The Q & A Way
The Q & A Way is based in large part on readers' questions. Do you have a
question about preparation, strategy or tactics? Submit your questions (with
you full name and country of residence please) and perhaps Bruce will reply in
his next Chess Cafe column...
Yes, I have a question for Bruce!
Test the Best
Question I am a 12-year-old kid and I enter a lot of scholastic tournaments. My
The Q & A
question is about openings. Which ones should I study? What ones are good at
the scholastic level? Should I play 1. e4 or 1. d4 or 1. c4 or what? Maybe I
should play a flank opening. What do you think I should do? I have tried just
Way
about everything and I often get confused. Johnny Bishop (USA)
Bruce Pandolfini
Answer Most teachers counsel young players to practice king-pawn openings
first, before they begin to branch out. They argue that the themes stemming from
that initial e-pawn move are clearer and more direct. Many of the same teachers
also believe there s an abundance of supportive literature on openings that
originate with 1. e2-e4, more so than for any other starting moves. But these are
old ideas, and they re open to dispute, despite Fischer s claim that 1. e2-e4 is
best by test. Still, look what it s done for him.
Let s say you start with king-pawn openings. Find a contemporary player who
often begins 1.e2-e4 and whose play you admire. Then adopt his or her opening
repertoire. You may have to look at numerous games from current journals and
magazines, or simply see what you can extract from the Internet. There s such a
wealth of material available, and so many outstanding sites, that one could
easily go astray amid the informational abyss. If you d like to narrow your
search to a specific site, I suggest you go to Chessgames.com. It has a large
database, is very current, and should prove inviting. Naturally, as you become
more seasoned, you may want to modify your own repertory to suit your
individual needs and tastes.
Starting with the style of particular player is an excellent vantage point. At the
very least you ll acquaint yourself with a set of harmonious concepts that can be
used to springboard toward more specific study, once you figure out who you
are and where you re going.
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Question You and Yasser Seirawan have one thing in common, that is, you
don t reply. My question is (just in case you get this), I have plenty of chess
books, so, which is the best one to start? Dino Lar (Philippines)
Answer It s an honor to be compared to Yasser in any regard. Nonetheless, it
would be nice to know what chess books you have. It would also be helpful to
know more about you as a player. Without real knowledge on either of those
two subjects, the best I can do is to steer you toward a generic or all-purpose
chess book. But I can t think of any that works for all levels of chess skill and
that some readers wouldn t find repellent. Even so, if you re interested in quality
and substance, I suggest you take a gander at the series of texts produced by
Yasser himself. They re quite good. You might also consider, once again,
reaching out to him directly. He may have more time to write e-mails these
days, and his replies, when he does reply, are always on the money. It s a start,
just like pawn to king four.
Question I am from Rome and I am 38 years old. I am also an admirer of yours,
since the time you appeared in the movie Searching for Bobby Fischer. What do
you think of the rare book of I.M. Santasiere on the Santasiere Attack of the
Wing Gambit of the Sicilian? I am not sure of the title. Did you ever meet him?
Fabrizio Nomagnoli (Italy)
Answer Santasiere wrote lots of articles and various monographs on openings
and different aspects of chess, but I don t recall one in particular on the Wing
Gambit of the Sicilian, not that he didn t play it (or write about it). He loved to
play b2-b4, whenever he could, which is why another name for the Orangutan or
Sokolsky s Opening is Santasiere s Folly. He was a very creative man. I met
him only on one occasion, at the Marshall Chess Club, when Carrie Marshall
introduced him to a table of people I was sitting with. I was just an obnoxious
kid, so I don t remember much about it. What I do recall is that Mrs. Marshall
was all aglow as she guided him around by the arm. Those were the days.
Question With all the man vs. machine matches of the past ten years, I have
really enjoyed the comments on both sides. For example, take a few of the
comments by Vladimir Kramnik and Frederic Friedel. They said some things to
arouse my curiosity. I found them to be rather interesting and also mysterious.
