When I was a junior I played through many master games, in many cases guessing the moves. It helped me to become national Junior champion.
One suggested approach was not to take too long on the moves, say about 10 seconds or so. You could score correct guesses. If the move was totally unexpected, then it would be a good time to see if you could understand why the move was played. Every move should have a clear idea behind it. If you cannot see the idea, there is a learning opportunity there.
Some books contained similar exercises as well as some columns in magazines etc. The exercises here are a little different. Instead of having to look at all possible moves, you will be given between one and four choices. This is similar to a multiple choice exam. This makes the task easier than having to look at all moves and may mean you examine some moves you would not have normally considered.
How to Score
Chess rater consists of a collection of 20 old master chess games. You may simply play over the games for their own sake if you wish. To use this program to the fullest you will choose one of the games and play over them and take the role of the winning player. The winning side will always be playing up the board.For a number of opening moves you will not need to guess the move. The number will vary from game to game and will generally be between 8 and 12 moves (for each side).
After these opening moves have been played, you will then try and predict your players moves. Your choice will be selected from a number of candidate moves. In a few cases you will only have one move to choose from. In this case you shall get the correct answer. In most cases you will be presented with the maximum number of options which is 4. In same cases there will be 2 or 3 options.
If you guess correctly you will score points which will range from 1 to 6. This depends on the approximate complexity and difficulty of the move. If you score incorrectly you will not score for that move. Regardless of whether you are correct or not the correct move will be played. You can either write down or otherwise keep track of your total score and see what category you reach.
RATING
The score for each game will always be out of 50. Scores may vary from game to game so to get a consistent rating average your score over 10 games.These are based on the FIDE (The international chess federation) rating system developed by Professor Elo.
The rating of 2400+ is only an approximation of the strength needed to be an international master.
Play Like a World champion series
This similar series of books is based on the following World champions.- Steinitz
- Lasker
- Capablanca
- Alekhine
- Euwue
- Botvinnik
- Smyslov
- Tal
- Petrosian
- Spassky
- Fischer
- Karpov
- Kasparov
- Anand
- Kramnik
- Carlsen
Each book features a different world champion. How many of their moves can you guess?
- 91-100 2500+
- 81-90 2400 - 2499
- 71-80 2200 - 2399
- 61-70 2000 - 2199
- 51-60 1800 - 1999
- 41-50 1600 - 1799
- 31-40 1400 - 1599
- 21-30 1200 - 1399
- 11-20 1000 - 1199
- 0 -10 below 1000
Note that the total score is out of 100, unlike in Rate Your Chess and Rate Your chess 2 in which the score is out of 50.
The challenge is to increase your rating with each game!
Some time before creating this series there were some issues with the way I created chess diagrams in my books. Look Inside the Book would frequently split the boards and create gaps between the ranks. One of my readers pointed out that the diagrams in one of my books did not display correctly on his phone.
The way I was creating diagrams was to use tables in html. One advantage was that this led to small book files. This made them quicker to upload and download.
Another advantage was the Amazon delivery fee was minimal. The delivery fee is subtracted from the author's royalty.
Because of the issues with tables I decided to change the way I created tables. I went to some trouble to convert all my diagrams to image files. OK I wrote a program to do it. Did you think I would convert tens of thousands of diagrams manually?
Part of one of the diagrams is on the above book cover.
Unfortunately this caused the delivery fee to blow out in books with many diagrams. In many cases the royalty went to zero. A good example was what happened with my Rate Your Chess series of 2 books. Diagram numbers could not be reduced as there needed to be a diagram for each position a move was to be guessed in.
My solution was to split the 2 books into 4 moves while improving and adding text. And that is why there are 4 books instead of 2.
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