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Chessbud

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Post by Chessbud June 11th 2009, 10:02 pm

I wanted to introduce myself. I signed up for the ICS and the opening module. I am a 2100 rated player USCF player and a 2100 rated FIDE player. I have never made it to 2200 but have been trying for 20 years. I have 1000+ chess books, hundreds of tapes,DVDs etc. that I have bought over the years to try to make master. Though I really should read more of those 1000 chess books I have. I guess I am more of a chess book collector. I saw this forum and decided to give the ICS chess school a try. I just got my first month lessons a few days ago. At least I know what I need to study for the next year or so. Thanks for all your great comments on the course.


Last edited by Chessbud on June 16th 2009, 8:59 pm; edited 1 time in total

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Post by Chess? June 11th 2009, 11:33 pm

welcome chessbud,
I am on month four and loving the material. Best of luck with the studies.
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Post by Blue Devil Knight June 12th 2009, 3:08 am

Welcome to the forum! Remember in month one, if they don't cover something in enough depth, chances are they will spend a lot of time on it in a future month (except for the ideas of move consequences and the to do list, which is probably the main focus of month one in practice if you look at the problems they give).
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Post by hoopy June 12th 2009, 7:29 am

Welcome on board. It will be interesting to see how much progress can also be made by the higher graded players among us. Good luck on the journey.
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Post by chesstiger June 12th 2009, 8:39 am

Welcome!

It would be good to hear how already high rated players think about the course ICS provides.
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Post by Chessbud June 12th 2009, 10:10 am

Thanks everyone – I'll let you know what I think. I know this if I had used their five tactical points I probably wouldn’t of had my horrible loss against a WIM rated 2322 a few weeks ago. I had her beat. It was a French defense exchanged variation and I was black. I had connected passed pawns on the 5th and 6th ranks. Two rooks and a knight against two rooks and a knight. She defended well but Fritz showed me up +3…Then I moved my rook hanging one of the connected pawns..Then the very next move I hung an entire rook, probably because of the first terrible blunder. Man what a disappointment. However, the course used the terms (sustainment) to see what pieces sustain others. If I would of done that I would of realized that my rook of the 5th rank was sustaining the attacked pawn on the 5th rank. Then maybe I would of remembered any rook move off that rank would be bad. Seems obvious now but I have never really done a check list like that when I play. Its more like I move here she moves there. Showing the game to some other players one suggested the same mistake I did. It’s easy to blunder when a piece is protecting another piece because you move it in your mind but think it is still protecting that piece. I look forward to going through the material…

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Post by Blue Devil Knight June 12th 2009, 12:46 pm

Good to hear you also find it useful. I find these extremely simple ideas very helpful for building up a much better evaluation of the safety of the position.
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Post by BobbyBlunder June 16th 2009, 11:46 am

Hi and welcome. I am just coming to the end of the course and felt that there is much material that will help any chessplayer who is not an FM.

I am excited for you because one years high quality study will give you a really great chance of filling a life-long ambition.

I look back over 35 years of chess study and realise I really did not know what the hell I was doing. I bet all of us wish we could have had chess explained to us like ICS do when we were just 4 feet tall.

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Post by Chessbud June 16th 2009, 8:57 pm

Thanks BobbyBlunder – Sounds like a good course. I have been reading some of the first months course but haven’t had time to really dig into the tests or annotated games. I plan to play in the world open in two weeks and been studying up on my openings. Recently changed my openings up some to English as White, French Defense and Kings Indian as Black. Need to learn some more of the sidelines on the English. May give d4 and the Dutch a shot as well after the course. I bought the opening module as well. However, after the world open I am going to really hit this course hard…I don’t play too many games in a year but generally go to at least the World Open and Chicago Open. I will probably find a tournament or two to play later in the year as well. What do you plan to study after the ICS course is over?

