Dr.Dave's Canon of educational chess games

Introduction

The games and positions below have been compiled through a weekly discussion group in Exeter Chess Club as being useful examples, mostly trawled from books and magazines. They have been aimed at club players in the BCF 100-150 grade range (ELO up to 1800); the simplest should be accessible to all, the deepest I am only beginning to understand myself (= ELO about 1800! [USCF 1900]).

Download

If you want to download the complete canon of games in database format, you can have it

as pure PGN, or
the main file and index for users of ChessBase 1.11 or Fritz versions 1-4, or
ChessBase 6.0 Zip file (.cbh and all the others) for CB 6/7 or Fritz 5.
Games and analysis used in the opening booklets are kept separately; again you can have them as PGN, two ChessBase 1.11 files, or a ZIP file for CB 6.0.

ChessBase files can be used by many other commercial and PD database programmes, and either the CB or the PGN files can be converted into other database formats using readily available PD utilities.

You can download demonstration versions of ChessBase 1.11 and 6.01 from the ChessBase Site.

You can also get the whole of the chess on this site (the Canon and other games with explanatory notes) as a gzipped tar file [9Mb file, use TAR and GZIP to unpack].

It is, as you might expect, rather derivative, but hopefully there are some examples you haven't seen before. This index has separate sections on: tactical patterns and opening traps {D}, guidelines for opening play and example openings {C} {D}, model attacking games {D} and attacking techniques {C} {D}, defensive play {B} {C}, positional themes {B} {C} and planning {B}, the endgame {all}, the psychology {all} of chess, and personal style {all}.

All of the examples contained here should contain at least one diagram, and at least one comment. Let me know if you catch me out. The games are available in a database - see the main Coaching Page.

Comments

and contributions You can send me comments and games (Portable Game Notation [PGN] format preferred, example available) at D.Regis@exeter.ac.uk.
In particular I'd like to know about: * hits and misses for topics and examples
* names for any of the players marked NN or Anon.
* club players' own examples of these topics (too many are mine!)
* queries on particular games: I have used most of these games with groups, and I'm always being asked " why can't Black play...", and I often don't have a good answer. I'd like to add notes where I can to cater for these suggestions.

"Far from all the obvious moves that go without saying are correct"

-- BRONSTEIN

P.S. If you find odd dates (e.g. 2004) or grades (club players with grades over 2500) this is because Fritz has decided that there are no grades and no dates below 1700 or so. Harass the company... (Can you convert BCF to ELO?)

Tactics

"Chess is 99% tactics"

-- RICHARD TEICHMANN

Tactical patterns

Best single reference: Chernev & Reinfeld Winning Chess

"At the heart of every combination there shines an idea, and though combinations are without number, the number of ideas is limited"

-- ZNOSKO-BOROVSKY

GM Traps

Best single reference: Lombardy Snatched Opportunities at the Chessboard
GM traps a PGN file I found at Pittsburg

Opening Traps

Best single reference: Znosko-Borovsky, How to Play the Opening in Chess

"Do not regard your opponent as a sheep, but rather as a wolf"

-- Russian Proverb

Openings

"Like us as Black", beg the chess pieces," and you will anyway like us as White"

-- BOLESLAVSKY

Guidelines for opening play

Best single reference: Walker, Chess Openings for Juniors

Advanced guidelines

Example openings (BCF)

"...P-Q4 is the antidote to the poison in gambits"

Best references: Walker, Chess Openings for Juniors;
Znosko-Borovsky, How to Play the Opening in Chess

Attacking play

"No price is too great for the scalp of the enemy King."

-- KOBLENTZ

Model attacking games

Best single reference: Walker, Attacking the King

"In chess, only the attacker wins"

-- KOTOV

"Thou shalt not shilly-shally!"

-- NIMZOVITCH

Attacking techniques

Best single reference: Tal & Damsky, Attack with Mikhail Tal

"A keen and dogmatic sense of prudence is the mortal enemy of great deeds"

-- MICHEL de MONTAIGNE

Strategy

"Where are their new objectives? If each player is capable of quick development, castling, and of not blundering any pieces away, what is there to separate the two sides?"

-- MICHAEL STEAN, Simple Chess

Best single reference: Chernev, Logical Chess

Positional themes

Best references: Chernev The 100 Most Instructive Games of Chess ever Played (basic);
Euwe & Kramer, The Middle Game I/II (advanced)

Planning

" It is not a move, even the best move, that you must seek, but a realisable plan."

-- EUGENE A. ZNOSKO-BOROVSKY.

Best single reference: Kotov, Think Like a Grandmaster

Excellent notes to these two Steinitz games by ROMANOVSKY can be found at http://dab.psi.net/ChapterOne/uscf/browse/midplan.html">, but their diagrams are awful. You really need two windows...

Endings

"To play with correctness and skill the ends of games, is an important but a rare accomplishment, except among the magnates of the game"

-- STAUNTON The Chessplayer's Handbook (Plus ca change...!)

Best references: Mednis & Crouch, Rate your Endgame (practice);
Speelman et al. Batsford Chess Endings (theory)

Psychology

"Chess is above all a fight."

-- EMANUEL LASKER.

Best single reference: Webb, Chess for Tigers

Errors

"The blunders are all there on the chessboard, waiting to be made."

-- TARTAKOVER

Best single reference: Avni, Danger in Chess

Chess Praxis

Lessons from the masters, model treatment of common middlegame formations, practical play by club players, style of the world champions.

Pawn sacrifices

Manoeuvring

Material imbalance

King's Indian Master Class

Lessons from the Masters

Queen's Gambit Master Class

Clock Control

Swindling

Odds and Sods

Analysis

"Chess is the art of analysis."

-- BOTVINNIK

Best single reference: Nunn & Griffiths, Secrets of Grandmaster Chess

Defence

"Winning isn't everything... but losing is nothing" [Edmar MEDNIS, on the importance of fighting for a draw]
"The basic principle of defence consists in making the opponent's task as difficult as possible, creating ever new obstacles in his path.

" [...] If you can succeed in abruptly changing the situation on the board (even by choosing a continuation which is objectively not the strongest, associated with a degree of risk), your opponent, having already envisaged a particular pattern of play, will frequently not manage to reorganise his thoughts and will begin to make mistakes."

-- DVORETSKY Best single reference: Soltis, The Art of Defence in Chess

Style of the world champions

" It was night. I went home and put my old house clothes on and set the chessmen out and mixed a drink and played over another Capablanca. It went fifty-nine moves. Beautiful, cold, remorseless chess, almost creepy in its silent implacability..."

-- RAYMOND CHANDLER, The High Window

"Alekhine is a player I've never really understood; yet, strangely, if you've seen one Alekhine game you've seen them all. He always wanted a superior centre; he manoeuvred his pieces towards the King's-side, and around the twenty-fifth move began to mate his opponent.
"(...) ...it worked for him, but it could scarcely work for anyone else. He played gigantic conceptions, full of outrageous and unprecedented ideas. It's hard to find a mistakes in his game, but in a sense his whole method of play was a mistake."

-- Fischer.

"How does Tal win? It is very simple: he places his pieces in the centre and he sacrifices them somewhere."

-- BRONSTEIN

Best single reference: Euwe & Kramer, The Middle Game I

I have composed a brief piece on The Development of Chess Style as a companion to these games. There are some excellent sites devoted to individual Players and a couple devoted to the chess champions from Smart Chess and Palle Mathiesen.

This document (canonidx.html) was last updated 3rd June 1998.

Back to Chess Coaching Page. [cool blue cat]

Dr. Dave