Black to play and win.
Suggested Solution : 1...Rhd8!! 2. Rxc5 bxc5!!
Tuesday 23 April 2013
Monday 22 April 2013
Tactical Awareness in implementing Positional Plans
Even strongly positional players should be aware of the tactical resources hidden in the position. Even if combinations are not played, it is very important to have tactical awareness when trying to carry out positional plans. Positional plans can fail tactically even though their concept is very good. There are positional players that really know how to put their opponent under a lot of positional pressure. If they improved their tactical awareness and still sticking to their fundamental plans, they would be even more effective players. They would not fall for silly tactical traps set by their opponent and beat around the bush excessively with positional play when there is a clean kill tactically they can play that instead. It is not enough to judge positions based on how good they look, and superficial judgements. Tactical variations provide reassuring evidence for one side being better or worse. "Test your positional play" by Bellin and Ponzetti was an excellent book that incorporated an analysis of the tactical variations to give the reader bonus points when selecting the most appropriate positional plan. The practical problems associated with implementing a plan are emphasised in the form of tactical variations. This may radically effect the choice of plan altogether in some cases.
Tactical Ability in Positional Play
Positional play can bring excellent positions. It can be used to put the opponent under enormous pressure, reduce their counterplay, and generally put the opponent on the racks. However to finish off the game usually requires a tactical blow which will convert the advantage in a technical way. The name given to a series of tactical moves which may involve a sacrifice is a combination. For example if one has a passed pawn, there may be a tactical combination to forcefully queen it. If the opponents king safety is suspect, there may be a combination to checkmate. Tactical ability and the ability to spot combinations thus helps to convert positional advantages into more concrete gains.
What is Chess
Winning by trickery without understanding the game at all is nothing less than pathetic. Yes, we all need tricks now and then to save us from certain doom, but to play for a cheap tactic from move one on is not chess. By all means, study tactics as often as possible, but don’t allow yourself to look at a grandmaster game and understand nothing whatsoever about what’s going on. To avoid this state of "chess existence without beauty,” one must seek balance. Understand a couple openings (don’t memorize, understand the ideas of your opening), understand basic strategic concepts, learn endgame basics, and master key tactical motifs. All this can be done at your own pace, and you can improve without the use of snake oil.
Study Endgame Positions
Learning a lot from Paul Keres' masterpiece "Practical Chess Endings" is a must although there are better books now. With good reason he quoted something like "for someone to beat me they have to beat me in the opening, the middlegame and the endgame" and "A player can sometimes afford the luxury of an inaccurate move, or even a definite error, in the opening or middlegame without necessarily obtaining a lost position. In the endgame an error can be decisive, and we are rarely presented with a second chance". You may re-read through that book and engrain the patterns again in your mind, because in the beginning you would easily forget. How exactly do you win with Q+K vs R+K again?
Better plans of new Positions
Usually, when you're playing a game, you make moves with a certain plan. When you've passed the opening phase, you'll have to make up a plan like "Starting a kingside attack with pawns/pieces" or "Preparing the c7-c5 pawn break". You then make up moves, according to this plan, and start executing the plan. Sometimes your plan was good enough, you get to achieve the purpose of your plan, and you continue to a new phase of the game where you make up a new plan. However, in some cases, your original plan seems to be insufficient. It turns out your opponent can easily stop your kingside attack, or white can prevent c7-c5 by controlling c5 with enough pawns or pieces. What to do then? Many people in this situation will still continue with their plan, hoping for things to turn out right anyway. They'll think "Maybe my opponent doesn't see he can stop the attack easily" and just continue the kingside attack anyway. Sometimes they get away with it (the opponent makes a mistake), but in other cases the opponent does play right, defends against the kingside attack while executing his own plan, and wins. Better however is to stop and take another good look at the position and your plan. Do I have any better plans than this plan I have now, which doesn't look so good anymore? Is it better to stop the kingside attack now, before it backfires on me? Sometimes you'll conclude it's still best to continue your previous plan, but in other cases you'll be happy to have realized in time that another plan is better now.
