Chapter 6

The Woodpecker Method

Club: Lunds ASK

Born: 1 985
GM: 20 1 0

Tikkanen became a member ofLunds ASK at the age of 14, and moved to Lund when he was
19. At that time, he had lost his motivation for chess, and instead tried both Go and half
hearted studies at university. However, with the new environment he soon regained his old
passion for chess. In the spring of201 0, he created The Woodpecker Method and only months
later he made three GM norms in seven weeks. Tikkanen won the Swedish Championship in
201 1, 2012 and 2013.
222 Pump Up Your Rating

Chess is 99% tactics - Richard Teichmann

Like so many maxims, there is some truth in Teichmann's quote. Despite this, pracnsmg
calculation is quite a small part of most players' chess training. The reason, I believe, is that it's
difficult to define exactly what you have learned. That desire for tangible results is very human
("Today I memorized 30 moves of Griinfeld theory'') but even so there is nothing more valuable
at the board than being able to calculate well.

Chapter overview

This chapter begins with a discussion about tactical training, with Hans Tikkanen as the model
player. Tikkanen improved a lot when he started to work systematically and he also inspired a
Danish friend to even greater improvements. The general advice is to make the training similar to
a game situation. One way of achieving that is using a chess clock.
The second section deals with tactical motifs. It facilitates calculation to know their features by
heart. One of the motifs has not been named before: the lifeline.
The chapter contains 5 1 exercises of varying degrees of difficulty. Most of them ( 1 2+6+ 1 2+6)
are presented before each tactical motif, but the last section also holds 1 5 challenging exercises.

Tactical training

Hans Tikkanen is interested in studying the human brain, its structure and function. His training
program was designed to fit the way that humans learn to intuitively recognize patterns.
Tikkanen started by solving quite simple tactical exercises. When he finished, after about 1 000
exercises, he took a short break, and then started all over again on the same exercises. And when
he finished for a second time, he started a third time, and so on.

Tikkanen's results were convincing - his three GM norms the following summer gained him more
than 1 00 Elo points. I have therefore named the training program after him: The Woodpecker
Method. This comes from the meaning of 'Tikkanen' in its original language, Finnish.
However, as Tikkanen is a somewhat mysterious and modest person, he doesn't want to explain
the underlying theories or exactly how he did it. What I have written in this chapter is therefore
my interpretation, but as I have followed him closely, it's hopefully close enough!

There is another sunny story about this method's effectiveness - the Danish player Andreas Skytte
Hagen, who also plays for Lunds ASK. Since 2006 he has been a serious chess player: playing,
analysing openings, reading books and solving exercises. However, his progress was modest until
he met Tikkanen at a tournament. Suddenly, Hagen increased from 2290, in March 20 1 1 , to
2454, four months later.

It turned out that both Tikkanen and Hagen had read the same book: Geoff Colvin's Talent is
overrated (20 1 0) . Colvin proposes a tough training program with repeated exercises. Feedback
should be given after each training session, which means using a timekeeping and points system.
In that way, progress can be seen from day to day.