Thanks to all who attended and worked hard with us.

Many thanks also to Julian and Nicky Bacon who gave up their day for free to do the coaching.

If you couldn't come along, the notes from the sessions are below.

My favourite chess coaching observation is from GM RB Ramesh, who says that if you want to learn swimming by attending a series of 10 lectures, you may know enough by the end about how to swim, but if you jump in the water you will drown.  Getting better at chess is less like passing exams at school and more like passing your driving test; less about what you know than what you know how to do.

1. You can get better at chess just by playing, but if you don't reflect on your games and try and assess your strengths and weaknesses as a player, your progress is likely to be slower than it could be.  William James wrote about how he was approached by someone who wanted to improve their memory, so James gave them things to recall, for years I believe, and at the end of it the client was not that much better than when they started.  But I know a trick that will allow me or anyone else to recall a multi-digit number perfectly even after more than 40 years have passed; a little insight is worth a lot of brute practice! I was pleased to see that all those attending both played online and reviewed their games online.

2. I think the role of the chess coach is not only to provide you with insights, but also to introduce you to the sort of resources that might stretch your skills, and raise them.   In the notes you will find a graded set of exercises that take you from the basics to much harder material, and some book recommendations that will suit different levels of player.  The tactical exercises are from BURGESS, The Gambit Book of Instructive Chess Puzzles; the positional puzzles are from DUNNINGTON, Could you be a positional chess genius?; the opening problems are from me, and the endgame problems are mostly from the Icelandic Endgame Challenge (bronze, silver and gold awards).  I encourage you use these to take a view about your strengths and weaknesses as a player, and hence the sort of study you might do to improve your game.  The slideshow includes several book recommendations for further study, and there are also many useful online resources, some of which you will find listed here:
https://devonjuniorchess.co.uk/content/chess-skills-links
https://devonjuniorchess.co.uk/content/u14-chess-training-resources

3. These problems are designed to push up your skill level -- to raise the ceiling of your performance.  But a very great part of getting better at chess is to raise the floor of your performance -- and in particular, reducing the number of blunders you make.  Blunder-proofing your game involves (a) being aware of all the various tactical patterns and ideas, (b) actually looking for them on each turn!  The level of tactical puzzles you can solve on lichess.org or chess.com is almost certainly much higher than that of the mistakes you make in your games, and the secret of avoiding such mistakes is being in good habits of thinking.  There are many slogans and tips you can find to improve your thinking habits, and my preferred scheme is described in a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqwPPxFrriI
4. Games played in our previous U14 and U18 matches are collected, annotated, lauded and criticised here: https://devonjuniorchess.co.uk/content/devon-u14-chess-team  Have a look through the games and notes, and see if you could have done any better!

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Attachments:

Autumn2024slides.pdf
448 kB

Autumn2024booklet.pdf
580 kB