Dear Fitness Professional,
Normally I&m not quite this &in your face& about things, but I&m just going to come right out and say it…
Every fitness professional that runs a bootcamp or group personal training program absolutely, positively, without question needs to add SGT 365 to their exercise & training library!
In fact, here&s the &add to cart button& because for less than a cup of gourmet coffee per workout, you can get all the programming you need for the next year&s worth of training sessions…
This is a downloadable product. Nothing will be shipped.
Now, for those who need to know a little more, I&ve got all the details for you, but first let me share some feedback we&ve received back from our mastermind members who&ve previewed SGT 365:
&I&m totally psyched about SGT 365! I take my group personal training bootcamp programming I literally lay it out a year in advance. As you can imagine, this takes a tremendous amount of time.
Having a done-for-me solution like SGT 365 that I completely believe in makes my life so much easier as a business owner focused on growth and profit – you know how crazy-busy it is!
I&d want anyone reading this testimonial to know that I&ve been fortunate enough to work closely with Steve & Jared for the past couple years. I&ve studied their training programs and systems in great depth and have incorporated them into my own business – with rave reviews from my clients, I should add.
I actually remember the night I was sitting in the lobby of The Brown Hotel, and I asked them if they could just make my life really easy by giving me a years worth of plug & play workouts. ;-b
Well, here it is – SGT 365. Twelve phases (1.5 years of programming for me) of group personal training bootcamp workouts completely laid out with &red lights,& progressions, exercise videos and descriptions.
I&m one happy camper!&
Justin Yule, BS, CPT, MTE, FMS
President & Chief Fitness Officer
Chanhassen Fitness Revolution
Steve and Jared are doing great things for the fitness industry with Smart Group Training. One of the biggest drawbacks of large group training, despite the effectiveness, is the difficult nature of assessing and individualizing the program for each client&s specific needs.& This can lead to ineffective programs, poor results, and even high injury rates.&
Smart Group Training takes this complicated topic and makes a complete done for you group training system that anyone can follow.& Steve and Jared have both clearly spent countless hours developing their system that you can now implement and become a real game changer for you and your clients.
If you want to set yourself apart and deliver the best group training experiences for your clients, look no further, Steve and Jared have done it all for you with Smart Group Training.
Mike Reinold
World Renowned Physical Therapist and Fitness Expert,
Steve and Jared are two guys I’ve helped mentor for years. Not only are they taking the industry to the next level, but I think this product will be a game changer for your business!
When you combine the FMS assesment with correctives and smart programming, you have a large group program that rivals most 1-on-1 or semi-private settings.
Quite simply, this product is going to help you create better programs in less time. Enough said!
Mike Robertson, MS, CSCS, USAW
President, Robertson Training Systems
Co-Owner, Indianapolis Fitness and Sports Training
We have been integrating SGT into our training systems over the last few months, and the benefits to our clients and coaching team have been tremendous. Our coaches are now on the same page regarding the proper correctives and progressions for our clients based on the individual FMS screening. The client is now more educated and has a better understanding of the big picture of their training. They understand they are not just “working out”, but there is a training plan customized for them, even in the group setting, to help them get better. Moving better, feeling better, and looking better. SGT has helped simplify our systems and allowed us to coach more effectively.
SGT 365 takes this to the next level. While we will continue to customize our programming for our clients needs, SGT 365 has incredible value in helping educate our coaches in the art of writing and coaching effective training programs. Studying the way Steve and Jared have broken down the training cycle both in the individual sessions, as well as micro and macrocycle, gives us another tool to keep our training leading the pack. Anytime you have an opportunity to expand your knowledge base and learn from coaches who have demonstrated they know what they are doing you should jump at the chance. In this industry if you are not getting better you are getting left behind. SGT 365 will make you a better coach, and you can’t ask for more than that. Highly recommended.
Dean Carlson
Training Director
Get Fit NH
Group training and classes in the fitness industry continues to evolve. For years, intense large group workouts seemed to be a win/win for both the trainer (make more money in less time and help more people get fit) and the client (more affordable option, supportive social environment, etc) but not everyone was a winner. Many so called &personal trainers& jumped at the opportunity to make more money which resulted in inadequate coaching and less personalization, ultimately injuring clients.
