Metrowest Chess Club regular and fellow chess blogger Blunderprone has recently put together an excellent series of posts detailing how he uses his own games as fuel for his study plans. Parts 1 through 4 are available at blunderprone.blogspot.com. They’re a great read both for technical details for how to accomplish some of these things in Chessbase and for ideas about crafting your own improvement plan.
One of his ideas is to take his games and look for critical moments where he missed the best continuation, or made a bad mistake and create a series of training positions. I’m now working on this idea as well, but with a slight twist. Blunderprone’s main use of these positions is similar to any other chess trainer, where you are presented with the position and have to find the right move. I’m making a list of these sorts of positions as well, but I’m also working on a group of positions to be practiced against the computer.
As I look over my non-wins, I’m finding a large number of positions where I had a large advantage and failed to convert it into a win. Usually this happens because I blunder, but I think those blunders can be traced to a general lack of knowing what to do with the position. One game from this summer ended in falling into a mate in 2 that I didn’t see coming, but this followed after several moves of inefficiently trying to wrap the game up. If I had played simpler, cleaner chess after gaining the advantage I wouldn’t have been floundering around for moves, and probably wouldn’t have made nearly the only losing move on the board.
Thus, I’m gathering games into my “Hall of Shame” database that contain positions where I had a large advantage and did not win. My plan with these is to actually play them out against Fritz, repeatedly, until I can win them cleanly and efficiently. I don’t like playing games against the computer very often, because I find their style maddening, but the nice thing about playing against a machine is it doesn’t get annoyed when you make it defend the same losing position over and over again. (I also really like this method for endgame training…).
As I gather these games, I’ll post them here for the entertainment of all, so that you can gasp at the positions I failed to convert into the full point.
Here’s your first taste. This position comes from a game I played back in July at the MCC.
Wollkind - Neogy, 7/28/2009
In positions like this you have to ask yourself: what is the opponent’s plan? what is his hope for counterplay? Black’s threat here is clear. Were he to have the move, he mates in 2 with Qc3+ followed by Qb2#. Fortunately, it is white’s turn, so he can address this threat. The simple Rb1+ would do nicely. Unfortunately, the only threat I saw was the one to my c pawn, so I played the losing Rc1?? which walks right into the mate just outlined.
Hopefully by taking real positions of the sort I actually reach, and learning how to deal with them, I can stop turning wins into draws and losses.
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