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The Q & A Way by Bruce Pandolfini
From the
Relatively Speaking
Archives
Question I am a thirty-eight-year old woman who just recently started
Chess Informant #111
studying chess in a more serious manner. I've enjoyed playing all sorts of
by Branko Tadic
games, but have been fascinated with chess for a long time. My brother-in-
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law has played a lot of chess with friends and considers studying chess a
Kyler Donlan waste of time. He thinks the most important thing is to play as much as
possible to improve your game. I feel that my game and perspective have
improved with books and videos, yet I still haven't been able to beat my
brother- in-law in chess. Do you consider that just playing a lot a better
technique than studying? (Carmen Manning, USA)
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Answer I'm not sure where to start, so let's begin with your brother-in-law.
The fact that he continues to beat you, even though you study and he doesn't,
doesn't mean that studying chess has no value. He may be an excellent player
(it's possible), and whether you pursue the game his way, merely by playing,
or your way, by combining study and play, he may still continue to beat you
ChessBase Magazine 144
in head-to-head competition. So you shouldn't base your chess plans merely
by Rainer Knaak
on the results of these contests.
It's also unclear what he means by saying that studying chess is a waste of
time. Does he mean that studying chess for you is a waste of time, because he
understands your nature and knows what's best for you? Or does he mean that
it's a waste of time to study chess in general, for anyone under any
conditions? The latter assertion naturally is preposterous, so I'm going to
assume he means something like the former. That is, he believes you and
those similar to you stand to gain more from playing and less from studying.
While this is debatable, it's entirely reasonable, and may even be true in your
individual case, though I'd have to know more about you to say for sure.
Let's assume that your brother-in-law is indeed a fine player. He's certainly
Fritz 13
not the first to contend that chess shouldn't be studied. I know of one
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by ChessBase
grandmaster who believes chess can't be taught. And there are other strong
the games from
players who share this opinion, or a version of it, though they are in the
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minority. Most chess authorities think otherwise  that chess is teachable, and
ChessBase Game Viewer.
that to become really adept at the game you should immerse yourself in both
play and study.
But what are we talking about here? By your own words it's clear you've
gained a lot from your efforts. It's also evident that you take considerable
pleasure in studying the game, whether by reading books or watching videos.
Shouldn't these positive feelings and experiences take precedence over
everything else? You enjoy doing what you're doing, so why do you care what
your brother-in-law thinks? Nevertheless, if you're really concerned, and still
have doubts, do some reconnaissance. Send me a few of his recorded games
and I'll tell you what I think about what he thinks.
Question My fiancé and I love to play games, including backgammon,
Monopoly, cards, Go, Scrabble, and other word games. It is very competitive,
and I am almost as good as he is, especially at chess, though he does not think
I am that good, claiming that I am too defensive. He also thinks that chess is
the least intelligent game we play, and he does not like chess players,
referring to some of them as "barbarians" who can only play chess. Recently I
bought a book on how to play chess better and my fianc criticized me. He is
not really a reader, and I certainly cannot get him to read anything that I read,
and sometimes it hurts my feelings. He says that truly talented people do not
have to read a book to master a game anyway. They do it with natural ability,
and it is only those without intelligence who turn to books. Do you think he is
right? (Sandra Meyerson, USA)
Answer Not only do I think he's wrong, I suspect he can't read, even though
he supposedly plays Scrabble. But this is something you'll find out soon
enough. Right now go on reading and trying to improve. It can't hurt to arm
before the barbarians get to the gate.
Question My brother and I have been playing chess for quite some time. We
always seem to fall upon a disagreement about if a pawn can 'pass up' taking
another pawn when it is diagonal to it. In other words, if you have the
opportunity to take another pawn, but instead go straight one square without
taking it ... is this legal? Even if both pawns have already made their initial
move? (Francisco Shillander, USA)
Answer What you seem to be asking is: Are certain captures in chess
compulsory? There are only two situations in which the rules of the game
necessitate a capture to be made. You must take a particular unit if it is the
only legal move possible; and you must capture in compliance with the touch
move rule (if you've touched the enemy unit and can legally take it, or if
you've touched one of your own units and its only legal move is to capture a
specific enemy unit). No other circumstances in chess compel capture, so you
and your brother can go right on passing each other like pawns in the night.
Question This is Lev D. Zilbermints, inventor of the Zilbermints Gambit,
writing. If you were White, what would you play after 1.d4 e5 2.de5 Nc6 3.