Today, &one size fits all& programs are being exposed by more educated clients and coaches. The best in the industry are figuring out how to put that personal training level of coaching into both small and large group classes. As a trainer, SGT 365 will no doubt give you the tools and resources necessary to stay ahead of the pack.& More specifically, SGT 365 will:
1. Help you get your clients better results by creating the correct program for them, getting away from the one size fits all programming.
2. Save you a ton of time, by providing you and your coaches with done-for-you systems to implement correctives and proper progressions and regressions for more personal program design.
3. Allow you and your coaches to better and consistently communicate to your clients what and why they are training this way.& Ultimately getting them better results through education.
Bottom line, we all need to continue educating ourselves and SGT 365 is a valuable tool to understand.&
If you want more clients, get your current clients better results.& This product will help you do just that making you a better coach and saving you $$$ on marketing.
Ryan Riley
Riley Athletics
Our goal as coaches should be to leave our clients feeling better than when they walked through our doors.& Sure we could create you a cookie cutter routine for the group training sessions, but how is this going to help your clients?&
If I have a large group of clients together I would rather have 20 individuals performing a routine that is best for them than a routine that is going to leave them in more pain and discomfort than when they walked in.
When the initial SGT program was released our programming took leaps and bounds ahead of where it would be today had we not utilized the SGT systems.& Now that Steve and Jared have created SGT 365 I will have another way to deliver amazing results for our group personal training clients.
This will also save me time and money as a business owner when I add coaches to the program.& This will simplify the training process for new coaches.&& The coaches will be able to coach the clients based on the client&s needs using this system.
It does not matter how long you have been in the industry you should strive to learn daily. The SGT 365 system is an extremely valuable tool to add to your toolbox. Your clie why not learn from the best.
Heath Herrera
When I started my bootcamp program in 2008 there were just a handful of other ‘bootcamp’ programs in the area. Now it seems like there is one on every corner, and the majority of them are not quality programs.
We have always been more than just a bootcamp program but thanks to Smart Group Training we will be able to differentiate ourselves even more from the corner bootcamp program.
Working with Steve and Jared has been an awesome experience and the SGT lays it out for you step by step, so there is absolutely no reason to not implement this into your programming and testing. Your clients come to you to get better, this is a systemized way to do that.&
If you want to stand out and be the best training program in your city then SGT is an absolute must!
I have been using the SGT for several months now and it has really made a difference with the clients results and how I run my programs. The clients have noticed the difference in their body movements and have become more aware them as well.& They see that they are moving more freely, becoming stronger and more flexible than ever before.& With the FMS being formatted for group use was the best thing I could incorporate into my own programming.& This program has allowed me to take what was once just a one-on-one screening to a higher level of manipulating dozens of people through in a very systematic, organized and efficient manner.& This has literally saved me hours and hours of work!
I would dread having to arrange my group clients to come in only a few at a time to get their screenings done so we can apply the correctives properly to our training programs. This would literally eat up hours of my time as you can well imagine.& Let me tell you, this is nothing short of genius! This system will free up so much time for you, give you the same results as the individual screenings and give the clients the necessary correctives to make you and your studio gym the talk of the town.& This system separates you from the regular Joe&s, puts your clients safety and needs first and makes you look VERY smart. I love what it has given me, my trainers and my clients.& I highly recommend this program to anyone who wants to stand out in a crowd for doing things right. I am unique, and you should be too.& ;D
CPTS, FMA/GED, FMS, FKS, CKS
CEO Chase Fitness
L anyone who knows me, knows that the #1 thing I tell the fitness professionals that I coach is to focus first on delivering an extraordinary training program and service. This, above all else, is the most critical factor for sustaining a profitable business…
Sure, you can get all kinds of leads with sizzle marketing, daily deals, and cheap front end offers, BUT you can&t build a profitable business with clients that stay, pay and refer unless you have a program that delivers RESULTS. At the end of the day, your clients want to look, feel and perform better. PERIOD! If you can&t deliver the results they want, they&ll find someone who will…
SGT 365 is literally a year&s worth (or more) of training programs designed and laid out for you by the creators of Smart Group Training – Steve Long & Jared Woolever. Smart Group Training has taken the fitness industry by storm and is turning it on it&s head!
