Sweden is now a regulated market, which means that as a player you can only play at casinos with a license. See all regulated casinos in Sweden by Mr casinova.
Candidate master Peter Zhdanov's column at Pogonina.com
What does it take to become a master? Pros who started playing chess competitively at early age and grew up to become GMs often look down at lower-rated people and claim that anyone can achieve the title of grandmaster given proper conditions and enough time. Meanwhile, amateurs usually overestimate the difficulty of getting a title and consider masters to be especially gifted and special.
While many books and blogs dwell on the subject of becoming better in chess, very few describe explicitly the training routine of an improving player. Most biographies just include obscure statements like X coached me, I worked hard, played there and there, my rating went upand there we go!. Now, my case is rather typical, you can probably relate to it: Im 24, a candidate master rated 2000+ FIDE, have a job, family (including a small baby), am studying for a PhD and have other commitments. People say that it is not possible to progress in such an environment, well-wishers predict that I will never make it to FM. The idea behind this column is to prove them wrong and share my experience, achievements and failures with you. We will be discussing everything related to improving in chess, and chess in general! Now, in part 1 of the story let me briefly recap my chess career as a player:
1990 my father, a world-class physicist, taught me how to play chess. It involved a lot of crying on my behalf (he was a tough opponent, so I kept losing game after game)
Early 1990s I learnt notation myself and started reading chess books and good old Soviet magazines
1996 attended a chess school in Sweden, won some local tournaments, participated in a national championship for kids (greatest impression playing a game, then finding out that it was for fun and losing the real one)
1999 won the schools chess championship in Canada, London (H.B.Beal)
2000 played in a few Russian events, started from 5th category (newcomers) and made it to 2nd grade in 3 events (only one draw along the way, other games won)
2001 participated in a Swiss open event and scored a miserable 0.5/9. That was a tough lesson!
2002 a few tournaments, and then 5/9 at the same event, 10 times more than last year!
2003 attended Professional Chess School (with coaches like IM Arseny Kargin, IM Vladislav Akselrod, IM Roman Popov, FM Andrei Kirchanov)
2004 got my first FIDE rating, 2038. Quit chess due to being too busy: a job, studies at the university, powerlifting, debates, etc.
2008 met WGM Natalia Pogonina and felt like I might return to chess
2009 5 years since my last competitive game, an attempt to return results in rating losses (down to 2002 FIDE)
2010 chess results are getting better, 2200 performances in two events, individual rating record 2049. Total number of FIDE-rated games played in my life 48.
Now, my goal is to make it to FM (2300+ FIDE) in 2 years. Quite ambitious, yet possible.
2. Written by
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on 18:24 17 2010 .
I think to become a master in chess, or anything else, one has to have a love and passion for what you're doing. I like to play chess, but my passion is for astrology and martial arts so I don't expect to master chess. Mostly I see chess as a fun way to train the mind; like, if we keep making the same reasoning mistake in chess, that flawed reasoning pattern will spill over into other things too; chess gives us the opportunity to see and correct these reasoning flaws, hopefully, to accelerate our progress in non-chess pursuits. Therefore, I feel for most of us, chess is a means on our long and winding road to mastery; while only those rare few who have the passion for chess is chess mastery the end of that road.
3. Written by on 19:08 17 2010 .
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4. Written by Peter on 20:37 17 2010 .
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@Guy Roberts Totally agree. The trick is that chess helps me get rid of some of the flaws in my personality (not reasoning), so I think this should be a good challenge.
5. Written by
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on 23:19 18 2010 .
Peter,
Right now the main reasoning flaw I am trying to correct through chess is; I see a few options, become biased towards them and not take the time to investigate all the other options. I see this as a very serious flaw in myself and to correct it I am doing two things. First, when doing chess puzzles, I started to write down the moves, branching off like a tree to investigate different lines of development. It gets complicated but doing this makes it easier for me to get into the habit of looking for more options.
And second, I apply a recent discovery in neuroscience about neurogenesis: http://bit.ly/5WeZes As you can see from the article; aerobic exercise will initiate the growth of new neurons in the part of the brain we use the most. Ive put a lot of thought in how to apply this to sports and in learning new skills; and I told other people about it.
Remember when Serena and Venus Williams used to space out and make a lot of errors, I emailed Serena telling her what she was doing wrong, that she was daydreaming while on the practice courts and thus directing neuron growth to the part of the brain involved in daydreaming, and that trained her mind to daydream during tournaments; I also sent her that link on neurogenesis and told her to stop daydreaming on the practice courts. She emailed back saying how much she appreciated the tip and that she did do a lot of daydreaming during practice. After I told her that her game change for the better, and Serena started talking about staying focused in the moment during her interviews. Now look at how focused the Williams sisters are, Serena won Wimbledon in straight sets! I can imagine the things Dinara Safina is daydreaming about during practices.
Anyway I talked about Serena here to illustrate how the knowledge of how aerobic exercise initiate growth of new neurons in the part of the brain we use the most can be used to prevent the behavior that develops bad habits, like daydreaming did for Serena as well as running 5K, like Alexandra Kosteniuk does just before practice, will help optimize the neural structure of the brain for chess. And yes, I told Alexandra about this too. I work out by perfecting a 1000 move martial art form just before I do brain work. Sorry I wrote so much. I find the implications of neurogenesis fascinating in how knowledge of it can be used to optimize the brain to make mastery of the impossible possible. Neural engineering is cool!
