Practise practise practise. Play your computer as both black and white - the improvement in your play will be immense as you learn from it.
I’m no competition level player at all, but have occasionally surprised players much better than me with very specific White strategies which I worked on against a computer at maximum difficulty until I could penetrate most of the counters. (I was particularly proud of an English opening I worked on).
Of course, this is just the equivalent of learning a single piece on the piano so well you can play it mechanically, without actually being able to play the piano. I wish I had more time to develop a better all round game, really.
You could also go get a copy of “Chessmaster 10”, and work your way through the tutorials. You get a lot of good material in a format that’s easy to grasp.
I’ll certainly take you up on it. The logistics of a cross-atlantic chess match seem a little intense, but I’ve got faith. What’s a good time to do this for you? And should we do it on another post?
Well my idea was to play one move per post in this thread, adding to all previous moves. I would give comments as we went, and you could take back moves (don’t do this in a game!). Also interested parties could follow the game.
I’ll take White (you should have studied chess notation by now … my move e4 represents pawn from e2 to e4 … i.e. the pawn in front of the White King moves two squares forward.)
White Black
glee Birdmonster
e4 (this move occupies the centre and lets my Q + B move out)
(would you believe me if I said I’d’ve done this without your comment?—quick question—do you know any place online you can set up a chess board with old moves. I’ll be playing both at work & home, and when the game gets more complicated, I’d like to be able to set the board easily. if not, i’ll deal)
I also liked the Bobby Fischer book a lot. It was programmed reading. On one page he present a situation, with a question that goes along with it. The next page had the answer and explanation.
It started from the premise that the point of the game is to checkmate the other player. So it jumped right into how to checkmate someone. After seeing the simples, you move back a move or so and learn how to set up for checkmate. And you gradually move backwards in the game.
The catch for you is that you are behind already, so it’s harder to get to mate. But I found it very helpful, in any kind of even game, to have a better eye for setting up the mate.
Other standard White moves were 3. Nd2 and 3. Nc3. 3. exd5 is boring.
My move gains White space (the Black knight on g8 cannot come to its natural square of f6), and sets up a pawn chain (where each pawn defends the next one, making it almost impossible for enemy pieces alone to do anything. (I expect to play c3 soon, setting up the pawn chain b2-c3-d4-e5.)
I don’t know of such a place, though I suppose you could register at a games site and play both sides of the chess game. Such as:
I’ve never liked this position when playing black, but I love attacking it with white.
The best black can do here is disrupt, I’d use c5, eventually hoping for the e5 pawn to be undefended. A less aggressive move could be a fianchetto, starting with g6 then Bg7.
(I don’t fianchetto much because I play too much bughouse.)
As for playing your uncle, try orchestrating a Queen trade early. Also, before taking a piece, visualize/count-off the resulting trades, then see who comes out ahead.
The best move is indeed 3 …c5. As you say, it is aiming to attack the e5 pawn later once the d4 pawn is exchanged.
About a century ago, the move 3 …f6 was popular, but the talented writer Nimzovitch persuaded the chess world it was better to attrack the base of a pawn chain, rather than the head. (I realise this isn’t ideal beginner stuff, but it is hopefully interesting!)
3 …g6 would be a mistake. It weakens the black squares, especially f6 and puts no pressure on the White centre. Fianchetto (moving a g-pawn to give the relevant bishop a square is perfectly good with the right pawn formation.
I once beat a computer in six moves. It was on a difficulty setting where it occasionally made deliberate mistakes, and it happened to slip into a variation of the classic Fool’s Mate.
For those unfamiliar with the Fool’s Mate, it’s
1: F3 E6
2: G4 Q-H4 mate
If you’re having a hard time visualizing that, White has moved just enough to open up the diagonal from the King and get any possible blockers out of the way, while not opening up any escape routes for the King. Black, meanwhile, has moved a pawn to free up the Queen, and swooped the Queen in to take advantage of the opening White gave up. There’s a little flexibility in the pawn moves (the white bishop’s pawn or the black king’s pawn could move ahead two rather than one, and White can make the two pawn moves in either order), which would leave it at two moves, and of course, one or both sides can make irrelevant moves on the other side of the board before the mate (which is what happened in my six-move mate, and probably in spingears’ twelve-move mate).
As predicted, White sets up the pawn chain.
This game has a blocked centre (where the central pawns can’t be easily exchanged). This means there will be more manouevring than direct attack and that typically knights will be better than bishops. (Compare the prospects of the Black bishop on c8 with any knight.)
I play this variation with both White and Black, so I’ll see if I can dig out any of my previous games…