Low quality bootcamps are popping up all over the place these days. Even the big box gyms are jumping on the bandwagon with FREE programs…
You CANNOT compete on price!! Instead, you MUST be the best!!!
Smart Group Training is teaching bootcamp owners and fitness professionals how to run their group programs with the same level of service and quality as personal training – yielding more income per hour and higher profit margins…
SGT 365 gives you 12 training phases designed by the Smart Group Training gurus, Steve & Jared – THEY&RE HANDING OVER THEIR WORKOUTS TO YOU ON A SILVER PLATTER!
And, that&s not all…
including “Red, Yellow, & Green Light” Variations for every exercise based of the Functional Movement Screen so you can ensure your clients SAFETY & RESULTS – Plus, medical professionals are blown away by this…meaning you’ll got tons of referrals from them!
demonstrating EVERY one of the 300+ exercises included in the SGT 365 group personal training bootcamp workouts – eliminate the guesswork and ensure your coaches know exactly how to perform each exercise safely and effectively.
you can incorporate into your group personal training sessions to make your workouts even more intense while still maintaining the quality that’s so important to you.
that clearly displays the exercises your clients should avoid based on their Functional Movement Screen. Clients really appreciate when this is made available.
lays out the entire program for you one place. This manual can literally be the group personal training handbook for you and your staff – very professional!
walks you step-by-step through the entire programming making it a cinch to understand and implement. Follow the checklist and you’ll be up and running with your new programs by next week!
You might guess that a program this in depth, with this much content (manual, PDFs, videos, etc.) would cost at least a thousand dollars, maybe even two thousand…
And, to tell you the truth, it WOULD be worth it!
But, as I&ve stated before and I&ll state again, Fitness Consulting Group is all about making the very best fitness business products, programs and tools available to everyone – even the start-up fitness professional. So, with that being said, we worked it out with Steve & Jared to offer SGT 365 to you for the incredibly low price of $299.95 – less than a less than a cup of coffee per session.
Today Only $299.95
This is a downloadable product. Nothing will be shipped.
And, just like everything else we share with you, we&re backing up SGT 365 with our no-hassle, only pay for it if you love it, 100% SATISFACTION GUARANTEE…
This is a downloadable product. Nothing will be shipped.
Make Your Group Personal Training Workouts The Best In Town
Blow Your Clients Away With Results They Can See and Feel
Equip Your Trainers With Everything They Need to Deliver Incredible Results
Give You More Time to Spend On Your Business and/or With Your Family
I look forward to hearing YOUR success story after implementing SGT 365…
Dedicated to Your Success,
Pat Rigsby
P.S. – SGT 365 is without question, the smartest group training program design on the market. I hate to use the term &no brainer,& but ordering a copy today really is one, especially at this special low price…
P.P.S. – You have to find a way to separate yourself from the competition. The price war will put you out of business… Instead, use SGT 365 to win the QUALITY war. As a matter of fact, most of our mastermind members are RAISING their prices and justifying it with no objections because of the programming the deliver. Think about that…
Today Only $299.95
This is a downloadable product. Nothing will be shipped.The Chess Improver | Nigel Davies and friends on getting better at chess
The best chess players in the world have a great ability to focus on a position, using this well honed skill (their ability to focus) to concentrate on finding the winning move. Seasoned players can maintain focus for extended periods of time. The beginner, on the other hand, has trouble staying focused for any length of time. The ability to maintain focus eludes even the most enthusiastic and obsessive chess novice. The ability to focus must be learned like anything else, making it a skill. Can the ability to focus really be considered a skill? Absolutely! Like any skill, it requires training and practice. Here are some ideas to help develop your ability to focus, most of which take place away from the chessboard.
