Exeter Chess Club: Dr. Dave's Chess Blog Archive

Comments, bouquets, brickbats to the usual address. -- DrDave, May 2006

KEY to classes [explanation]

all

6th March 2008: Charlie's notes [All]
22nd Feb 2008: A planning challenge [All]
14th Aug: Your actual mistakes [All]
By the way [C/B]
7th Aug: Minor piece endgames [C]
2nd Aug: A PalView version of the blog
1st August: The Logic of Chernev [B/A]
31st July: Endgame ahoy! [B/C/D]
24th July: Learning opening lines [all]
17th July: A thinking process [C/D]
10th July: Tactics: Combinations and blunders [B/C/D]
19th June: The beginning of the end [C/D]
5th June: Joe, Harry and Jay: why we need other people [B/C/D]
4th June: Elements of a profile [all]
14th May: Coaching 2007 Part 2: adults [all]
13th May: Coaching 2007 part 1: U14s [all]
5th May 2007: Exeter -- a chess city [all]
5th Jan: A note about Blumenfeld's rule [all]
20th May: Authors and Openings [B]
19th May: Openings for correspondence [C]
18th May: Books to help a solid Black player [D]

[All] . 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

[C] Charlie's notes. My notes on Charlie's game

Just to complete the story; were they anything like yours?

Complete game without notes for you to annotate:

C. Keen - G. Ward 1-0 [B50]

Complete game with notes for you to compare:

C. Keen - G. Ward 1-0 [B50]

[C] . 22nd Feb 2008: A planning challenge

With my usual arrogance, I was offering Charlie some notes on a game, and he remarked afterwards:

"The move I sweated over for so long, you passed over without comment, as though it was the most natural move in the game!"

What would you have played? Make your mind up (that is, write it down) before reading on!

White to move

Sicilian B50

C. Keen
G. Ward

Exeter vs. Met. Office
2008

1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. c3 Nf6 4. d3 g6 5. Be2 Bg7 6. O-O O-O 7. Bg5 Re8 8. Re1 Qb6 9. Qc2 Nc6 10. Nbd2 Be6 11. h3 Rac8 12. Rad1 a5 13. Be3 Nd7 14. Ng5 Nf8 15. Nxe6 Nxe6 16. Nc4 Qc7 17. a4 b6 18. Bg4 Ncd8 19. Na3 h6 20. Nb5 Qd7 21. Be2 Rf8

No. 1

(White to move) ... 1-0 (42)
1-0

OK, so, how do you go about making a decision like this? We haven't followed Charlie's thought processes move by move, so we need to warm up a little, get ourselves into the game... A quick once-over the available tactical ideas tells us that the position cannot be 'solved' by a combination, so we have to see what is our proper strategy here.

Jeremy Silman talks about a pawn-pointing rule, saying you should look to expand or attack on the side where your pawns are pointing. I don't think pawns always point quite so obviously as this suggests, nor is it a rule that cannot be broken, but if you are stuck it will give you a shove in the right direction.

Charlie's game, for example, seems a very good example of the pawn-pointing rule. White's pawn chain c3-d3-e4 points forward towards the King's-side, and Black's e7-d6-d5 chain points to the Queen's-side. This is quite clear and also rather cheering, for it seems that Black's earlier manoeuvring on the Queen's-side has resulted only in a weak square on b5, which is occupied by the piece which benefits most from such outposts, the Knight. So,

So, to play on the King's-side... White can try to attack mainly with pieces with moves like Qd2 or moving both Bishops (er, somewhere) and playing Re1-e3-g3 and maybe (groan) Na3-b1-d2-f1-h2-g4... I can't see that going anywhere at all, certainly not at that speed. Imagine putting those pieces there now, what threats would White have, even if Black did nothing for 10 moves? However, there is a familiar plan here of playing f2-f4-f5 and opening a King's-side file, where Black has less space. So, f4 seems a very natural, even an obvious choice.

The trouble with the march of the f-pawn is that White's pieces don't fit in with that right now. I would rather prefer the Re1 to be on f1, and the Be2 to be on d3, and the Nb5 to be on g3, to lend their weight to a discussion of the f-file. So, pointing pawns notwithstanding, I wouldn't be pushing the f-pawn to f5.

Let's see if we can go through this from scratch. First, make a quick comparison of the two positions: compare pairs of pieces, see which one is better. Then have a go at the pawn structures, what are they telling us?

