Study of Classic Games

Our old friend Likes Forests recently posted on the Mayet-Anderssen game which I annotated a year or so ago. I must say the annotations are more thorough and pointed to some lines that white could of played which I didn't consider. If you are curious, My initial post is found here which discusses the GM-Ram methodology and for ease of viewing I reposted my annotations found here. This is the first game in the book GM-RAM. I hope Likes Forest continues with this as I would enjoy reading this annotation on future games especially those games covered in GM-RAM.



LF asked me yesterday how long did I take to study this game. I did spend a significant time over a week or two studying it. I did memorize it and was able to play it in my mind completely. The GM-Ram Methodology suggest that one memorizes all 59 games. Well for me that is not going to happen. My buffer is too small and multiple games memorized tend to mix together. At various times I have memorized the Opera game, Evergreen Game, Immortal Game, the Double Rook Sac Game of Euwe-Reti and others. However I don't think I ever had more than one game I could replicate at one time. At this point I don't think I am holding on to any of them.......



You may ask the bigger questions



* Is Studying GM Games a good way to improve ones chess ?



* What Games should one study ?



I'll start off my saying that if I did things only to improve I would have quit blogging and studying chess a long time ago. I have seen improvement but certainly not significant or consistently enough to merit all this time. If I cared greater about my rating I would be doing Ct-art now instead of blogging.... I do tend to improve after studying deeply annotated games and the line in my play tend to get a little sharper and interesting.




I do however enjoy studying the games that are generally recognized by the chess community to be classic games. I am interested in the historical perspective and am interested in the March of Chess Ideas through time. Also the historical games often show tactics and ideas which are not seen at today's GM level but prevalent in the patzer world. Those popular classic games that are still being discussed often have exciting combinations, thematic attacks and are quite instructive. There is also the benefit of analysis and discussion about these games that make study of them enjoyable. I often get the most benefit in analyzing lines that may look good on the surface but don't hold up in play.

I often use ideas and a style of play that I get from some of these games and is shown in this past post