Friday 19 April 2013
Coaches
A good coach is always open to providing references that you can check, and is primarily interested in your improvement, so that if you feel you need to try another coach, they aren't going to be overly hurt or insulted. Don't be afraid to have open and direct discussions about what you think you need, and what the coach thinks you need. Find someone that will hold you accountable for your work so that your time and effort spent is more likely to lead to actual realized improvement. Remember, FIT with the coach - finding the right combination of demeanor, knowledge, and teaching ability, is more important than price or pure instructor stength.
Finding good Coaches
A chess coach is not good when:
1- He spends all of your precious time playing with you. Unless you have specifically hired him for that, you won’t get much benefit if all your coach does is spend your time playing blitz with you. This is an essential characteristic of some strong players who are hired to coach, but they really have no idea what to do otherwise. This doesn’t do much other than provide you with practice, and even then, blitz is not the best way to leverage your time and money. In this situation, renegotiate your contract, call for a price cut, and play longer games with post game analysis. And look for another coach.
2- He does not analyze your games. The analysis of the student’s games is the most effective way for a coach to get into the head of his pupil and understand his strengths and weaknesses. If he doesn’t provide this, and dedicates his time elsewhere, then there is something wrong with his approach.
3- He likes to teach you his openings – not yours. This is closely related to analyzing your game – if he doesn’t do this and you have no established repertoire, he cannot help you with choosing openings and defenses that match your style. If you already have a repertoire (which you understand and feel comfortable with), then he is simply trying to convince you to play what is easy for him to teach and you may not be prepared to play.
4- On the other hand, the coach may be a scholar in terms of the opening, but to the exclusion of other critical aspects of the game. Of course, this can just as easily apply to endgames, tactics, or any other component. Obviously, it would be ideal to work with an interdisciplinary team on each specialty, but it is doubt that the average player possesses the financial resources to manage this. Find a trainer that is universal and not mono-themed.
5- He bombards you with a bunch of chess exercises (usually tactical) without a specific plan. That is, he takes out the first book he has and just hands you the diagrams, irrespective of your and the puzzle’s rating levels. Given that tactics are the easiest skills to teach and acquire in chess (and also the most prone to getting rusty) one should take into account other deeper exercises, including positional ones or endings. The only way to know what kinds of exercises you need is by analyzing your games.
6- If he analyzes your games and points out the mistakes but without explaining any reasoning behind them. He may point out errors such as “That’s a bad move,” and then provide a dizzying shower of variants. In the best case scenario, he may give you a brief positional explanation such as “because you give up the bishop pair.” If you are still in doubt about whether this applies to your situation or not, then you’re more than likely to be dealing with it now.
7- If he analyzes your game, but has no plan to eliminate the errors found in your game. The whole analysis may have been wonderful, and you may have understood what your mistakes were, but the coach should have a plan to address the flaws in your thought process and the gaps in your chess knowledge. You should both reach some consensus on what you should do when he is not with you: either to resolve certain exercises against the clock (no matter whether they are tactical, positional, or endgames), tips to apply in your future games, or writing a report about an opening line or a positional issue. In short, a plan is absolutely required to address your weaknesses and to take advantage of your strengths.
8- He does not provide you with extra-curricular study. The key word is “extra”. He may be a good coach, but he is human and can have lapses because he is focused more on a particular issue than with trying to increase your overall chess knowledge. Chess is vast subject, so if he hasn’t recommended any books to study beyond what you have planned, then ask. It doesn’t need to be on exactly the same subject. For example, you may be working on your middle game, but an endgame book may complement your study nicely.
9- If he does not help you solve your psychological chess problems. For example, you may always suffer from severe time trouble, but he has ignored the issue or offered a quick, ineffective “band-aid” solution which doesn’t address the root cause (such as playing blitz in our example). Or you may feel uncertain playing a particular opening variation, or you may always lose to the same weaker opponent. These issues may not arise in normal chess chat – your coach needs to know you intimately and some do not know how to develop this bond.