Both Kings are castled and secure. The positions of the Queens seem equivalent, centralised and poised but not yet active. White's Rooks are on good squares but on closed files; so that's our first hint, White's Rooks will need an open or half-open file to work on before long. Black's Rooks on the 'bishop' files are not badly placed but I don't know what Black is planning to do in order to open a file (the c-pawn cannot be moved and perhaps the f-pawn should not be). And the minor pieces: White's good Knight and Black's good Bishop are very much more active than the rest, which look rather tame at the moment. If the position opens up, White's Bishop pair will enjoy life much better.

If we want to (half-)open a file, where can White look? Black's advanced a- and c-pawns allow White to lever open either the b-file or the d-file by advancing and exchanging the pawn on those files; Black, faced with b2-b4 or d3-d4 may choose to (half-)open the a-file or the c-file by exchanging his pawns on those files instead. All Queen's-side files, I note. Now, at the moment, most of Black's pieces look well-placed to take advantage of open lines on the Queen's-side: they're either on that side or pointing that way. Nonetheless, I can imagine someone pointing to the weakness of b5 and that handsome knight, and declare, White should be attacking on the Queen's-side. There are prospects there, I expect, but I can't see it happening very quickly. I'd want to get the Be2 into the weak light squares, maybe the Queen... I have a feeling that by the time I'd arranged all my pieces for attack (Rb1 Bf3 Qc2-c4 maybe) Black would have re-arranged their pieces for defence (...Nc7 threatening to exchange on d4 is one immediate idea). Hmm, Na3-c4 and b2-b4 might make the backward b6-pawn feel sorry for itself... OK, let's not forget all those ideas, but nothing there is compelling.

Well, if neither side is quite appealing, White can turn to the centre. The 'crouching' white central pawns do suggest a central expansion with d3-d4. That immediately gives a sniff of the wild to three of the currently tame White pieces, namely, the Rooks and the Be2, all of whom suddenly have new prospects. An argument against d4, of course, is that Black has sensibly parked a Rook on the same file as the White Queen, so that after d3-d4, ...c5xd4, the white c-pawn is pinned against the Queen... Currently, White still has three other units covering d4, so d3-d4 doesn't lose anything, but it would be nice to threaten to take over the centre by d3-d4 and be able to recapture c3xd4 with two pawns abreast. Having had this idea, I can see that I can get the white Queen off the c-file with gain of tempo:Qd2 forces some sort of response from Black, like Kh7, when most of our earlier options are still available. After which, I think taking space in the centre with d4 seems very logical. I also think that is White's best short-term goal; long-term, it is hard to tell what a general space advantage can lead to, but this push seems to put pressure on Black's game and gives a definite (modest) advantage to White. Medium-term... well, I can imagine playing d4-d5 (again with tempo) squashing Black even more; I can imagine playing e4-e5, opening lines in the centre... Just at the moment, White doesn't have enough covering e5 to make that much of a threat, but Bf4 or f2-f4 would definitely make it a contender.

Charlie's actual move was f4. So far, I've listed two separate if not overwhelming reasons for this move: to open a file with f4-f5, and to support a pawn advance after d3-d4 and e4-e5. Having thought of playing it, I can see another virtue in the move: parking that fidgety light-squared Bishop on f3, waiting for the liberating e4-e5. This is the Bishop without an opposite number on the Black side, it's the Bishop which make use of the weakened light squares on Black's Queen's-side... so it should be doing more in life than getting in the way of the Rooks!

Overall, then, 22.f2-f4 was probably worth more comment than I gave it, but it was plausible, unobjectionable and had more than one point... And there were more important things to mention! If you fancy a go yourselves, what would you comment on this whole game? I'll show you what I sent Charlie in a week or two.

22.f4 Nc7 23.d4 cxd4 24.Nxd4 Nde6 25.e5 Nd5 26.Qe4 Nxe3 27.Qxe3 Qxa4 28.Bb5 Qa2 29.exd6 exd6 30.Nxe6 fxe6 31.Bd7 Qxb2 32.Qxe6+ Kh8 33.Bxc8 Qxc3 34.Bb7 Qc5+ 35.Kh1 Rxf4 36.Rc1 Qb5 37.Qxg6 Rf6 38.Re8+ Rf8 39.Rxf8+ Bxf8 40.Be4 Qd7 41.Rc8 Qxc8 42.Qh7# 1-0

[C] 14th August 2007. Your actual mistakes (or, Towards Bona Chess)

Richard Fredlund wrote:

> Hi Dave,
>
> Would it be possible to look at the kind of mistakes we all tend to make in 
> practice in our actual games?
>

Of course.  I'll have a think...