First off, don’t confuse memory with focus. Many beginners think that having a well stocked chess memory will give them an advantage, which it does to some extent. However, unless you can focus on the position at hand, a head full of memorized chess positions does you little good. It’s as if you have the pieces of the puzzle in your hand but you can’t put them together because you mind cannot clearly see them as individual components of the puzzle. Lack of focus equates to fuzzy thinking.
We’ll start our exploration of focus with a loose definition. I’m not going to site the Oxford Dictionary for the definition of focus but instead, give you an example of the level of focus you want to achieve. When I was seventeen, I was sitting in my bedroom reading a book. Suddenly, I found myself in the story. Instead of sitting on my bed reading, I was in the scene described in the book. I could see the most minute details described by the author. In short, I was part of the story. This is an example of a momentary high degree of focus. I’ve had the same experience watching certain movies. While this moment is often fleeting, it serves as an example of the type of focus I want you to strive for. Don’t simply play the game externally, be part of the game internally. Be one with the game. Absolute focus allows you to do this.
A wise chess teacher said that when you sit down to play chess, you should leave your day to day thoughts off of the board and concentrate only on the game. While this is true, it is difficult to do, especially when you haven’t developed a strong ability to focus. While we can run away from external situations that distract us we cannot run away from the internal distractions, namely our own thoughts. So how can we develop our focusing skills?
Start by reducing your sugar and caffeine intake. Sugar and Caffeine, friend to many a chess player, may artificially raise your energy level, making you feel as if your brain is functioning at a higher level (greater focus), but what goes up must come down. Once the sugar or caffeine effects start to wear off, you crash, which means your ability to concentrate becomes weaker (less focus). Stick to healthy foods prior to playing chess. Get plenty of rest because a brain deprived of sleep is not conducive to good chess.
The environment in which you play is also important. Quiet environments are the best places to develop you focusing skills. Environments with the least amount of external distractions, such as computers, televisions, etc, give your thought process fewer avenues of escape. Ideally, an empty room with only a table, chairs and chess set would be the best choice. However, it is unrealistic to ask you to empty out an entire room in your home for such a purpose. Libraries are nice and quiet. So are churches! I have sat in the back of a well known church here in San Francisco to work on my game just for this reason. Even the Vicar approved of the idea once I explained my reasoning!
Of course, environmental controls are a small part of this equation. No matter how well suited the environment, you still have to deal with all those noisy thoughts rattling around in your brain. Consider the ability to focus as a circle whose diameter is constantly changing. The greater the circle’s diameter, the broader and less concentrated the focus. The smaller the diameter, the more concentrated the focus. Our goal, as chess players, is to narrow the circle of focus down to a circle so small it appears as a dot! The smaller the circle, the greater the focus.
If you walked in the door after a long day of work or school and immediately started playing chess, it would be somewhat difficult to instantly narrow your focus to only the events on the chessboard. Instead of immediately sitting down to play, try some simple exercises before playing. Start by employing some breathing exercises. Take twenty or so long deep breaths. Take your time. You’ll find that to do this correctly, you have to concentrate on your breathing. Guess what? Because you’re concentrating on your breathing above all else, you’re focusing and unclogging your thoughts a bit.
Next, play solitaire on your computer or better yet, with a real deck of cards for ten minutes. Seriously? This does two things. First, it allows your brain to wind down a bit and concentrate only on the card game, developing your focus and second, it helps you with your pattern recognition skills. I use simple card games with my students to foster these two skills and it has helped immensely.
The next suggestion I have is to sit at the chessboard, position your head so that only board takes up your complete field of vision, and look at each pawn and piece, silently naming the squares each of those pawns and pieces is on. The idea here is to get your focus aimed at the board!
For overall, general improvement of your focus, take up a physical activity if you’re not already involved in one. It can be any physical activity, such as golf, Tai Chi or even bird watching. Why such an activity? I like to bird watch. To get to many of the locations where the birds are at requires some walking. Walking is excellent exercise and exercise helps your brain function at a higher level. While exercise will not make you the next Einstein, it will help you increase your brain’s ability to function optimally. What does bird watching have to do with concentration? To identify a bird in the wild, you have to focus in on the bird’s size, shape, feather coloring, etc. These are all variations of pattern recognition. Because you generally have a very small time frame in which to identify the bird before it flies away, you have to focus your attention very quickly and maintain a high level of focus and concentration while identifying the bird. Learning to focus in small increments makes maintaining focus over a longer period a bit easier.
