I'm only writing here because you love comments. ;)
I'm about 1900 on FICS and really trying to improve my game. I never had chess training, all I know I told myself. I'm decent positionally but I suck at tactics. So my question is how do I improve best? How do I work on my tactics? And if that’s not working what openings should I play that suite my positional style (I play the Catalan with white with great success but with black I lack a weapon)? I really want to break the 2000 mark and maybe get as high as 2100 in the next years. I'm your age but if I work hard enough I should be able to do it.
Ps: I only have this account because of your videos. :)
First thing you should definitely do is start playing in some rated USCF tournaments. Don't make the mistake of waiting until you are "ready". Without playing in serious competition at slow time controls, it's hard to improve as rapidly as possible. Note that it's hard to say what 1900 on FICS means.
The Caro-Kann+Slav are good choices for a positional player and they mesh well with each other. It's not easy for me to say the best way for a 1900 to improve, but I'm sure getting as great as tactics as possible couldn't hurt, and noting any key positional patterns that come up in your games and making sure you memorize them would be good. ChessTempo+chess emrald are two good tactics training sites to use in conjunction (chesstempo you have plenty of time, emrald you have to answer fast...both skills are useful)
I used to play the Caro-Kann but found that often I only got draws agains weaker players and when I moved up I got murdered by better players in the main line. So I gave it up as too passive and switched to the Alekhine. You can really do some damage to bad players with the Alekhine because they're out of preparation at move 1 which is nice. But again good players give me head aches and I always feel like I have a dubious position. In the Slav I always feel like I have a cramped position.
What is your take on openings for black? I know you try to stir things up vs bad players but often you still play your relatively drawish lines. For example there was a vid where you played the Bogo-Indian with your Nc6-Na5 line which is super drawish.
You seem to first try to get an even position (not getting killed out of the opening) even if it’s drawish. Do you think that’s the way to go? How has your opinion changed since you learned all those openings?
very nice video. I'm really looking forward to the second part of this tournament.
Question unrelated: I recently started looking into some midstack/shortstack math for NLSH and have created some relatively big tables in the process. It would be ideal to know them by heart, but memorizing all the ranges etc seems pretty hard. Do you have any advice on how to approach this (I think I'll look into using flashcards like you mentioned in another video, but it might be hard to apply here). Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Charts are almost completely meaningless in shortstacking....basically just have an approximate feel of what's right, and then you'll be fine. Like if you know that if someone minraises the button 40% then it's correct to go allin with A6o in this situation, that's fine. I honestly just memorized a few key numbers, I don't know of any giant winner that was looking at some chart the entire time. Any decision that is close enough where you have to look at a chart, means it won't really make much difference. Almost certainly the best way to improve is to improve your postflop play a bit.
My chart was a huge joke, it was like 5 columns on one excel page and that's it for BB+SB defense. Meanwhile everyone I was giving lessons to was showing me these giant 5 page charts with 100 different columns and situations and I was like wtf.
I'd say make one chart and one only. Make it for what to do against a minraise from the BB + SB facing given raise %'s, going by 5's. So figure out what to do against a 10% raise, 15% range, all the way to like 45 or so. This should not be too complicated and you don't need anything more. If the raiser's stats are in between two numbers just use your judgement. Usually it's pretty simple if they are in the 35% or under range, because any hand you'd go allin with, you can simply call a minraise if it's a close decision and play postflop (hands like QJo, KTo etc play well shortstacked OOP to a minraise call). If they do more than minraise, just have a standard amount that you'd take on to their raise %. So like if they usually raise 30%, and they normally 2.5x, then just assume they are raising like 33-35% instead, and just adjust your range accordingly.
It's stupid to have endless streams of charts, just memorize one key number and then adjust your decision based on one or two things.
I used to play the Caro-Kann but found that often I only got draws agains weaker players and when I moved up I got murdered by better players in the main line. So I gave it up as too passive and switched to the Alekhine. You can really do some damage to bad players with the Alekhine because they're out of preparation at move 1 which is nice. But again good players give me head aches and I always feel like I have a dubious position. In the Slav I always feel like I have a cramped position.
What is your take on openings for black? I know you try to stir things up vs bad players but often you still play your relatively drawish lines. For example there was a vid where you played the Bogo-Indian with your Nc6-Na5 line which is super drawish.
You seem to first try to get an even position (not getting killed out of the opening) even if it’s drawish. Do you think that’s the way to go? How has your opinion changed since you learned all those openings?
Tons of openings are fine to play. If you want a solid game go with Caro-Kann, if you want something more aggressive play the Sicilian. It's easy :) There are like at least 6-10 good openings against 1.e4 and 1. d4
I was a pretty serious player in my teens, got to 2255 FIDE aged 15 then quit. That was 20 years ago though! Would have loved to have internet as a learning tool back then.
Anyway I'm thinking of making a comeback, are there any specific books or learning techniques you would recomend?
I tried playing an online game but really struggled to get out of the opening - just couldnt remember my repertoire! I'm sure the concepts will come back to me, but I like the idea of learning a fresh repertoire at some point, widening my understanding of differnet positions.
I've been solving some chess problems over the last month, you know the classic composed ones with an unrealistic position but requires a creative imaginative solution. I never did these as a kid as the positions were unrealistic but I've been really enjoying them. I dont really want to put a huge amount of work/time in at this stage, but am looking for a bit of a mental workout away from the poker grind.