Vladimir Kramnik said: I have to change my way of playing from normal
chess. What matters is to develop the most unusual tactics possible. I have to
keep the computer from using its calculating skills. And I will do this while
provoking moves that it doesn t understand. The machine has to feel
uncomfortable, so to speak. I don t know what Kramnik meant exactly by the
term unusual tactics. And I understand that computers are superior to humans
at tactical play, so why doesn t Fritz understand these unusual tactics? And
how do you provoke moves that it doesn t understand? Does he mean he will
make the machine do things it has no idea of? Why would the machine make
moves it does not understand? Strange! Then there is Frederic Friedel: But I
confidently predict that within five years Fritz will be able to beat any human in
any type of match. His speed and sophistication are going to continue increasing
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exponentially. I am astonished that Humans will become such useless players
so quickly! In five years only! I understand the speed aspect, but I wonder
whether the speed of calculation will help it only in the tactics department. As
for sophistication, is it not the HUMANS who teach the machine that, hence
humans will always know more in that department? Tehul Mohil (Kenya)
Answer I expect it s likely that Russian world champion Vladimir Kramnik and
German computer genius Frederic Friedel were trying to engage interest in the
match Kramnik and Fritz played a couple of years ago. We might want to keep
in mind that these two intellectual giants had to reduce complex ideas to a level
that could be understood by various journalists and their readerships, many of
whom may not have been familiar with the most elementary of chess concepts.
Since Kramnik and Friedel are two of the smartest and most gifted people on
Earth, I m not certain I should pretend that I understand exactly what they were
trying to convey. But since you ve asked me to, I d say Kramnik intended to
play the match with a different mindset, one emphasizing unusual aspects of
positional struggle to which computers might have trouble assigning verifiable
numerical values. His programmed opponent might attribute weight to irrelevant
matters or miss certain intangible subtleties that the experienced human mind
would be able to judge better, however intuitively. By invoking the term
tactics it appears he was not using it as is often done, to mean short-range
immediacies to advance a strategy. It seems he was really employing the word
in a more strategic sense, to indicate a methodical line of attack or overall
approach.
Friedel s remarks also seem perfectly plausible. Programs are becoming so
sophisticated they indeed should be playing better than the world s most adept
players within a couple of years. But nowhere does Friedel say or imply that
humans will thereby become useless. They are the programmers at least for
now. I m sure they re resourceful enough to find some way to keep people on
top, even if that means merely having a better seat from where to observe the
proceedings.
Question I have a deep desire to improve my game although I am slightly better
than Josh (that is, when Josh was 8). Most of the books I ve read over the years
and the little instruction I ve received emphasize tactical perception. A tactical
threat or opportunity can require some searching but once you ve found it the
course of action is concrete. I believe to improve my game I need to be able to
recognize more subtle threats and opportunities. Your book Weapons of Chess
is helping. Also, I m reading with excitement, The Amateur s Mind (Silman)
which I m confident will dramatically improve my positional perception and
enable me to one day beat Josh (actually a computer simulation of Josh at age
9). While drills abound for improving tactical play, exercises for improving
strategic play seem scarce. What advice do you give in learning to recognize and
leverage subtle positional imbalances? Lawrence Kilmer (USA)
Answer Improving strategic play is very much a factor of experience. You
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simply have to see many situations requiring a strategic handling played out
over and over to get a sense how to proceed in similar circumstances. In recent
years countless books have appeared dealing with all kinds of strategic problems
and long-term decision-making. Some of these are quite excellent, and surely
Jeremy Silman s The Amateur s Mind is among the best. But rather than
limiting yourself to any one book I d recommend that you go across the board,
ferreting out games played by top grandmasters that are fully annotated,
wherever they come from (books, magazines, software, or the Internet). The
comments should contain both variations and explanations, as in Bronstein s
masterwork on the Zurich 1953 Interzonal (of which there are two excellent
editions obtainable, one by Burt Hochberg and one by Jimmy Adams). Living
through and breathing in strategic ideas laid out in competitive games played by
great players is an efficacious way to learn something about planning and the
positional themes commonly associated with higher strategy. And if not that,
you re just going to have to face Josh at a later age. He was good at eight, but he
got really good at ten.
