Libertarian - do you give lessons? Or how about play on ICC? I’m an avid player without official ranking but ICC rates me 1500 at Standard chess, I’d love to play some games some time.
And next, why did you stop?
Thanks for the cool thread!
RexDart asked:
The names have just developed over the centuries, and usually (but not always) identify the originator. It’s just convenient to speak of a Ruy Lopez, for example, and that way a position comes immediately to mind for everyone. The openings have been analyzed in some cases deep into the middlegame. There is so much data now (chess games have been recorded for hundreds of years) after untold millions of games that most of the blunders, pitfalls, and traps in most of the openings have been identified. (There are exceptions, though. See the above game from Taran, where Kasparov was stung on move 10.)
Middlegame positions are usually called by various classification schemes involving the pawns, like open, semi-open, closed, etc. Philidor said that the pawns are the soul of chess. And much middlegame strategy and tactics revolves around their structure. Doubled pawns, isolated pawns, pawn chains and islands, and so forth can actually pretty much dictate how you need to play. A knight, for example, is more useful than a bishop in a position with lots of pawns all locked up together because it can hop around them and over them. But a bishop is usually more useful than a knight when the board is more open, or the pawns are locked on a favorable color.
The endgames are pretty much exhaustively cataloged. In fact, I would recommend to any beginner to learn the basic mates with queen, rook, two bishops, and bishop and knight. Learn also about “the opposition”, probably the single most important endgame consideration. I won my championship by sheer blind luck. It just so happened that I found, in what seemed for all the world like a lost position, a neat (and fairly famous) endgame trick. The only reason I even noticed it was because of the expression of terror on my opponent’s face. I was probably going to resign on the next move. And then suddenly, I had a forced win.
Read a couple of the old books first. Go to Amazon or the USCF site I linked above and look for books by Steinitz, Nimzowitch, and Lasker. Learn the endgame first, then the middlegame, then the openings.
Ronincyberpunk asked:
I’ve given some lessons over the years, and I’ve gotten some as well. I was lucky to have daily access to several expert and master players when I began serious play. One guy that I taught was so naturally gifted that he was beating me within a year, and he went on to become a master. I’m not real keen with the online playing, though, for the reasons I stated above. But if you have specific questions, I’ll try my best to answer them.
The main reason was that I had to move because of my job. Where I ended up was pretty much dead chess-wise. Of course, I could have travelled, but there were just a number of things that contributed to my getting distracted. My only regret is that I didn’t get to hang in there for those extra 20 ratings points. I believe that I could have earned them.
I’m glad you’re enjoying the thread! 
Well, at least I know a little about that. At least, I think everyone knows the rook mate, and the queen mate is just a matter of doing the rook mate without stalemating the guy, at least that’s how I always played it from my novice viewpoint. Like most novices, I’m so inept with bishops that I wouldn’t know where to begin 
Thanks for the advice on where to start looking
I know the moves that belong to each piece on the board. Put a piece on a given square and (after a few minutes’ pause) I can point to the squares it can go to. But when I look at a chessboard once play is underway, I see a grid with pieces on it, not an unfolding strategy or a set of likely future opportunities available to each side.
Is there something that you did (or that chess players in general do) to make the leap from “oh, it’s a knight, it can go two up and one to either side or one up and two to either side” to “aha, these three pieces can move in a pincer-movement while these two pawns block that bishop over there from moving here and then there and then there after he gets his rook out of the way, and that pincer movement will force him to either pull that queen back or sacrifice that knight over there…”
Or is it just “keep playing chess and one day it will just click into place for you”?
Hey, I made it to the other side! Crown me!
RexDart
Best of luck to you!
AHunter3
Actually, there are ways to get the pieces and their scope into your head with various exercises. Try this one, for example, since you mention knights.
Get out your chessboard and remove everything but one knight. Place it on a central square, say e4. Now, take eight pawns and place them on every square that the knight threatens. And now look at the pattern. It’s an octagon, and wherever you might move the knight, you can think of that octagon as a sort of hoop-skirt that follows it wherever it goes.
Now, move the knight to a side square, like h4. Place pawns where the knight can move. Notice that its power is half on the side that it was in the center. Half of your octagon is off the board. Now, place the knight on a corner square, like h1. You can only put two pawns down now, as the knight’s power is a fourth of what it was in the center.
Moral of the story: In general, develop your knights early by moving them out toward the center, where their octogan hoop skirt will dominate the maximum number of squares.
