The Mind of a Beginner

I have been a USCF rate Expert for over 10 years but I am going to study this course as if I know nothing. For 13 months I will follow instructions given by the ICS. I have also been a chess coach for over 20 years. It always puzzled me why scholastic players improve by leaps and bounds while adult struggle to improve at all. What I have experienced is that adults filter instruction and information while being very reluctant to change. My scholastic players follow instruction with questions. Being 60 years old I don’t have time to waste. The material that I have covered in the first month is the best instruction that I have seen and I have read hundreds of chess books, studied with software, DVD’s and taken lessons from GM’s, IM’s and other chess masters.
The theory has shown me a unique approach to think, I have never heard of a “TO DO LIST” before and “play of coordinating piece”. I just finish play through 4 annotated games and found their annotations very instructed. Following their suggestion I used a board and pieces. Before I studied games using ChessBase. Using a real chess board going over the annotated games, I found it difficult to follow some of the variations mentally and if I move the piece to follow the variations then I am not able to go back to the mainline from memory. What I plan to do is to play the mainline on the board and look at the long variations using ChessBase. Maybe during this course I will improve my board vision to the point that I can follow all these variations clearly mentally.
How are you going over the annotated games and has the ICS training improve your ability to analyze better mentally?

Well, it's just difficult to get rid of your bad habits, for me strictly following the thinking method proposed by ICS is difficult, i prefer to pick up some elements.

It's the same than playing the piano, the lessons tell you must put your fingers properly on the keyboard and do some finger gymnastic to play "academically", but if you ever have played it by yourself, you already have mechanical memory of some shortcuts or other manner to do it and don't follow the advices.

Same for the "todo list", the idea behind this is good, having a plan, and try to follow it, adapt it depending on the consequences of the moves.
But i feel it boring to write down while playing, so i don't and do it more or less mentally.

After some months of ICS course trying to apply material, i found the most efficient way for me to take advantage of it, was to play normally, and incorporate little to little the new knowledge.
Let us know how will be your progress, starting from "reseted" mind :-)

Regarding board visualisation there are exercises later in the course, personnally i find this too difficult and gave up, even if i manage more and more to locate quickly a square with just its algebric name.

Regarding mental analysis, still for my personal case, it improves more with tactical exercises (like ct-art for example), but only these which are requesting foresee of at least 5 or 6 moves ahead. It helps calculating more deeply without errors.

The great advantage of ICS course is more on strategical plan, what do you do with this kind of center, what do you do with your pawns, how to defend your king, which pieces to exchange and which to keep (pieces coordination), and so on.
The course, deals more with game structure than anything, so what ICS brought me so far, is the ability to take decide what plan is right to follow.

I a real game, there are opening moves, forced moves, tactical exchanges and free moves. The free moves are those when you can choose what to do, in which direction you want to lead your position, and when you did this move, the next few moves are quite automatically determined.
For me this is when ICS serves me the most, and prevent me to do dummy blunders galore (i still make blunders, but less).

One should learn this course with an open and blank knowlegde of chess to quicker absorb the material in the course. However, old habits kick in and sometimes overtake what one has learned. Throwing you back one step as it were.

It takes time to implement what one has learned. Its not read and bam its in your chess thinking/knowlegde. So at first one can suffer defeat after defeat but dont despair, just wait for the click, the moment all fall into place. Only then one will find it easy and one feels one has improved.

With other words, although you say your mind is of a beginner, zero knowlegde, old habits will return. Just be patient and tolerant, after some time the knowlegde will sink in for real.

I am beginning the first month's module along with the opening module. Just skimming over all the material I find that I indeed am a beginner therefore going at it with the "Mind of a beginner" is easy for me.

I have to look at this game in a totally different light than i have been looking at it and playing the game.

Much of the info in the first month is indeed over my head. The terminology and ideas are totally new for me.

For me I think the entire program will probably take me longer than 13 months. Therefore, I have downloaded every lesson on my PC and backed them up on my external hard drive.

I will probably have to read and re-read each page of each lesson numerous times and hope that some info sticks in my mind with each reading.

I glanced at the "tests". The time given will be difficult for me to achieve the correct answer so I will take the test at the end of the first month and hopefully do better after reading and re-reading all the lessons.

The games I have downloaded into Chessbase and I will annotate each of the games myself using the given annotations as a guide. Hopefully this will allow some of the info to stick in my head. I will have to do this over and over again as well.

In a nutshell, I think this course will take me longer than the 13 months so I am resigned to the fact that I will learn slowly in bits and pieces.

My 68 yo head is hardwired in certain ways that will take a while to undo and re-wire how I think about the game of chess that I have been playing since 1957. If I were a cynic I would think that all of those years were wasted after looking over the modules of Month 1. Instead I look at it as a challenge and hopefully I will be able to enter a tournament and begin a game with a Master tutored 9 yo and not get creamed.

I intend on playing in the Senior Southwest Open this August in Tyler, Texas. A few weeks back I told my friend that instead of getting clobbered by a 9 yo I will instead lose to a 95 yo deaf, dumb and blind chess player. Maybe after a few months of this course I will be better able to handle that 95 yo, I hope!! I have met a few 90 year old chess players that compared to me are very good players so I cannot take anyone lightly and with the help of this course I may be able to play a respectable game of chess.

That is all that I hope to achieve from this course, a respectable game of chess. Anything over and above that I will consider "frosting on the cake."

Chuck

I see this place is thronging with aging players, like myself, keen to rewire the brain and are up for the challange. I am very impressed with the course material and benefitted greatly. I am done with it now and am moving on. Good luck to all those here. This will be my last post.

My coach always said he thinks kids learn faster because they don't try to find exceptions to everything.

This entire thread resonates very well with Rowson's book Chess for Zebras, it's a great thread.

I am now over 2000. I have taken 13 months and have completed the course. In reality I have only completed about 60% of it properly & reckon I will be another 5 months. Don't be scared to take your time. it is not a race

hoopy wrote:I am now over 2000. I have taken 13 months and have completed the course. In reality I have only completed about 60% of it properly & reckon I will be another 5 months. Don't be scared to take your time. it is not a race

2000 what? If its otb rating i will be impressed. If its online rating i am kinda impressed but on those short timed games everything can happen.

Yes, it will take more time then 13 months to complete this course. Its kinda normal since we all have a life beside chess. Me for instance am, thanks to this life beside chess, starting over for the third time, with other words, starting with month one for the third time. I got as far as month three when the first time life became a bitch and took all of my time, second time i only got to the start of month two, now i hope that in a slow pace i atleast get to read month 13 in a year or two.

Over 2000 is great in any venue that I go to, at any time limit

chesstiger wrote:

hoopy wrote:I am now over 2000. I have taken 13 months and have completed the course. In reality I have only completed about 60% of it properly & reckon I will be another 5 months. Don't be scared to take your time. it is not a race

2000 what? If its otb rating i will be impressed. If its online rating i am kinda impressed but on those short timed games everything can happen.

Yes, it will take more time then 13 months to complete this course. Its kinda normal since we all have a life beside chess. Me for instance am, thanks to this life beside chess, starting over for the third time, with other words, starting with month one for the third time. I got as far as month three when the first time life became a bitch and took all of my time, second time i only got to the start of month two, now i hope that in a slow pace i atleast get to read month 13 in a year or two.

2000 OTB: 1900 in internet (20mins + games). I tend to experiment more on internet - a practice I'd certainly recommend. Anything faster my fingers are too slow. So in conclusion I have improved with the course. But it is hard work.

Congrats on reaching 2000 otb. May i know what your rating otb was by the start of the course. And what do you feel has changed in your chess play?