The point to all of this is simple: The better your focus, the more apt you are to find that winning move. Focus development techniques can be found in many of the things you do away from the chessboard. The more you do in the way of honing your ability to focus, the better your playing will be. Make a list of five things you do each day that help you with your focus. You should be able to come up with at least five. If not, find five things you can do to increase your focus. They can range from card playing to riding a bicycle. Get focused. Here’s a game to enjoy until next week!
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Hugh Patterson
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The second British Webserver Tournament has been won by the ‘ICCF Warriers’ Team, consisting of GM Nigel Robson, GM Raymond Boger, GM Mark Noble and SIM Ian Pheby by the narrowest of margins on a tie break with 16 / 24, beating their nearest rivals and last year’s winners, ‘Pawn Stars’, consisting of SIM Gino Figlio, SIM Dr Michael Millstone, SIM John Rhodes (myself) and Austin Lockwood who also scored 16 / 24! The third placed team were ‘Scheming Mind A’ who scored 14 / 24. In this tournament teams are allowed to have two British and two International players.
When you consider that my team had an average ICCF grade of 2408 and the winners had an average of 2519, I think we did rather well! The last two games were adjudicated as draws at the end of 2014, so we have been eagerly awaiting the results. The top scorer for ‘ICCF Warriers’ was GM Nigel Robson with 4.5 / 6 and for ‘Pawn Stars’ was Austin Lockwood with a great score of 5 / 6.
Here is one of the crucial games that had to be adjudicated. It shows Michael Millstone holding Raymond Boger to a Sicilian Sveshnikov draw.
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John Rhodes
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Chess champion Boris Spassky once expressed the thought that he would like to learn chess over again and this time learn it the right way.
The human effort to learn chess is shaped in part by its cold mathematical nature as an intrinsically difficult problem: definitive evaluation of a given position requires it be solved to all possible terminal positions.
Thus it makes sense to start learning chess at the ending. There’s the purely human consideration that it’s easier to internalize the powers of the pieces when seeing them act in solo or in small groups on an open board among reduced material. And then there’s the austere science of converting a position step by step to the final win, working back towards to the midgame in one’s studies.
General trends in teaching chess seem most askew from the game theory realities in the study of the openings.
The older notion of the openings as narrow trails mapped out in a huge, dark forest doesn’t apply to modern times. With and without the aid of computers chessplayers have broadened the ground being regularly trampled until chess is less like a mysterious forest than an overloved and over-visited public park. Opening positions are revealed to be a very broad spectrum of related positions shading off this way and that, like the iconic Hindu picture of the Transfiguration of Krishna when he is revealed as all deities fading off to the vanishing point.
Openings used to be said to “transpose”, which is fatuous, since a move order is not headed to a specific place on the strength of possessing a name assigned to the first few half-moves on the basis of some historical personage, event, or even joke among chessplayers. There are simply many paths to similar or identical positions. There certainly are an amazing number of move orders to get to the tabiya we call the Maroczy Bind, paths arising in openings as varied (in the view of our lame classification schemes) as the Sicilian, the Ruy Lopez, and the Modern. An analogous band of converging tabiyat is clustered towards the center of the Neo-Grünfeld spectrum.
Reading criticism of World Champion Carlsen’s handling of the problem of opening study suggests strongly that he takes much this view and doesn’t concern himself with classification as much as absorbing the spectrum.
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A few days ago I was watching a game played between Neiksans (2567) and Geir Sune (2453). On move number 20 white sacrificed his bishop for 2 pawns on a6. After a long thought I came to the conclusion that white wanted to create a pawn mass on the ‘b’ and ‘c’ files. Then on move 28 Black played …Rb8 and white rejected the exchange of rooks and played Rxf7. At first glance it looks dubious to exchange the last major and active piece, but White had very logical reasons for not exchanging the rook.
