using a spaced repetition method (Edit: I now understand that it isn't really spaced repetition because, with that method, you typically increase the length of time between successful solves (and decrease review time for those problems you miss). My method reviews all problems regardless of accuracy and consistently decreases review time, thus being more like the woodpecker method). Here's my rough outline of that guide:

1) Set a limit of 5 minutes per problem the first time through the book. If you don't get the answer, look it up.
2) Each time through the book, cut the time in half.
3) Repeat going through the book faster and faster until you can get 85%+ within 10-15 seconds per problem.

It's some form of de la Maza's Seven Circles Method. 1001 Chess Exercises for Beginners is quite an easy book for me and that's the book I've chosen to start with. I'd already started working through the first part of the book multiple times when I came across Dan's list. The first half of the book encompasses 492 problems categorized by motif along with hints so it's pretty easy to find the right idea. So at the time of writing, I'd decided to wrap up the first half and then more diligently follow this Seven Circles Method for the later sections.

Here's my plan moving forward:

1) Complete the 492 problems with 95+% accuracy (completed 6/19).
2) Complete the other sections of the book in piecemeal fashion, doing small 150-200 problem sections at a time until I can complete them at a rate of ~15 seconds per problem with 95% accuracy.
3) Systematically review all problems.
4) Complete the entire book in one day with at least 85% accuracy.

The Four (Half-Assed) Circles through first 492 problems
I just completed this last weekend, June 19. What a crazy Friday night. For my records, here are the solutions I got incorrect: [removed to different section] That list will be helpful to review before I try the entire book! I finished with 477 correct out of 492, or 96.95% accuracy.


The REAL Seven Circles
I should note that the Seven Circles idea is not without controversy, probably due to some things I mention in the Reflections section below. I'm just going to ignore that and use it as a reason to continue to train tactics diligently. I tend to be better at finishing things if I keep metrics on my progress and the Seven Circles method is a format that allows me to do just that. My only other note is that the study routine requires going through 1000 chess exercises every cycle. As already explained, I'm breaking the second half of this book into smaller subsets, only to try the final 1001 exercises later on. Here is the breakdown for the second half of the book:

Mixed Motifs - White to Move
Problems 493-690 - 198 total 

Mixed Motifs - Black to Move
Problems 691-864 - 174 total 

81 Mate-in-3 problems
33 Mate-in-4 problems
23 Curiosities

I will begin with the 198 White to Move problems. As inspiration, I'm taking ideas from this blog and so I will take some statistics throughout my work. For each problem, I will start a timer, get my solution, and write it down along with how long it took me and whether it was correct. I'll compile and summarize numbers at the end.


Seven Circles for Mixed Motifs - White to Move
My goal is to complete the set with 95% accuracy at a rate of ~15 seconds per problem. I hope it doesn't take me seven cycles, but we shall see. Once I reach that milestone, I know it's time to move on to the next section.

Cycle 1 (completed 6/25): 
   Number of days of study: 4
   Overall Time: 5h 11m (18669 seconds)
   Time per problem: 94 sec/problem
   Overall Accuracy: 87.88%

Cycle 2 (completed 6/29): 
   Number of days of study: 2
   Overall Time: 2h 1m (7260 seconds)
   Time per problem: 36.7 sec/problem
   Overall Accuracy: 92.9%

Cycle 3 (completed 6/30):
   Number of days of study: 1
   Overall Time: 47m (2843 seconds)
   Time per problem: 14.3 sec/problem
   Overall Accuracy: 97.3%


Summary:
So after three cycles, I've reached my goal for the Mixed Motifs - White to Move section. As expected, my accuracy improved and I went faster each time. Here are some graphs to visually represent how quickly the time-to-solve metrics dropped after each cycle. To make them easier to read, I decided to segment the time metric into larger "chunks" of time.

So in the above graph, you can see the blue bars are my first cycle through the set of 198 problems. As mentioned, the problem set is relatively easy for me and I did a pretty good job of solving many of them in 0-30 seconds or 31-60 seconds. Granted some were incorrect but I decided not to display them in this graph since I was more concerned with showing how time-to-solve changed through the cycles. As expected, the blue bars are more evenly distributed throughout the time chunks but with the second cycle (orange bars) and third cycle (gray), I started to get a lot more confident and faster in my solving. The third cycle shows nearly all were solved within 1 minute.

