Adult Guide Page 2
Special Notes for Internet Chess Club (ICC) in Green
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INTRODUCTION

Chess lessons are a wonderful way to develop your mind and provide a productive activity that can be enjoyed throughout life ("there are no senile chessplayers"). This guide answers many common questions and helps set expectations.

Chess a game for all ages - and it can strengthen the brain as one gets older, just as exercise strengthens the body.

Typical adult goals for lessons include:

• Learn how to play well enough to do "X" (such as a rating goal, learning certain openings, etc.)
• See how good I can get – achieve your potential!
• Learn more about some of the interesting aspects of chess, such as problems, tournaments, history, etc.

THINK OF CHESS LESSONS LIKE PIANO LESSONS!

• Although Garry Kasparov made several million dollars a year, it is unrealistic to expect that anyone will be a professional chessplayer, concert pianist, or professional baseball player. While many of my students have become champions, that is not a required goal. So if you think chess is great fun, that is the best criteria for starting lessons!

• Chess and piano both develop the mind, so think of them as very similar, beneficial, amateur activities. An important note – it seems that there are few  chess players with Alzheimer's disease! – chess exercises the brain.

• Regular lessons and practice are far more effective than once every few months, as with any similar activity. Many adults like lessons "one hour a week", "two hours every two weeks," or something similar. If you plan on only taking 3-4 lessons to get some tips, please let me know! I will treat your lessons differently than if you indicate you are interested in ongoing, long-term lessons. Many adults only take 3-6 lessons but don't communicate this to me until they stop, and at that point they are "in the middle", so to speak, so it helps me if you let me know you are only interested in a limited set so I can help you more effectively!

• One only gets out of chess lessons what one puts in. A piano teacher would not be effective if their students didn’t practice – and wouldn’t expect the student to get better, either. Chess, like other activities, requires a balance of theory (lessons, studying chess books, etc.) and practice (playing at clubs, tournaments, with computers, or other players) to show any real improvement. As you might expect, a student needs to play more than one game a week to make progress.
  
• Many of my students, upon taking my suggestion to play tougher opposition, start losing more(!) but they also start improving. So don't confuse the two issues of playing strength and winning percentage. If you play stronger opposition, you are going to lose more, but you should eventually see an improvement in playing strength. For example, a student was concerned after his first lesson that he was no immediately winning. I wrote:

  "If you meant my students results after a lesson, then these are almost random. It takes time to improve at chess (or violin, or golf, or piano), and no one lesson does this. In fact, often a student starts winning a lower percentage because one of my advices is to play stronger opposition, and stronger opposition means fewer wins (but more learning). Also, when you start taking lessons and start thinking about what you are thinking (always a bad thing, but can't be helped until you practice enough), that has a temporarily negative effect and results can suffer.

  But in the long run almost all my students improve, and most significantly. But that takes patience and time. If I guaranteed instant results, no one should believe me or take lessons from me."

• I make no promises about fantastic improvement in a short amount of time.  Instructors that make promises that "they can help you greatly in just a lesson or two" are probably not trustworthy.

• Many good chessplayers are instructors, but being a good chessplayer does not necessarily make you a good chess instructor.  As the Quality Manager for Intermetrics, I was in charge of all training, and I also taught calculus at a local college, so I was a professional instructor as well as now a full-time chess instructor/author.  I love teaching, and chess is now my full-time job. Of course, as an NM I am still a strong player.

• Besides emphasizing tactics, I also try to work on your thought process.  What good is studying a fantastic amount of information and then misusing it by not thinking correctly?  Chess is a discipline, and most chessplayers have never been taught how to think correctly.  There are many interesting books on the subject, such as Thought and Choice in Chess by Adrian deGroot.  I have read it cover to cover - if you find an instructor who has done this, he is probably pretty thorough!  Other books cover the subject in less detail, such as Think Like a Grandmaster by Kotov, Inside the Chess Mind by Aagaard, or The Amateur's Mind by Silman  - all good books.  So during a lesson as we review one of your games, we often spend some time on "What were you thinking when you made this move?" and looking for ways to improve this process. I also specialize in time management, which few instructors do.

• I do not have a standard plan for all students at the same level, although I may recommend similar homework if they have common needs.  Some know some things better than others, and some prefer one media over another.  I do
• Emphasize tactical study for all students who are not at a high level because this is the single most important practice they can do
• Go over slow games with all my students.
• Want all my students to primarily try to play opponents near their level or stronger

• As a USCF Senior Tournament Director, I can also help you with chess rules, such as insufficient losing chances, how to deal with opponents that bother you, how to claim draws, etc.

We want to go over your games together "live" because

...for many players their weaknesses are in how they evaluate and analyze positions. This is not as easy to see just from looking at the moves! For example, I have several exercises where the student either analyzes out-loud over the phone or evaluates positions for me. This helps identify weaknesses in a way just the raw game score cannot.

Also, time management is a factor. Suppose you lose because you make move "A" in 20 seconds; then that means one thing. But suppose you made the same move "A" in 10 minutes; then that means something else.