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Post by Chess? June 16th 2009, 10:50 pm

BobbyBlunder wrote:Hi and welcome. I am just coming to the end of the course and felt that there is much material that will help any chessplayer who is not an FM.

I am excited for you because one years high quality study will give you a really great chance of filling a life-long ambition.

I look back over 35 years of chess study and realise I really did not know what the hell I was doing. I bet all of us wish we could have had chess explained to us like ICS do when we were just 4 feet tall.

I would have loved to have something like this in my 6th grade when my teacher introduced the game to me. 4 month after he introduced the game to me I beat him. It was a great day for me, but that summer I discovered girls. Now that was a great day! but here I am 35 years later and I still can't play the game. lol!
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Post by BobbyBlunder June 17th 2009, 1:33 pm

What do you plan to study after the ICS course is over?

Good question. I suppose we will have different needs after the course and perhaps different ideas about what the next steps should be, even if the needs are deemed identical.

I have almost completed the main module but barely started the opening module. So the next training horizon includes extensive work on opening systems.

The next part I think might apply to us all. That is spend time reinforcing the new concepts. For me the value of the course is that it offers a superior way of looking at chess. But to rewire the brain takes some effort. I will create and use flash cards to overwhelm my mind to help me unlearn the faulty approach I developed as a teenager working on my own all those years ago. I have started this and I think there is some benefit to it. It is basically the idea offered in 'Chess Master at any Age'

Finally I intend to work through game collections by great players. Stopping at critical positions and analyzing the position before seeing the annotation. I think it is going to be interesting to revisit the classics in the light of being exposed to the ICS course material.

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Post by Chessbud June 17th 2009, 8:50 pm

BobbyBlunder - That sounds like a pretty good plan. I have tended to play some off beat openings for years but have lately gone to more main lines. The English seems to have more bite to it than my normal KIA. French seems to have more chances than my center counter etc… I have always played the KID, been wanting to give it up for years but it’s my best opening performance wise. Get terrible loses with it as well. I think d4 as white may be the way to ultimately go. Always a hard decision. Lately I have become a member of a lot of online sites;
Chess.Com,Chesspublishing.com,Chesslecture.com,Chesstempo.com
Plenty of good material on all those sites. Chesspublsihing is very good for opening study…Those of you that like tactics should check out chesstempo.com. 33,000 tactics but what I like about it over other sites is you can take 10-20 minutes or longer to solve the problems in standard mode. Lately I have taken the ICS thinking points and have been trying to find out the consequences of the last move. It’s help me find a lot more tactics than before. The extra time is good, as I progress I am sure I will get faster. Before I would look for unprotected pieces and tactics around that and I still used that method but adding the consequences part of it seems to help. I have also found out I need to study tactics more. Thought I was strong in that area but I miss a lot. Study the classics sounds like a good way to go. Have put tons of thought into what books one would read to become a strong master. I tend to like the older books because they seem to have more material you can use. Not too impressed with some of the modern books that go on for ever with line after line of computer analysis. Though some modern books are excellent. In the end like GM Spraggtt said on his site avoid the information trap, what’s important is the application of chess theory not the absorption. His web site has an article on how to become a master at http://canchess.tripod.com/. Also at his site he has a favorite book list. All the old classical books.

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Post by HangingKing June 24th 2009, 5:21 pm

Hello, welcome here, a bit late but i was away for some time.

Very Happy

Since you are now 2100, and we are for most of us, below this rating, can you tell which were the most difficult ELO steps to achieve ?

For example when i started i was about 1200, i achieved 1400 in a short time, and then get stucked around 1450 for a long period of time.
Then i jumped directly to 1600, and since i progressed very slowly up to a solid 1700.
Again i'm stucked, and my 1763 record is lasting since almost 1 year !
So, i joined ICS course to climb over this ELO barrier.

Do you experienced the same progression, or was it a continuous progress ? Each time your ELO jumped was it the result of something new your learned or just the work of the time ?
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