- The Lesson page is the basics: Where, When, How, etc.
- Adult Guide Page 1 overviews Adult Lessons. There are two more pages to be browser-friendly:
- Adult Guide Page 2: Why Lessons? How is Chess Helpful for Adults?
- Adult Guide Page 3: Getting Ready for Lessons - What kind of games to play - Adult students may benefit from reading "Program, what Program?" on this page
GAMES ARE THE FUEL FOR MOST LESSONS - while I have many "canned" lessons on instructive problems, openings, endgames, etc. your games, more than anything else, will tell me what you understand and what you don't, and therefore what you need to learn to get better.
Things you can do to start improving now:
I enjoy working with each and every student!
Program, what Program? - The 97% solution (different than The 7% Solution for how much you learn during lessons)
I was once chatting with a new student and he mentioned that one or two of my former students had said that they had enjoyed lessons and found them helpful, but they finally stopped lessons because they decided they did not want to follow my program. My reaction was:
Program? What program?
Let's backtrack a little. Any instructor will have lots of suggestions on what to do to improve: who and when to play, what time controls, opening advice, which types of books and media to read, how to analyze better, etc. If they don't, then they aren't really an instructor because that's what instructors do. Suppose one of these gives you 100 suggestions of things to do and you don't want to do (for any reason) a handful of these, say 3%. Only finding 97% fun or useful is normal. If you are looking for an instructor who has 100 suggestions and you like all 100, that would be amazing. To switch instructors because you don't like a few of his/her suggestions would be to continually switch instructors forever. On the other hand, if you only LIKE a few of their instructions, that is a great reason to switch.
I have many suggestions, some more strongly felt than others. If there are some that a student does not wish to do, that is quite understandable. When a student gets a suggestion, there are basically three things he/she can do:
1. Follow it the best he/she can and see how much fun it is and how much benefit it provides,
2. Decide not to try it and be truthful with the instructor that this suggestion is not being followed, or
3. Don't say anything and not follow it, letting the instructor think you are following it.
Of these three #1 and #2 are fine - the instructor and student are on the same page and being honest with each other. The only unacceptable option is #3.
However, many students are embarrassed to pick #2. Even though not wanting to follow every suggestion is normal, they feel that the instructor may take their reluctance personally, so instead they choose #3, or worse, stop taking lessons. If you have a good instructor, that is somewhat like throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Moreover, if you tell your instructor why you don't wish to follow his advice, it may be that you misunderstood the advice or that the instructor can help you find a new way to make the advice more fun to follow.
So, even though I have some suggestions that I make to most students (like knowing basic tactics inside out and upside down or playing your speed games with the same increment as serious OTB games), I don't really have a program (= a set of steps each student must take in a specific order, within a specific timeframe. Why? Because some students have much more time for chess than others, and many steps can be taken in any given order). However, my guess is that some students feel as though not following a suggestion is like not following my program...
A post by IM David Pruess on a chess forum relating to how chess players respond to advice (good or bad):
Thought you mind find it interesting...(Dan H added bold for the parts related to The Four Homeworks)
"As a teacher, my impression is that there is precious little advice the student actually wants to hear. Almost anything about how you need to work to improve is disregarded.
For example people write in to Jeremy Silman's column and ask him how to become a master. He'll list many things including "playing over 10 000 games" (I forget the exact number). Rather than starting to look over games, they'll reply in the comments section that he's lying, making it up.
"You should analyze your own games: losses and draws particularly." So, I've been doing this program "your games analyzed" for over 20 weeks now, in which a chess.com member has the opportunity to select any game of theirs and show it to me, and i'll go over it, ask about their thought process, and give my comments and feedback on the game. I believe I have seen 1 loss and 1 draw submitted out of ~25 games.
