Mans.hu

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Improve my Chess – Update 9

December 27, 2021 by manshu Leave a Comment

This has been a really good year for my chess. My goal was to cross 2100 in Lichess Rapid ratings, and I was able to do that this year. I have felt and played well, and the balance of training and playing has been perfect.

I played one tournament this year and my USCF score remained unchanged because of an even score there.

At the end of the year here’s my stats:

  • USCF: 1576 was 1576
  • Lichess Rapid: 2163 was 1995
  • Lichess Classical: 2032 was 2008

I have only one goal in the 2022, and that is to finish completing all 5,000 plus puzzles from Lazlo Polgar’s tactics book.

Filed Under: Chess

Lightweight Project Plan Template

May 23, 2021 by manshu Leave a Comment

Here’s a lightweight project plan template I created to help with our cross country move. Feel free to use and enhance!

Filed Under: Business and Technology

Improve my Chess – Update 8

January 1, 2021 by manshu Leave a Comment

I have not written a chess improvement post for the last two years, and for good reason — I haven’t made much improvement! Here are my ratings compared to the previous post two years ago:

  • USCF: 1576 was 1452
  • Lichess Rapid: 1995 (No Rapid Rating)
  • Lichess Classical: 2008 was 1955

This is measly progress for two years, and although I have put in time, and taken lessons – I haven’t done enough studying to break the current plateau. My goal is to reach 2100 in 21, and to do this I need to put in a lot more hours in simply studying chess, and that’s my intention. Put in 5 to 10 hours of studying time every week, and play less, and when I do play – play long play games only.

Filed Under: Chess

Book Review: Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

December 4, 2020 by manshu Leave a Comment

I recently finished reading Grit by Angela Duckworth, and it is easily one of the best books I’ve read recently.

The biggest takeaway for me was that it is this thing called grit, and not talent that determines our success in life, and I loved this equation from the book that explains what this is all about:

EnCcnCMXEAI05gj

 

Chess analogies come easy to me so I’ll take one to explain the equation. About an year or so ago I saw this video embedded below where Danny Rensch puts a blindfold on and tells you what color a square on the board is, and moves the knight from one square to another in his head. Here’s the video below for all of you to understand what I’m talking about. Just watch it for a minute or so even if you are not into Chess to get a sense of what I’m talking about.


When I first saw this I thought well this is impossible for most people. That’s what I really thought – it seemed like some sort of a magic trick.

But then I thought I can at least memorize the co-ordinates and colors because that seems a little more doable, and I’ve in fact blogged about my CAGE even is white method that I came up with to do this and I found that not only was it doable it wasn’t as hard as I’d expected it to be.

So, if you think back to the first part of the equation there’s certain innate talent that you have for anything which was vizualization in this case, and you take that talent and multiply it with effort, and build a skill. Now in tournaments I see many 10 year olds who probably took a tenth of the time I took to learn the color of every square, but it doesn’t matter because you put more effort into it, and achieve the same skill level.

So, that’s the first part of the equation and my analogy. The second part is that the skill is a means to an end, so in my case I wanted to improve this visualization skill to improve my chess results. So, now you have this skill and you further multiply it with effort which is playing tournament games and applying this skill to get to achievement.

When I look at it this way – the equation makes total sense to me!

To take a business analogy – I am sure a lot of you have heard about the feedback sandwich where you provide feedback in the following manner:

  1. Positive
  2. Constructive
  3. Positive

Now I’ve known this method for more than 15 years but knowing is not doing, so in a way it takes very little talent to understand this skill, but it takes effort to practice and internalize it, and then when you use it over and over again it becomes second nature, and your achievement would be to become someone who’s good to providing constructive feedback to their colleagues.

So, while reading this book I made a note that I’ll be deliberate about providing feedback in this manner, and I’ve found that it has greatly helped internalize it because I looked at it in the form of this equation.

The idea above was the one that most resonated with me from this book, but there were several other things that I came across that I had read before that helped form a more integrated view of them in my mind. For example – Angela Duckworth mentions Martin Seligman early on in the book, and I do highly recommend Learned Optimism to anyone interested in positive psychology, and Tal Ben Shahar’s book (my review here) and lectures are a further resource on this as well.

Another interesting idea she mentions is Amy W’s job crafting which I came across earlier this year while reading either Prof. Ben Shahar or Shawn Achor and here’s a very nice video where she explains her idea.


All in all I really loved this book not only for its own idea but also for how it weaves together other ideas in the area of positive psychology and paints a comprehensive picture for you.

Filed Under: Books

Book Review: How to Reassess Your Chess: Chess Mastery Through Chess Imbalances

November 29, 2020 by manshu Leave a Comment

HTRYC (How to Reassess Your Chess) is widely regarded as a modern classic, and is one of the best books on positional imbalances available to amateurs. I have had this book for about two years now, and I couldn’t get through it in my first attempt of reading it. I found the material too hard, and was just not able to get through the chapters when I first started reading it.

This time around though not only was I able to understand the concepts I really enjoyed reading the book as well. So much so that while reading the book I much preferred reading the book to playing chess!

 

One of the revelations for me has been that positional skills are a lot easier to learn than I always thought them to be. I’ve always looked at positional chess as somewhat mysterious and enigmatic, and thought that this is for players at the very highest levels, and is not so easily understood by amateurs. However, the book proves that this is not true, and in fact towards the end Silman himself states the following:

I tend to place very high level calculation under the umbrella of “talent”, while positional skills are something everyone can learn and excel at.

So, how do you go about learning positional skills and excelling in them?

By understanding imbalances.

Silman defines imbalance as any significant difference in the two respective positions, and the book details out the following imbalances:

  1. Material
  2. Control of a weak square
  3. Pawn Structure
  4. Superior Minor Piece
  5. Control of a key file
  6. Initiative
  7. King Safety
  8. Space
  9. Lead in development
  10. Statics vs Dynamics

I have listed down the imbalances in the order that I understand them and understanding and practicing these imbalances have greatly helped my game. This is a great book that I would very highly recommend to all players.

Filed Under: Books, Chess

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