Nf3 Nge7(!)? Please give some specific analysis to support your viewpoint.
Thanks. Keep in touch. (Lev D. Zilbermints, USA)
Answer Sometimes you have to be there. I've never been there, nor is it likely
I'll ever experience the pleasure of being in this position against you. Now
that I know what you play I plan to steer clear of 1.d4 in all our possible
encounters.
Question Recently, we started a chess club. A number of our members
haven't played since college. A few are secret internet chess junkies. None of
them are chess sharks. For people just getting back to the game, what are a
few basic openings to play as white or black? (Alec Diacou, USA)
Answer Most players in your situation usually start with king- pawn
openings. They are easier to understand on the surface, and there's more
literature on them. But I wouldn't worry so much about investing effort in
studying specific systems and variations at first.
Nevertheless, to provide a prime mover, why don't you begin by advancing
your king-pawn two squares and see where it takes you. Note how your
opponents respond to this beginning and whether you feel comfortable in the
ensuing situations. As you experience problems you can go back to the books
for particular information. And don't be afraid to change, make adjustments,
or experiment.
You could follow a similar policy with the Black pieces. Here, too, you could
reply to most of White's usual first moves by moving your king-pawn two
squares. (I would think twice, however, about answering 1.Ng1-f3 with 1...e7-
e5.) But it should work against practically everything else, including 1.d4. For
example, consider the opening 1.d2-d4 e7-e5 2.d4xe5 Nb8-c6 3.Ng1-f3 Ng8-
e7. This seems interesting. I'd be curious to know where it goes from there
and how you do with it.
Question I am curious as to how one becomes and works as a chess teacher in
the U.S. Are there reliable organizations that provide chess teachers with
work schedules, students, salary, etc.? Or do teachers have to create their own
connections with schools and individuals to arrange lessons? And also, what
prospects do you see for chess teaching as a profession in the next few
decades in U.S.? (Sergei Kanevsky, USA)
Answer There really is no official way to become a chess teacher. There are
organizations, such as the U.S. Chess Federation and Chess-in-the-Schools,
and they help considerably. But if a chess teacher is to make a real living he
or she must rely on personal initiative. Does chess teaching have a future in
America? I believe so, and there is much promise, but we have a long way to
go. (I hope to address this question more fully in a future column.)
Question I am rated about 1700. I study chess with a prominent chess teacher
in California. Though I admire him immensely, I find him to be a bit of a
workaholic. He works from early morning to late at night, whether it's
teaching, studying, or playing. I can almost never get him on the phone. He
never refuses a chess lesson or a class or an appearance, if he can be reached,
and I can't get him to take a day off. It's almost as if he is afraid to say no for
fear of going out of business. People tell me you are also somewhat like this.
Is this true? Is chess teaching that insecure? Do you ever take a vacation or
relax for a day? (Ronnie Goldschlager, USA)
Answer Maybe chess teaching does leave us feeling insecure. Most of us
have trouble making a living at this activity, and it's not always based on
factors under our control. Some of America's very best chess teachers have
had to abandon the profession in order to eat and pay the rent. So I empathize
with your chess teacher. But I don't consider myself a workaholic. I try to take
days off here and there, and I love sitting in parks, walking through museums,
and reading big books. Yet it's hard to escape the chess scene completely.
I can remember a vacation day I took a long time ago when I managed the
Manhattan Chess Club. I needed to get away, so I decided to head out to East
Hampton for an afternoon of sun and no chessplayers. I think it took about
three hours to reach Main Beach, far away from chess civilization. I sat on a
beach chair and began to relax with a copy of Moby Dick, a book I had always
wanted to read. About ten minutes after "Call me Ishmael" I suddenly heard
my named blurted out most familiarly.
"Hey, Pandolfini, is that you? Hot dog, it is. Take a look at this."
And there he was, the biggest pest the Manhattan Chess Club ever had,
walking over, wanting to show me on a pocket set a recent game he had
played in the Manhattan Friday Night Rapids. I never did find out why he was
there, nor did I progress much with Melville's masterpiece. I concluded two
things that afternoon: taking a vacation day wasn't all it was cracked up to be,
and the game shown to me on the pocket set was absolutely terrible. Anyhow,
I wouldn't be surprised if your teacher has had comparable experiences with
similar books and chess fanatics. Take that into account the next time you
make out his check.