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So why did White not exchange the rook?
1) It is last major piece on the board.
2) The rook is very active on 7th rank and has targets.
Eventually game was ended in a draw after 64 moves.
I was watching this game on
and doing a ‘guess the move’ exercise (this is exciting and fun while doing it with a live game). I toyed with the idea of playing Rxb8 on move 29 with following considerations:
1) Black Knight on g3 is awkwardly placed so you can get tempo with e4 after Rxb8.
2) With the e4 lever you can create a strong pawn mass.
3) Black’s Rook is not participating in the main battle area.
Out of curiosity I checked my analysis with Fritz, where the engine didn’t like my moves at first, but after few moves it liked White’s position. I will not publish my analysis here as I want readers to do it on their own.
Lessons Learned
1) Like any tactical shot, the strength of a pawn mass must be analysed thoroughly.
2) A pawn mass is very powerful if it creates space for you and cramps opponent position, creates a mating net or the opponent has difficulty in bringing his pieces or additional piece into the action because of it.
This lesson is ba spend some more time on a move which looks dubious and illogical at first glance. Often you will find the logic in it after further study.
Ashvin Chauhan
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Here’s a nice documentary featuring interviews of different players. Among the featured players are Anatoly Karpov, Levon Aronian, Alexandra Kosteniuk and Elizabeth Paehtz.
Nigel Davies
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What training materials I am using at present? And can I recommend them?
At present, I am working my way through the Steppenmethode Step 6 workbook and the three Yusupov orange books.
I can recommend them, because they provide a systematic coverage of most of what I need to know at my level.
But the training material which is good for you is the training material which exposes weaknesses in you. If you go through a book and think to yourself that you understand everything in that book, then you won’t have learned as much as a book which took you three or four attempts before you got what was being explained.
So what weaknesses in my game have my training materials found?
I am poor at positional play and poor at endgames that require exact calculation.
As an exercise, ask yourself ‘What weaknesses came to light while reading the last chess book I read?’
That will be an interesting exercise which should help you improve.
Steven Carr
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So we left you last time considering the Exchange Variation of the Ruy Lopez after the moves 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 4. Bxc6 dxc6 5.O-O. If Black, as he often will in lower level kiddie tournaments, plays a natural developing move such as Nf6 or Bc5 we can capture the pawn on e5 safely, and, if Black tries to get the pawn back we have an array of tactical weapons involving using our rook on the open e-file at our disposal.
The most popular moves, in order of frequency, are f6 and Bg4, followed at a considerable distance, by Qd6 and Bd6. Stronger players tend to prefer f6 and Qd6, while lower rated players are more likely to go for Bg4 or Bd6.
At this level you can usually get away with simple development but there’s one important thing you need to know. It’s a trap which happens quite often in kiddie chess: the ‘s much more respectable cousin.
After 5… Bg4 play continues 6. h3 (a natural move, and by far White’s most popular choice here) 6… h5 when White has to decide whether or not to take the bishop. Theory recommends 7. d3 when both sides have to calculate each move whether or not White can take the bishop. If instead 7. hxg4 hxg4 leaves White in trouble, and if he tries to save his knight with 8. Nxe5 he gets mated after 8… Qh4 9. f4 g3 (the key move, shutting the door on the white king).
Before we move on there’s one other thing you might want to demonstrate, at least to older kids. Look at this variation: 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 4. Bxc6 dxc6 5. d4 exd4 6. Qxd4 Qxd4 7. Nxd4. Now take everything off the board except the kings and pawns and play out the resulting pawn ending. Something like this might happen:
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This is worth explaining. White’s winning because he can always force a passed pawn. As long as he doesn’t undouble Black’s c-pawns his opponent will never be able to create a passed pawn. If you run an intermediate level class it’s well worth giving this sort of ending to your pupils. Get them to record their moves and see what happens. In my experience many players will fail to win with White because they play c4xb5 at some point.
This exercise will teach you a lot about doubled pawns: about when and why they can be a disadvantage. It will also teach you a lot about pawn endings. Most importantly, it will teach you how openings and endings are closely connected (even though both are even more closely connected to middle games).