D

So, here's some thoughts: first, some cherry-picking...

Before we got to tonight, I had a look at the Elements of a profile and thought that the only thing I hadn't done justice to was the opening. It's interesting to look at people's comments there: most people just said they wanted to improve 'openings' without being at all specific (viz. 'I need an answer to the Sicilian Defence' or 'What's the best line for a solid Black player against the Trompovsky?'). Nigel Davies has identified a tendency for people unfairly to blame their lack of opening knowledge for losses and says, 'Don't blame the opening' (rather, blame your chess sense, or your misunderstanding of the resulting structures).
Andrew Soltis once wrote a whole book about chess mistakes: his classification is to be found elsewhere on the website.
Jonathan Rowson produced a list of The Seven Deadly Chess Sins:
thinking (unnecessary or erroneous);
blinking (missing opportunities; lack of resolution);
wanting (too much concern with the result of the game);
materialism (lack of attention to non-material factors);
egoism (insufficient awareness of the opponent and his ideas);
perfectionism (running short of time, trying too hard);
looseness ("losing the plot", drifting, poor concentration).
Chris Baker's Learn from your chess mistakes lists:
Openings:
poor opening preparation,
being over-prepared and getting 'stale',
being caught by your opponent's preparation,
choice of openings/learning new lines and styles,
understanding standard and re-occurring themes,
being caught by move orders and transpositions
Middlegame:
Losing the 'thread' of the position,
miscalculation,
confidence and playing against stronger/weaker opponents,
middlegame judgement,
losing the initiative,
missing your shot
Endgame:
Endgame technique,
forming a plan,
having too many choices and missing tricks,
understanding 'good and bad pieces',
control
Dan Heisman thinks that he has identified the 13 Most Common OTB mistakes, among which is not playing appropriately for the chess state that you're in:

1) playing too fast because of overconfidence
2) not recognizing the critical moment
3) playing too fast because of carelessness
4) being overcautious
5) guarding instead of moving
6) miscounting
7) allowing a removal of the guard tactic
8) not adjusting from one phase of the game to another, or not playing differently when way ahead or behind
9) counterattacking a guarded rook when an unguarded minor piece is attacked
10) not developing all your pieces
11) making threats that are easily parried
12) overlooking that your move can be easily refuted by a check, capture, or threat
13) not asking yourself, "what are all the reasons my opponent made that move?

Of these offerings, Heisman claims his list has been based on his experience as a full-time tutor, but beyond that they all seem pretty impressionistic. That is, I think they're all important mistakes, but I don't know how common they all are in practice. Heisman certainly has found miscounting and removing the guard to be of greater importance for his students than he originally thought, but having trolled through a bunch of amateur games myself (with my distinctly amateur eye) I would have said forks were overlooked way more often than anything Heisman picks out. I'd be interested in doing some serious statistics on a bunch of amateur games; I don't think we know a lot about the natural history of amateur chess. Anyhow, blinking slightly at the almost complete lack of overlap between these various lists, we can also try something a bit more local:

The nearest I got to doing some serious statistics was showing 111 local games from the East Devon Premier and Major sections to Fritz for a typology of blunders (examples of each). The single biggest category in terms of tactical theme was an attack on the king, by way of a thinking error was an unmet or overlooked threat, but by way of psychological theme it was simple blindness: not seeing, probably because of not looking. Dan Heisman calls this 'Hope Chess'; if you are not certain that every one of your opponent's threats can be met on every move, you are merely hoping that you can meet them, and so every move you have to be lucky. I promise, it won't last.
What I haven't done is a typology of errors other than tactical ones. I haven't got time to do that before Tuesday, but I'll have a go one day.
Don't forget where we came in: you're the person best placed to know what mistakes you make in practice. Take a bona vada at your own games, share your conclusions. I'm pretty good on my own mistakes, Brian's mistakes and some of Jon's; I tried looking for common themes but I think we've all got distinctly individual ways of playing badly... So, Brian has a tendency to let his opponent have the centre and makes odd decisions about who is winning, Jon is inclined to change horses in mid-stream, and I often get muddled with my move order.
I've just whizzed through a few dozen games from the three of us, and, if there is a theme, it's something I've written about before: it is necessary and desirable to set problems and put your opponent under pressure.
- And its corollary: when you're under pressure, you need to play twice as well.
- Without putting your opponent under pressure, you cannot expect them to make mistakes.
- If you are the one under pressure, you are more likely to make mistakes.
- And so there is nothing more dangerous than 'playing safe', allowing your opponent to build up as they wish.