Here's a graph of smaller 5- or 10-second chunks:

This shows a little bit more detail. Looking at cycle 1 first, you can now see how many took me over 60 seconds to solve. The second cycle shows more even distribution and by the third cycle, I was solving a lot more under five or ten seconds.

Here's the data:

The Rest of the Second Half (edited on July 24)

I did the same process on the other sections from the second half of the book (509 problems) but I'll forego any deeper analysis. Here's a quick summary of my time spent working on the second half:

• June 22 to July 23 - I completed the second half in piecemeal fashion.
• 19 sessions (days) of solving
• 13 rest days
• 1527 total tactics solved
• 80.4 tactics solved per session

Reflections on the Second Half
I cannot say for sure if this is worth it.

:)

It's at least interesting to do and I encourage everyone to try it. It gives you a sense of mastery of tactics but I'd guess it is partly artificial. I sensed a feeling of "memorizing the book" on more than one occasion. To be fair, I certainly also noticed times where I was picking up on general patterns, my eye quickly jumping to the idea, and only needing a quick calculation check before I had the solution (the goal I think!).

If I recall correctly, in the introduction to The Woodpecker Method, the authors state that the reader should make it a point to go through ALL calculation no matter which cycle you're doing. I found that during my final cycles, because I was timing myself and I was aiming for the quickest solve that was possible, I would often get the idea and stop the clock after 1 second. I wasn't doing the full calculation. 

When I say I was "memorizing the book" I mean to say that there are some puzzles in this set of 198 (and in the larger set in the first half of the book I'd done previously) where I had simply made some mental shortcuts. I had been noticing small little details in the position, say an unusual king placement in relation to pieces, and I really quickly remember that puzzle in particular and I see the move instantly. No extra calculation required. Going through the positions the third cycle, an obvious example might be "Oh this is that one where the king is boxed in by two rooks and I have that simple queen fork." I may have just been remembering "king boxed in, so play the queen-fork" without checking for counter-play or other moves the opponent might have.

Another example is an endgame problem I remember taking me over four minutes to solve and I didn't get the solution right the first time. The solution was a crazy castle-queenside move that ended up forking two pieces. Since it was an endgame position, 0-0-0 is really off your radar. Granted it was a bit tricky, but the point is the first cycle through, I'd calculated and analyzed for nearly five minutes and had to write some answer down. Once I saw the real solution, the second and third cycles through, I got that answer in a matter of seconds. "Oh this is that dumb one with the long castle." Did I learn much from that? Did I hardwire in some master-level pattern recognition or automate some calculation techniques? I doubt it, at least as far as positions like that are concerned.

So that's a case against this method. How about some positivity?!

In this set, there is a king and pawn endgame position with locked kingside pawns but there is a possible breakthrough. When I first encountered the puzzle, I saw the pawn breakthrough idea (the only non-king move actually) so I calculated it but it took several minutes of checking pawn races and if black had other intermediate moves or tricks. By my second cycle through, I recognized the puzzle immediately and knew the answer was g3-g4. Again, the question is, "Upon my second, third, fourth cycles through this position, am I truly practicing pawn-race counting, checking intermediate moves, or am I just seeing that familiar locked-pawn configuration that I saw the previous cycle and I know without having to check anything that the solution is the only pawn move in the position: g3-g4?" I'd have to say in cases like this, I may be simply memorizing the solution, but is this okay? Maybe it is, at least for positions like this. Perhaps next time I have a similar locked pawn position in one of my games, I'm hopefully more tempted to immediately check what pawn breakthroughs I have--thanks to this training and seeing this pawn breakthrough many times over in the last few days. Granted I will still have to calculate and count, as I did in the first cycle through, but the hope is that I'll have a shortcut now to know what to look for.

