Exeter Chess Club: Dr. Dave's Chess Blog

It won't have escaped people's notice that I haven't been doing as much to these pages over the last few years -- pressure of work and other projects have taken precedence, I'm afraid. Also, the club dropped the coaching sessions for a while, so I was not forced to write an article every fortnight or so.

That doesn't mean I don't have any more ideas about what to go here, I just lack the time to work things up into proper articles or handouts. So, I've set up this online notebook to record less developed thoughts and will add to it from time to time, perhaps including some e-mail exchanges, and also recording any other activity related to coaching in the club.

E-mails to the usual address, but now you can comment directly on this page. I plan to extend some sort of comments system to the rest of the site.-- DrDave, the one-eyed man... May 2008

Summer 2008 [All] Provisional summer programme

See below for suggested timetable of sessions

3rd June 2008. Last Pawns Match.
10th June 2008. Country vs. Coast Match.
17th June 2008. Introductory session (DR)
24th June 2008. Douglas Phillips Quickplay.
1st July 2008. Material imbalance I: Queen vs. Rooks (DR)
8th July 2008. Chess Psychology (Ish)
15th July 2008. Planning in the endgame (DR)
22nd July 2008. Material imbalance II: Exchange sacrifices and their kin (DR)
29th July 2008. The Secret of Not Losing (DR)
5th August 2008. The Seven Deadly Chess Books (Simon)

[B] 5th August 2008. The Seven Deadly Chess Books (Simon)

[and congratulations Simon and Faye!]

[All] 29th July 2008. The Secret of Not Losing (DR)

It is clear that I haven't yet got the hang of this myself...

[C] 22nd July 2008. Material imbalance II: Exchange sacrifices and their kin (DR)

White sacrifices for attack on f6 in the Sicilian

White sacrifices for attack on h5 in the Sicilian

Black sacrifices for attack on c3 in the Sicilian

Black sacrifices for initiative on c3 in the Sicilian

Black sacrifices for too little on c3 in the Sicilian

Black sacrifices for initiative in the King's Indian

Encore!

White sacrifices for all sorts of compensation in the Grunfeld

Black passively sacrifices for initiative (1)

Black passively sacrifices for initiative (2)

Compensation for the exchange

Rooks don't like defending against passed pawns

A defensive sacrifice

Petrosian is at it again

The Karpov sacrifice

A whole Rook

[C] 15th July 2008. Planning in the endgame (DR)

Lessons that can be applied elsewhere, I hope; if you have examples of games where you have struggled, send them in.

How to plan, anyway (Silman).

Elements of endgame planning:

1. Passed pawn

2. Pawn majority

3. Rook on the seventh

4. Infiltration (Weak colour complex), blockade, breakthrough

5. Accumulation theory

6. Two weaknesses

7. Manoeuvring

8. Minority attack

9. Endgame technique

A bit of Capablanca magic

"Once in a lobby of the Hall of Columns of the Trade Union Centre in Moscow a group of masters were analysing an ending. They could not find the right way to go about things and there was a lot of arguing about it. Suddenly Capablanca came into the room. He was always find of walking about when it was his opponent's turn to move. Learning the reason for the dispute the Cuban bent down to the position, said 'Si, si,' and suddenly redistributed the pieces all over the board to show what the correct formation was for the side trying to win. I haven't exaggerated. Don Jose literally pushed the pieces around the board without making moves. He just put them in fresh positions where he thought they were needed."

"Suddenly everything became clear. The correct scheme of things had been set up and now the win was easy. We were delighted by Capablanca's mastery..."

-- KOTOV, Think like a Grandmaster, tr. Cafferty, pub. 1971 Batsford.

Alekhine plays for a win

The best books for further study of endgame planning are undoubtedly Shereshevsy's.

[All] 8th July 2008. Chess Psychology (Ish)

Looking forward to this one!

Meanwhile, here are three games from Gandalf which explore the wilder shores of compensation for a Queen (83,84,85)

Some notes on books about chess psychology:

[A] 1st July 2008. Material imbalance I: Queen vs. Rooks (DR)

I have to say, if this is the aspect of your game most in need of fixing, then count yourself lucky, but there are some general lessons to be learned.

Example games:

Ish follows some theory:

Kramnik wins with the Rooks:

Fischer wins with the Queen:

The Queen on the attack:

The Rooks make a team:

So, what features favour the Rooks, which the Queen?

Yusupov loses to the Queen:

Yusupov has another go with the Rooks:

Chernin finds an improvement:

Ish's game in hindsight:

[All] 17th June 2008 . Introductory session (DR)

So, starting in a similar way as last year, I asked everyone to name the three main reasons you lose chess games.

These turned out to be:

STRATEGY

Lack of strategy

Not looking for outposts enough

Moving pieces which leave holes in my position

Failure to spot strategic weaknesses early enough

GENERAL ATTITUDE

Moving rather than taking more time

Poor psychology: making mistakes and then making worse ones

Letting my opponent off when I was ahead on material with a better position

THINKING PROCESS

Playing a middlegame sequence out of in the wrong order

Running out of time

Miscalculation (poor vision)

Blunders -- mainly after 1 hour+ -- due, I suspect, to lack of recent practice

Careless loss of material

EGOISM

Moving without working out what my opponent can do in reply

Not seeing the opponent's intended move

Not being completely aware to what my opponent up to

OPENINGS

Opening inaccuracy

Inferior opening preparation

Poor openings

In opening, occasionally make over-easy moves which weaken my position

ATTACK AND DEFENCE

Getting shafted on the diagonals

Playing unsound attacks

I can be over-keen to attack, i.e. launch an attack before I've prepared the necessary back -up

Over-extension in the middle-game (trying too hard to win)

I'll try to come up with a programme which includes some material relevant to these topics as well as suggestions made earlier

[All] 12th May 2008 Comments

I'm trying out a new comments system, vaguely anticipating a new season of coaching sessions. Suggestions and comments invited. What did I leave out last year?

[All] 5th April 2008 London 1922

Some of you may know that I've done a bit of work editing and typesetting for Hardinge Simpole, and my first project for them was pulling together everything I could find about the tournament in London in 1922 (which gave its name to the London System). It would have pleased me to be able to include some splendid cartoons that I've just come across: enjoy...

http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/winter14.html#3937._Comic_strips

Help on using inserted games [palview].

I've re-worked this page to use palview, which I think is wonderful; had I been starting from scratch now, I'd use it for everything.

Whole games will be displayed in a new window or tab if you follow the link; play through them if you like, then come back to the main text.
The control panel buttons are, in order:

\|<	<<	<	>	>>	>\|	^	( )	/\
Go to start	Back 5 moves	Back	Forward	Forward 5 moves	Go to end	Flip board	Autoplay	Step into variations

It's working for you, you should see a diagram and a game which will open a new window to play through below:

Visitors without Javascript, and perhaps with other configurations, may not be able to view and play through these games as intended. You can download all the games and positions as a PGN file, and this can be viewed using a PGN viewer (N.B. WinBoard is also a PGN viewer, as well as a front end for GNU chess and online play.)
Any other problems, suggestions, etc., let me know.

KEY to classes [explanation]

class A class B class C class D

class [All]


May your pieces harmonise with your Pawn structure and
your sacrifices be sound in all variations


D _
 / "()/~    Dave Regis         &8^D* Exeter Chess Coaching Page etc.:
|| \_/|    = DrDave on FICS   http://www.exeterchessclub.org.uk/
~\   /                      "...what else exists in the world but chess?"
 _|||__SHEU                  -- NABOKOV    "Contribute!" -- Doug Attig

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Dr. Dave