Question I started playing chess seriously for 2 months now and I am
thoroughly dedicated to it. On my free time I study all aspects of chess. My
question is, do you think that a player with my love and dedication for chess can
ever become a grandmaster or at least a master? E. Torres (USA)
Answer You haven t given me enough information about yourself to say
anything specifically, so it s hard to make a definitive statement on it,
particularly concerning your desire to become a grandmaster. But I can say this.
I didn t know anything about myself when I became a master, and I didn t have
very much talent for it, so it wouldn t surprise me if you were to do significantly
better. Perhaps one day you could even answer questions from onliners such as
yourself, who love the game as you do. You never know.
Question According to many observers, you are an experienced chess educator
with more students than you can ever possibly do a good job on. (Maybe you
could send some of them to me.)
I often read your column at the ChessCafe, advising people to take lessons from
masters, not to be too frugal about the price of the lessons, and to not expect that
the lessons will make them instant grandmasters or a world champion. Now
here s my problem. I am a very strong player (I should be about 2400), and I m
also heavily involved in club, state, and USCF affairs. I also want to get a hold
of more chess students, and my lessons, while not overpriced, are not
inexpensive either. So what is my problem? Well, I get new students several
times during the year, and for the price I ask for, even though I m not cheap.
The problem is that they always take just a few lessons from me before leaving
me regardless of the price. Is it that I m too honest with them when I tell them
that I can t help their game as much as I d like to? Or that I tell them that if they
buy a recommended list of chess books from me (usually at a discount), reading
them through religiously, and play a weekly tournament (or several weekly
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tournaments), analyzing the game(s) carefully with their opponent s or strong
players sitting around, that they will (or could), improve their game a great deal
from this as well, and without weekly paying me my required fee, whatever I
charge. Goodness gracious! Maybe I should just pretend that I really can be the
complete answer to all their chess problems (I suspect this is what you must do,
not that you do it that well). Then I will retain their need for lessons from me for
a lot longer!
How do you keep your most consistent students, or do you simply tell them
that they are good when they are not? Also, I expect you sell a lot of your books
to your students. I would not be surprised if those are the only books you
recommend (your own), which many people tell me is pretty clear from reading
your column. Or is it that you are famous, so you are always in big demand with
people who don t know any better, and that is how you get them to buy your
books? Finally, do your know of any chess agents or publishers (I don t need a
big advance) who could help me with my own book ideas (this is where I think
you could really help and it is what I most need)? I m a pretty good writer (no,
an extremely good writer), and if I had students and connections I think I could
succeed (I would not be surprised that I would do as well as or better than you).
Can you help me? Especially, though, how can I succeed as a chess teacher?
Brandon Wagner (USA)
Answer The most reliable way to keep your students is not to pretend they re
something they re not, or that you re something you re not. You should always
make clear who the two of you are and do the best you can for them. You should
always tell them the truth. If they ve done well, you should show them why and
how. Every student is from Missouri and they have to be shown not just told.
If they ve done poorly, you have to demonstrate what they did wrong. Even if it
lowers the boom, you need to provide the most useful and pertinent advice you
can give, making sure not to promise ridiculous panaceas. That doesn t mean
you have to be hurtful just truthful. Furthermore, if you endorse books or
items for your students, it should be those you think can really help them as
feasibly and economically as possible. And you should never recommend your
own products, no matter how wonderful they are. That way they ll come to trust
you, which is essential to the relationship between student and teacher. But that
quality, at the foundation of character, must be earned, not bought or sold. How
can you get to be a successful chess teacher? By making a commitment: to your
student, to your profession, to the game of chess, and to the honest truth. Do all
of that and watch your status go up, not just at the club, tournament, and USCF
levels, but at the human level, where all good teaching begins.
Copyright 2004 Bruce Pandolfini. All Rights Reserved.
Yes, I have a question for Bruce!
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