Do the exercise with the knight on various squares until you get used to the idea of its hoop skirt following it around. Then, start looking at it without the pawns, just imagining dots forming the octagon in your head. Move the knight to one square, imagine the dots, then move it to another, imagine the dots, and so on.
What you will notice from this is that the knight always alternates colors when it moves. Light then dark then light then dark, and so on. When the knight is on a light square, its hoop skirt will cover dark squares. And when it is on a dark square, its hoop skirt will cover light squares.
Do this exercise, and within an hour, you will see knight moves in a whole new way. They’ll pop out instantly even in the most complex position. Let me know if it was a help to you. There are similar exercises for the other pieces as well.
There’s a nice analysis here. Apparently, after the game Kasparov said that 10.f3 c5 11.Nb5 was correct.
How is it common to distinguish when the middle game begins, and when the endgame begins?
Eris asked:
Ordinarilly, it’s when the middlegame strategies have played out. There’s no hard and fast rule about it, but there’s generally a consensus that when players have begun devising strategies to promote pawns or to prevent same, the endgame has begun. But even that’s not always the case. There have been games where pawn promotion was a key element fairly early on, especially in the wilder gambits. But generally, it goes like this:
OPENING
Development of the pieces and pawns toward control of the central squares is paramount in this phase of the game. Almost all pieces (except the rooks) are stronger in the center than they are on the sides, so the classical approach is to occupy the center squares, thereby maximizing the power of the pieces. But another approach is to exert control and influence from afar by techniques like fianchetto. That’s where you play your bishop to say, g2, so that it aims down the long diagonal from a8 to h1.
But for ordinary everyday players, the best bet is to position a pawn or two in the center, d4 and/or e4 if possible, making sure that they are covered and safe. Then, get one or both knights out to c3 and/or f3. Next, get a bishop out and plant it as close to the center as is safe, usually d3 or c4. Castle as soon as you can. Don’t put it off. If you find yourself reaching for your queen in the first 5 moves, slap your hand and tell it “No!”. But when you’ve castled, push your queen off the back rank only as far as is necessary to say, c2, d2, or e2 or something like that. Get your rooks connected; that is, get all of the other pieces out from between them so that they can work in tandem. No two pieces work quite so well in tandem as the rooks. Together, they are as strong as or stronger than a queen.
The opening is a struggle for domination of the center squares. A lot of people overlook that a chess game is not just about the pieces, it’s about the board. The squares on the board. So, the basic opening strategy is to develop your pieces with an eye toward control and occupation of the center squares and to castle so that your king is in safety and your rooks are connected. Once one of the players has gotten that done, the middlegame begins.
MIDDLE
Middlegame strategies involve positional assessments. Who has the initiative? Who has positional superiority? What sort of board have the pawns given you?
Initiative is about time. If you have completed your opening strategy before your opponent, then you go into the middlegame with the initiative. Practically speaking, it means that your opponent has wasted time, and you are now in effect one or more moves ahead of him. Bobby Fischer would gladly give you the advantage of a whole queen, but he would be highly reluctant to give you two or three moves in a row.
If you have the initiative, and your opponent is not a dufus, it is likely that you have sacrificed material, like a pawn. The reason gambits work when they do is that the opponent wastes time in capturing the sacrificed unit. So if you do have the initiative, it is time to try to assess whether you can press that initiative into a full-blown attack on the king or whether it is necessary to use it to recover your material. You can usually attack the king right away if your opponent has neglected castling or has moved his knight away from f6, where it protected the h7 square, AND your pieces are fully developed onto central squares or onto squares where they control the center can be quickly mobilized.
If no one has the initiative and both players have completed their opening strategies, Black is said to have “equalized”. In these cases, you must play a middlegame strategy of attempting to improve your position. DO NOT ATTACK if your position is not clearly superior. If you do, your attack will likely fail, and you will create vulnerablities at squares you have abandoned for the sake of the attack, and your opponent will counter-attack there.
The best way to decide on how to improve your position is to consider the pawn structure. Look at the pawns. Have they given you a board that has a wall between the two sides? Have they left a wide-open gap in the center or on one side? Is there a file that is open where the two pawns on it have disappeared? Are there pawns that are isolated, i.e., having no pawns to protect them on either side? Are there pawns that are doubled or tripled, i.e., one directly in front of the other (of the same color)? Doubled pawns are great targets for attack in the middlegame.
