Introduction

At the outset, I submit that I do not feel qualified to write about a vast, intricate, and at the same time essential subject like improvement in chess calculation skills. That I even attempted such an exercise is motivated by the following reasons. As a chess coach, I have realised that in this critical aspect of chess, many players struggle a lot to make significant progress. I have worked with many talented young players and many grandmasters over the last two decades. I have seen first-hand how these strong players made progress in their analytical skills in general and their calculation skills in particular. I hope this book will act as a medium to share the knowledge and experience I acquired with a larger audience.

This book is written more by an experienced and reasonably successful chess coach than by an author. English, not being my mother tongue, is something I learned poorly at school! So, there could be many places where the choice of words may not be appropriate or correct. Forgive me for any mistakes related to language/grammar. I have tried my best to convey my thoughts as well as I could.

During my days as a player (effectively, my playing days were from 1989-2008), I faced many practical problems related to different aspects of the game. Some of my chief concerns were: how to improve my calculation skills, endgame technique, positional understanding, building an opening repertoire, etc. Chess improvement is a journey from ‘where we are’ to ‘where we should be’, with its inherent challenges.

Until 1998 or so, we (my generation of players in India) did not have access to good chess books, computers, and coaches. Most of the solutions we came up with were mainly by trial and error and from personal experience. Such an approach to improvement had its virtues and shortcomings.

Subsequently, when I started reading chess books by acclaimed authors, initially I felt a world of information was thrown open to me. I could perceive things differently than earlier. I thought I had access to everything I needed to solve my doubts and problems. I am very thankful to all the great authors who have enriched my chess education. It felt as if becoming a stronger player was just a matter of time and hard work.

But with time, I also realised that there are a few critical areas where the books did not venture into with full conviction. One primarily ignored area was how to learn and acquire the necessary skills in chess education: the practical difficulties a player faces while trying to learn different aspects of the game, the reasons for such problems, and the methods to overcome them. A player must successfully navigate many psychological battles to convert the knowledge he has acquired by reading a book into a practical skill to apply in his games.

Let me explain with an example. We can read in many books that ‘we should develop our pieces quickly in the opening’. They give instances where one side ignores the development of pieces and is rightly punished for doing so. But despite reading or being taught all these principles with examples, I have seen in practice that most amateurs fail to develop their pieces properly. I have seen many instances where players rated up to even 2400 level make this kind of ‘beginner’s mistake’. Why does this happen?

The chess player is being influenced from two different directions all the time during a game. On one side is the player’s own biases, prejudices, personality, fears, convictions, likes, dislikes, and belief systems. To put it in another way, his very nature. On the other side, he is being influenced by the chess principles, the knowledge acquired from books, typical reactions acquired through personal experience, and the demands of the position on the board.

In other words, a player has to constantly choose between what he wants to do and what he has been told/taught/learning to do. Every chess player will have his own natural way of doing things. The chess principles guide us on how to do things in the correct way. If the chess principles do not conflict with the nature of the player, the player is able to absorb those principles and apply them effectively in his games.

If the chess principles teach things that run contrary to the nature of the player, the player finds it very difficult to accept those principles and apply them in his games. Whenever there is a contradiction between the chess principles and the player’s nature, the player usually chooses to rely on what his instincts tell him to do rather than the chess principles. Over time, this becomes his nature and his weakness.

Ideally, a chess player should combine his instinct, reactions, and manner of thinking with his skills acquired through training and experience to deliver what is required by the position. Some things come to us naturally, and other things we have to learn by modifying our ways of looking and thinking about things. Many players remain loyal slaves to the habits they formed during the early stages of their chess career and, as a result, find making progress in chess a daunting task.

At times, the right thing to do in a position will be exactly opposite to what we would want to do. For example, the situation may demand that the player exchange the queens and go into an endgame with a slight advantage that needs to be nursed and converted into a win after patient play. But the player could have an aggressive nature in chess, and might want to keep the queens on the board and play in the middlegame. Some players may even consider the endgame phase of chess to be tedious and not to their liking. Such players may try to keep the queens on the board and avoid the endgame altogether.

In this book, I have tried to cover important instructions and examples about calculation, and a chapter is allotted to general chess improvement suggestions covering a wide variety of topics. An honest attempt has been made at sharing the training methods I use with my students to improve their calculation skills over the last two decades.

Happy learning!

RB Ramesh

Chennai, March 2022