And lastly, I think the biggest revelation is that, regardless of the pluses and minuses, at least I was doing many hours of tactics training per day. Sometimes it was legitimate full calculation during the first and second cycles, and other times it was simple memorization with only minor pattern recognition. But still......tactics? They say any time spent studying chess is good to some degree. Did it help to see a bunch of these very easy problems a second and third time and know the solution in a matter of seconds? To be determined I guess. All I know is that I just devoted an entire month of training in which two out of every three days I was solving an average of 80 tactics per session.

A final final reflection: It is really slow going, especially during the third cycle when you know the solution but you have to stop the clock, double-check the solution, write down the time, and then get the next position pulled up. That's the main reason I didn't continue the diligent time-keeping stats for the other sections of the book. :)


For Future Cycles

Another idea to do in the future is to try Ray Cheng's Practical Chess Exercises using this repetition method. With that much more challenging book, I think I will have to try the true "X number or problems per day" version of the 7 Circles method as it was intended whereby you pick a number of problems to do per day and stick with it for the first cycle, doubling that number for the next cycle. Say 10 problems per day for the first pass through, the next cycle through would be 20 problems per day, the next cycle is 40 problems per day, then 80, 150, 300 and then all 600 problems in a day. That is following the 7 circles exactly.


Other Information
For my records, here are problems to review before full attempt:
Incorrect problems in first 492: { 26 , 109 , 154 , 241 , 245 , 263 , 274 , 293 , 358 , 366 , 426 , 429 , 459 , 464 , 476 }.

Incorrect problems in "White to Move - Mixed Motifs": { 503 , 505 , 507 , 509, 511 , 521 , 522 , 523 , 525 , 526, 531 , 538 , 542 , 552 , 558 , 560 , 563 , 564 , 565 , 567 , 571 , 577 , 578 , 590 , 596, 602 , 609 , 613 , 619 , 624 , 639 , 640 , 644 , 651, 654 , 657 , 658 , 661 , 662 , 664 , 674 , 680 } 

Incorrect problems in "Black to Move - Mixed Motifs": { 745 , 750 , 759 , 767 , 774 , 777 , 778 , 783 , 785 , 794 , 806 , 807 , 809 , 817 , 831 , 856 , 863 }

Incorrect problems in Final Section: { 884 , 890 , 891 , 894 , 902 , 915 , 923 , 924 , 954 , 957 , 960 , 961 , 964 , 969 , 970 , 991 , 992 }

Black Repertoire against e4

After studying some Caro-Kann opening theory and seen how intuitive it is for my style, I've decided to build a dedicated repertoire. HangingPawns youtube channel was extremely helpful with assembling this. Here's a playlist.


Caro-Kann Defense - Mainline

1.  e4  c6 
2.  d4  d5

The most common third moves for white are:
         3. e5  (21.3k games)
         3. Nc3  (16.9k games)
         3. exd5  (13.3k games)
         3. Nd2  (10.1k games)
         3. f3  (1.7k games)

 I’ll cover each of these in order.


