Chris Wainscott (center) at the 2013 Sinquefield Cup with (l-r) Hikaru Nakamura, Lev Aronian, Magnus Carlsen, and Gata Kamsky. BEYOND THE BASICS
In a special feature-length version of GM Lev Alburt’s “Back to Basics” column, a class player sets the goal of reaching master. Providing his thoughts on the author’s methods and journey, Alburt offers grandmaster perspective valuable for any player trying to improve. By CHRIS WAINSCOTT with commentary by GM LEV ALBURT
In this special feature-length edition of GM Lev Alburt’s “Back to Basics” column, author Chris Wainscott details his goal of rising from class player to master level. This is his starting point: He studies chess about 10-15 hours per week. When he solves problems, he usually solves one or two out of 10. He plays about 10 games a month (either Game/60 or Game/100 time control). He meets with his coach once every two weeks for two hours and they analyze his games and the coach’s games. GM Lev Alburt’s comments are in italics.
B
ack when I was in high school and was first taking chess seriously I would
always see people come in to the chess club who were returning to the game after an absence of 15 or 20 years. I never understood this because to me chess was something so beautiful and majestic that I couldn’t imagine ever walking away. In March of 1992 I was on top of the
world. I was 19 years old and had just gone 4-0 and won my first tournament, raising my rating to an all-time high of 1526. I assumed that my game would continue to improve rapidly. It would only be a matter of time before I became a master! 19 years then passed before I played my next game.
28 January 2014 | Chess Life In January of 2011 I made my come -
back. During the preceding 19 years I had played perhaps as many as five skittles games. When I stopped playing I complete - ly stopped playing. After playing one rated game as a house
player (losing to an opponent rated 1199) I played in my first tournament. I played in the Reserve section and somehow went 5-0 and won that as well! First tournament in almost 20 years and I picked up right where I left off! I was unstoppable! Well … not so fast. Chess results fluctuate, often for no
apparent reason; so don’t overreact. Rather, after 5-0, “it seems my real chess potential is higher than I thought; let’s work hard to
fully realize it.” And, after failures: “let’s learn from mistakes.” In both cases—the common key—hard but enthusiastic work. As I started to get back in to the habit
of studying and working towards improving my game there were some things that immediately became obvious to me. The biggest was how technology had changed the game. Back in the early ’90s I built my games database by going to the library and hand copying games out of whatever chess books they had. I had read that this was something that Paul Keres did, and so I figured if it was good enough for Keres it was good enough for Wainscott. Now you have millions of games at your fingertips in the latest
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