I recently ordered this book & will take my time trying his suggested exercises. Chess takes time, you can't improve overnight. Magnus certainly didn't.
Something that I want to mention about motivation which is really what Peter was asking about (24:00). The biggest problem that most adults have regarding studying is just getting started. You need to be organized. Take some time every couple weeks to figure out what you are going to use for your studies and set things up so that there is as little friction as possible. For me, I have my study material sitting on the counter every night so that in the morning, it's right there for me when I get coffee and breakfast. To ignore my studies, I would have to actually expend more energy than it would take to get started. The key to sticking with something is to make it attractive and if you cannot make it attractive at least make it easy to get started.
Doing priority items (chess, exercise, whatever) in the morning does wonders. Get it knocked out early, then nothing can come up and give you an excuse not to do it later
Good Show, Ben can I ask you how do you read chess books so fast? do you skip the excercises or some games? and how mutch do you retain of what you read. Thanks. I ask because I read a lot also but at a mutch slower pace and any tip of yours would be awesome.
Horace, Unfortunately when I am reading in preparation for podcast interviews, I have to skim the game analysis parts. So it doesnt help my chess as much as one would hope. I think the way you are reading is probably better for chess improvement. :)
My strategy is to have several puzzle books of varying difficulty, easy, intermediate, difficult, and to seriously try to solve the puzzles. While simply going through every other book as quick as possible, the idea is to see as much chess as possible, not worrying about understanding at the time, your mind will process it all later and become apart of your knowledge and experience.
I think tons of people exaggerate how little free time they have to study. Just the amount of time an average person plays blitz or watches TV or any other free time activity is probably huge amounts of time they could study if they are being honest with themselves and making improvement a priority. Most of my “serious study” friends of recent past have massive 3+0 monthly game counts.
I skimmed through my recently received copy of Kuljasevic's book, "How to Study Chess on Your Own." I do not like it, here's why: 1. Pedagogical reasons. -There is no organized skeleton/summary of recommended study suggestions at the beginning of the book, nor is there an explanation of his personal study plan and logic behind it. 2. The information is scattered around. -There are some useful quotes that i never heard before, but there should be a quote glossary or similar because they are spread sporadically through the book. ironically he literally suggests to have a quote collection, which i only found in one part of his book making it seem random; if he suggests to have a quote collection then where is the quote glossary!? or recommended resources to collect quotes!? He has at least 15 quotes about analysis, but they're scattered throughout the book. 3. Lots of fluff to cut through. -He says too much boring or repetitive information that makes it hard to dig through a several useful nuggets of information I wanted to find; his most useful information is two blogs worth of information. 4. Gimmicky advice and opinions. -In his chart that explains the level of usefulness for various chess training methods, he regards blindfold training as excellent. First of all, this is very impractical training (as confirmed by no less than 4 titled players I spoke to) in general. Secondly, he says you can do blindfold training with any of the above training methods. WHO WATCHES DVDS BLINDFOLDED? 5. Gimmicky advice and opinions cont. -In his same chart as described in #4, he regards playing against the computer as great training. This should rather highly depend on the purpose, circumstances, and other factors, as training the computer could mean MANY DIFFERENT THINGS! max power computer? handicapped? how humanlike is it? is it in a certain tablebase endgame position or in start position or what!? is it tournament preparation? what is your rating!? Without some concrete circumstances, playing the computer will not help you much, especially if you're rated below 2000! Maybe there is some exception to be made for concrete technical positions such as tablebase endgames. 6. Gimmicky advice and opinions cont 2. -He says to watch videos for openings and middlegame play. 99.9% of strong players say to NOT do that, especially for chess streams, because most of the content is horrible. 7. Hard readibility. -This book is not formatted via a double column! This makes it so much harder to read and is one of the main reasons why a publisher like Gambit is superior to New in Chess! On a positive note, it really kicked me to focus more on analysis of my own games; this is extremely important after all.