By the way...

Tom and Richard were having a look at this game:

Anthony Miles - G Garcia Gonzales 1-0 [A65]

And Richard reckons he would have played 25.Nxb5!?

Can't imagine Miles overlooked it, but what made him choose something else? Fritz rather fancies Richard's idea... Any thoughts?

[C] . 7th August. Minor piece endgames

The minor pieces are bishop and knight (and the major ones are rook and queen). They are of roughly equal value (3 pawns, we often say), but have such different powers of movement that they have very different uses in the endgame.

In the struggle of bishop against pawns compared with knight against pawns, the superiority of the bishop is plain, the knight being more easily overstretched or herded away. However, there are some neat mates available to the knight when the side with the king has a rook's pawn, which should be known. And there is a quirk of chess, that a rook's pawn which will queen on the opposite colour to its supporting bishop, cannot be forced through against a defending king. But, on the whole, we would sooner go into an ending with a bishop than a knight.

Knight endings remind us of King and Pawn endings, because knights are similarly slow across the board, and are subject to zugzwang. They can also run out of manoeuvring space at the edge of the board, and hate to chase rook's pawns. When knight battles knight, it is often hard to calculate how many moves it will take a knight to eat up a group of pawns, because a knight takes three moves before it can attack the next square on a rank, and then the pawn might move... With a bishop, if the pawns cannot escape, it's very easy to count your way through a sequence.

Endings with opposite coloured bishops are notoriously drawish, because the defender can so often set up a blockade.

Endings with bishops of the same colour have some interesting features. You are usually better off with a pawn at the edge of the board, so it's easier to squeeze the defending bishop off the defence of the queening square when the defending king is distant.

The battle of bishop(s) against knight(s) in the endgame is worth studying. When there is play on each side of the board, the bishop is superior -- so much so that you can play for a win based just on that advantage. However, when the play is all on one wing, the capacity of the knight to control squares of each colour can make it the preferable piece.

If you share Simon's affection for studies, a very nice collection of simple studies is Chernev's Practical Chess Endings, and this includes dozens of minor piece endings. However, if you actually want a guide to practical chess endings, then I think Paul Keres' title of the same name is the best. (I haven't seen Silman's or Dvoretsky's manuals.)

[B/C/D] 31st July. Endgame ahoy!

A couple of members were struck by Simon's discussion of the Ruy Lopez Exchange Variation during his talk about King and Pawn endgames. That's the best example of endgame thinking arising in the opening, but it's not the only one.

There are endgame openings, where the queens come off early and the players forget about mating attacks, as recommended by Edmar Mednis. There is one more opening where we see an early queen swap: Lasker's Petroff exchange variation of the Petroff. Far from choosing a drawing variation, Lasker played it to win against selected opponents, like Frank Marshall who might be expected to over-egg it. One simple win from him was:

Emanuel Lasker - Richard Teichmann 1-0 [C42]

Much more commonly, we see endgame thinking arise in games where there is a pawn structure which will definitely get better and better for one side as we approach the endgame -- a familiar example is the Isolated Queen's Pawn.

"Before the endgame, the gods have placed the middlegame." -- Tarrasch. Couldn't agree more, but accepting a pawn weakness for attacking chances immediately gives your opponent a winning plan, namely, survive, swap and win the endgame ...

Emanuel Lasker - Siegbert Tarrasch 1-0 [D34]

I've found a comparable example from the French Defence ...

Hartman - Yanofsky 1-0 [C09]

, and was immediately reminded of the same sort of issue with the Backward Pawn you get in the same opening ...

Hunt Harriet - Song Yi 1-0 [C03]

The minority attack in the Queen's Gambit Declined Exchange Varation is all about saddling Black with a weakness that will persist into the endgame:

Evans - Opsahl 1-0 [D36]

In the games of Rubinstein and Capablanca we often see opponents lured into losing endgames, lost because of weaknesses acquired, if not in the opening, then certainly long ago; I gave a couple of examples...

...a couple of sessions ago, and offer today another from Rubinstein ...

