I was just letting my curiosity take me forward … In hindsight … it seems like I had this grand plan … But that’s not the case at all. I was just following my interests and the path unfolded in front of me.
-Marissa Neuman (cited in “The Passion Paradox”)
It's been quite a week. In fact so much has happened since INVISIBLE CHESS V it feels rather odd to speak of Magnus Carlsen for any reason other than The Unpleasantness In St Louis. Still, that's what I'm going to.
This week we'll have a few thoughts on the (soon to be former) Champ's interview with Lex Fridman before we get on to the exercises. These will again be King and pawn position, but a little more demanding than last time.
HOW TO TRAIN
Carlsen's Fridman interview was a real old-school chat equivalent of "classical chess". Two and a half hours long - back in the day that’s what they had for 40 moves each before an adjournment - and no breaks. Quite a change from the bullet/tik tok rhythm that is becoming the norm.
The bit that has really stayed with me the most was when Magnus started talking about his early training regime and how he never really got on with being set tasks - collections of exercises - to complete for homework. His coach, unnamed in the interview but I believe it was Simen Agdestein, quickly realised this and instead took another approach. "Pick a book that interests you", he would say, gesturing at the shelves, "and come back next time having read it". Carlsen was lucky that he hadn't been lumbered with a coach that insisted on rigorously training the joy of chess out of him.
It's on odd thing to say, maybe, for somebody who is 60% through a course of 'telling folks what to do", but there's nothing wrong at all with going off piste. I truly believe that blindfold/visualisation work can be good for our chess - and more importantly can be an enjoyable way of getting more chess into our days - but exactly how you do it isn't so important.
If you end up doing something else rather than my exercises this week, that's all well and good. Something from my @Unseenchesspod twitter account maybe, or one of Martin’s books. If that’s the route you’d choose I’d go for Blindfold Endgame Visualisation, but what about you? If you prefer studying openings then Martin’s second visualisation book is probably a better bet for you.
The main thing is to be sure to do something for five to ten minutes a day for five or six days of this week's seven.
This isn’t just some short-term hack to trick yourself into doing more work. As Stulberg and Magness put it,
… nearly all grand passions began as someone merely following their interests.
-The Passion Paradox
WEEK VI EXERCISES
This week's exercises are all about forcing a pawn through to the queening square ... or preventing your opponent from promoting. Again, it's all king and a single pawn against king, but this week things are less about a straight race. If you're not already familiar with the theory of these positions, it's worth looking it up.
Oh, and if you really want a challenge - rather than just stopping when the pawn queens (if it does) you can always try visualising all the way to mate with King and Queen against king
EXERCISE ONE
WHITE
Kd5; e6
BLACK
Kd8
White to play and win
EXERCISE TWO
WHITE
Ke2
BLACK
Ke4; e3
White to play and draw
EXERCISE THREE
WHITE
Kg5; e6
BLACK
Kg7
White to play and win
EXERCISE FOUR
WHITE
Ka5; c6
BLACK
Kd8
White to play and win
EXERCISE FIVE
WHITE:
Ka5; c6
BLACK
Ka8
White to play and win
EXERCISE SIX
WHITE
Ke6; f5
BLACK
Kf8
White to play and win
NEXT WEEK
Next week alongside the week 7 exercises we'll have a few thoughts from comedian Stewart Lee on performing shows in his 50s compared to when he started out three decades ago and what is probably the most important technique to master when you're developing your visualisation skills.
Have a good week everybody.