
Comments, bouquets, brickbats to the usual
address. -- DrDave, May 2006
| D | C | B | A | all |
[All] . London 1922
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[C] Charlie's notes. My notes
on Charlie's game
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[C] . 22nd Feb 2008: A planning
challenge
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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
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).
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?
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.
Tom and Richard were having a look at this game:
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?
D
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.)
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:
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 ...
I've found a comparable example from the French Defence ...
, and was immediately reminded of the same sort of issue with the Backward Pawn you get in the same opening ...
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:
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 ...
P.S. The famous Flohr-Capablanca game is here: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...
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:
|
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: |
|
|
Here are their comments:
Player B
|
Player C
|
Player D
|
Player E
|
Player F
|
Player G
|
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.
I often think, only a correspondence player has the
luxury of
adopting a genuinely consistent thinking process. The rest of us have
to contend with the clock, our emotions, our laziness...
I have struggled with this issue all my life, it seems. There has to be something which balances the thorough with the realistic.
For juniors, I have been playing around with a THINking scheme, which was really driven by the need to correct some common errors; it goes:
|
Beginners, I'm happy if they do just 123 and 5. If
they
can't manage that, then just 1 and 5 will do. If they can't
manage that, then just do 3... Anyone
who regularly does every step between 1 and (*4) can probably outplay
me.
Purdy suggests:
|
Purdy adds: "Being
unmethodical by nature, I have never been
able to train myself to use my own system throughout a game!"
Although he adds, having made a list of errors after a tournament, he
was convinced that at least half of them would have been avoided had he
done so.
Dan Heisman regards organising your thinking as one of the Big Five things to get right. He also, helpfully, provides us with an example, described in a dozen pages, which I summarise:
|
This is quite a lot, for sure, but he reassures us that a lot of it becomes automatic -- it's not something you go through like military drill.
OK, this all may be too much advice by now. How
can you
respond to all that? In particular, how do you make sense of
three overlapping but contradictory schemes?!
Some suggestions:
I've just come across two splendid swipes at Irving Chernev.
Here is John Nunn, in the introduction to his Grandmaster Chess, Move by Move. He quotes a very illuminating annotation by Alekhin, and then goes on to say:
"Lesser annotators are often fond of propounding grand general principles, but these are often totally misleading. A typical example occurs in Logical Chess, Move by Move (Simon and Schuster, 1957) by Irving Chernev (I have converted the descriptive notation to algebraic). His Game 3 ...
... goes 1 d4 d5 2 Nf3 Nf6 3 e3 and we read "Generally, it is dubious strategy to release one Bishop while shutting in the other". After 3...e6 he says "This deserves censure because it is a routine developing move which seems to take no thought of crossing White's plans". Yet a little later Game 8 ...
... went 1 d4 Nf6 2 Nf3 e6 ("Black releases his King Bishop and does not commit himself to any specific line of defence.") 3 e3 d5 ("Black plants a pawn firmly in the centre.") Now there is no censure for Black's play, only approval, but we have reached exactly the same position as the earlier game. What then, can we make of Chernev's general principle on developing Bishops? Basically, it's wrong. Many common openings flout it, such as the Queen's Gambit Declined, the Closed Ruy Lopez, the French and several lines of the Sicilian. Even in 1957, these openings were played by many World Champions.
"If you are unlucky, the 'general principle' being put forward may not even apply to the specific position under discussion. Referring again to Logical Chess Move by Move, Game 12 goes ...
[Help]
... 1 c4 e5 2 Nc3 Nf6 3 g3 d5! 4 cxd5 Nxd5 5 Bg2 Nb6! (his exclamation marks) and now we read "There is another bit of subtlety in the Knight's move, one which the modern master frequently utilises. The Knight takes advantage of the Bishop's fianchetto development and bears down heavily on c4, a square weakened by the Bishop's absence." The italics are Chernev's so he obviously considered this point important. However, it is absurd. White will inevitably play d3 (or possibly b3) to develop his c1-bishop, after which the knight cannot move to c4. Even if it could, it wouldn't attack anything and would be instantly driven away again. The game continued 6 Nf3 Nc6 7 0-0 Be7 8 d3 0-0, reaching a standard position. The d3-pawn covers c4 and did so for the remainder of the game, so this isn't even a case of annotation by hindsight. Chernev was trying to formulate a general principle, this time on the defects of the fianchetto development, but it's not one that has any contact with reality.