E. Cohn - A. Rubinstein 0-1 [D29]

P.S. The famous Flohr-Capablanca game is here:

flohr - moscow capablanca 1/2 [D62]

[all] 24th July. Learning opening lines.

Lots of things to say about this... Here's half-a-dozen or so little nuggets to ponder, and a bit more practical advice.

"Of my fifty-seven years I have applied at least thirty to forgetting most of what I have learned or read. Since then, I
have acquired a certain ease and cheer which I should never again like to be without. (...) I have stored little in my memory, but I can apply that little, and it is of use in many and varied emergencies. I keep it in order, but resist every attempt to increase its dead weight." -- Emanuel Lasker

1. Is opening preparation mostly wasted in practical play? A four-board match played away at Exmouth one Saturday...

The top boards each made a mistake on move 5: 1.c4 e5 2.g3 Nc6 3.Bg2 f5 4.Nc3 Nf6 now 5.e3(?) was possibly inaccurate, allowing 5...d5!? (highly recommended in Kosten’s book, although NCO suggests White can still extract an advantage here) but Black didn't play it, preferring 5...Be7. Did the players know better? I had the idea they didn't know it at all, and were making it up as they went along.

Board 2, the players scampered along in the French Tarrasch: 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nd2 Nf6 4.e5 Nfd7 5.Bd3 c5 6.c3 Nc6 7.Ne2 cxd4 8.cxd4 Qb6 9.Nf3 f6 10.exf6 Nxf6 11.0-0 Bd6 This is the tabiya, where the real first choice lies for White, who followed the old main line: 12.Nc3 0-0 13.Be3 Bd7 14.Re1 Be8. Now here all the books give this position as equal; although it is unbalanced I don't know why White wants to learn and play this line, Black has so much counterplay... [GMs at the time were playing 12.Bf4.] We than had 15.Ng5 (a very important move) and then 15...Bh5? which was the first deviation from theory... White can now get an instant plus with 16.Bxh7+! e.g. 16...Nxh7 17.Qxh5 Nxg5 18.Qxg5 Nxd4? 19.Nxd5! but it was not refuted by White's chosen 16.Qb1?! So White played into Black's hands, Black didn't know it and made a mistake, and White couldn't take advantage of it...

Board 3 was a bit less theoretical, although it has been played before: 1.Nf3 g6 2.e4 c5 3.Bc4 Bg7 4.0-0 e6 5.c3 Ne7 6.d4 cxd4 7.cxd4 d5 8.exd5 after which Black surely should not have played 8...exd5(?) but 8...Nxd5, when there is some sort of plan against the IQP instead of a 'normal' White small plus with no prospects for Black.

And Board 4 had the unlikely start 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.h3... Not a GM move, but an attempt to play the opponent, and not the GM author of the opponent's latest book purchase.

So, opening preparation can be a complete waste of time!

2. We are often told: "Learn ideas not variations". This is a good starting point: there's nothing sadder than watching a player trot out a move from a book in the wrong position, or even a move that leads to the right position, but the player doesn't understand what to do in that position when the moves run out. [Common examples include: playing c2-c3 in the Colle [1.d4 2.Nf3 3.e3] when you aren't forced to by Black's ...c7-c5; playing the Giuoco Pianissimo in every game but not having a clue what to do after 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Nc3 Nf6 5.d3 d6 6.O-O O-O 7.Be3 Bb6, and then playing a3 or h3 or even b3; playing the Fried Liver sacrifice 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Nf6 4.Ng5 d5 6.exd5 Nxd5?! 6.Nxf7!? rather than the superior 6.d4!]

I got more out of reading Fine's "Ideas behind the chess openings" than reading any number of more detailed books; it's terribly out of date now, but to anyone taking up the Queen's Gambit or French Defence, I'd certainly recommend starting with Fine's discussions there. Tracing the history of ideas-led opening books, I can remember enjoying How to Play the Caro-Kann (Keene et al., RHM), where literally every move is discussed at some length, and How to Play the Sicilian Defence (Levy & O'Connell, Batsford), which emphasised systems over variations. Many modern opening books for club players use ways of explaining I associate with Bellin and Ponzetto in their 'Mastering the...' books, showing themes and piece placements related to structures as well as to variations.

