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Top 10 Health Benefits of Chess By  Health Fitness Revolution   |   0 Comment Health Fitness Revolution Often known as a game for the intellectually gifted, chess is the best sport to exercise the most important organ in our bodies: the brain. While Chess Grandmaster Bobby Fischer made it popular in the 1950s and 1960s, the game is still widely played around the world today among participants of all ages, from the young to the elderly. The game of chess might not help you build your biceps or tone your abs, but your lifelong mental health can certainly benefit from it. And a sexy and beautiful mind is one of the best assets you can show off! Here are the Top 10 Health Benefits of Chess: Promotes brain growth:  Games like chess that challenge the brain actually stimulate the growth of dendrites, the bodies that send out signals from the brain’s neuron cells. With more dendrites, neural communication within the brain improves and becomes faster. Think of your brain like a

An interesting article in Chesscafe that caught my eye. Requirements for Training Exercises:  by   Mark Dvoretsky Now let's talk about the requirements that examples used in training should meet. It is essential that the exercises should be interesting, that the solutions that are found (or even not found!) should give pleasure, and that they should be remembered for a long time, provoking a desire to keep studying. Difficulty of solving. You should not choose problems that are either too easy or extremely difficult – here it is important to use moderation. Sometimes it makes sense to use exercises of increased complexity, but the difficulties should not be purely analytical ones. Only the pleasure received from examining a subtle and beautiful solution can compensate for annoyance at not finding the solution. Necessity and uniqueness of the solution. Here are some examples, taken from various collections of exercises, that did not seem very successful to me. St

C hess tournament preparation, whether at the junior, local or world level is always a nerve wrecking activity. So you’ve been  studying  and playing a lot of practice games. You register for the next local tournament, take it easy on Friday night, sleep well, and even arrive 20 minutes early at the tournament hall to make sure you´re comfortable and everything is set. The time comes to sit down and play, and you literally fall apart at the board and get destroyed in 13 moves. Where did it all go wrong? CALM YOUR NERVES! Chess, above all, is a game of nerves. You can study all you want, but if you can’t control yourself at the board – you´re screwed. Learning to be calm & collected is vital for chess tournament preparation. Make sure you take a deep breath and chill out. Sometimes I like to close my eyes at the beginning of a game, even if the clock is ticking, and completely clear my mind and remind myself that I am there to do one thing – Win). So, maintain composure at

Isn’t that the big problem you have with calculation – trying to calculate everything in case you missed something? Imagine you could accurately calculate as many variations as you want… Ok, stop imagining that because it is just not humanly possible to calculate thousands of variations, nevermind millions. You need an effective way to  cut down on the amount moves  you have to calculate. There are only  3 kind of moves  which you should always calculate carefully: Checks Captures Threats (a move that carries a threat – attacking your piece or threatening a tactic) Checks, captures and threats are the 3 kind of moves which is essential to  calculate in every position ! And that goes not only for your moves, but also the responses of your opponent. So what to do when there are no checks, captures or threats in the position? Or what if you calculated all the checks, captures and threats and find nothing special about it? Strategy time. Finding a plan for the positi

As beginners, we are invariably warned that pawn grabbing in the opening is a cardinal sin. Indeed, what could be more incautious than throwing your development to the wind and setting yourself up for tactical calamity? Pawn grabbing usually stems from a short-sighted mentality outlined by GM Serper in his excellent article The Deadly Opening Sin: "Yeah, I know, don't worry, I will finish my development for sure, but first let me take the tasty little pawn that my opponent left unguarded." Frequently, a player will neglect his development in favor of material because he sees no forced tactical refutation, and simply assumes that he will find a way to neutralize his opponent's initiative. The fallacy of this approach was seared into my memory ten years ago: My opponent's incredibly disciplined and accurate play leads to a crucial point: when punishing a pawn-grabber, it is important to moderate your expectations. If there is no direct refutation, you should pa