If the pawns have given you open space, then devise a plan to marshall your forces so that they take advantage of the space. Put your rooks on the open files, preferably one in front of the other, backing each other up. Position your bishops so that they sweep across and through the open space. Same with your queen. Anchor your knights IN the open space such that they are protected by one or more pawns. Occupying and controlling the open space assures you of mobility and denies it to your opponent.
If the pawns are in lockdown, then devise a plan to open them up to your advantage. Look for where it would be easiest to advance a lagging pawn in order to force a pawn-trade, which would open the position up. Plan ahead and place your pieces where they exercise control of the open space once the pawns have been traded. If you are completely mobilized, and your opponent is strangled, consider even sacrificing a pawn to open things up. But be careful here. You are not justified in attacking until your position is superior. If the position can’t be opened to your advantage, then use your knights to infiltrate and wreak havoc. They can jump over the wall of pawns.
Whenever you have the advantage, either positionally or by the initiative, you MUST attack in some way or another, or else you will LOSE your superiority. Your advantage will disappear and your initiative will fade. If you have played a gambit, you might find yourself down in material, which will weigh heavily against you in the endgame. If you do not have any advantage, then make your middlegame strategy one of setting up an endgame advantage.
Once the middlegame strategies have been realized, by one or both of you — the attacks are finished, some pawns have been traded, the pieces have been exchanged away, the lost material has been recovered, etc. — the endgame has begun.
END
Now, the pawns are everything. If considerations of not only pawn structure but the movement and effects of pawns are dominating the game’s strategy, it is a clear sign that the endgame is underway.
Here, your plan is to push your pawns safely toward the back rank so you can promote them. Every strategic consideration is given over to how this can be accomplished. The king comes out of hiding to participate as a fighting piece, with strength roughly equivalent to a knight. Don’t be careless, of course. Be mindful of ordinary tactics like pins and forks, but you will definitely need your king to nurse and protect your pawns as they advance.
One thing you should look at is which side, king or queen, has the majority of your pawns. Do you have 4 to 3 on the queen-side versus 3 to 2 on the king-side? Wherever your pawns are in the majority, all else being equal, it is possible to get one of them by such that it is “passed” (one that is beyond any threat from the opponent’s pawns). A passed pawn in an ending is the absolute focal point of both players. The one who has it is trying to advance it, and the one who doesn’t is trying to stop it. Sometimes, an effective middlegame strategy, especially when your opponent has played well, is something as simple as establishing a passed pawn as something you will have in the endgame.
Endgame books teach the techniques. There are certain conditions in which a king and pawn against a lone king is a forced win, and other conditions in which it is a forced draw. If you’re fumbling around directionless and having trouble making progress or assessing whether you can force a win, then your endgame skills are too weak, and a book on endgames will greatly benefit you.
So in short, the endgame strategy is to advance pawns or else prevent their advance, depending on who has the passed pawn. It is possible that both players have one or more passed pawns, and if so, time is everything. You must calculate who can get there first and what, if anything, you can do to ensure that you are the one who can.
What do you think of transfer* as a diversion/ learning tool? Around the time I decided I wasn’t going to put in the effort to become a decent player, I became a bit of a transfer addict, and played it pretty much to the exclusion of proper chess. As a positional man, do you like it? Is it a good way to learn combinative play, or just destructive of patient position-building?
*Transfer is a two-board chess variant, requiring four players and two clocks (set at 5 or fewer minutes). When the other member of your team takes a piece, you can place it anywhere on your board as a substitute for your move. Games are short and full of sacrifices, solid pawn structures are at a premium.
I’ve seen it before, but we called it something else. Tagteam Chess, or something like that. I think those sorts of variants can be useful for sharpening tactical skills. Fischer used to do things like swap the initial positions of the knights and bishops and whatnot. I don’t think they destroy strategic thinking, but sometimes people use them to replace strategic thinking and naturally, when that happens, strategic skills stall and then erode.
Interesting thread, Lib, thanks.
Have you ever played Go? If so, what do you think of it as a game in comparison to Chess? I know next to nothing about Chess, (except where the pieces can move) and have recently been trying to learn Go. I’ve been finding it very difficult.
Oh and one more question. How to chess ratings work? You say you were rated 2180. What exactly does that mean? I assume it’s related to how many games you have won during tournament play. If you beat a person with a very high rating, do you get more points than if you beat some random guy?
I’ve never played Go.
