The best way to practice chess is not playing chess. Playing chess is kiddie funsies time, but if you want to improve your play, the best practice is to play through a master game, guessing the winner’s moves as you go.
Cover the gamescore, play through the opening without guessing (trying to guess a master’s opening play will drive you crazy, and is not beneficial), start guessing around move 10 or 12 (sooner if an original position arises early) by playing the move on the board (so you’re committed to it), then uncovering the move actually played. If you guess right, pat yourself on the back, make the opponent’s move, guess again. If you guess wrong, ask yourself why the master’s move was different (this is why annotated games are best for this practice, because the annotator often explains things).
My old chess coach — a tough taskmaster — used to say that our goal was 80 percent correct guesses. 50 percent is easy — making recaptures and getting out of check gets you up to 50 percent. 75 percent is pretty good, but 80 percent is the goal. Call the difference between guessing 3 out of 4 and guessing 4 out of 5 as one mistake — one mistake in a real game is the difference between winning and drawing or drawing and losing.
Like I said, my chess coach was a tough one. I’ve managed 80 percent once in my life.
In my lesson with a student today, we tackled a game by the great grandmaster Keres. (Keres’ opponent, the English master Sir George A. Thomas, is best remembered for losing a miniature in which Edward Lasker walked the enemy king from one side of the board to the other.)
Keres was one of a few we think of as the best players never to win the world championship. Keres finished second in four straight candidates tournaments! The winners of those candidates tournaments earned a challenge to the world champion, and Keres finished second four times in a row.
A player of rare talent, Keres was perhaps the best writer among the top grandmasters (some would vote for Tal, players active in the 80s and 90s might vote for Timman; then there’s Andy Soltis, an outstanding journalist and grandmaster but not at the elite level). Keres’ notes to his selected best games are thorough and honest.
Karpov, the best player of his day (after Fischer, before Kasparov), said that Spassky (also the best player of his day) was remarkable for moves that combined attack and defense. I reckon I’m not up to the level of recognizing those in Spassky’s games, but Keres — WOW.
I’ll make an incorrect guess of a Keres move, then think “The master’s move does that. Oh, and that. Oh, and that, too.” Sometimes those multiple aspects are offensive and defensive.
When I was a teenager, my coach wanted me to do my Capablanca homework before anything else. I think nowadays, he’d be OK with me studying the games of other players.