 * * *


Advanced
1.  e4  c6
2.  d4  d5
3.  e5  Bf5
4.  Nf3  e6
5.  Be2  Nd7

-You must avoid getting the LSB trapped in, so don’t play e6 too early. I’ve done it too many times and it’s uncomfortable. That’s why 3. ...Bf5 is played early.
-I’ve seen 4. f4 e6 5. g4??  and I missed it but 5. ...Qh4+ is winning. 6. Kd2 (Ke2 Bxg4+) Be4 7. Nf3 Qf2+ 8. Qe2 Qxf3
-If 4. Nc3 e6 and it’s equal. White can try the Van der Wiel Attack with 5. g4 Bg6 6.Nge2 (trying for Nf4) c5 seeking counter-play 7. h4 h5 8. Nf4 Bh7 9. Nxh5 cxd4 10. Nb5 Nc6 11. Nxd4. White has a misplaced knight and d5 is weak as are a5 diagonals to the white king.
-If 4. Bxd3, that’s fine because black usually wants to get rid of his LSB because it’s staring at nothing after Bf5. So black is okay to trade bishops after 4. Bd3 Bxd3 5. Qxd3 e6.
-The aggressive Tal Variation starts with 4. h4 h5 (...e6? 5. g4 and bishop is soon trapped) 5. c4 e6 6. Nc3 Ne7 7. Nge2 Nd7. Qb3 might come from white and Qb6 will make a queen trade which is common. The DSB is the problem piece for black in these lines usually. Look to trade it off.
-Another sideline is 4. c4 e6 5. Nc3 Ne7 6. Qb3 Qb6 7. c5 Qxb3 8. axb3. Black has a horrible DSB again and white is kinda prepping a minority attack on the queenside. c6 is weak for black.
-5. Be2 is clearly just to castle, black plays Nd2 to help with the ...c5 push
-If 5. Nc3? Nd7 and black might castle long.
-Wikipedia mentioned a popular game by Kann using his eponymous opening: 1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 Bf5 4.Bd3 Bxd3 5.Qxd3 e6 6.f4 c5 7.c3 Nc6 8.Nf3 Qb6 9.0-0 Nh6 10.b3 cxd4 11.cxd4 Nf5 12.Bb2 Rc8 13.a3 Ncxd4 14.Nxd4 Bc5 15.Rd1 Nxd4 16.Bxd4 Bxd4+ 17.Qxd4 Rc1 18.Kf2 Rxd1 19.Qxb6 axb6 20.Ke2 Rc1 21.Kd2 Rg1 22.g3 Kd7 23.a4 Rc8 24.b4 Rcc1 0-1
-And this: Nimzo vs Capa 1927 http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1007846
-This gives white the biggest advantage if played properly with a lot more space and piece activity. Black needs to play c5 in this opening to activate his pieces. After 4. Nf3 e6, black has the plan to later get c5 in and Nd7 and Ne7. It continues 5. Be2 Nd7 6. 0-0 Ne7 7. Nbd2 h6. It’s the “starting position of the Short Variation.” Black’s ideas playing Qc7, 0-0-0 and pawnstorming on the kingside. Black can also play solid and tuck the bishop on h7. Or after 8. Nb3 g5! to play aggressively. Also, a point of Ne7 could be, if ever the LSB was taken on f5, to re-take with knight and it’s a strong piece.
-After 3. ...Bf5 4. Nc3 e6 5. g4 Bg6 6. Nge2 (threat: Nf4) c5 7. h4 h5 (sacrificing a pawn. h6 is too passive) 8. Nf4 Bh7 9. Nxh5 cxd4 10. Nb5 Nc6. This is the starting position of this “old” way of playing the Advanced variation.
-A common theme in this Short Variation is to weaken defense of the e5 pawn by eventually playing ….c5, even playing Bg7 or f6 to hit it.


* * *


Classical
1.  e4  c6
2.  d4  d5
3.  Nc3  dxe4
4.  Nxe4  Bf5
5.  Ng3  Bg6
6.  h4  h6
7.  Nf3  Nd7

