Mikhail Botvinnik - The Method of Preparing for Competition

Copyright 2019 2020 Victor Ciobanu, All rights reserved.

This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

First paper edition August 2019.

ISBN 9798630282347 (Paper)

E-Mail: VictorCiobanu94@gmail.com

Table of Contents

About methods of preparing for competition

In the eleventh championship, I set some mainly sport tasks. For example, now, I try to play calmly, don't let my nerves get me down yet this mind-set is not so easy to achieve. I had always to remind me about this during the game.

My head works well only when I am calm, therefore, during the tournament, I intentionally trained this aspect and I am satisfied with the results that I achieved. Next, I tried to get rid of the time trouble. Frankly speaking, completely getting rid of them is impossible. During the game, there are moments when you have to carefully study the position, to spend the extra 20 - 30 minutes to check it, and to do some quickly moves to reach the overtime. This is a normal thing - time trouble, I do not intend to refuse that. But it often happens that a chess player is wasting precious time during the game, choosing bad candidate moves to calculate variations or in a way cannot refuse the seductive wish to play unfavorable continuation. I trained myself to economically spending my time during the chess game, I solved this problem in a convenient way. Sometimes even intentionally reducing the quality of my play. How to teach myself to save the precious time? There was no other way.

The third task, which I tried to resolve was to preserve the strength for the entire tournament. Usually, in almost all big events I quickly scored points at first, exhausted myself, and then I was barely holding it together until the end. Between the 12 th and 15 th round, I almost always lost the games.

Of course, you should not spend your energy like this, it is better to keep all in a balance, then there will be no failures at the end and, in general, the tournament will require less stress.

In this tournament I was able to achieve uniform energy consumption and I saved my strength all the way to the end. However, though I had to make a lot of draws, I did not lose a single game for the entire tournament.

I am not completely satisfied with my tournament conditions. After breakfast, I walked an hour and then prepared for the game for 25-30 minutes, then took a break from chess. At 3:30 - dinner and then for about an hour I lay. Lying down before the game is very useful, then you feel fit and crisp, and most importantly you are not distracted by intense thoughts and overthinking. After relaxing, I've walked all the way to the tournament. I was very fortunate that the tournament room was not far from me, and so I walked additionally 20-25 minutes before the game. The game ends at 10:30 pm, I have dinner at 11:00 and at 12:00 went to bed. My mistake was that I analyzed the game before going to bed and disturb my sleep. I did not fall asleep earlier than 3 A.M, and, as a result, I was not fully recovered.

Now during competitions, I never analyze the chess game before going to bed. This mistake will not repeat ever again.

When to analyze unfinished games? A way is after the morning walk, you can analyze it for about 40-45 minutes. Another way is to do it on the day the game was played. You should aim at a minimum of unfinished games, only in that case, you will be able to save strength all the way to the tournament finish.

So, the 4 task - the correct organization of the tournament conditions; I have not been resolved it quite satisfactorily.

And the last task was - to win the USSR championship.

I am quite happy with the result, but I have noticed a significant disadvantage in my games - the poor technique of advantage realization. In many games, I was not able to convert my advantages into a win. Probably, it may be explained by the aspiration to spend time and energy wisely, as I have said before, but one thing is clear: I have to focus the attention on that side of my game. However, the other side was a pleasant surprise for me, I finally learned how to play with black pieces. In eight games played with black pieces, I scored 6 points and could score even more. From this circumstance, we can make a rather interesting conclusion.

In almost all of the reviews of my game, I had to read about the opening erudition with the help of which I defeated my opponents. I have always believed that these reviews, had no clear justification. I had previously believed that these reviews were unreasonable, and treated them ironically. Its true that I usually won a number of games in the opening, but every chess player wants to finish the game quickly! This championship completely disarmed my critics: by playing with black pieces, such a result cannot be achieved with just opening erudition, because, whatever erudition you may have, you will not get an advantage with black pieces in the opening stage in every game. So, I outplayed my opponents in the middlegame. My opening knowledge was not to blame, and our chess journalists will have to find another explanation for my successes.

How am I preparing for competitions?

This has never been a secret. As soon as I mastered the technique of preparation, I set out my method in the book Flohr Botvinnik Match 1933 . Then I once gave a special lecture to Leningrad chess players of the first category, to which, unfortunately, only 15 students gathered.

First of all, before a competition, you need to think about your health, because only with a good health you can count on the success. And for this it is best to spend 15-20 days on the fresh air, outside the city. Unfortunately, our athletic organizations, realizing that football players need physical training, usually become surprisingly dull when it comes to elementary leisure for chess players before important competitions.

I begin my chess training by reviewing the literature accumulated from the time when I stopped following it. This is necessary in order to get acquainted with new interesting games; looking through the literature, I take notes on subjects that interest me. At the same time I mark all the games of my future opponents in the contest in which I am going to participate. I study the features of the game of these masters, their favorite opening variants and systems - this should be useful when you are preparing for each game during the tournament.

Next, I prepare those opening schemes that I intend to apply in the upcoming competition. It should be noted here that a chess player cannot and should not, in my opinion, play all openings that are known in theory. For one match, it is quite enough to have 3-4 opening systems for White and the same number for Black. But these systems must be well studied.

If the master does not have such systems in his arsenal, he can hardly count on a good sports result. Conversely, if a master plays only one opening, this is also very disadvantageous: first, his opponent will be well prepared for the game, and second, the most important thing is that the masters chess knowledge will be too narrow, in many positions he will swim.

So, the schemes have been worked out, but this is still not enough. Some of them, those in which the author of the schemes is not sure, should be tested in training session games. Of course, these games must be played with a partner who will keep them in secret, otherwise all future opponents will knew these schemes as well as their author, and the opening preparation will be useless.

These training games should be used not only to test opening schemes, but also to train yourself. I have long advised our masters, who are systematically get in time trouble, how to combat this disease. Unfortunately, they did not take advantage of my advice.