Bobby Blunder

Hi to all those who participate in this forum.

I live in California and have been playing tournament chess since 1974. I have been stuck at an ELO of 2160 for many years. I hooked up with ICS to try to fix my study program which I realised was full of holes.
Many of the ideas in ICS I think are very helpful and will plug the gaps in my understanding of the game. I have just finished module 10. The next few months I will skip 11-13 and concentrate on Openings (which I have avoided) and pick up the final three months excercises later in the year.

I can't imagine how difficult this course must be for lower rated players. Please never get discouraged, There is a tremendous amount of material here and absorbing it and then translating it into play and wins will take great effort and not a little time. As they say on GalaxyQuest - "Never give up. Never surrender!"

Good to see you here, and that you like the course even after ten months.

Welcome!

Thanks for the warm words of support and encouragement.

Given you are most of the way through, what do you find has worked well and where do you think we should supplement that training (if at all).
Thanks in advance.

Good question. Rubinstein is supposed to have lost to the strongest player in Poland, disappear for 6 months and remerge a world class player. I would love to know what he did ...

After this course it seems to me we will all have a solid foundation. Good thought process, opening rep and solid chess culture

We probably all will need a combinations/tactics/calculation boost. I myself think the Test Your Chess IQ series is very good. You get extra points for finding hidden resources for the opponent and countering them. They say best results come from doing one test a week (with a huge amount of effort applied in each test.

The endgame is missing here. There is a ton of material now Silman Endgame course and Mednis & Crouch maybe. Dvoretsky work (great book)is going to be too high level for many and too technical for much practical application for the non-professional. The idea I think is to become familar with the standard plans in standard piece configurations. So we should be able to know how to play them in general say BvN with 4v4 pawns (two on each side for example) as well as know all the key positions like the Lucena postion and so on. We also get to practice basic chess concepts like local superiority in a more 'abstract' setting but where calculation and planning is of the utmost importance.

Finally I imagine most us could be exposed to looking at the center and pawn structures again. Perhaps Euwe & Kramer I & II (again if you have already done it) and Soltis Pawn Structure book might be valuable just to reinforce some of the material. The course itself (as do many people) in a later module recommends Bronsteins Zurich 1953.

Maybe Questions of Modern Chess Theory (Soviets seem to regard this highly) . I trained with a former Soviet player for a while and looking back I think this work describes how he approached the game. Worth a read.

After that I think the conceptual foundation is complete. Then it is probably a matter of playing and analyzing one's own games to find repeating errors and patterns of thought that need correcting. Get a stronger player to help you. Every (slow time rate) game you play is the best source of instruction after that.

im on the road. but I wanted to say a quick welcome Bobby

Welcome to the forum Bobby Blunder!. It's great to have somebody high rated and experienced to comment on the ICS program.