If you send me games, it is hard for me to know if they are representative. Listening to you analyze is always indicative. A player is only as good as his worst games and moves, and often players who pick out their games avoid their worst blunders because "I know why I lost that game - I blundered a piece" - but the real improvement is learning a more disciplined thought process so that those blunders become less frequent.

I even found players who blunder in long games because they are hungry but are not aware of it because they are concentrating on the game so hard! Hard to tell that by a game score.

Anyway, the bottom line is that I am reluctant to take your games and charge you because you will get a lot more out of it if we do it together either typing (on the ICC - that is free - I have a lesson like that coming up in one hour) or, preferably, I can call you on the phone (and we can use the ICC - even if you are not a member, you can log on as a guest and share a board with me).

One of the strengths of my lessons is that when I go over games, I want my student to get the benefit of how I would think if I had to find their move. Therefore I treat the game as if it were a speed game of mine and give a quick analysis of what I would do. This constantly gives my student insight into how a master would analyze a position, a valuable exercise. If I see the game ahead of time I cannot do this.

As a master, there is no "benefit" to me from seeing a game first. I seem to be able to derive roughly the same information (or more) from going over it with you in "real time" as I do "studying" it in advance. There are some advantages and disadvantages, for sure, but overall no big benefit of advance study (for me, at least; I cannot speak for other instructors). Therefore it is much better to go over it with the student.

..."To become a good chessplayer, you have to be willing to play, to lose (often!), and to work hard (very, very hard) at ironing out all of the holes in your understanding.  There are many ways to begin this journey: study openings and the typical middlegame plans that arise from the systems you wish to employ; read any one of the many middlegame books that have flooded the market; pick up an endgame book and learn the basics of this phase of the game; look at annotated master games (always a good idea); and finally, find a chess teacher who will look at your own games and rip you apart (if you can't handle the criticism, may I suggest taking up solitaire?).  Having a chess teacher to look over your games is extremely useful..."

I might add that chess improvement is measured over months and years, and not a few lessons over a few weeks.  You should show gradual improvement (with some ups and downs along the way), but no one goes from beginner to expert in a few months - so feel good every time you learn something!

• Everyone's 2nd Chess Book (out of print until 2005)
• My multi-award winning Chess Cafe articles, including current and archived Novice Nook and pre-Novice Nook articles
• The Thinking Cap series of articles
• Elements of Positional Evaluation (3rd edition out of print; see my personal book page for availability)
• Other items of interest on my Articles page
• The Buy-In!
• My Chess Teaching Philosophy

So if you are interested in lessons, reading as much of these as you can provides a great foundation!

BOOKS:

    A) For Adult Beginners...
For adults that are just starting to get serious, by far the best single book is GM Patrick Wolff's The Complete Idiot's Guide to Chess.  Don't be put off by the title - it's the best book by far (in my opinion) for adults who need a first chess book. My usual recommendation is to start with Wolff's book to learn to play right and then to progress to a combination of Chess Tactics for Students (for tactics) and my Everyone's 2nd Chess Book (for everything else, like learning how to study, think, common mistakes, etc.).  After you read a basic positional text, you also should consider my first book: Elements of Positional Evaluation: How the Pieces Get Their Power (now out of print) see my Book Recommendation page and my personal book page for more info.

    B) For advanced adults: Speaking of JEREMY SILMAN...
For adults who have read Everyone's Second Chess Book and other books for the pre-1600 group, Jeremy Silman has three of the best books for experienced adults looking to get better in The Amateur's Mind, How To Reassess Your Chess (HTRYC), and the HTRYC Workbook, which I don't recommend until you are about 1400 USCF or better, but then highly recommend.

Here is what Silman told me in an e-mail about his books: “My recommended order (though all stand alone): 1) Read Reassess Your Chess through page 52. Then put it away! 2) Read all of The Amateur's Mind. 3) Read the rest of How to Reassess Your Chess. 4) Read The Workbook. And yes, you have to start people out with tactics and the basic mates else they will get shredded instantly.”  - IM Jeremy Silman in an e-mail to Dan, 11/16/2001.  Note: Dan recommends these books for players at least 1400 USCF strength.

CORRELATION BETWEEN ABILITIES AND CAPABILITIES

Being smart has very little to do with how good you are (or can be) at chess. I have many chess students who are both smart and love chess. However, many do not view the kind of work and practice that is necessary to improve as fun, so they progress slower than those students who enjoy working to get better. The students who get to be the best are determined to improve, play often in tournaments, love studying at home, seek the strongest competition, often have chess as their #1 hobby, and aren’t afraid to lose. So a student of somewhat above average intelligence with these capabilities will often beat a "genius." Many adults do not have time to work at chess as much as they would like, and I understand this; my job is to communicate how that time can be best spent to meet their goals.

CONSIDER OVER-THE-BOARD (AND ICC) TOURNAMENTS AND CLUBS

I encourage you to play in chess tournaments, or regularly at your local chess club!