The USCF ratings system (loosely based on the FIDE system) uses an extremely convoluted formula that has been sort of developed, amended, and re-constructed over the course of many years. But in general (and that’s a very broad “general”), you get points when you beat someone higher rated than you and you lose points when you lose to someone lower rated than you.
But because of the way the formula is constructed, you can actually lose points by beating someone rated lower than you. Nope. That’s no typo. You can lose points if, say, you’re rated 2350 and your opponent is rated 1400 and you win. Likewise, the 1400 player can gain points by losing to a 2350 player. Of course, defenders will argue that no serious tournament would ever pair a Master against a C-Player, but still…
Lib you would absolutely adore Go.
And thank you for that exposition. It is interesting that pawn promotion plays such a big part. I’ll have to take that into consideration as I never try to push pawns as a strategy. I should definitely try and work that in.
The bishop move you mention in how I always set up my defense for a king side castle: bishop as you mention, and knight hopped up to the center. Though it does cover the bishop’s influence, it is usually quite devestating because by moving the knight away you can get a double attack if planned well. Of course, if the other player is used to sleeper piece (that’s what I call them) attacks then it doesn’t work as well, but it still keeps a strong defense.
Another question. I know some players that would like to jump the gun to force a king to move before castling. Is there any general merit to this? I’ve never liked it myself as opponent castling is something I count on and almost prefer because of the strategies I’ve developed on my own (again, I have no idea how good of a player I am but I’m not going to pretend it is that good at all).
I absolutely consider plans for influence far more than I consider plans for attacking pieces. I’ve always felt that this is something more people should try and do if they are new to the game. You mentioned above that you think several moves ahead, but I would like clarification of this. I think about three moves ahead, but when I say that I mean that only in times where my moves can start some forced retreats and/or sacrifices that are in my favor. Do you find it to be a more general proposition for you to have a strong look-ahead?
Thanks for this thread.
**Libertarian: ** Next, I analyze the tactical consequences using a technique that I learned a long time ago from a local master.
Did you really think you could make such an enigmatic statement without letting us in on the obviously secretive list this master taught you?
Eris wrote:
In the ordinary course of events, it would be a monumental waste of time. They would be handing their opponent a monstrous middlegame initiative from wasting so much time on such a futile task. It would involve moving pieces multiple times, rather than spending time developing each piece off the back rank sequentially. So, while they could have moved out two knights and a bishop, they have moved the same knight two or three times. They are losing ground.
In most positions, preparation for castling is so trivial that even trying to disrupt it would result in serious positional weaknesses for the premature attacker. If he fails (and he most likely will), then his pieces will all be misplaced if not outright under siege. They will be over-extended into the opponents camp, right in the thick of heavy defense. They will soon fall either due to their inability to maneuver back into their own space, or else due to the defender having cut off the lines of protection from the attacker’s base camp.
That said, there are certain exceptional circumstances where prevention of castling is an essential part of the plan. In the wildest gambits — especially the dashing two-pawn gambits — White is sacrificing so much material and gaining so much initiative that he has committed himself to attack. His only other option would be to try to regain his lost material before it is gone forever, and that would make his whole gambit strategy look rather strange.
The Danish Gambit is one such daring strategy. After 1.e4 e5, 2.d4 exd4, 3.c3, White plans in some lines to allow Black to capture pawns all the way down to the pawn on b2. In the meantime, White is positioning his pieces onto strong central squares. By the time Black has finished eating pawns, White is already prepared to launch a formidable attack, and part of that attack will involve assailing the uncastled king. Theoretically, Black can always win against the Danish, but it is excruciatingly and painstakingly tedious to do so, and the slightest mis-step can spell instant ruin.
For me, I think so, yes. A player should play within his personality and limits. A shy and quiet player shouldn’t try to play like Tal, and a bold and brassy player shouldn’t try to play like Petrosian.
There have been grandmasters, like Capablanca, who seldom looked very far ahead at all, on the principle that a sound position does not offer anything more tactically to an opponent than sucker traps. On the other hand, there have been grandmasters, like Fischer, who looked into positions so deeply that their moves sometimes looked like blunders until the dust cleared, and they emerged with a superior position. I’m the kind of person who likes to know what is coming. I don’t like surprises. And so I try to see ahead as far as is practical.
Notcynical wrote:
I thought someone might ask. It’s no secret really. Explaining it in detail just didn’t seem to fit with the particular question I was answering about the general nature of my thought processes.
The reason I like the technique is that it takes into account not only your own plan, but your opponent’s as well. It also saves time, and organizes the thought process so that you don’t go over a line again and again as you keep coming back to it to see if more is there.