"Don't use computer engines until you are over 2400." but you see, a computer can "analyze" a game in a few minutes without any effort from the player-- who cares if they won't learn A SINGLE THING? and it's cheaper to ask a computer what you did wrong than hiring a master-- never mind that after the computer affixes a ? (or two) to one of your moves and provides an alternative, you'll be none the wiser as to why your move is not best, why the suggestion is better, what principle(s) is in operation, why you made the mistake you made, or what you'd have to do to produce the computer's move in a future game.
or when i give players in the 1000-1800 range advice on improving their tactics, viz: 10-15 min per day of solving simple tactical puzzles. the goal is to increase your store of basic patterns, not to work on your visualization, deep calculation. remember that is your goal. you are not trying to prove that you can solve every problem. if you don't solve a problem within 1 minute, stop. it's probably a new pattern or you would have gotten it by now. (with private students i'll take the time to demonstrate this to them: show them through examples that they can find a 3-4 move problem in 10 seconds if they know the pattern, and that they can fail to find a mate in 2 for 10 minutes if they don't know the pattern). look at the answer, and now go over the answer 3 more times in your head to help the pattern take hold. your brain can probably take on 2-3 new patterns between sleeping, so you should stop once you've been stumped by 2 or 3 problems (usually will take about 10-15 min). there is no point in doing more than that in one day. and any day you miss, you can't make up for. a semi-random estimate on my part is that you need about 2000 of these patterns to become a master. so you need to do this for 2 years or more.
i would guess that less than 1 in 100 of the people i have given this advice to have followed it to the letter. if they enjoy it, they'll waste their time doing it for 1.5 hours in a day, choosing to ignore that it's not helping them [after 15 min]. or some with ego issues will insist on trying to solve every single position (if only they linked their ego to their self-discipline ).
i could go on and on. from my experience, there are exactly two kinds of advice players *do* like to get:
- "you don't need to do x." Love, love, love, love that!! eg: "you don't actually need to memorize openings to be a master;" or "you don't need to calculate in positions like this, you can just move your pieces towards the best squares;" or "you don't need to study the endgame until your games are balanced enough to reach a lot of even endgames." people really drink that stuff up. sort of related is #2
- "see, this principle explains the entire position." provided the principle was well-explained, people love this too. well, on the one hand, powerful principles can often be pure gold; but i can't help but jadedly suspect that part of it may be that it is another pass for playing without working. playing according to principles is so much easier than employing painstaking analysis.
but anyway, chess is supposed to be fun, so have fun. you don't need to calculate if you don't like to. you don't need to revisit your losses if they are painful. you all have my not-even-one-iota-of-sarcasm-or-irony blessing to keep playing as you do. it's even fine with me if you ask me for advice and then ignore it as long as we all have fun in the process.
besides, people with an extremely strong desire to improve (in any field) pretty much all do put in serious work, and take pains to make sure they incorporate messages they are instinctively resistant to into their thoughts. when other masters tell me: "david, you aren't going to like hearing this, but here's what i think your problem is," i perk up. but currently i'm not doing the work to take advantage of that advice. i just enjoy playing"
----------------(end of IM Pruess suggestions) ---------------
- Record and bring all games to lessons so we can study them! (ICC students can play slow games and move them from their history file to their library. Do "help libraries") I realize that most adults are very busy, but I will do my best to help you derive as much benefit as possible! Think of me as a training guide, not just a source of information! I also ask that if a student has time and is looking for opponents, I can help you find other students to play (see below).
- What are the best kind of games to play (and show to me during a lesson)?
Show me games that you made some mistake you don't understand; for example, you were winning and drew or lost, or lost when you were drawing, but don't know why. "Every missed opportunity to play better - even in a drawn game, or a difficult game to win - is your loss. That is why it is necessary for you to return again and again to study your oversights, regardless of how the game turned out.” - Garry Kasparov- Games slow enough that you can learn how to think and can explain to me what you were thinking. I would say 45 5 (45 minutes with a 5 second time delay or increment) or preferably slower is good practice. But make sure to take (almost) all your time! If the game was OTB, then time-stamped (how many minutes remaining after each move) is much better. Online games are usually automatically time-stamped.
- Against decent competition - you want to play opponents who better than you but certainly not more than 100 points worse. A good range might be (-100,+250) with emphasis on the plus side
- Against humans - playing computers are fine once in a while if you can't find a human opponent, but humans are more inconsistent, and so provide more "fun" opposition
Things you can do to start improving now:
I enjoy working with each and every student!
- Play lots of slow games (at least 30 5) and keep them for review. Play slowly on each move, trying to find the best move you can given the time control. Take this link to find where to play on the Internet or even OTB. Whenever possible, play mostly players a little stronger than yourself. Avoid Intermediate Time Controls (games lasting 10-29 minutes). For fast games, play at the same increment as important over-the-board games. For example, in the US, five-second time delay is standard, so don't play 5 0 game; instead play something like 2 5.