3. "It may sound like a platitude, but openings have to be studied in accord with your own tastes. Another point is a little less obvious: in constructing an opening repertoire, you need to take your own powers of memory into account. (...) I know from my own experience what an excruciating labour it is to memorise 'theory' before a game. You have it all written down in notebooks, you have gone through it ten times before starting play, and you still can't remember it. If this is so, it may well be better to concentrate on what I call 'opening schemes' -- logical systems with a smaller amount of theory, in which it is more important to understand the position and know about typical ideas and resources than to memorise specific details and precise move-orders." -- Mark DVORETSKY

At a minimum, you should have some key games in your memory: the most simple wins for each side, the central ideas, the most common tactical patterns, and, vitally, any traps that are around in your opening. Dvoretsky says, keep a card index, but these days I guess you would use a computer. Although modern computers have a huge capacity, treat them like Lasker treats his memory: keep any databases small and well-ordered. Just having the games saved on your computer won't transfer them magically to your brain; you need to go through them and see what is typical and untypical of each game, and what reason if any might explain the differences.

4. "Some players learn a lot of variations by heart and repeat them in play whenever possible. But their opponents may by so ignorant or unkind that they step 'out of the book' long before that wonderful advantage-for-me sign has been reached. I remember a young player who said he lost three years of his life studying the Najdorf! He realised that he had learned variations, not chess."

"On the other hand, it is perhaps overly simple to say that you must learn the ideas behind the openings ... But the trouble with chess is the opponent: if you know only the 'ideas behind the variations' and he knows the ideas and a lot of variations, he is likely to beat you." -- Bent LARSEN

5. "As Victor Korchnoi points out in his book of best games, when you study openings you don't remember the variations. What
happens is that the strategic motifs become familiar to you at a deeper level - which means getting the kind of positions in which you know what to do." (...) "...It's really better not to try to memorize anything - the only stuff that will stick are things that can be hung on hooks of deep understanding. If you have good abilities in calculation and vision, much can be worked out during the game; what is 'theory' anyway other than a collection of imperfect games which have, for the most part, been analyzed rather badly." ... "You're best forearmed by understanding the middlegame structures that come from your openings." -- Nigel DAVIES

I think the other significant 'hooks' to hang things on are your own games. Make a card index or a database of all your own games, find out where you or your opponent diverged from what your book says, decide if it was a mistake or an improvement or just as good. You should find that each time you play a line, the 'tree' of moves that you can recall grows.

6. "What do most readers look for in an opening book? Unfortunately, something that they won't get. TWIC readers, for example, apparently want pretty much what my own students keep asking for: a book which explains all the 'ideas' of an opening, but isn't cluttered up with all sorts of nasty variations which one will never run into over the board anyway. I'm sorry to report that this is just a fantasy. Learning an opening by accumulating abstract ideas is a little like learning a language by reading a grammar book. Worse, actually, because generalizations in chess don't apply with nearly the consistency or predictability of grammatical rules. If a chess opening could be learned by absorbing the opening's 'ideas' (whatever those might be), the opening phase of the game would be universally mastered and of little interest. The fact is, no verbal description of what squares are important or where the pieces 'usually' go can describe the dynamic interplay of tactics and positional factors in any major opening. Whereas, by contrast, the straightforward study of enough examples will lead to a nuanced and practical knowledge of how to play that opening. In addition, by studying in context, you will automatically get a much better grasp on how those important squares and typical manoeuvres work than you would have from reading a general description." (...)

"To summarize this lengthy review, then:

(a) openings can only be learned by study of numerous examples and variations, not by learning abstract 'ideas';

(b) books can use either the tree structure or the illustrative-game approach successfully, but the second choice often leads to the omission of key material;

(c) watch out for books which fail to attribute analysis--there's a good chance that the material is copied from elsewhere;

(d) before you purchase a book, if you get the chance, compare a few variations in it (preferably ones you play) with what you have in your database. If a simple collection of database games gives you more information than what's in the book, try to assess whether other qualities of the book (line selection, instruction, guidance) outweigh its lack of original information. Barring that approach, your best bet is to go by the company's and author's reputation, and hope for the best!"

-- John WATSON

Well, Watson is an IM, and is perhaps telling us what we might need if we want to be an IM who plays 'major' openings. Club players who don't know much about any openings, major or minor, can't acquire a lot of opening knowledge at once. I would expect that we have to lay in the broad, rough pencil outlines of understanding before we can paint in each finesse. I think all of the above quotes are probably true for different levels of player, with different amounts of study time available; what are your ambitions, what can you manage?