Would you like to improve your chess? Use a good chess strategy to win your game.  On this page you can find some chess strategies that are worth knowing. What is Chess Strategy? The term chess strategy is often used as opposed to chess tactics.  Tactics, as you probably know, are merely combinations. They may be easy or very difficult, but they're always aimed at winning material (or delivering mate) and are very concrete. I consider chess tactics to be the basic building blocks to a chess game. You don't need much knowledge of chess strategy to be able to play a game. You just need to know the goal of the game (delivering mate) and how the pieces move and you're good to go. Chess strategy on the other hand, has to do with the evaluation of the chess position and the setting of goals and long-term plans. It is the overall decision making process. To find a winning strategy you need knowledge of tactics as well as positional uderstanding. Think of a gen

  After long and sometimes hard experience, I've come to the conclusion that the most effective pre-tournament preparation consists of sharpening and focusing what you are (or should be) doing for your longer-term training efforts.  This contrasts with the more common pre-tournament routine in which over the space of a week or two (at best) or a couple days (more often) players mostly spend time on openings and doing tactical drills, then put everything aside until the next tournament. This type of staccato and rushed approach resulted in little success for me as an adult player.  During the scholastic phase of my career, I played in tournaments quite often, so without really trying I had constant exposure to new chess concepts and practical lessons, even though my (self-taught) training was not systematic.  There's a lot to be said for simply playing a lot of longer time control games, which looking back on it now was probably my best chess improvement practice. Now wit

In your effort to improve in chess, how much time do you spend study? 3 hours? Four? Or perhaps chess improvement training has turned to a 'full time job' for you and you are now spending 8 hours a day? Whatever your answer, let me ask you: How much time do you devote to ACTUALLY play chess and apply what you have learned from your chess training? How many slow games do you play in a month or in a year to improve in chess? Unfortunately, for many amateur, the answer is: "Well, I haven't considered that at all. I'll play when the opportunity presents itself." Or they would say: "Why play slow games when the are internet chess playing sites where I can play blitz?" "Today's players, especially internet denizens, think that 30 minutes is a really long game!" said National Chess Master Dan Heisman. Well, guess what: 30 minutes a game is a quick speed for a chess game...NOT slow enough for you to apply what you have learned and play "R

From Lasker's Manual of Chess: "Let us assume that a master who follows a good method, say, the method of this book, strives to educate a young man ignorant of Chess to the level of one who, if conceded any odds, would surely come out the winner. How much time would the teacher need for this achievement? I think that I am correct in making the following calculation: 200 hours total: Rules of Play and Exercises: 5 hrs. Elementary Endings: 5 hrs. Some Openings: 10 hrs. Combination: 20 hrs. Position Play: 40 hrs. Play and Analysis: 120 hrs. "Even if the young man has no talent at all, by following the above course he would advance to the class specified. Compare with this possibility, the reality. In fact, there are a quarter of a million Chess amateurs who devote to Chess at least two hundred hours every year and of these only a thousand, after a lifetime of study, attain the end. Without losing myself in calculations, I believe I am safe in voicing the opinion tha

I have been playing chess for more than six decades now and know the most common mistakes by a player and how to overcome them. Here they are. Don’t play too fast unless you are playing a blitz game. Use your time wisely and don’t be impatient. Develop your pieces early and avoid moving them multiple times. Don’t neglect to castle. Don’t give up in controlling the center and never underestimate its importance. Avoid premature attacks and don’t expect that you can win the game in the opening. Do not rely on inferior moves by your opponent. Avoid making idle threats and useless checks. Develop your position first before grabbing the pawns offered. This is usually a trap. Don’t attack with only one piece. Make sure that your other pieces can join as early as possible. Do not exchange pawns and pieces unless the position calls for it. Do not create weaknesses in your position (knight forks, weak pawns, exposed king and holes in your structure). Do not lose material carelessly and