- Do as many basic (easy!) tactical problems as possible until you can do them very quickly. A goal might be 85%+ within 15 seconds.
- In slow games, every time you make a move attempt to construct a Principal Variation (PV) including what you expect to happen, such as "your current move, your opponent's likely response, and your next move". If you do not take your time on each move in a slow game and try to apply the things you have learned, how productive is it for you to learn more?
- Read my award-winning articles, especially Novice Nook. If an ICC member, check out my instructional videos.
- Create a Hall of Shame notebook of mistakes you don't wish to repeat: your diagrammed mistakes in a three-ring binder for study.
- HAVE FUN during your games! I don't want my students to play "worried" - worry about how you can improve after the game! During the game do the best you can and have fun - it's your hobby!
Program, what Program? - The 97% solution (different than The 7% Solution for how much you learn during lessons)
I was once chatting with a new student and he mentioned that one or two of my former students had said that they had enjoyed lessons and found them helpful, but they finally stopped lessons because they decided they did not want to follow my program. My reaction was:
Program? What program?
Let's backtrack a little. Any instructor will have lots of suggestions on what to do to improve: who and when to play, what time controls, opening advice, which types of books and media to read, how to analyze better, etc. If they don't, then they aren't really an instructor because that's what instructors do. Suppose one of these gives you 100 suggestions of things to do and you don't want to do (for any reason) a handful of these, say 3%. Only finding 97% fun or useful is normal. If you are looking for an instructor who has 100 suggestions and you like all 100, that would be amazing. To switch instructors because you don't like a few of his/her suggestions would be to continually switch instructors forever. On the other hand, if you only LIKE a few of their instructions, that is a great reason to switch.
I have many suggestions, some more strongly felt than others. If there are some that a student does not wish to do, that is quite understandable. When a student gets a suggestion, there are basically three things he/she can do:
1. Follow it the best he/she can and see how much fun it is and how much benefit it provides,
2. Decide not to try it and be truthful with the instructor that this suggestion is not being followed, or
3. Don't say anything and not follow it, letting the instructor think you are following it.
Of these three #1 and #2 are fine - the instructor and student are on the same page and being honest with each other. The only unacceptable option is #3.
However, many students are embarrassed to pick #2. Even though not wanting to follow every suggestion is normal, they feel that the instructor may take their reluctance personally, so instead they choose #3, or worse, stop taking lessons. If you have a good instructor, that is somewhat like throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Moreover, if you tell your instructor why you don't wish to follow his advice, it may be that you misunderstood the advice or that the instructor can help you find a new way to make the advice more fun to follow.
So, even though I have some suggestions that I make to most students (like knowing basic tactics inside out and upside down or playing your speed games with the same increment as serious OTB games), I don't really have a program (= a set of steps each student must take in a specific order, within a specific timeframe. Why? Because some students have much more time for chess than others, and many steps can be taken in any given order). However, my guess is that some students feel as though not following a suggestion is like not following my program...
A post by IM David Pruess on a chess forum relating to how chess players respond to advice (good or bad):
Thought you mind find it interesting...(Dan H added bold for the parts related to The Four Homeworks)
"As a teacher, my impression is that there is precious little advice the student actually wants to hear. Almost anything about how you need to work to improve is disregarded.
For example people write in to Jeremy Silman's column and ask him how to become a master. He'll list many things including "playing over 10 000 games" (I forget the exact number). Rather than starting to look over games, they'll reply in the comments section that he's lying, making it up.
"You should analyze your own games: losses and draws particularly." So, I've been doing this program "your games analyzed" for over 20 weeks now, in which a chess.com member has the opportunity to select any game of theirs and show it to me, and i'll go over it, ask about their thought process, and give my comments and feedback on the game. I believe I have seen 1 loss and 1 draw submitted out of ~25 games.