I wouldn’t encourage kids to spend too long playing the exchange variation, though. One reason is that, if you teach them to play the exchange variation after 3… a6 they’ll also make the trade after other third moves, which you probably don’t want them to do. So at some point they’re going to have to move onto 4. Ba4 as well as considering how to meet Black’s most popular 3rd move alternatives.
But first, you might like to demonstrate a couple of famous games. Regular readers will know that I’m very big on teaching chess culture as well as just chess so it’s always a good idea to look at how some of the all-time greats handled the opening you’re learning.
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Richard James
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In my youth, I knew another chess player who was absolutely obsessed with the game. While I had my music and other interests, my friend was only interested in chess. As time passed, we saw him less and less. He preferred the company of his chess set to that of his friends. Eventually, we didn’t see him anymore. He became a recluse whose only ambition was to unlock the deep mysteries of our game. We completely lost touch and years later I heard that he had been committed to a mental health facility. While I seriously doubt that chess was the cause of his problems, his obsession with the game serves as a cautionary tale for those of us that love the game. Too much of anything can be unhealthy.
I’ll be the first to admit that I am a bit obsessed with chess, but its a healthy obsession. By healthy, I mean that I have other interests and, more importantly, I know when to take a break from my playing and studies. Its no secret that getting good at something requires practice. We build our chess knowledge base by studying the game and put our new found knowledge to the test on the chessboard. We find the balance between theory (study) and practice (playing) and improve our skill set. The serious student of the game sets aside a time each day for their studies. This students knows the limitation of their attention span and sets a realistic limit on how much time they spend hitting the books. Then there’s the all out student.
The all out student puts much of his or her free time into studying the game. They think that if thirty minutes a day of study produces a good deal of improvement over a year, then three hours a day will in turn lead to the same improvement in far less time. The problem with this is that the untrained mind can only concentrate for so long before it starts to lose focus and wander. Putting three hours a day into your chess studies sounds great but if your mind can only handle 30 minutes of complete focus, you’re actually wasting the other two and one half hours of your study time. Building your mental muscles is similar to building your body’s muscles, you increase your exercise regime slowly. Now there’s the obsessive student. The obsessive student lives only for chess.
The obsessive student ignores all else except for chess. The obsessive student gets up in the morning and studies/plays chess and then falls asleep at the chessboard 10 hours later, repeating the process again the following day. Chess consumes their every thought. While truly chess obsessed people are somewhat rare, they exist. Of course, there is a difference between someone who studies the game and goes on to become a Grandmaster and someone who is simply obsessed. However, even titled players have been known to take it too far. Bobby Fischer is an example of a titled player who was unhealthily obsessed with the game. Yet there was a trade off in the case of Fischer. He became one of the greatest chess players ever known, but paid a tragic price for his success.
I have thought a lot about why people become obsessed with chess, either a slight obsession in which the obsessed has outside interests or a full blown ’til death do you part’ obsession. I believe it has to do with unlocking the game’s mysteries. The one aspect of studying chess that keeps me going is the simple fact that the more I study, the more my game improves. The more my game improves, the greater my calculation skills. The greater my calculation skills, the better my combinations. Of course, better combinations lead to winning games. But what about the mysteries of chess?
When you first start playing chess, the entire game seems a mystery. However, as you diligently study the game, you start to unlock some of it’s mysteries. Of course, at the beginning of your training the mysteries revealed to you are small in stature, such as proper development during the opening. However, as your skill set improves, the mysteries that are revealed become deeper in nature. One such mystery is calculation. Beginners tend to calculate a single move at a time, their move, which isn’t much in the way of calculative skills. As they improve, they improve their calculative abilities and think in terms of “if I make this move, what is my opponent’s best response?” Now they’re calculating two moves into the future. As time passes, the beginner becomes an intermediate level player and can see three or four moves into the future. The now intermediate player goes back over a master level game that they didn’t understand as a beginner and suddenly it starts to make sense. Moves that baffled our beginner now become clear. This is an ‘unlocking the mystery’ moment.