The twin ideas underlying the technique in theory are vigilance and economy. The 1st rule is begin your analysis with your opponent’s last move. And the 2nd rule is never visit the same line twice. When first becoming acquainted with the technique, it is helpful to stand up, walk to the other side of the board, and look at the game from the perspective of your opponent. There is no rule against this so long as you are not disruptive, such as drooling on his neck, or dry-humping his back or something.
Step 1
Begin by asking yourself why your opponent made the move he made. Is he attacking something? Defending something? Making some sort of preparation? Look at everything about the move. When the piece or pawn moved, did it open a line for something else? If so, what does the newly exposed piece threaten? What changed in the position from where the piece used to be to where it is now? How does the move fit in with what he’s been doing before? Is a pattern developing? For example, is he massing pieces onto the queen-side, possibly in preparation for a queen-side push? Knowing his plan can often help you find your own best move quickly. If your next move is a move that both thwarts his plan and advances your own, then it is a move with double strength.
Step 2
Try to find what your opponent’s best move would be for him to make next. You might wonder whether you aren’t wasting a lot of time here, since you haven’t even begun to consider your own moves yet, but I assure you that you are spending your time wisely. If he just moved a bishop, his next move might be to pin your rook against your queen. You’d better look to see whether that is the case. If he moved a pawn, he might have opened a line for his queen to capture a defenseless knight. Try to find what you believe is his strongest next move. That way, you will never miss making a necessary prophylactic move that saves your ass. If your opponent’s movements are constituting a threat, you have just saved yourself a lot of wasted time looking at your own moves and suddenly ten minutes later going, “Ah, shit! My queen is hanging!”
Step 3
Quickly scan for a handful of moves that might serve the dual purpose of thwarting your opponent and furthering your own cause. If you find two or three, don’t waste any more time. Use them. Go over them one at a time. Don’t stretch beyond your limits. If you can see only two moves ahead clearly, don’t try to see three. When you’ve gotten as far as you can, grade that position on a pass or fail basis, awarding a bonus plus if the position is spectacular. Is it one that knocks your opponent’s queenside attack on its butt and hands you the kingside attack you’ve been looking for? Give it a pass plus. Is it one that either thwarts his plan or advances your own, but not both? Give it a pass. Does it result in your queen and rook being forked? Fail it and forget about it. Any move that wins outright (like taking a queen or something) is a pass plus.
If at any step in the process, a pass plus presents itself, stop. You’re finished.
Step 4
You’re doing step 4 only if you didn’t find a pass plus in step 3. This is where you end up if you don’t have a clear understanding of what your opponent’s plan is, or can’t find a move to thwart it outright. Some players are more discreet than others and have the ability to conceal a plan (which is something you should work on for yourself — try not to be too obvious about anything unless it is an immediate gain). You’ve reached this step only after you have determined that your opponent has no immediate threat against you and his plan is unclear. Beyond that, it is similar to step 3.
Look for 2 or 3 moves that might further your own plan. If you can handle 4, fine, but don’t push it. The advice that follows applies generally to any stage of the technique: never analyze the same branch of the tree twice. Ask yourself questions about the consequences of each move in the tree. What changes about the position when I go here? What new lines are opened up? What pieces are uncovered that were not threatening before. Then ask yourself the same questions when looking at his response. Go as deeply as you can in this manner (but no deeper!), and when you can’t see any further ahead, stop and analyze the final position, and grade it according to its strength. Advantageous position? Pass plus. No harm done position? Pass. Bad position? Forget about it.
If the position is only a pass, but not a pass plus, then go to the next of your candidate moves, and examine it in the same way. Just like before, if you find a pass plus, you’re finished.
Step 5
You’ve reached this final step only if your opponent has made no immediate threat, you cannot figure out his plan, and you have no pass plus moves to make of your own. That means that you have to choose from among your passes. DO NOT revisit them and analyze them all over again. Just pick one and go.
Have you ever played Shogi?
For those that don’t know Shogi is kinda like chess except:
It’s played on a 9x9 board (instead of 8x8)
Some pieces have similar moves, but there quite a few different ones
Different promotion rules
Instead of moving you can place an oponent’s piece you previously captured on the board.
brian
Hey Libertarian! I don’t usually post to “ask the” threads, but I gotta ask, How does the pressure of an important game affect your playing? How do you deal with pressure in an intense game?