7. "Reading and nodding is not learning", says Jonathan Rowson (after Nigel Davies), and he's absolutely right. You have to do something more deliberate to get the information in, and you have to practise getting it out, too. Read and nod, yes, but put a line in the margin beside everything that is important, then take some notes, and see if you can get all the main points of a chapter down on one side of a piece of paper. Shut the book and read your notes and see if they still make sense. Then put aside your notes, get out a set and a board (or an empty game in a database) and see what you can recall. Wait a day, then try writing it all down from memory, or, even better, explaining it to someone else and see when you dry up and which questions you can't answer; go back to the book to patch up what you know. Wait a week, and do the same. Play a bunch of 15-move games, write the moves down, see where you or your opponent went wrong, see if there was a better way to take advantage of any mistakes.

8. Whatever the green lobby tell me, I always think that the natural resource in shortest supply is time. There are ways to cut down the amount of theory you need to know:

Choosing non-confrontational openings: Purdy once said (re-published in Action Chess) you can learn all the opening theory you need "to get by" in 10 hours. He recommended the Colle System (1.d4 2.Nf3 3.e3) as White, and the Rubinstein French (1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nd2/Nc3 dxe4) as Black against 1.e4. Against 1.d4 and other closed openings, he recommended you aim for a standard formation of ...d5/...e6/...Nf6/...Be7/...b6/...Bb7/...c5, which, against the Queen's Gambit, is called the Tartakower variation (first seen at the London 1922 tournament). He didn't say these were great openings, just systems where there was a decent trade-off between strength and ease of use. If you want to do more than "get by", maybe you need to study more, but Purdy was very clear that spending 10 hours studying the middlegame or endgame would do more for your chess results than any 10 hours on the opening.

Choosing early deviations: "Is it possible to play the Ruy Lopez with just strategical ideas? Probably not. Is it possible to memorize all the lines? Probably not." -- Alexei SHIROV. I liked Andrew Greet's championing of the Worrall Attack in the Ruy Lopez, a deviation from the main line by 5.Qe2. [He then rather spoiled things by writing a book large enough to act as a shelter during inclement weather (or even nuclear attack), but the approach is sound.] Retracing his steps, we might recommend the Ruy Lopez Exchange Variation (4.Bxc6), or the Scotch Game (3.d4), or Bishop's Opening (2.Bc4), or even Bird's Opening (1.f4) as ways of making it more likely that the battle takes place on ground of your choosing. Then you have to learn less.

White and Black: You can adopt similar systems as White and Black; obvious examples include the King's Indian Defence and the King's Indian Attack, Bird's Opening and the Dutch Defence, the English Opening and the Sicilian Defence, and so on.

Sister openings: You might think about playing the Semi-Slav (...d5/...e6/...c6) as Black against 1.d4, and perhaps the Caro-Kann (1...c6) or Scandinavian Defence (1...d5) as Black against 1.e4. These openings share some features in common, and your pieces will often end up on similar squares. These would form a decent set of openings to use if you play the Colle System as White.

Moving in the same street: rather than taking up an entirely new opening, you are better off using as much of your existing knowledge as possible, and moving to a different variation of the same opening. So, if you already play the Ruy Lopez, you might prefer on move 5 to play the Centre Attack (5.d4), the Four Knights' (5.Nc3), the Andersson-Steinitz line (5.d3), or some other variation where a lot of your homework will still prove useful.

Traps: I have no problem if people include lines in their repertoire where traps arise. But you shouldn't choose an opening just because it has a trap, and you may find that none of your rehearsed traps ever arise in practice. Ask around... I know Ray has had some success with 1.e4 d5 2.exd5 Nf6 3.c4 e6!?, getting in a few standard tricks, while although I like very much to play the MacCutcheon French (1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.Bg5 Bb4), I never get to play it, because White nearly always plays 4.e5 or 3.e5... So everything I know about this line is just 'dead weight' in practice.

Wacky openings?: Grob's Attack (1.g4 e.g. 1...d5 2.Bg2 Bxg4 3.c4) will always have a fan base, but it's only a surprise once and antidotes can be found. The trouble is, while any opening can be played with shallow ideas or deep ones, it's easier to find a layer of deeper ideas in a mainstream opening. You are then faced with learning the whole of a new opening, with your hours of study of the obscure lines of the Grob being wasted. "...kids need to move on to real openings as quickly as possible..." opines Nigel Davies.

10. Learning from what?

Dvoretsky recommends building up your own card index; most of us I think would prefer to take a pencil and a stack of sticky notes to a book.