-If white doesn’t takej back on e4, black can probably play 4. ...Nf6 5. f3 b5! and black is better here.
-If 5. Nc5 e5! 6. Nxb7 Qb6 7. Nc5 Bxc5 8. dxc5 Qxc5 and black is way ahead in development.
-If 5. Qf3 e6
-Move 6, white has several options. Besides the mainline, white could play Nh3, Nf3, Bc4, N1e2.
-If 6. Nh3 (Flohr variation) you have to give up the bishop and develop, don’t try to save it. Play like this: 6. ...e6 7. Nf4 Bd6 8. h4 (c3 is actually best) (Nxg6 hxg6 and rook is open)  Qc7 9. Nxg6 (9. h5? Bxc2 10. Qxc2 Bxf4 winning a pawn) hxg6. Here black is hitting g3 twice, and the h4 pawn is a weakness. In this line, after 7. ...Bd6 white could play 8. Nh5 hitting g7 so 8. ...Bxh5 9. Nxh5 g6 10. Ng3 (Ng7 Kf8). Black has weakened dark squares for now but development is equal and both sides have things to play for.
-If 6. Nf3 e6 7. Bd3 c5! 8. c3 Nc6 9. Be3 cxd4 10. Nxd4 Nf6 and black has a great position and will castle long.
-If 6. N1e2 e6 and will probably transpose to Flohr
-If 6. Bc4 e6 7. c3 Bd6 8. Nh5 Bxh5 9. Qxh5 Nd7 Qe2 Ngf6 Nf3 and a nice normal caro pawn structure but you must stop the d5 push from white.
-If 6. Nf3 Nd7 and if 7. h4 comes it might translate to the variation provided.
-If 6. Be3 or Bd3???
-A rare 6th move from a note in chessgames.com: 6. f4! e6 is fine from black.
-6. ...h5 should not be played because it will always be weak. 7. Nf3 Nd7 8. Bd3 Bxd3 9. Qxd3 e6 10. Bf4 Qa5+ 11. c3 Ngf6 12. 0-0 Be7 13. Ng5 and black is losing here.
-7. ...Nf6? 8. Ne5 gives white lots of activity because Qb3 or Qf3 (with Nh5) are threats, or Bc4 and Qe2 as well.
-If 8. Ne5 Nxe5 9. dxe5 is good for black because you can trade queens white’s king is in the center without castling rights.
-There’s a good chance white will trade light-squared bishops with Bd3 at some point, like in the Spassky Variation which is also considered the mainline I think: 8. h5 Bh7 9. Bd3 Bxd3 10. Qxd3 e6 is the most common continuation. White says he’s better developed but is also weak on the kingside. White’s pawn on h5 looks like a good attacker but it can prove to be a weakness in an endgame.
-From this position after the Spassky Variation, black needs to develop. White will surely not castle kingside. The mainline follows 11. Bf4 Qa5+ 12. Bd2 Bb4 13. c3 Be7 14. c4 Qc7. And here it’s cool because black effectively played two moves (Be7 and Qc7) but forced white to play three weakening moves (c3, c4 and Bd2). Mainline continues 15. 0-0-0 Ngf6 16 Kb1 0-0. This is the starting position of the mainline—meaning this is the result of the best moves engine-wise and theory-wise. As far as white is concerned, the h5 pawn is over-extended, the knight on g3 is pretty useless and it will have to probably exchange off for black’s f6 knight, but then this activates black’s other knight to f6. White will also need to spend some moves to prepare a kingside pawn storm whereas black has b5 and a5 moves ready to go.
-White can also play 11. Be2 a5 is good for black and a4 coming and b5 coming.


 * * *


Exchange
1.  e4  c6
2.  d4  d5
3.  exd5  cxd5
4.  Bd3  Nc6
5.  c3  Nf6
6.  Bf4  Bg4
7.  Qb3  Qd7

-Very passive for white
-White’s fourth move is actually second most common among masters. The most common is the Panov Attack (see next section) which follows 4. c4 Nf6 5. Nc3 e6 6. Nf3 Bb4. It often leads to IQP positions, with white obtaining rapid development, a grip on e5, and kingside attacking chances to compensate for the long-term structural weakness of the pawn.
-4. Bd3 tries to capture control of a key diagonal
-If 4. Nf3 Nc6
-If 4. c3 it should probably transpose. BLack should try to get that key diagonal though, so he plays 4. ...Bf5 5. Bd3? Bxd3 6. Qxd3 e6 and black is fine, and the b5 square isn’t a problem like it can be. Instead, white should play 5. Qb3 Qd7 6. Nf3 Nc6 and it’s now a normal position that should transpose to the main exchange line with a slightly better bishop for black.
-If 4. Bf4 Bf5 and it’s kinda an improved london system for black since black has two central pawns to one.
-If 5. Nf3 Bg4
-7. ...Qd7 helps defend everything. It can follow 8. Nd2 e6 9. Ngf3 Bxf3. Black’s LSB is kinda a bad piece so it’s okay to trade it, and that knight going to e5 is a big threat, with white’s other knight coming to f3 to help defend it. So now if 10. Nxf3, Ne5 from white isn’t quite the same threat because black can just take it with his knight and things are neutralized. 10. ...Bd6 11. Bxd6 Qxd6 12. Qxd7? 0-0 and black should be able to re-gain the b2 pawn (I guess with Rb8?). Yeah he says black gets major initiative in the position with Rab8, Rfc8, Ne4 opening the position with black’s king in the center, etc. The starting position ends with 13. 0-0. Black has a plan to play a6 then b5 and b4. White’s only good break is f4-f5 so they might move their knight out and try for that.
-Wikipedia source says some of the strategic ideas in the Caro-Kann Exchange are analogous to the QGD-Exchange with colors reversed.
-In most exchange Caro-Kann positions, the main plan for black is usually to play g6 and Bg7 and Nf6. Black will have problems with checks on the a4-e8 diagonal.
-The Panov Attack, white is accepting an IQP but is disrupting black’s center.