"A player of his strength is unlikely to discover new general principles which somehow eluded great chess thinkers such as Tarrasch, Nimzowitsch and Reti.
(...)
"Every chess move adheres to some general principles but contravenes others."
Ouch.
Exhibit B: here is Master Ron Wieck, in his Foreword to Purdy's Action Chess:
1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Bc5 4. c3 Qe7 5. O-O d6 6. d4 Bb6 7. a4
"... Here Chernev writes,
"A tricky move, but an illogical one. White threatens an attack on the bishop by 8.a5. If then 8...Bxa5, 9 d5 strikes at the Knight protecting the Bishop. After the reply 9...Nd8, White captures by 10.Rxa5, winning a piece. Should Black, after 8.a5, play 8...Nxa5, the continuation 9.Rxa5 Bxa5 10.Qa4+ nets White two pieces for a Rook." 7...a6. "Prepares a retreat for the Bishop." (...) 8.a5 "There is just a wee chance that Black will be tempted to take the pawn." 8...Ba7 "But Black does not bite!"
"All very charming. It's as though an affectionate uncle took you by the hand and made sure you didn't miss anything.
"Later, however, you happen to pick up a copy of Tarrasch's book on the great tournament, St.Petersburg 1914. The game, Gunsberg-Alekhine, repeats these moves, but on move 8, Alekhine bit: 8... Nxa5 9. Rxa5 Bxa5 10. Qa4+ b5 (Oops. Maybe he was doing more than prepare a retreat) 11. Qxa5 bxc4 ... And White did not have enough for the exchange.
"We return to Logical Chess where Scheve had just played 9.h3. Chernev devotes half a page to castigating this move:
"A coffee-house move! (...)""He goes on and on, quoting Tarrasch and Alekhine, delivering a sermon on the certain damnation that attends any pawn move in front of a castled King."(...)
"10...Nxe5 11. Nxe5 Qxe5 12. Nd2 Bxh3 13. gxh3 Qg3+ ... and the finish should be fairly obvious.9...Nf6 10. dxe5
"White exchanges, and opens lines for his pieces. Unfortunately, this reacts in Black's favor..."
"You buckle down to some study on the Italian Game and discover that 7.a4 is a perfectly good space-gaining move, and the blunder 8.a5? is best replaced by the coffee-house 8.h3, a strong move which preserves the tension in the centre to White's advantage by preventing ...Bg4, which would strike indirectly at the square d4. White stands well after 8...Nf6 9 Re1, so in retrospect it is apparent that Scheve's 10.dxe5 was a terrible howler. The problem is, Chernev was utterly clueless about the reason for White's defeat, leaving the definite impression that h3 was the culprit. You end up wishing your patient uncle would take a hike and learn something about chess.
"I have been terribly harsh with Irving Chernev ... but I must insist that you can't teach what you don't know. This is where Purdy is different: he really understands the positions he discusses."
Ouch squared.
On the other hand...1. Specifics
a. Well, we all know people who can't teach even what
they do
know, so I'm
happy for people who can teach to have a go. Chernev was far from
a
dead loss as a player (he scored 6/15 in the US Championship in 1942,
national master strength),
and if you want to find holes in published analysis, Chernev isn't the strongest player ever to leave one.
b. In the context of the game given, the move 7...a6 does seem to have been made to provide a retreat, just as Chernev said (and just as von Scheve, Teichmann and Gunsburg likely thought).
c. What did Alekhin say, exactly, that he could be quoted by Chernev in support of his criticism of 9.h3?
"Always try to keep the three pawns in front of your castled king on their original squares as long as possible."
And indeed, when Alekhin had this position as White,
twice, he
did
not play 8.h3, but 8.Be3. So this would not be an example of
Chernev
inventing a general principle that Alekhin overlooked, but Chernev
quoting and explaining what Alekhin wrote and played.
d. I'm happy to think that Ron Wieck knows players who
might
seek
out
Tarrasch's tournament book, or who might buckle down to research this
unusual line of the Giuoco Piano. But I have a feeling that
Chernev
is
instead addressing beginning players who might play as follows:
And if Chernev wants to spend half a page shouting
about this
habit,
I'm sympathetic, even if it was mistimed. My most detailed information
about the Giuoco Piano is the Batsford offering from Gufeld and
Stetsko, who, after trundling down the main line, comment:
"The h3-pawn is a reasonable place for Black to start organizing an attack on the king..."
e. Oh, and let us quote the whole of Chernev's comment
after
dxe5:
"White exchanges, and opens lines for his pieces. Unfortunately, this reacts in Black's favor, in accordance with the rule in these cases:
Open lines are to the advantage of the player whose development is superior."
