Blog 22: Answer #3

Essential Question: What is the best way to win a game of chess?

Answer 3: It is important to remember to remain flexible during a game while also remaining consistent with your strategy.

Evidence
- A player who is flexible to the opponent's moves (can quickly adapt to any situation that occurs on board) will not have much success in the result of the game if there is no underlying strategy that your ultimate goal ends up in. 
- In the same way, a player who doesn't deviate from his per-determined strategy will also be unsuccessful because adapting to an opponent's moves is a huge part of knowing what specific strategies will work against them.
- It is important to keep a combination of both flexibility and consistency during a game, flexibility to react well to an opponent's strategy and the consistency of using a set strategy to actually work towards an endgame.

Source
- An article called flexibility vs consistency found on chess.com actually enlightened me on the importance of both factors and made me consider it as an answer.
- During my 3rd interview I actually asked the question, " What is more important, flexibility or consistency?" to be answered with wise advice that a combination of both is essential.
- Speaking on personal experience with the game, I have found that responding to every opponent's move will make you aggressive but will not give you a solid board position. Playing stiffly off a recently-learned strategy might be terrible against an opponent who is reacting to your moves and continuing with a failed plan will only lead you to a loss.

Room Creativity

(1) How do you plan to address the room creativity expectation?  

I will have a number of different self-made chess display boards all over the classroom that I can easily manipulate to provide a challenge or a puzzle to the students. This will demonstrate a creative approach to teaching the students, seeing as they can have physical interaction with the board's themselves. 

(2) What activity ideas do you have for answer 1 or 2?

My answer 1 is to play against higher skilled opponents to learn from their experience. I might have students play against the computer on a higher difficulty making them experience what my answer actually entails. 
For my second answer( Study the games played by chess Grandmasters) I'm still not too sure about how to actually do it inside the classroom. However, I will probably just show a famous game move-by-move on the board and stop at certain points to get predictions from different groups as to how "Kasparov" will move next, therefore having the students actively participating. 

Answer 2

EQ: What is the best way to win a game of chess?

Answer 2: One of the best ways you can improve your game in chess, and therefore lead to more wins, is to study the popular games of Grandmasters. 

Evidence: There are a large amount of games that can help a player with their skill. I will list 3 historic games that every player should know about:

- Deep Blue(Computer) vs Kasparov(Best player) 

- Bobby Fischer vs Boris Spassky (Cold War confrontation)

- Karpov vs Kasparov (2 Chess Icons) 

Source

- "Why they Play?" An article published by TIME magazine describing the fascinating reasons why grandmasters do what they do and their motivation behind it. 

- My Service learning gave me a lot of examples of games that I should study in order to improve.

- Chess.com provides most historic games ever played that can be easily accessed in order to study. 

The Product

As of this month, the product of my senior project would have to be my evident improvement of my skill in the game of chess. In other words, because of my work this year, I am a better player today than I was in September. I believe this is the case because playing so many games during the year, both in independent component(playing against people on chess.com for 30+ hours) and service learning(participating in Cal Poly chess club), has lead to a noticeable increase in overall wins comparing to previous years. 

My evidence for this can clearly be seen in my independent component blog because it shows the improvement i have made from the beginning of the year to now. 
http://diegocproject.blogspot.com/2012/02/independent-component-1.html

Fourth Interview Questions

Some of these questions are similar to previous questions, but I am trying to get another opinion, seeing as I am interviewing a different person.

 

1. What is the best way to win a game of chess?

2. What is the best way to teach someone the basics of chess?

3. Are there any good techniques to use when teaching others advanced chess techniques?

4. Would you suggest any books or articles that could help me answer the first question?

5. How important is playing against people who are "better" than you?

6. Do you think solving chess puzzles increases your ability to perform well in game?

7. Would you say there are any obvious mistakes to avoid that occur often in the game?

8. Do you think any specific openings are worth studying over others?

9. What do you think makes a grandmaster so good at the game?

10. Would you agree this game increases important academic traits like logic and memory?

11. What is chess notation?

12. Do you think using chess notation increases a player's ability to improve in game?

13. What are some ways a player can benefit from studying their own games?

14. What items would you think are essential in order to teach a class about chess?

15. How important is studying "chess prodigies" for personal improvement?

16. Why would some one pursue further knowledge of chess after knowing the basics of the game?

17. What is a better use of your time in order to improve? Playing one long game against an even opponent or playing multiple quickly won games against lesser opponents?

18. How can one pursue a "higher knowledge" of the game?

19. What would be more important in game? Being flexible to your opponent's moves or being consistent in your own strategy?

20. How can one teach beginners advanced terminology of the game without having them confused and lost? 

Independent Component 2 Plan Approval

 1.) For my independent component 2, I plan on solving a large amount of chess puzzles over 30 hours of time from the book, “CHESS, 5334 Problems, Combinations, and Games” by Laszlo Polgar.            

2.) I will solve puzzles in intervals of at least 30 minutes, and will record every single one I solve in a journal, which will include my personal solution and the actual solution. I will try to solve as many as possible in the time intervals I have.

3.) This will be extremely useful for solving my EQ because one of my answers is to solve as many puzzles as possible. I need experience doing this to be able to instruct others on how to do it. Also, my activity will include solving a puzzle with the class, so I think it will help me with the presentation. 

Independent Component 1

Literal: 

a. I, Diego Cortez, affirm that I completed my independent component which represents 30 hours of work.

b. For my independent component,  from the 20^th of October 2011, I have logged in a total of 48 hours on Chess.com after playing an overall number of 181 games against ranked opponents. (The average time for a game was 15 minutes. )

Interpretive

Defend your work and explain how the significant parts of your component and how it demonstrates 30 hours of work.

With my topic being on chess, I can't start teaching what I don't know about. I needed a lot of experience with the game to be able to develop a different perspective on the subject. With so much experience in the past months, I have definitely improved my skill and have a better understanding of the game. 

I thought it demonstrated hard work because most of the games are only a few minutes long, so I had to play more to get the hours I needed. I could have just played turn-based games( day-long games) and gotten easy hours like that, but instead I thought more games would increase my skill and help me out more than just a couple of really long games. 

Applied

How did it help you answer your EQ?  Be specific and use examples.

My EQ is "What is the best way to win a game of chess?" It would be impossible to answer this question with relevant  answers if I had no experience with the game. My third interview( Nguyen, Thongminh "Interview 3." Personal interview. 25 Jan. 2012) told me the best way to improve was to just keep playing games, and that is essentially what I have done with my independent task. A potential answer I currently have is to learn from more experienced players when you play against them. In a game played this past week, I had a superior position the entire game but still lost from a checkmate that I had never experienced. So after the game was finished I messaged the player and I was able to learn the technique he used to pull that surprising win. Overall, these hours of independent task have provided a level of experience and understanding of the game that I previously did not have. 

Hours Log Calendar (google doc):

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AtOdVDzQH5hJdDFSbXgtd01BdVdWVWRoN042eC03a3c#gid=0

Evidence of 30 hours of work: 

For the evidence, I will simply provide my account's(diegocortez28) public game archive on chess.com. It keeps track of every single game I have played on the site. I used games from October 20, 2011. 

http://www.chess.com/home/game_archive.html?member=diegocortez28&show=live