Create your own Workflow - Part #3

Russell Sherwood  Sunday, February 20, 2022

We left off last time with the V6 Workflow and now look to enhance sections.

Workflow

V6

1. Get move to be played

2. Consult Opening Materials

3. Consult our Notes

4. Play through last few moves

5. Analyze Opponents Move

            5.1 Move as expected

            5.2 Move not as expected

6. Pivotal/Transitional Move?

7. Analyze move

            7.1 Opening

                   7.1.1 Analyze move with Engine

            7.2 Early Middle game

                   7.2.1 Analyze move with Engine

            7.3 Late Middle game

                   7.3.1 Analyze move with Engine

            7.4 Endgame

                    7.4.1 Analyze move with Engine

8. Blunder Check

9. Make Move

10. Update our Notes

Looking at “ Get move to be played”: Here we need to consider what game to be reviewed. There are a number of approaches utilized by players but the main ones are:

1. My Time Remaining
2. My Opponents Time Remaining
3. How long my clock has been running
4. How many moves have been played (Is the game still in Opening theory)
5. Moves to Time control
6. Psychological factors
7. A combination of above.

There is no right or wrong answer on this, but most players use a combination of these. Psychological factors may need a little explanation, but this includes the slow playing “insta-move players” or visa-versa.  What matters here is being clear on your approach and sticking to it – even if it is a combination of approaches!

Consulting Opening Moves is interesting in practice we can separate this stage into:

2.1 High Level Opening Texts

2.2 Opening Books

2.3 Opponents Opening Preferences & Methods

2.4 Specific Opening Preparation

High Level texts are chess books/videos and similar materials covering the opening you are playing/planning to play. Two issues are vital to consider here:

• That many opening treatises are totally unsuitable to the challenge of Correspondence Chess. As a rule, play through the lines suggested and see if the engines suggest different moves. If they do consider why the author did not consider this.
• The texts considered need to be fairly modern, otherwise lines suggested can have wholly incorrect assessments.

Opening Books: This will be covered in more depth in the Opening Books series but consideration needs to be made on the book or books you utilise.

Opponents Opening Preferences & Methods

This section is about understanding your opponent. This is done through many questions. A few examples:

• Does your opponent always play the same moves?
• Do these meet the current trend? 
• Do they tend to play the current trend? 
• Do they play mainline or off-beat openings? 
• Do they follow the Statistics, Book Line or the Engine’s evaluation?
• Do they seek/accept early draws? 
• Do they seek for 0.0 Evals or seek for active equality? 

From this, the player may attempt to predict an opponents move and utilize conditional moves. The more discerning player will utilize this approach to make decisions to move the game towards positions their opponent’s dislike and which make your strategy easier to apply and theirs harder.

Specific Opening Preparation

Here we are looking at Opening lines and ideas we have prepared, for which our opponent may not be familiar. This is a massive topic in itself but out aim here is to move our opponent onto unfamiliar territory, where little or no games have been played and the engine may lose its way. 

From examination of these steps – if we are in the opening phase we, we will now be far better informed in our choice of opening move.

Now our V7 Workflow becomes:

V7

1. Get move to be played
2. Time Management Strategy
3. Consult Opening Materials
   1. 2.1 High Level Opening Texts
   2. 2.2 Opening Books
   3. 2.3 Opponents Opening Preferences & Methods
   4. 2.4 Specific Opening Preparation
4. Consult our Notes
5. Play through last few moves
6. Analyze Opponents Move
   1. 5.1 Move as expected
   2. 5.2 Move not as expected
   3. Pivotal/Transitional Move?
7. Analyze move
8. 7.1 Opening
   1. 7.1.1 Analyze move with Engine
9. 7.2 Early Middle game
   1. 7.2.1 Analyze move with Engine
10. 7.3 Late Middle game
    1. 7.3.1 Analyze move with Engine
11. 7.4 Endgame
    1. 7.4.1 Analyze move with Engine
12. Blunder Check
13. Make Move
14. Update our Notes

Till the next time!