Books: There are different levels of book with different styles which might suit different levels and styles of player. There are excellent books about things I couldn't have imagined when I starting reading chess books... I guess there's a ladder of difficulty which can be hinted at in the title: "Starting Out..." "Explained..." "Winning with..." "The Complete..." and even "The Ultimate..." represent some sort of hierarchy, and depending on your grade, memory and study habits, I expect you could decide what's appropriate for you. Some books have key ideas, some use a tree structure, others are based on complete games, some use a mix of approaches. Complete games undoubtedly help you remember themes, but are also undoubtedly used as padding. It's not enough that a book contains detail, it needs to be useful, organised and well-explained detail with a point. So, even if you see detail, don't assume it will do you any good. As a rule, more elementary books use illustrative games, and more advanced books use 'trees' of variations, but Lev Psakhis arranged all his material in his monumental tetralogy on the French around illustrative games.

Show and tell: I've always thought that videos, DVDs and so on, however memorable, have a terribly small amount of content. I've had to transcribe every video I've ever owned because (a) such a transcript wasn't packaged with the product, and (b) it's essential to compare the lines given with other sources, otherwise you have to keep zipping back and forth to find the position you are interested in. And when you do this, you might find a video costing £15 has about a page of variations in it. They really have to have a substantial accompanying booklet to be worth it.

Software: Most databases have all the features you need to organise a repertoire: trees, sort functions, training modes and so on. There is even software (BookUp) which is designed specifically to help you organise and test yourself on the openings you play, and boasts a transpositional feature which I haven't heard about elsewhere.

Hybrid DVDs: The latest development seems to be a DVD bearing a database linked to videos of talking heads. I haven't seen many of these but if the talking heads are telling you important things, then it's the same pain as with a video finding the part where they talk about the position you are interested in, and if they're not telling you important things, well, it does beg the question, why the talking heads...

[all] 18th July. Do chessplayers think?

The late Simon Webb had a wonderful idea a while ago, to record chessplayers of different strengths for 10 minutes while they considered a chess position. He published them in Barry Wood's old CHESS magazine in the 1970s, and I've used them before with groups. We tried this last week; I gave them all this position:

Fridrik Olafsson
Svetozar Gligoric

Los Angeles (1)
1963

No. 1

Position for analysis from Simon Webb

* [Webb]

Black to move. [Take 10 minutes yourself, if you like.]

Without being able to record them all, I asked people to write down their thinking while they were doing it. I then asked people to describe, not what they were thinking about (specifics), but how they were thinking about it. If they found this difficult, I got them to just say their moves, then I tried to re-describe their thinking in terms of process, as follows.

Player A's actual comments:	What I wrote down:
I felt uncomfortable as Black and very cramped I wanted to swap off pieces	General assessment of position Plan based on position

Here are their comments:

Player B Is there anything easy for me to pick off? Can I make a safe advance?	Player C Threats for each side Positional objectives: how can I improve my game, disrupt my opponent's? Compare pairs of pieces: do I have a piece that needs help? Candidate moves selection Analyse forced/semi-forced sequences Choose
Player D Threats Combinations for either side Structure Long-term plans	Player E Threats against me (Hold the centre) = plan based on position Defensive responses Short-term plans Medium attacking plans Long-term plans
Player F "Overprotect e5" (=plan based on overall positional assessment)	Player G Material? Strength of material? Strong/Weak pawns/squares? Potential long-term features Static/dynamic assessments

Now, there's nothing to say that a different 7 players might have come up with something totally different, nor that the same 7 players might not do something totally different when faced with a different position. Also, I don't know if they would recognise the descriptions I gave them... Anyhow, all good food for thought:

Of the 7, 4 didn't mention looking for White's threats. Ever get surprised by a blow of your opponent? Often? Is that because you don't routinely check for threats?
I think you can put these 7 in order of organisation, but, without wishing to embarrass anyone, I think this order would be different to order of playing strength. I suspect that if the strongest players were more organised, they would be better, rather than concluding that thinking organisation is irrelevant.
From the various models given in the session, I think a couple come close to Purdy... if we listened long enough, maybe we would discover they were doing a lot of what Heisman says too.
I rather warmed to player B: once they get some error-checking in, they have the basic survival kit for beginners down pat.
Player C was just awesome... Lots of appropriate questions used in sequence.

Fridrik Olafsson
Svetozar Gligoric

Los Angeles (1)
1963

No. 2