* * *


Panov Botvinnik Attack
1.  e4  c6
2.  d4  d5
3.  exd5  cxd5
4.  c4  Nf6
5.  Nc3  e6
6.  Nf3  Bb4
7.  cxd5  Nxd5
8.  Bd2  Nc6
9.  Bd3  0-0
10.  0-0

-White strikes at black’s center immediately. White’s LSB diagonal and the Qa4+ are threats to black. Black is technically equalized after white’s fourth move but you need to know it.
-The most common 4th move from black is ...Nf6 but ...g6 and ...e6 are possible.
-5. h3 is possible to stop pieces coming to g4 but it’ll probably transpose to the mainline.
-5. Nf3 g6 6. Qb3 Bg7 7. cxd5 0-0 (Qxd5? 8. Bc4)
-5. ...e6 is the mainline and it seems passive but it lets black castle and the bishop shouldn’t be fianchetto’d in this line. Usually it wants to come to b4 to pin the knight.
-At the end of the variation, white has an IQP but it’s doing a lot but it could become a weakness. In the position, black doesn’t want to play ...Bxc3 because bxc3 reinforces. If black’s knight on d5 is ever taken, you can certainly take back with pawn and concede in the center, with both sides having an IQP, but you might want to try to take back with a knight. Like if immediately white plays Nxd5 black could try Ne7 in some positions, so that you can play Nd5 and blockade with a powerful piece. Not always possible though. White has much more active bishops in this position so black doesn’t have attacking prospects.
-A common continuation is 10. ...Be7 (knight isn’t pinned anymore so the bishop isn’t doing anything) 11. a3 Bf6 12. Qc2 g6 13. Bh6 Re8
-For black, a more active choice however is 5. ...Nc6 6. Bg5 Be6. If white takes on f6 you play exf6 and you have the bishop pair and better position. The reason 6. ...Be6 is possible is because white’s bishop is taking the g5 square where the knight would like to be to dislodge black’s LSB. Furthermore, white’s knight isn’t on f3 and so it cannot come to Ng5 to dislodge black’s bishop on d6. The line continues 7. a3 Qd7 8. Be2 Rd8 9. Bxf6 exf6 10. c5 Be7. White wants to push b4 and b5 and create a passed pawn on the queenside but black has a lot of initiative in the center, the bishop pair, and a safer king.


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Modern  (transposes to classical)
1.  e4  c6
2.  d4  d5
3.  Nd2  dxe4
4.  Nxe4  Bf5

-As I play it, it transposes into the Classical variation.
-The Modern Variation is actually 4. ...Nd7, delaying the bishop move but I’m going for easy to remember repertoire so adding in another line when it’s not necessary is silly. Anyway, a cool mating trap in that line is: 4. ...Nd7 5. Qe2 Nf6? 6. Nd6#
-White has no other good fourth moves, but if they try something like 4. c3 Nf6 is good for black.
-4. Nb3? e6 and black is much better.


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Fantasy/Tartakower
1.  e4  c6
2.  d4  d5
3.  f3  Qb6

-This is also called the Maroczy. With 3. f3 white is supporting the center with a pawn which is less common in the Caro-Kann. The line HangingPawns gives is 3. ...dxe4 4. fxe4 e5 5. Nf3 Bg4 6. Bc4 Nd7 7. c3 and this is the starting position.
-In this line, white’s e-h4 diagonal is very weak and there are always tactics to watch for.