Question I am nineteen now and I took up chess seriously when I was
seventeen. I seem to have improved reasonably fast as I am 1800 ELO
strength. I even drew with a 2427 rated IM (only in a speed chess
tournament). I was wondering how best I should continue to improve. I have
recently started studying endgames more (Rueben Fine's Ideas Behind the
Chess Openings is good). I hope this will help my improvement. I was
wondering if you knew of any precedent of someone taking up chess later
than most and becoming a GM? This is something I would dearly love to do.
(Stuart Hamilton, England)
Answer Obviously you're a talented player, and I have no doubt that you
should become much stronger if your love for the game endures. But advising
you is not so easy. Your endgame project seems wise. You might want to
proceed by building a solid library. Let's just talk about endgame books.
Perhaps you should start with Reuben Fine's Basic Chess Endings, which is a
great source of material. You could supplement your efforts with Rook
Endings by Smyslov and Levenfish. I'm sure you would also benefit from any
endgame texts written or edited by either Jonathan Nunn, Jon Speelman, or
Yuri Averbakh. You'll probably also want to add to your shelf Pal Benko's
two collections of endgame articles originally published in Chess Life.
Finally, it wouldn't hurt to get a copy of Jeno Ban's illuminating text The
Tactics of End-Games. It's a joy to play through.
As far as the opening goes, Fine's book is fine as a starting point, but it's a
little dated for a contemporary player. A better approach might be trying to
keep abreast of current ideas by subscribing to a major chess journal, say New
In Chess. There you can see games played by today's top competitors and
novelties analyzed by eminent theoreticians. Beyond books and particular
studies I'm going to throw out one other piece of advice, which is to play
strong players as often as you can (beating a 2427 player, even at rapids, is a
nice rung on anyone's ladder). You can't be the best unless you beat the best.
With regard to your concern about not becoming serious until your late teens,
I know of several other chessplayers who have succeeded following a similar
path. It can be done, and you sound like the kind of young person who can do
it. Good luck on your quest.
Question In your book Chess Complete you say that you prefer to encourage
your students to learn how to think rather than structure their chess lessons.
While I have some idea of what you mean, could you please elaborate?
(Craig Knight, England)
Answer I became concerned with thinking in chess at the start of my teaching
career when I noticed that many of my students played perfunctorily, without
much consideration of their opponent's moves or their own. I concluded that a
student might play this way because he or she was lost in a specific train of
thought or because it was easy to rely on certain lines previously memorized.
Students seemed to strive for these rote setups without real comprehension
and even after their opponents veered far from the track. Sometimes they got
away with it because their opponents operated in similar universes, but not
always. To prosper as a teacher it was clear that I'd have to serve as more than
a mere database. I'd have to show students how to think when I wasn't sure
myself.
Since I was uncertain how to proceed it seemed prudent to ask lots of
questions, especially using them as probes to get inside the heads of my
students as they were working out their thoughts. I began to question every
move and suggestion, even the good ones. I decided that this procedure could
furnish instructional insights while necessarily slowing down students so that
they'd have more time to ponder. It would also invite them to look ahead to
anticipate problems before they materialized. I reasoned that if my questions
were consistent, and I asked typical ones repeatedly, students would gradually
assimilate the types of questions and the overriding process. They might start
to ask themselves comparable questions in their own games. At some point all
this questioning would result in better move selection and superior chess.
Beyond this I believed it would impart what I considered to be a powerful
truth, that by asking a good question one practically had the answer, which in
chess would lead to the right move.
Accordingly I resisted giving structured lessons. I wanted to be free to muse
at the board, in front of the student, to illustrate how I analyzed unfamiliar
positions. By encouraging students to join me as analytic equals, I hoped they
could see my flaws firsthand, and possibly find some ideas I didn't. This, I
thought, would build their confidence, and our lessons would equilibrate in
friendly conversations, where I sometimes learned as much as I taught.
That's about it. I could fill a book on all the other methods and special
exercises I've essayed to help students think while playing chess, but none
have proved more valuable than the art of asking interactive questions. And
there's nothing profound, remarkable, or new about it. You can find it in the
dialectics of Talmudic scholars, and you can see it in the Socratic dialogues.
But it's also a technique that teachers ordinarily employ in the performance of
their everyday duties. By constantly questioning a student's thoughts, by
always seeking explanations, a teacher lays groundwork for the student's
eventual adoption of the analytic method. This is primarily what I mean by
saying I try to teach thinking. I question them so that they learn to question
everyone and everything. For both student and teacher the process succeeds
when it culminates in a great realization, that the teacher is no longer needed.
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This article first appeared at ChessCafe.com in February 2000.
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