Mostly, situations of material imbalance are fairly clear.
Typically extra material wins: even with an otherwise level
position, the extra firepower can make an attack pay, or make the
opponent's defences overstretched.
Occasionally, normal material values are overturned. This
is most obvious in situations of sacrifice: the mutual
possibilities of exchange sacrifices Rh1xNh5 and ...Rc7xNc3 in the
Sicilian Dragon are well-known, if not always easy to judge. The
sacrifices remove a key defender and open lines against the
King.
Based on: The Middle Game I by Euwe and
Kramer.
[Currently out of print; Batsford's have the publishing rights for this
title
and I am grateful for their permission to use this material]
Actively sacrificing a Rook depends on you having an open file and something to aim at. So the best-rehearsed exchange sacrifices are ...Rc8xNc3 in the Sicilian, ...Rf8xNf3 in the French and to some extent the Dutch, Rf1xf6 against the Sicilian... You need some compensation for your Rook: either a good central pawn, or the weakening of the opposing King's defences, or all three!
This season, I have decided to take Webb's advice from Chess for Tigers and do a
statistical analysis of my openings. I have arranged them by opening,
written the opening outcome (advantage to white, black or equal), and
outcome of the game. I have included some tips for preparing to play
me. Unfortunately, I'll be in china next year, so you won't have the
chance to use this stuff to thrash me just yet!
I've written about planning before
but mostly from a theoretical point of view; most of the practical
planning advice
I've come up with went into the books
I write
with Tim. I did tuck some away some how-to-do-it in an
ancient handout about what's wrong
with club players, and had a reason recently to dig it out and have
another go. Here it is with a worked example:
I was wondering about
1. e4 e5 and 1.d4 d5 openings - would you recommend exploring some of
these? I'm not enjoying being squashed as black any more and thought
I'd
make a longer term plan to learn a (very) few classical openings
instead. I wondered about French (winawer?) but thought I try a
complete new tack (why swap an early d6 for an early e6 ?!!)
My first thought was, I don't know how long you've been getting back
into the game, but I'd leave the job of taking on two or three whole
"In the eighteenth century they announced their first rule: "Sortez les pieces" - "Get the pieces out". "It took a hundred years before a new rule was announced. Anderssen, the winner of the first International Tournament, that of London, 1851, said: "Move that one of your pieces, which is in the worst plight, unless you can satisfy yourself that you can derive immediate advantage by an attack" "A few decades went by [...] the masters evolved a "public opinion":
