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Supercharge Your Training with Solitaire Chess

Such exercises, involving analyzing and covering up the pages of the grandmasters notes, are very bene cial in perfecting the the
technique of analysis. If the reader will try it for himself, he will soon realize how e ectively it helps him improve.

Alexander Kotov in Think Like a Grandmaster

How would you like to have a master sitting next to you, giving you advice as you train? If you could learn what he thought of a position
and what variations he considered, would this be helpful to you?

It would be immensely helpful! One way to do this would be to take lessons from a titled player, but sometimes nancial limitations or
other restraints may limit our ability to take advantage of this excellent resource. However, we can get similar bene ts by playing Solitaire
Chess.

What is Solitaire Chess?

Solitaire Chess is a training method where you use an annotated game and playing the side of the winner, you decide which move you
would make in the situation aka Guess the Move. You see what move the master made, and move on to the next move. Once you are
nished with this game, you can compare your moves to that made of the master and study the di erences.

This is not an original training method. Kotov refers to a variation of this in his well-known class Think Like a Grandmaster. I rst learned
of it 20 years ago when taking a lesson from GM Greg Serper. He highly recommended it as the proper way to study a chess book.

Although it is a well known training method, I would venture to say it is not an often used one by amateur players. It can be both time
consuming and mentally taxing. Similarly, it can be hard on the ego as it can reveal how much more we have to learn about chess.

After reading this article, I hope you will be inspired to include it at least occasionally into your chess training regimen.

Bene ts

Solitaire Chess has a lot of bene ts to improving your chess:

It will help you understand how a master player thinks about chess.
By involving yourself emotionally and intellectually in the game as opposed to just reading the annotations you will have a
deeper understanding of the positions and ideas.
Because you are actively engaging the material, your retention of the concepts will be greater.
It will help you correct your errors in thinking or conceptions of the game as the master consults with you on how to look at the
positions.

How to Play Solitaire Chess

Here are the steps I use and recommend to play and learn from Solitaire Chess:

1. Choose your source game. I recommend a well annotated game that has a lot of text explanations in addition to move variations.
You can choose the source game according to you needs. For example, if you want to learn how to be a better attacker, you can use
 annotated games by Tal or Shirov (both of whom have written very well annotated collections of their games). Similarly, if you want
to learn more about positional or endgame play, you can study the games of Karpov or Capablanca.
2. Play out the rst 10-12 moves. Unless you are studying games from an opening within your repertoire, I recommend playing out
the rst 10-12 moves to get you into the early middlegame (you can pick a di erent point if, for example, you are focusing on
studying the endgame). What I like to do is nd the game in a database on my computer and play it out (programs like Chessbase
have functions where you can play out the moves without seeing the game score).
3. Think about the positions and record what move you would make for the winner. Once you nd your starting point, try to
play the position as if it is a tournament game playing the side of the winner. Even if I have the position on the computer, I often
set up a physical board. If you often play at a particular time control, you can time yourself as well. To record the move, I like using a
composition notebook and I will often write quick notes about what variations I considered or anything else that will help me
remember what I was thinking for reviewing later.
4. Play through the rest of the game. After you decide on your move, look at what was actually played in the game. If you guessed
correctly, great! If you didnt, just note the move and play the next one. You want to get through the entire game and then
afterwards analyze it. On database programs like Chessbase or SCID, you can enter the move your move as a variation so you can
look at it later.
5. Review the Game. Once youve completed the game, you can then review the annotations made by the author, comparing your
thoughts and variations to those of the author. By the way, although it is helpful to use games annotated by the actual winner of the
game, any well-annotated game will be helpful. Lets discuss this step in a little more detail.