Maybe mistaken, but not "clueless". [Selective
quoting
isn't fair. If I wanted Chernev to look better, I would have left
out all of Nunn's stuff about the English Opening in Game 12. But
that wasn't the whole of the argument.]
f. Similarly, with regard to Nunn's discussions of Chernev's comments on the Colle: Chernev's full comment on Game 8 was
"Black plants a pawn firmly in the centre. This move, together with ...e6, blocks in the Bc8."So, not quite so contradictory. I'm forever trying to get juniors to stop getting unnecessarily cramped and passive positions by making moves like d3/d6, blocking the lines of their Bishops. I'm going to guess that Chernev had also seen enough games like:
g. With this in mind, I too would prefer to
see my clubmates,
after 1 d4 d5 2 Nf3 Nf6 3 e3,
play a move like 3...Bf5,
crossing up White's clockwork plan of Bd3 Nbd2 and e3-e4. [In the
other move order, in Game 8, the issue doesn't arise.]
2. General
"I remember chancing upon it as a frustrated, fumbling teenage chess novice and being happily amazed to learn that chess actually had underlying principles I could learn and use. This process was aided by the simplicity and clarity with which Chernev explained myriads of previously mystifying master moves and maneuvers. Reading it was like a having a blindfold removed, waking up from a confused daze, or having a light turned on in a dark room (not to mention having several hundred points added to my rating)." – Taylor Kingston
I had exactly the same experience, and so have many
others. I think
Chernev's book was only the second chess book I had read (the first one
being David Pritchard's The Right
Way to Play Chess); and as a second chess book, it was wonderful.
I ordered the book hoping to get maybe a catalogue of chess principles
which I could then apply. When the book arrived, I was actually
frustrated
for a moment that this was nothing of the sort, because the book seemed
so flippant and unmethodical, but I was soon delighted and charmed by
what I read. Chernev is so engaging and enthusiastic, and I have
had so much pleasure from reading this and others of his books and
enjoying his selection of games and positions.
"Nimzowitsch became then for me more or less the author of the only book which could help me get away from these Euwe books, which, I admit, are very good for the ordinary club player. But once you've reached a certain strength you get the impression that everything that Euwe writes is a lie." -- Bent LARSEN, in KEENE, Nimzowitsch: a reappraisal.
I think
that's the
heart of it; Chernev is even more careless with the truth than Euwe,
but you have to start somewhere. It took Chernev yelling "Get
your pieces out!" six times a game for 33 games for me to remember it,
and he did so with such variety, with such a sense of wit and good
humour, that I didn't realise I was being shouted at. You might
say that if I hadn't started with such enthusiasm for Chernev, I would
be better than the barely-2000 ELO I am now, but GM Maurice Ashley
still recommends
Logical Chess and describes it as his favourite book. (See also a review of Chernev's
Logical Chess; there are many other positive reviews online, and
Dan Heisman can't stop recommending Chernev's books.)
I don't know the Grandmaster way to coach beginners out of playing 1 a4 2 Ra3 and 1 h4 2 Rh3, but I do try and discourage it. You learn this, but in fact you overlearn it... so that later (as Larsen pointed out), you overlook opportunities to develop rooks in this way, when it may be the most appropriate method. But you can get over these over-generalisations. [I'm reminded of going into a science lesson for 11-year-olds, and the teacher saying, "All matter is made of atoms, but the atom also has a structure; here is the nucleus, here are electrons going around it like the Earth goes around the Sun"... If you have a more sophisticated education in science, each statement is enough to reduce you to tears, but that was my first picture of how atoms work, too, and it didn't stop me acquiring a better picture later.]
OK, yes, Chernev misses things, and yes, he's over-fond
of
general
principles, but I'm very much at ease with Chernev being read by people
who haven't yet done much work on their game. Chernev's
enthusiasm is
infectious, the games are inspiring and well-chosen (Chernev's
selections have turned up ceaselessly in instructional books published
since), and, if you're in need of some
general principles, I can't think of a better way to acquire them.