10- He does not push you to the limits of your abilities. This advice should not be abstract: “What? You can’t calculate more than five moves? Well, try six.” Or “You don’t think endings can win a game? Okay, next week be prepared to show me how to do rook and pawn versus rook endgames”. Or “You think Karpov is boring? Ok, take these 5 (10, 15 …) games from Karpov, and I want you to explain me why he won.” You get the idea…
2200+ Rated Players
There seems to be a general thought that excellent chess players are naturally smart and have never worked an honest day in their life. Ask any chess player over 2200 how they progressed at chess and it can be guaranteed that the bottom line of their response will be very simple: hard work. You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself.
Chess Teachers
Without a doubt, some chess teachers are more effective than others due to a variety of contributory factors. Some trainers are more experienced, some are better with kids, and some chess coaches are simply stronger players. There is not one universal “Best” method of teaching chess. However, the best teachers are frequently able to pinpoint weaknesses and suggest the most efficient path towards improvement. Encouraging students to strive toward a truly universal style of play such as balancing deep positional training with tactical exercises while simultaneously maintaining a comprehensive approach to learning and perfecting openings, middle-game strategy, and endgame technique is one of the variations. While results might not skyrocket in the short-term, it is believed that a holistic approach to chess improvement is by far the most effective method overall.
Chess Coach
While it is certainly possible to improve your chess without a teacher by simply utilizing available tools such as books, videos, and blogs but there are some things about your unique chess game that need to be specifically identified and improved through an individually tailored study regiment with a chess coach. By avoiding formal instruction with a chess coach, these weakness often go unnoticed and even worsen.
Middlegame Combinations
If you are in the middle of calculating a combination, make sure you don't stop too early. Analyze in your head the final position and assure yourself that you have gone deep enough.
Calculate Wisely
You are not a computer. You can not calculate countless moves ahead on every single move. Develop a sense as to when you should spend a lot of thinking time calculating, and when you can get away with using your intuition.
Selecting an Opening or More
When you select an opening, make sure you have the time necessary to master it. Some openings, like the Sicilian Defense, are incredibly vast and complex and require countless hours to learn and understand. If you do not have the time, pick openings that are more "compact."
Confidence in Playing
Confidence is very important even pretending to be confident. If you make a mistake but do not let your opponent see what you are thinking then he may overlook the mistake.
Opponent Style of Play
It is important that you don’t let your opponent impose his style of play on you. A part of that begins mentally. At the chessboard if you start blinking every time he challenges you then in a certain sense you are withdrawing. That is very important to avoid.
Wednesday 17 April 2013
A good Way to memorize Openings
It’s not about memorizing move orders but about the ideas behind them.
Concepts, Ideas and Motifs
We chess players always considered chess to be a game of pure intelligence. Concepts, ideas and motifs for middlegames and endgames or other chess theory perfectly fit into this picture. Now, if memorizing opening move orders is all it takes to win some games, our beloved game would get simplified and losing some of its appealing aspects.
Study arising Middlegame Positions
Instead of spending too much time to understand an opening, some coaches and trainers recommend to focus on the arising middlegame positions. Look for reference games for inspiration how to continue after you run out of your theory. Learn and memorize the opening theory in an efficient way and then spend your time on more complex topics. Run your played games against your repertoire to find novelties that played by you or your opponent. Analyze these positions and make adjustments to your repertoire if necessary.
Creating an Opening Repertoire
Don’t underestimate the process of creating an opening repertoire. The process itself can turn into a learning curve and is far from a dull job. It requires some skills to create a repertoire as you want to ensure you only reach your preferred middlegame positions no matter what your opponent replies. Anybody who has created his own repertoire knows actually quite well why he made certain decisions and plays a specific move. So, even memorizing openings is not that simple as you have to create a proper repertoire first, actually for most of us a lifetime project. Managing your opening repertoire and training it without specialized software is a burden. On the other hand, if you use such a helpful tool, you can save a lot of time which can be used for studying middlegame positions or endgames.