Post-Mortem

Like your own games, you should do a post-mortem analysis of your Solitaire Chess games. here are a few of the key areas you should
focus on:

Moves where you deviated from the masters play, but had the right idea . Lets assume for now that for the most part, the
masters moves will be the correct move to make. In this particular case, try to nd out why. Perhaps it is a tactical nuance your
move allows that the text avoids. If you had the right idea, then analyzing why the master chose di erently will be very bene cial to
your calculation and assessment skills.
Moves where you deviated from the masters play, but had the wrong plan. In these cases, try to understand why the masters
plan is more correct than yours. Many well-annotated games will explain both the strategic and tactical reasons behind their moves
(at least at major points) and these explanations will help guide the way.
Blunders. Of course, sometimes the move you make will lose by tactical means. When this happens, try to understand why. Was it
because you overlooked a tactical shot several moves away? Was it because you were inattentive? The answer to why is critical to
your improvement. Solitaire Chess as opposed to just solving tactical problems (which is very useful as well) helps train you not just
to nd tactical shots from your point of view, but also to avoid walking into them.
Variations within the annotations that you did not consider. When an annotator notes a particular variation (especially if the
author is the player of the game), it is important to note whether or not you considered this particular line of play in your Solitaire
Chess game. If you did (and you played the inferior move), try to understand why the author evaluated the particular line the way
he did. If you didnt consider it, you may want to think about why that was. Perhaps you did not consider enough candidate moves,
or perhaps you stumbled upon the best move early in your calculations. A good annotator doesnt include variations of little
importance, so understanding the di erence between the authors line of thinking and your own will help guide your future
analyses.

I wanted to share a recent Solitaire Chess example with you. This particular game was Capablancas rst encounter against the Marshall
Gambit against none other than Frank Marshall. In my Solitaire Chess game, I got Whites 14th move wrong, but got a good lesson in
defense and tactics from Capa.
 << < + > >>

Capablanca, J.R. 1918.10.23

Marshall, Frank New York
1-0

14. Qf3! [14. hg4 When I played through this particular game, I chose this during Solitaire Chess. Fortunately, Capablanca showed me
through the following variations why this doesn't work. 14... Qh4 1 5 . g3 (1 5 . Qf3 Bh2 1 6 . Kf1 Bg4 1 7 . g3 Qh3 1 8 . Qg2 Qh5
Threatening ...Bh3.) 15... Bg3 16. fg3 Qg3 17. Kf1 Bg4] 14... Qh4 15. d4 Nf2 16. Re2 [16. Qf2 Bh2 17. Kf1 Bg3 18. Qd2 Bh3 19. gh3
Qh3 20. Qg2 Qg2 21. Kg2 Be1] 16... Bg4 17. hg4 Bh2 18. Kf1 Bg3 19. Rf2 Qh1 20. Ke2 Bf2 21. Bd2! Setting up a "blocker" for the
king. 21... Bh4 22. Qh3! Rae8 23. Kd3 Qf1 24. Kc2 Bf2 25. Qf3 Qg1 26. Bd5 c5 27. dc5 Bc5 28. b4 Bd6 29. a4! Breaking open the a-
file to activate his rook. 29... a5 30. ab5 ab4 31. Ra6 bc3 32. Nc3 Bb4 33. b6 Bc3 34. Bc3 h6 35. b7 Re3 36. Bf7 Rf7 [36... Kh7
37. Qf5 Kh8 (37... g6 38. Qg6#) 38. Rh6#] 37. b8Q Kh7 38. Rh6! If 38...Kxh6 then 39.Qh8+ Kg6 (or 39...Kg5) 40. Qh5#

Final Thoughts

Solitaire Chess is an incredible way to improve your chess. In my opinion, it is the next best thing to having a personal chess coach. You
can have the world champions such as Botvinnik, Alekhine, or Tal as your consultant and guide through their greatest games, or you can
have a specialist on a speci c opening teach you the key lines using illustrative games. As you can see, only your imagination limits how
you can use this powerful tool.

Solitaire Chess is time consuming and can be intellectually and emotionally taxing, but it is through this struggle that we grow. This also
brings other bene ts. Because it is hard to do, not many players will do it which will give you an advantage if you do. Embrace the
struggle and supercharge your chess training.

Bryan Castro

This entry was posted in Articles, Bryan Castro on May 20, 2016 by Bryan Castro.

About Bryan Castro

Bryan Castro is a businessman and writer from Bu alo, NY. When he's not spending time with his family or working, he can be found playing
chess or practicing martial arts. He combines his interests of personal development and chess on his site Better Chess Training
(betterchesstraining.com).
View all posts by Bryan Castro

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