Unless you have ambitions to be a very much better player than GM
Ashley or
even postal master Taylor, you could do worse than make it your second
chess
book, too.
(Aside: I think that particular accolade must go to Garry Kasparov.
At 2800+ ELO, he distinctly out-rates John Nunn, who in ... after ... also failed to note the mate in one by...).
I often think, only a correspondence player has the
luxury of
adopting a genuinely consistent thinking process. The rest of us have
to contend with the clock, our emotions, our laziness...
I have struggled with this issue all my life, it seems. There has to be something which balances the thorough with the realistic.
For juniors, I have been playing around with a THINking scheme, which was really driven by the need to correct some common errors; it goes:
|
Beginners, I'm happy if they do just 123 and 5. If
they
can't manage that, then just 1 and 5 will do. If they can't
manage that, then just do 3... Anyone
who regularly does everything between 1 and (*4) can probably outplay
me.
Purdy suggests:
|
Purdy adds: "Being
unmethodical by nature, I have never been
able to train myself to use my own system throughout a game!"
Although he adds, having made a list of errors after a tournament, he
was convinced that at least half of them would have been avoided had he
done so.
Dan Heisman regards organising your thinking as one of the Big Five things to get right. He also, helpfully, provides us with an example, described in a dozen pages, which I summarise:
|
This is quite a lot, for sure, but he reassures us that a lot of it becomes automatic -- it's not something you go through like military drill.
OK, this all may be too much advice by now. How
can you
respond to all that? In particular, how
Some suggestions:
1. Chess is 99% tactics, said Richard
Teichmann. However, 90% of the time, there is no tactic for
either side. So, as well as any difficulty presented by a
complicated position, we also have to counter our natural laziness in
not looking out for a rare event, as if each move we are crossing the a
quiet country road, and not bothering to check for oncoming
traffic. When they think it's a quiet position, even the
best players miss things.
2. Tactical ability can
be
improved, says Dvoretsky. He described two elements: vision and analysis. Both can be
developed by completing
exercises. [An uncomfortable corollary: If you don't exercise,
don't expect to get better!]
3. You need to have a good understanding of the varieties of tactics. There are different ways of classifying and naming this variety; Purdy gives six simple headings of:- Jumps, Mates, Forks, Nets, Pins and Ties. These building blocks can be fitted together to make a combination, a set of more or less forcing moves, often with a sacrifice, resulting in your advantage.
4. The more combinations you see, the more you will be able to see. Real examples are very helpful in developing your imagination, throwing up ideas that you can analyse. Euwe doesn't call it imagination, he calls it combinational vision, but he and Dvoretsky both agree that looking at different problems helps. The most obvious thing that it helps, which you would expect, is that you can develop depth and accuracy the same way; keep pushing yourself on speed and depth.
5. Purdy also advises us, when searching for combinations: examine moves that smite! These are
checks and captures; both are forcing moves which limit the range of
reasonable responses. The move that
is right when a tactic is available is usually the opposite of a normal
sensible move.
6. You should always examine every position for
'accidental'
tactics, but look especially hard if you think you have an advantage
(if your position is better, your better pieces are more likely to work
up a combination between you) or if you notice the clues for a combination: an unsafe king or loose pieces.
7. You should also be aware that there is another, less
well-known, list: the list of difficult
moves to spot: Long moves,
Backwards moves, Declining to
capture, an intermezzo or
Zwischenzug, False
endings, Coming back from
the dead, Quiet
('creeping')moves in noisy positions, Switchbacks,
Hesitations, and in John Nunn's uneuphonious coinage, Collinear
moves (throwing yourself on the sword).
8. So much for the theory. You can be good at a
lot of
that stuff and still lose games because of tactics. You have two
other pitfalls to avoid: [1] Going
to sleep and ignoring the approaching fin until a shark bites your leg off, and [2] forcing
the issue, trying to make combinations happen in positions
which are not ripe. If you have the first problem, you need to
become more paranoid: they
really are out to get you!
9. I have been bellyaching for a while that books of puzzles don't test you properly, because every position has a solution, and you can often guess what the answer is just because you know it has a solution. One author in particular has tried to get around this p