Very nice. So many tactical motifs to be learned just from this game. I found the lines very entertaining and refreshing and it should be very good for players looking to learn tactics to watch this video and then re-watch it!!

Good job Steve!

Thanks again. I just want to give back to the community as I feel I am getting more from it than I am giving! I enjoy watching your games and those of Curtains as well, so keep them coming, please.

Also having Dennis Monokroussos doing videos here is a very nice touch. I used to watch his vids on Chess.FM and always found them entertaining and informative.

enjoyed it. nice explanations of the tactics.

Excellent video! Thanks very much :) The visualization techniques seem especially useful for advancing for someone at my level (1700). I'll be doing some this week. I was wondering too if perhaps you could recommend a very good Combinations book that you've used in the past? Thanks!

"I was wondering too if perhaps you could recommend a very good Combinations book that you've used in the past?"

It is so good to hear from someone living in Paris - my favorite city in the world! I've played there a few times but mostly vacationed there while living in Europe.

Yes, at 1700 I think that the exercises I mentioned in the video would do you very well. As a matter of fact, I was around 1750-1800 when I decided to do it.

I would look for a book that is only of positions, not composed chess problems, but positions from actual games. Eric Schiller has a book called "The Big Book Of Combinations". Normally I would not recommend books he has done, but in this case it would be a good tool.

How I approached the 'quiz' is I started on page one, diagram one. I wrote down the first move that came to mind. I would also write next to the answer 'O' for open, 'C' for closed and 'S' for semi-open. Do this on a separate piece of paper. I would allow myself just a few seconds, no more than 5 seconds, for each problem. After you've done about 50-75 problems, check the answers.

Remember that this is not a quiz to see how smart you are, that's not the point. What you are going to do is see in what 'type' of position you get the most correct and the most wrong. What you are doing is basically giving yourself a test on 'Pattern Recognition'. If you do well in closed positions then you are good with that type of 'Pattern', if you are good in open positions, then you are recognizing those types of pattens.

Once you have determined your strengths and weaknesses you can 1) hone your opening repetoire to fit your strengths and 2) study games in the style where you showed some lack of understanding. This will make you an well rounded chess player.

By the way, this applies to players of all strengths. At higher levels you opponent will try and drag you into some open positions, especially if your opponent has access to your games from a database. For example, I love to play the White side of the French Defense if any of the more closed lines show up on the board. If Black ever needs to make a break with ...f7-f6 I am already happy with White's game. If he keeps things closed as in the 'Attack With The Heavy Pieces' video, I am again happy. If he steers towards the Rubenstein lines, I am less comfortable. However, since I know this weakness, I will tend to take my time and play more carefully.

In looking back over my games I have been scoring 76.9% and that would be phenominal if my losses were not to some lower rated players (oops, there go those rating points again). For about 6 months I completely changed my opening repetoire and opened with 1.d4, I still scored about 75%, so I am convinced that it's not the opening but the understanding of position patterns.

Zibbit joked that my style almost makes him want to change his style. That is indeed a nice comment, but I know of several very strong players who did the quiz mentioned here and actually did change their style, with some success I might add!

One last thing about this quiz system, do it periodically, say every year or two. A person's style changes as their understanding of the game changes. I have now grown more comfortable in completely closed games, something that was not the case just two years ago.

Please give this a try and let me know your progress.

Thanks Steve, I enjoyed the video a lot, but unfortunately I have a problem with girls prancing around in bikinis too :)

Haha!

I just have to relate a true story here about girls in bikinis.

A local FM was playing at a tournament at the University of Arizona that happened to be near the heavily female populated swimming pool. Now, my dear friend had managed to play most of the tournament without being distracted. During one of the rounds these two stunning beauties walked into the playing hall, clad only in thong bikinis. They came over to my friends table and stood there and watched, all of the players watched too, they watched my friend turn a bright red (he is fair skinned with red hair, so was actually glowing bright red) After several minutes he got up while it was his turn to move and went to splash water in his face. He came back and to his fortune they were gone. However, they showed back up with another attractive co-ed and he proceeded to severly butcher up the endgame he was in.

All of the players thought that if those girls would have sat down to play that they would have gone undefeated, but the games would probably last for many hours. My thought would have been a quick draw and drinks to analyze the, ahem, game.

So, blindfold or not, they are distracting... but not unwelcome! :D

Guess this was off-topic for the room, but what the heck.

Hi Everyone!

I have made a ton of videos, over 185 of them, and it's easy to lose track. So I have made a link to http://www.yetmanbrothers.com/Videos%20 ... ctures.htm so you can look up the videos I have done in the past. This will make navigating my videos much easier and there is often a short narrative with each video, so if you are looking for one that you can't remember so well, this may also help.

I will be posting this message to all my video threads.

Thank you for your patronage!