This week I came across an interesting variant on a training method I have used in the past, Alex Fishbein's 'post post-mortem'. Fishbein was the surprise winner of the US Senior Championship, so I listened to the podcast on how he did it. He listed a number of things that he felt might have helped him, including giving up his day job and being more active as a player than the other participants. Yet the thing that drew my attention was an analysis exercise he called the 'post post-mortem'.
Essentially this involved using pre-engine books with deep annotations, and then analyzing key positions without moving the pieces and trying to discover flaws in the author's analysis. This is reminiscent of Kotov's analysis exercise which I did extensively as a teenager, but the twist is that you are trying to find an error. With Paul Keres's games collection Fishbein reported finding errors around 50% of the time, with Mikhail Tal it was rather higher.
The first thing to point out that this is a really hard exercise, it's like sitting alongside some of the greatest players in history and trying to critique their thinking. On the other hand this difficulty, and the extent to which it will engage the mind, is exactly why it will be so effective, and especially for older players whose analytical ability may decline. I intend to try it, alongside my other training methods, time permitting.
Training Tournaments
This week's training tournaments are in the Queen's Gambit Accepted, featuring the lines with 1.d4 d5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.c4 dxc4 4.e3 Bg4 and 4...e6 5.Bxc4 c5 6.Qe2 a6, the Furman Variation. These lines both feature in the White 1.d4 Repertoire:
Sunday August 24th at 5pm UK Time: QGA with 4...Bg4
Sunday August 24th at 6.15pm UK Time: QGA Furman
Video Discounts
This week's discount is 40% off buying any of my four Analysis Training Courses, which provide material for a similar exercise to Fishbein's. The code is 'aug22to30', and they can be found at the following links:
Analysis Training 1
Analysis Training 2
Analysis Training 3
Analysis Training 4
Last week's discount was 40% off buying the frequently misunderstood area of Understanding Strategy and Planning, using the code 'aug15to23'. This series presents a systematic way of approaching these areas by learning how to play different pawn structures and the plans and ideas they contain.
My Upcoming Events
Earlier this week I emailed the organizers of the Tenerife tournament I was due to play in, only to find out that it has now been cancelled. It seems it was cancelled back in July, but for some reason I wasn't notified. Hopefully I will be refunded for my air fares, having spent almost £300 on them.
Anyway, my only scheduled event is now the Hull 4NCL Congress, but I'm mindful of continuing to play in order to avoid the reaccumilation of rust.
September 5-7: Hull 4NCL Congress
I'm a big fan of 4NCL Congresses because they are played in nice venues, they're invariably well organized and they offer free entry and accommodation to GMs. You can find details here:
Have a good weekend.
Nigel