Agreed on every point! I felt that the book made a number of very unprofessional errors: 1. It was not aware of the previous literature on the subject, or the state of the literature on the subject, which is really ignorant and shows he did not research anything. The point is to improve on past work, not ignorantly produce much lower quality work... He would do well to study the previous books on chess improvement that are considered classics. 2. He states things as some kind of science, when he is making things up or stating things completely without evidence. This is a misleading tactic that only confuses readers and gives them false confidence. 3. Agreeing with what you wrote, he says to do serious blindfold training, play the engine constantly, and watch lots of random videos and streams. The average player will see nothing in blindfold training, lose any position to the engine within 10 moves, and waste hours on Twitch and TH-cam watching very low quality content. This was extremely bad advice. 4. He does not give a book list to study, so readers are left to their own devices, with no idea what to get or focus on. 5. Agreeing with you again and expanding, he does not tell you what you should study if you are 1200/1600/2000/2400 (clearly it will be different based on rating), and gives no clear study plan, making the book useless. This was supposed to be the whole point of the book. 6. He also does not tell you how to study your own games or the games of other players. Big miss here too. 7. He says he wrote the book during quarantine because he could not find enough students. This is one of the worst reasons ever to write a book, and is a reason none of us should want to buy it. Who wants to study rushed ideas of a GM who doesn't have anyone that wants to study under him? Cash grab. So my opinion is that the book is very random, hyper-opinionated without clear reasoning for those opinions, fails in all of its goals, and deserves a 2/10. It would have been better off as a few blog posts on ichess or on chess.com, but as a book, there was lots of filler (like 10 quotes that all said just to analyze... we got it already. No content was provided in these quotes), no meat, and all kinds of random statements, like him saying to not study players from the 19th century or interesting theoretical endgames, like fortresses (very valuable for those looking to move up in chess). I was disappointed because I liked the previous work from Kuljasevic.
@@BeFourCM Road to Chess Improvement by Alex Yermolinsky, Improve Your Chess Now by Jonathan Tisdall, and Secrets of Practical Chess by John Nunn are three of the biggest ones.
@@BeFourCM Those books which that guy recommended, are very good. I want to say to see also Chess Lessons by Vladimir Popov, Pump Up Your Rating by Axel Smith, Applying Logic in Chess and Chess Logic in Practice by Erik Kislik, Chess for Zebras by Jonathan Rowson, and maybe The Search for Chess Perfection by C.J.S. Purdy.
@@ubicutvojuporodicu1039 Can I ask how strong you are? I wanted to know whether you think we should read multiple guide books like these, or just stick to 1-2. And your comments are very high class. I prefer to read as many of these types of books as I can so that I can scan for recurring information or agreements and disagreements.
@@batboy2311 In theory the latest book should always be the best one, if the author is smart and knows what is in all of the previous books and improves on them. Some of these books are unique and have little overlap. For a general guide of how to study all aspects of chess, only one or two of the books you mentioned apply, which is good. The rest are just general improvement topics without clear suggestions for what to do in our own regimen.
I recently ordered this book & will take my time trying his suggested exercises. Chess takes time, you can't improve overnight. Magnus certainly didn't.
Something that I want to mention about motivation which is really what Peter was asking about (24:00). The biggest problem that most adults have regarding studying is just getting started. You need to be organized. Take some time every couple weeks to figure out what you are going to use for your studies and set things up so that there is as little friction as possible. For me, I have my study material sitting on the counter every night so that in the morning, it's right there for me when I get coffee and breakfast. To ignore my studies, I would have to actually expend more energy than it would take to get started. The key to sticking with something is to make it attractive and if you cannot make it attractive at least make it easy to get started.
Thats a great idea, I am reading "Atomic Habits" and it has a lot of helpful suggestions along those lines
Doing priority items (chess, exercise, whatever) in the morning does wonders. Get it knocked out early, then nothing can come up and give you an excuse not to do it later
Thank you
Good Show, Ben can I ask you how do you read chess books so fast? do you skip the excercises or some games? and how mutch do you retain of what you read. Thanks. I ask because I read a lot also but at a mutch slower pace and any tip of yours would be awesome.
Horace, Unfortunately when I am reading in preparation for podcast interviews, I have to skim the game analysis parts. So it doesnt help my chess as much as one would hope. I think the way you are reading is probably better for chess improvement. :)
My strategy is to have several puzzle books of varying difficulty, easy, intermediate, difficult, and to seriously try to solve the puzzles.
While simply going through every other book as quick as possible, the idea is to see as much chess as possible, not worrying about understanding at the time, your mind will process it all later and become apart of your knowledge and experience.
I think tons of people exaggerate how little free time they have to study.
Just the amount of time an average person plays blitz or watches TV or any other free time activity is probably huge amounts of time they could study if they are being honest with themselves and making improvement a priority.
Most of my “serious study” friends of recent past have massive 3+0 monthly game counts.
I skimmed through my recently received copy of Kuljasevic's book, "How to Study Chess on Your Own." I do not like it, here's why:
1. Pedagogical reasons.
-There is no organized skeleton/summary of recommended study suggestions at the beginning of the book, nor is there an explanation of his personal study plan and logic behind it.
2. The information is scattered around.
-There are some useful quotes that i never heard before, but there should be a quote glossary or similar because they are spread sporadically through the book. ironically he literally suggests to have a quote collection, which i only found in one part of his book making it seem random; if he suggests to have a quote collection then where is the quote glossary!? or recommended resources to collect quotes!? He has at least 15 quotes about analysis, but they're scattered throughout the book.