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Rare second moves from white

1. e4  c6
2. d4  is the most common second move (64k games), but white may make other moves:

          2. Nc3  (5.5k games)
          2. c4  (3.8k games)
          2. d3  (2.3k games)
          2. Nf3  (2.0k games)
          2. Bc4  (14 games! It’s not popular among masters but I’ll include it since I’ve seen it)

I’ll cover those more in depth right now, but the short answer is that black should play 2. ...d5 every time anyway! Also note that these often lead to transpositions to more mainline Caro-Kann formations. Nc3 is a move in the Classical, and c4 the Panov so when you see those, be prepared for transposing. Here’s an example of each of those lines in order of popularity:


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Two Knights Variation
1.  e4  c6
2.  Nc3  d5
3.  Nf3  Bg4
4.  h3  Bxf3
5.  Qxf3  e6

-White may also switch around the two knight moves and it won’t matter.
-White will have rapid development of pieces.
-If 3. d4 dxe4 4. Nxe4 Bf5 which transposes into the classical variation.
-If 3. Qf3, black can try to play for tempo on the queen: 3. ...dxe4 4. Nxe4 (Qxe4 Nf6) Nf6 5. Nxf6 exf6 6. Bc4 Nd7 (threatening Ne5)
-If 4. Be2 e6
-If 5. gxf3 still play e6 to bring bishop out
-A simple tactic in this line to watch out for: 6. d4 dxe4 7. Nxe4 Qxe4 8. Bg5 Qxb2? 9. Rd1! and black is gonna have to be careful. Simple solution is don’t take the pawn on b2 on move 8!
-Magnus won a game in this line against Hikaru. He exchanged both his bishops actually.


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Accelerated Panov Attack
1.  e4  c6
2.  c4  d5
3.  exd5  cxd5
4.  cxd5  Nf6

-The idea is to clamp down on d5 but black plays it anyway. If white takes twice there then that pawn is incredibly weak. Black shouldn’t take back with the queen though because it allows Nc3, which is development with tempo. Your basic goal in this as black is to develop and play against white’s weak pawn structure.
-if 3. cxd5 cxd5 4. exd5 (4. e5 Nc6) Nf6 same as the given variation.
-if 4. d4 Nf6 is fine and transposes into the regular Panov Attack.
-if something stupid like 4. Nf3 d4 is good for black, even playing 5. ...e5 maybe and gambiting a pawn because 6. Nxe5 Bd6.


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The Breyer Variation
1.  e4  c6
2.  d3  d5
3.  Nd2  e5
4.  Ngf3  Bd6

-Wikipedia source calls this ineffective or doubtful.
-3. Nf3 is the better move but not by much. If that’s played, 3. ...dxe4 4. dxe4 Qxd1 and maybe black can play g6 and Bg7. It’s an equal middlegame.
-3. ...e5 gives black a great center.


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1.  e4  c6
2.  Nf3  d5
3.  Nc3  Bg4
4.  h3  Bxf3
5.  Qxf3  e6

-This transposes into the Two Knights variation from above so see those notes.
- If 3. exd5 cxd5 4. Ne5 (Apocalypse Attack) Nf6


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Here's a line I saw in a game on lichess: https://lichess.org/nzKQmlw2/black#0

1  e4  c6
2  Nf3  d5
3  exd5  cxd5
4  d4  Bg4
5  h3  Bxf3
6  Qxf3  e6
7  Bd3  Nf6
8  O-O  Bd6

-I misplayed it in the game so just follow this along if an early Nf3...I like getting the LSB out.


The Hillbilly Attack
1.  e4  c6
2.  Bc4  d5
3.  exd5  cxd5

-Carlsen evidently beat So in a game in 2017 with it in an opposite-color bishop ending.
-I faced this three or four times in a row on lichess and chess.com on 3/28
-One game followed 1. e4 c6  2. Bc4 d5  3. exd5 cxd5  4. Bb3 Bf5 5. d3? (5. d4 e6 is best) , and black should play e6.
-Another followed 1. e4 c6 2. Bc4 d5 3. exd5 cxd5 4. Bb5+ (second best move after Bb3) Bd7 5. Bxd7+ Nxd7 6. Nc3 (Nf3 is better) Ngf6 7. d4 e6 8. Nge2 Bb4. 8. ...Rc8 is best but black is better either way.


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