"Don't use computer engines until you are over 2400." but you see, a computer can "analyze" a game in a few minutes without any effort from the player-- who cares if they won't learn A SINGLE THING? and it's cheaper to ask a computer what you did wrong than hiring a master-- never mind that after the computer affixes a ? (or two) to one of your moves and provides an alternative, you'll be none the wiser as to why your move is not best, why the suggestion is better, what principle(s) is in operation, why you made the mistake you made, or what you'd have to do to produce the computer's move in a future game.
or when i give players in the 1000-1800 range advice on improving their tactics, viz: 10-15 min per day of solving simple tactical puzzles. the goal is to increase your store of basic patterns, not to work on your visualization, deep calculation. remember that is your goal. you are not trying to prove that you can solve every problem. if you don't solve a problem within 1 minute, stop. it's probably a new pattern or you would have gotten it by now. (with private students i'll take the time to demonstrate this to them: show them through examples that they can find a 3-4 move problem in 10 seconds if they know the pattern, and that they can fail to find a mate in 2 for 10 minutes if they don't know the pattern). look at the answer, and now go over the answer 3 more times in your head to help the pattern take hold. your brain can probably take on 2-3 new patterns between sleeping, so you should stop once you've been stumped by 2 or 3 problems (usually will take about 10-15 min). there is no point in doing more than that in one day. and any day you miss, you can't make up for. a semi-random estimate on my part is that you need about 2000 of these patterns to become a master. so you need to do this for 2 years or more.
i would guess that less than 1 in 100 of the people i have given this advice to have followed it to the letter. if they enjoy it, they'll waste their time doing it for 1.5 hours in a day, choosing to ignore that it's not helping them [after 15 min]. or some with ego issues will insist on trying to solve every single position (if only they linked their ego to their self-discipline ).
i could go on and on. from my experience, there are exactly two kinds of advice players *do* like to get:
- "you don't need to do x." Love, love, love, love that!! eg: "you don't actually need to memorize openings to be a master;" or "you don't need to calculate in positions like this, you can just move your pieces towards the best squares;" or "you don't need to study the endgame until your games are balanced enough to reach a lot of even endgames." people really drink that stuff up. sort of related is #2
- "see, this principle explains the entire position." provided the principle was well-explained, people love this too. well, on the one hand, powerful principles can often be pure gold; but i can't help but jadedly suspect that part of it may be that it is another pass for playing without working. playing according to principles is so much easier than employing painstaking analysis.
but anyway, chess is supposed to be fun, so have fun. you don't need to calculate if you don't like to. you don't need to revisit your losses if they are painful. you all have my not-even-one-iota-of-sarcasm-or-irony blessing to keep playing as you do. it's even fine with me if you ask me for advice and then ignore it as long as we all have fun in the process.
besides, people with an extremely strong desire to improve (in any field) pretty much all do put in serious work, and take pains to make sure they incorporate messages they are instinctively resistant to into their thoughts. when other masters tell me: "david, you aren't going to like hearing this, but here's what i think your problem is," i perk up. but currently i'm not doing the work to take advantage of that advice. i just enjoy playing"
----------------(end of IM Pruess suggestions) ---------------
Things you can learn during a chess lesson
1. Become a better chess player:
A. Theory
i. Skills
1. Become a better analyst
2. Become a better evaluator
3. Learn superior (chess) Time Management
4. Learn how chess players think (and a good thought process)
ii. Knowledge
1. Openings
2. Middlegame/tactics
a. Tactical Sets
b. Board vision puzzles
3. Endgame
4. Heuristics/Guidelines
5. Rules
B. Practice
i. Playing slow games and how to review them
ii. Playing fast games and how to use them for improvement
2. Learn how chess theory was developed
3. Learn how chess players improve (and why they stop); the relationship of theory to practice, etc.
4. Learn about chess history
5. Understand how the chess world is structured (adult and scholastic)
6. Learn about chess media: Books, CD’s websites, etc.
7. Learn about chess evaluation material: Tests, Puzzle-sets, etc.
8. Learn how to teach chess
9. Learn how to organize and run a chess event
1. Become a better chess player:
A. Theory
i. Skills
1. Become a better analyst
2. Become a better evaluator
3. Learn superior (chess) Time Management
4. Learn how chess players think (and a good thought process)
ii. Knowledge
1. Openings
2. Middlegame/tactics
a. Tactical Sets
b. Board vision puzzles
3. Endgame
4. Heuristics/Guidelines
5. Rules
B. Practice
i. Playing slow games and how to review them
ii. Playing fast games and how to use them for improvement
2. Learn how chess theory was developed
3. Learn how chess players improve (and why they stop); the relationship of theory to practice, etc.
4. Learn about chess history
5. Understand how the chess world is structured (adult and scholastic)
6. Learn about chess media: Books, CD’s websites, etc.
7. Learn about chess evaluation material: Tests, Puzzle-sets, etc.
8. Learn how to teach chess
9. Learn how to organize and run a chess event