3. Lots of fluff to cut through.
-He says too much boring or repetitive information that makes it hard to dig through a several useful nuggets of information I wanted to find; his most useful information is two blogs worth of information.
4. Gimmicky advice and opinions.
-In his chart that explains the level of usefulness for various chess training methods, he regards blindfold training as excellent. First of all, this is very impractical training (as confirmed by no less than 4 titled players I spoke to) in general. Secondly, he says you can do blindfold training with any of the above training methods. WHO WATCHES DVDS BLINDFOLDED?
5. Gimmicky advice and opinions cont.
-In his same chart as described in #4, he regards playing against the computer as great training. This should rather highly depend on the purpose, circumstances, and other factors, as training the computer could mean MANY DIFFERENT THINGS! max power computer? handicapped? how humanlike is it? is it in a certain tablebase endgame position or in start position or what!? is it tournament preparation? what is your rating!? Without some concrete circumstances, playing the computer will not help you much, especially if you're rated below 2000! Maybe there is some exception to be made for concrete technical positions such as tablebase endgames.
6. Gimmicky advice and opinions cont 2.
-He says to watch videos for openings and middlegame play. 99.9% of strong players say to NOT do that, especially for chess streams, because most of the content is horrible.
7. Hard readibility.
-This book is not formatted via a double column! This makes it so much harder to read and is one of the main reasons why a publisher like Gambit is superior to New in Chess!
On a positive note, it really kicked me to focus more on analysis of my own games; this is extremely important after all.
Agreed on every point! I felt that the book made a number of very unprofessional errors:
1. It was not aware of the previous literature on the subject, or the state of the literature on the subject, which is really ignorant and shows he did not research anything. The point is to improve on past work, not ignorantly produce much lower quality work... He would do well to study the previous books on chess improvement that are considered classics.
2. He states things as some kind of science, when he is making things up or stating things completely without evidence. This is a misleading tactic that only confuses readers and gives them false confidence.
3. Agreeing with what you wrote, he says to do serious blindfold training, play the engine constantly, and watch lots of random videos and streams. The average player will see nothing in blindfold training, lose any position to the engine within 10 moves, and waste hours on Twitch and TH-cam watching very low quality content. This was extremely bad advice.
4. He does not give a book list to study, so readers are left to their own devices, with no idea what to get or focus on.
5. Agreeing with you again and expanding, he does not tell you what you should study if you are 1200/1600/2000/2400 (clearly it will be different based on rating), and gives no clear study plan, making the book useless. This was supposed to be the whole point of the book.
6. He also does not tell you how to study your own games or the games of other players. Big miss here too.
7. He says he wrote the book during quarantine because he could not find enough students. This is one of the worst reasons ever to write a book, and is a reason none of us should want to buy it. Who wants to study rushed ideas of a GM who doesn't have anyone that wants to study under him? Cash grab.
So my opinion is that the book is very random, hyper-opinionated without clear reasoning for those opinions, fails in all of its goals, and deserves a 2/10. It would have been better off as a few blog posts on ichess or on chess.com, but as a book, there was lots of filler (like 10 quotes that all said just to analyze... we got it already. No content was provided in these quotes), no meat, and all kinds of random statements, like him saying to not study players from the 19th century or interesting theoretical endgames, like fortresses (very valuable for those looking to move up in chess). I was disappointed because I liked the previous work from Kuljasevic.
@@BeFourCM Road to Chess Improvement by Alex Yermolinsky, Improve Your Chess Now by Jonathan Tisdall, and Secrets of Practical Chess by John Nunn are three of the biggest ones.
@@BeFourCM Those books which that guy recommended, are very good. I want to say to see also Chess Lessons by Vladimir Popov, Pump Up Your Rating by Axel Smith, Applying Logic in Chess and Chess Logic in Practice by Erik Kislik, Chess for Zebras by Jonathan Rowson, and maybe The Search for Chess Perfection by C.J.S. Purdy.
@@ubicutvojuporodicu1039 Can I ask how strong you are? I wanted to know whether you think we should read multiple guide books like these, or just stick to 1-2. And your comments are very high class. I prefer to read as many of these types of books as I can so that I can scan for recurring information or agreements and disagreements.
@@batboy2311 In theory the latest book should always be the best one, if the author is smart and knows what is in all of the previous books and improves on them. Some of these books are unique and have little overlap. For a general guide of how to study all aspects of chess, only one or two of the books you mentioned apply, which is good. The rest are just general improvement topics without clear suggestions for what to do in our own regimen.