There is a great natural high to making such a discovery. Sure, other players have made the same discovery during their studies. However, this discovery is new to the discoverer and often has the effect of driving them further into their studies. This is a good thing but too much of a good thing can be problematic. You should never drive yourself to study past the point of losing concentration. When your concentration is lost, time is wasted. You’ll also face the possibility of becoming burnt out which will destroy your game.
I have a textbook addictive personality so I have to be careful, be it in life or in chess. I could easily become a completely obsessed chess player. Fortunately, I balance my chess with other activities like playing music. I also don’t go overboard with my studies. I break my study time down to small increments of three, thirty minute segments, five days a week. Because I’m 54 years old, I don’t have the ability to concentrate for as long as I used to, with the exception of music. Rather than try and force myself into long study sessions, I break my sessions up into manageable blocks of time. I also am weary of becoming burnt out from too much chess so I take vacations from playing. Because I teach chess full time, I spend a great deal of time around the game. Sometimes, when I have a break of a few days to a week, I grab my binoculars, journal and go bird watching. Sometimes, I take a day off and play guitar. In fact, some of my best chess ideas have come to me while the playing guitar. The point is to know when to take a break. Not doing so can lead to terminal burn out. Take it slow and take it easy. That is a sure fire way to improve your game. Balance your studies with physical exercise. Speaking of games, here’s one to enjoy until next week!
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Hugh Patterson
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GM Davies suggested a recent game: . Cox, author of the chess book , resigns a Giuoco Pianissimo after 15 moves against an “unknown”.
After playing through this amusing miniature, I lightly opined to Davies that 5 &# is a lemon. 5 … a6 seems to do best in practice, e.g., 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Bc5 4. c3 Nf6 5. d3 a6 6. Bb3 Ba7 7. O-O d6 . “It’s not just about the opening,” replied the GM, “check with an engine and you’ll find some very serious tactical errors.”
Chess being intrinsically difficult, lacking a definitive solution short of exhaustive calculation, we employ heuristics, analytical rules for examining a position, to navigate the complexity. A heuristic is never absolute, merely, as the Zen koan has it, “a finger pointing at the moon”.
We call our educated guesswork strategy and use the word tactics when matters devolve to concrete calculation.
Yet the saying of chess is not the playing of chess. The somatic joy of the game is the sudden flash of insight,
that instance wherein you see .
Heuristics are merely a discipline as we try to polish our perception of the game.
Glad of the grandmaster’s advice, I plugged the game into Stockfish which confirmed my impression that Cox’s loss was a failure of perception more than one of calculation.
1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Bc5 4. c3 Nf6 5. d3 O-O (5 … a6!?) 6. b4
Stockfish would rather castle. White isn’t really threatening to win a pawn yet, after 6 … Be7 7. b5 Na5 8. Nxe5 d6 Black is okay.
6 … Be7 7. O-O d5
Stockfish likes 7 … a6 and so do I. Here we go a-thrusting.
8. exd5 Nxd5 9. Re1
Stockfish likes 9. b5 Na5 10. Bxd5 Qxd5 11. c4 Qd7 12. Nc3 for White.
Here’s where the perceptual failure really kicks in. Stockfish suggests the obvious 9 … Bf6.
10. h3 Bh5 11. b5 Na5 12. Rxe5
Now 12 … Nf6 tidies Black’s position, again obviously, but …
12 …
Bxf3 13. Qxf3
Stockfish thinks Black should play 13 … Nb6 eventually losing a pawn into a possibly drawn ending, but Cox completes his thrusting with an unsound combination.
Nxc3 14. Nxc3 Bf6
Stockfish suggests the fantastic 14 … Qd4 15. Rxe7 Qxc3 16. Bxf7+ Kh8 17. Qe2 Qxa1 18. Qb2 Qxb2 19. Bxb2 Rad8 20. Be5 c5 21. Be6 Rf6 22. Bc7 R3f8 23. Bxa5
15. Rd5 1-0
After 15 … Qe7 16. Bd2 it’s over.
Jacques Delaguerre
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