• No one would like to attend Little League practice without getting to play games. "Chess tournament" is a misnomer – you should think of it as a "Chess Festival". There are several adult tournaments in the Philadelphia area (and probably the area in which you live) each year.
• NO ONE IS ELIMINATED AT CHESS TOURNAMENTS! – Most tournaments are "swiss" system – you play someone who has the same score as you do. So if you are a beginner who loses their first three games, you will play someone else who lost all three. No one likes to lose, but students who view losing as a challenge and learning opportunity do best. You do not have to play all the games, but you must tell the director if you are going to leave.
• Tournaments can be set up by anyone. While large chess tournaments are advertised in Chess Life (The US Chess Federation - USCF - magazine; call 1-800-388-KING to join, for information, or to order boards, sets, books, and clocks), small tournaments are run all the time by local clubs. Here in the Philadelphia suburbs, our Main Line Chess Club usually meets Tuesdays starting at 7 PM. Here are links to the USCF and to their over-the-board tournaments.
• Many busy adults join the Internet Chess Club (ICC) or the equivalent, so they can play conveniently when they have spare time. Ask me about a demonstration on how you can join and play.  Conversely, ICC students should strongly consider playing in over-the-board tournaments against other players.  This gives a kind of chess experience which is very much fun and helpful towards their overall experience.  Use the "over-the board tournament" link to find out about where tournaments are held.  If you are an ICC student and cannot play over-the-board, that is OK; make sure to play lots of slow (30 5 or slower) games to practice how to think correctly.  Too many quick games might get you into bad habits if not augmented with slow games. See "Finding Slow Games on the ICC"
I will provide a set and board for over-the-board lessons. I teach via a Socratic method, where I try not to give any answers, but rather lead the student to learn by helping them find those answers through a set of questions and logical thinking. For most this provides the maximum retention. However, some adults find the Socratic method frustrating; if so, let me know and I will adjust my style to better fit your learning preference ("the customer is always right…"). If finances become a problem, let me know and we can work something out – no one should lose their lessons due to finances.

Some adults who start with great enthusiasm, but waver when they realize that it takes time and effort to really improve.  For this minority, I offer the following advice:

1) Adults, because they have less time and other factors, often cannot spend as much time or learn as fast as they had hoped.  Because of this, they do not have as much chance to assimilate the information from my lessons, such as Try and move every piece once before you move any piece twice, Think defense first when you are way ahead, and Do tactical exercises.  Also, it takes more time than they think to show marked improvement (Michelle White's rule: it often takes four years of study and serious play to play at a decent level).  Therefore, adults perceive that they are not learning as fast as they wish and get disappointed but, in actuality, most of my students learn an enormous amount - but this often does not translate into hundreds of rating points in a month or two.

2) It is only natural to make the same mistakes over and over until these mistakes finally diminish.  This takes time and practice.  When I point out a mistake, I am not criticizing anyone personally, just an aspect of their chess play or even a just one chess move!  I really care about my student's personally, so I do not wish to hurt anyone's feelings, no matter what.

3) Typing on the ICC may seem a great way to save communication cost (compared to talking on the phone on a 2nd line), but sometimes important points of communication can be lost.  For example, if I type "What were you thinking?", that does not mean "What a dumb move; what could you have been thinking about?" - instead it means "I would be interested if you typed in your thought process so I could better understand why you made that move and better help to correct that thought process for next time..." And further, since we can communicate more by phone per unit time, you are getting more for your money by calling instead of typing. So if you can afford the extra few dollars (cheaper on weekends and evenings!), then calling is more efficient and preferable.

•  ICC member MrBoeJangles, who raised his ICC standard (slow) rating from the 1400's to the 2000's in a little over a year!  MrBoeJangles was a regular student of Dan's, once a week. 

• Over the board, Craig Klein has the record, raising his rating from the 800's to the 1700's in about 18 months!

• Scott Kerns won the New Mexico State Chess Championship over several experts, with a Class B rating!

• Similar to Scott, but not a student (rather a Novice Nook reader) was Bruce Johnson, who wrote: 

"Thanks for helping me win the Wyoming state chess championship last year. Your column Novice Nook has been consistently helpful, and where "gee, I wish I'd said that" comes up the most often.

I'm a classic baby boomer and started playing chess in 2nd grade and postal chess in 1964.  got to be a weak postal master, mostly by following Ken Smith's advice, after I gave up thinking I'd ever get any better. OTB your advice to play real chess instead of "hope chess" was the best I've learned since Smith's. Next week end I lose my crown, but at least I got to the top once.  It's fun to beat experts, and it's fun to get linked with players you've known over the years."

• Ernest Cronin: "I have increased by 160 pts since I began taking lessons from you. This seems pretty outstanding to me considering it's been less than a year. Plus, I'm under the impression that people my age don't progress so rapidly. Well, good job to you! You're a good teacher."

I am going to try to guess in how many states and countries I have had students: States (37): HI, CA, WA, AZ, NM, SD, MO, IA, TX, OK, MI, IL, PA, NJ, FL, LA, NC, KY, NY, CT, CO, DE, MD, NH, VT, ME, MN, MS, IN, MT, DC, VA, OR, OH, GA, UT, WI; Countries (16): USA, Canada, Trinidad, Germany, Spain, Abu Dhabi (UAE), Hong Kong, Australia, Scotland, England, Norway, Italy, Sweden, The Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland.

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