Thursday 4 April 2013
Problem-Solving Tool
Chess clearly is a problem-solving tool, an ideal way to study decision-making and problem-solving because it is a closed system with clearly defined rules. When faced with a problem, the first step is to analyze it in a preliminary and impressionistic way: sizing up the problem, possibly looking for patterns or similarity to previous experiences. Similarity judgements may involve high levels of abstract reasoning. As in mathematics, which might be defined as the study of patterns, pattern recognition in chess is of prime importance in problem solving. After recognizing similarity and pattern, a global strategy can be developed to solve the problem. This involves generating alternatives, a creative process. A good chess player, like a good problem solver, has “acquired a vast number of interrelated schemata”, allowing for good alternatives to quickly and easily come to mind. These alternatives must then be evaluated, using a process of calculation known as decision tree analysis, where the chess player/problem solver is calculating the desirability of future events based on the alternative being analyzed. The calculation may go several to eight or ten moves ahead. This stage requires serious concentration and memory abilities or visual imagery. Once a suitable alternative for solving the problem is reached and implemented, it can be evaluated. Chess players, like all good problem solvers, will go back and evaluate the outcome of a solution to increase their level of expertise. Experts and potential experts want to know, even when they are successful, if there was a better alternative available to them.
Provides more long-term Benefits
To the players, the game is like an unfolding drama. The players live through the emotions of an exciting story. Chess has a powerful aesthetic appeal. The best chess games are works of art. They are the products of original and creative thinking. The beauty of chess is as compelling and pleasure giving as any other art form. The endless opportunities for creating new combinations in chess are perhaps comparable to painting or music. Several benefits accrue from the teaching chess: 1. Chess limits the element of luck; it teaches the importance of planning. 2. Chess requires that reason be coordinated with instinct [intuition]; it is an effective decision teaching activity. 3. Chess is an endless source of satisfaction; the better one plays, the more rewarding it becomes. 4. Chess is a highly organized recreation. 5. Chess is an international language. It can be a lifelong source of interest, amusement, and satisfaction. Chess provides more long-term benefits than most school sports.
Mathematics, Music and Chess
An intriguing phenomenon that links mathematics, music and chess is the fact that child prodigies have been known only in these three fields. That children have never produced a masterwork in painting, sculpture, or literature seems only natural when we consider their limited experience of life. In music, chess, or mathematics, that experience is not needed. Here, children can shine, because native gifts are the dominant factor. Aesthetic sensitiveness and ability to think logically are certain inborn qualities. How, otherwise, could Mozart have composed a minuet, and actually written it down, before he was four years of age? How could Gauss, before he was three years old, and before he knew how to write, have corrected the total of a lengthy addition he saw his father do? How could Sammy Reshevsky play ten games of chess simultaneously when he was only six? The reasoning ingredient in a chess combination is always of prime importance, even though a vivid imagination will make a chess player think of possibilities that will not occur to a less imaginative logician.
Mathematical Thinking
Mathematical thinking is generally held to be more or less closely related to the type of thinking done in chess. Mathematicians are indeed drawn to chess more than most other games. What is less widely known is that very frequently mathematicians are equally strongly attracted to music. Many musicians do not reciprocate this attraction, but it is believed that this is mainly due to their lack of acquaintance with mathematics, and to the widespread confusion of mathematics with “figuring.”
Learning How to Solve
Chess is an exercise of infinite possibilities for the mind, one which develops mental abilities used throughout life: concentration, critical thinking, abstract reasoning, problem solving, pattern recognition, strategic planning, creativity, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation, to name a few. Chess can be used very effectively as a tool to teach problem solving and abstract reasoning. Learning how to solve a problem is more important than learning the solution to any particular problem. Through chess, we learn how to analyze a situation by focusing on important factors and by eliminating distractions. We learn to devise creative solutions and put a plan into action. Chess works because it is self-motivating. The game has fascinated humans for almost 2000 years, and the goals of attack and defense, culminating in checkmate, inspire us to dig deep into our mental reserves.
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