Three years ago I was just developing a habit of studying and I really didn't know what to study. I had never put any real effort into my game. I had been stuck at 1600 for three years although I was probably already stronger than this. The reason that I lost interest in chess in the later years of high school was mostly that I did not want to work at it. I wanted to be good, but I did not have the discipline to make it happen. This is one of my major shortfalls, I am so used to things coming easily to me that when I am faced with a challenge I often do not step up to the plate. I also had no guidance, no one to tell me what to read, what games to look at, I was on my own. So coming off my hiatus I crafted a repertoire and studied openings, just as I had done in high school. I also studied endings every once in a while cause people say you're supposed to. But I had never really given any thought to just looking at annotated games....

Of course I had seen a lot of games, but when I was studying I would very rarely look at annotated games. When I was looking at annotated games the annotations hardly made any sense. I was looking at more recent games and the themes were too advanced for me. The opening was way over my head, then the middlegame would feature comments that seemed like Chinese, and annotations in the endgame were simply exhausting. Then I came across Capablanca's Best Chess Endings by Chernev. I studied this book almost exclusively during the first half of 2005 and my rating went up 200 points over the summer (which was my chess season during college). As I read this book, I found themes that I could understand. In Capablanca's time there was no advanced opening theory, no exchange sac, no Chinese, just pure simple chess. Exchange the pieces at the right time in the right place and convert. So simple, so beautiful. My tendencies to attempt to create brilliancies because I had seen Tal and Fischer and Kasparov do it went away and I just played simple winning chess. I have a distinct attacking style, but there is nothing I like more than reaching a drawn endgame and outplaying my opponent. And I started to realize how to reach won endgames from the middlegame, and how to convert won endgames into full points. I realized that the sense of urgency in my play should be controlled and avoiding conflict can be useful. I was no longer trying to find holes in my opponents moves, I was finding holes in their positions.

After the summer when I was done with Capablanca I read Watson and all of a sudden everything made sense. I was unable to look at annotated games because I didn't understand them. It was not that Watson explained modern chess so well that I absorbed each individual concept and was able to put them into practice. It was that I realized that each individual concept was a product of the games of the masters of the past. Each concept had been introduced slowly through hundreds of games and to gain a full understanding I would have to turn to the past. I bought the Kasparov's My Great Predecessors, Volume 2 (I was done with Capablanca, time for the next era). This features the games of Euwe, Botvinnik, Smyslov, and Tal. I had never even heard Euwe, but from this book I gained a great appreciation for him. I knew my strategy was correct. I could understand the games of this time period. As 'new' ideas were introduced I was acquainted with them and studying became not a chore, but a compulsion. I sped through Euwe and arrived at my first chess hero, Mikhail Botvinnik.

If you had asked me my favorite player (or my opinion on the best of all time) before 2005 I would have said unhesitatingly Fischer. I was in love with the story of Fischer, but I knew very little about his chess. In fact I knew very little about chess history in general. When I started to read Botvinnik I fell in love. Botvinnik's play was so dominating, so methodical. In many of his games it seems as though his opponent is merely going through the motions and does not get any say whatsoever in the course or outcome of the game. After reading Kasparov's portion of Botvinnik I bought Botvinnik's self-annotated games and his analysis is so well thought out. It all made so much sense. I didn't feel as though any of the analysis was out of reach. To break such a scientific approach to the game new ideas were required and who better to introduce these ideas than Mikhail Tal. To fully appreciate Tal I think you have to read Tal's prose. He is such a talented writer, his evaluation of the position is so down to earth. He gives it to you straight. During this time I also read a lot of Fischer's My 60 Memorable Games, but I was going to wait until I reached the fourth volume of the Kasparov books before I performed a detailed analysis of Fischer.

Studying the Kasparov books seemed like such an accessible way to gain knowledge on the history and now I have finally reached the Fischer book. I am ready for the themes that Fischer imparted on the game. Not that I am not already familiar with them in many ways, but I think it is important to understand the source. I ended up skipping around a little bit because I was studying Karpov and also studying a lot of modern themes. But as far as my chess history goes, it is time to learn about Fischer.