Inspired by mighty Ng5, I got back to playing chess online. My goal is to self-improve a lot: no specific level roof I want to reach! You can check my struggle here (The website I'm using is super-simple polish server Kurnik aka PlayOK. From time to time, I'll use this blog to give some thoughts about my play.
Today, I wrote down what I learned so far. Those are eight rules worth applying to ones' play. Not very high-level advice, but not super-noobish as well; just what I feel is important to have idea about. I hope it helps; even for me, writing this post was a good lesson about chess theory.
So... here they are:
1. You need to find good moves for your opponent just as hard as for yourself.
I would consider this a #1 gold rule for players' improvement. Yes, your opponent has a plan. Sometimes, it's a one-move shot; sometimes - a well thought-out sequence of seemingly incoherent moves. But he IS playing and wants to beat you as hard as you want to beat him. So in fact, revealing his thoughts behind innocent pawn moves is like scouting in Starcraft; it lets you at least not die and, as you keep gaining skill, also lets you to plan hard counter strategies for yourself.
2. Everyone loves to attack; learn to love the defense.
In Internet, you'll meet countless number of cheesers, rushers, gamblers and other shady guys who'll make incorrect sacrifices just to unnerve you and abuse subsequent blunders. Sometimes, the only way will be through, according to Steinitz's truth that 'to refute this gambit, you have to accept it'. It may be stressful, heart-attack inducing to learn the proper defences - but without it, you'll set yourself in victim position forever. Besides, what's more satisfying than stopping 5 Pool or other offbeat rush?
3. Do not simplify positions unless you are sure it will help you.
Yes, simplifying position by exchanges is mandatory when you have significant material advantage. It's like trading bases in Broodwar: with 6 vs 4, your win will be clean and simple if you can trade three own expansions (preferably those mined-out ones keke) for three bases of your enemy. But when situation is unclear, every major change becomes dangerous: there might be hidden opportunities for your opponent to bounce back (if he is on the defense) or just easier ways for him to win (if he was ahead).
4. When position changes, so should your thinking patterns.
Imagine someone sacrifices a piece to rip apart boring, dead-closed position. Will you still try to find a way to swing that poor Knight from c3 to, say, e5 outpost. No. You'll (or, at least, you should) suddenly start to calculate one line after another, since the spectrum of possibilities totally exploded after last move. What I mean is that you've got to be flexible; don't fix your thinking totally on strategical or tactical aspects of a game, because even craziest position can quickly turn into positional struggle and vice versa; and then, with single-minded play, you gonna get crushed.
5. Mobilize all your forces before landing hammer blow.
Your position is good? Fine. You have a simple brakthrough plan? Awesome. Your opponent can't do a thing about it? High five. But if he is really tied to knots, why hurry with a hit? Nonono: let him suffer for a while; put all pieces in commanding positions, gain some space with pawns... hell, sometimes you'll be even able to take a stroll with your King to the place from which it can totally dominate the endgame if it even goes that far. Isn't this as obvious as using all your Marines to break the Sunken line?
6. Almost everything is relative.
Yes, exposing your King to check is illegal and Kinght can't leap directly from b8 to c5. But aside from those obvious examples, there are very, very few absolute rules of a thumb that can't be suspended under any circumstances. Feeling like a boss because you gave a check? Look, he blocked it and will soon drive back your Bishop with tempo. You doubled his pawns? Good job: now he can use them to undermine your center twice in a row. Et caetera, et caetera...
7. The Present is more important than The Future.
This is a big warning sign for advanced calculating human machines; beware. Ask yourself how many times you saw 10-move main variation ending for you with a winning pawn snatch and then the other guy captured your piece for free because it got attacked with his last, seemingly deep strategical move? Believe me, this is a big problem for no-more-scrub players. Stay aware about the present man: by thinking about tomorrow during downtown walk, you're going to be hit by a truck one day.
8. Rage regaming won't do any good.
He beat you? Sucker. But man, this isn't Starcraft: extra determination and FFUUUUU adrenaline are both counter-productive. Have faith in a simple law: those who lose the objective view on position eventually lose the game as well. So if you feel furious about last defeat, step back for a while and check Funny Pics thread or some other stuff. Walk out from your room for a five minutes or at least do couple push-ups. Don't regame at once.
these are some great tips! however, before even following THESE tips, i should learn the terms that you are using first. shows how much i know about chess....
Most important things for a chess player to improve:
Learning openings. Stick to the most common for now, which are:
Sicilian, Najdorf variation.
Ruy Lopez.
Since you enjoy defense, king's indian is so much fun and really strong. I would study those three, probably Lopez more deeply than anything else though.
Tactical chess. This helps you understand 'hanging' pieces and tightens defensive play soooo much. Looks like this may conflict with #4 though. I hope you don't discard tactical play, as that style is very successful if you can memorize an opening.
Trap chess. At anything 2100 FIDE or below, traps are very viable. My favorite trap opening is trompowsky. You should probably learn a couple variations from trompowsky attack, as this can lead to very early games. And embarrassing at that.
Edit: some people say trap chess is bad for your game, but quite the contrary.. while they are cheap wins and losses, traps are awesome to have in your tool kit. They not only give you more options and knowledge, but gives you much better defense. PM if you want to hook up and play some games. Not tonight though, I'm surprised I can still type after watching GSL. GO NADA
I've had a few conversations with Ng5. Haven't seen him on stream in ages - last time I spoke with him he was still working on his Ph.D I wonder how that is going for him? Anyway, glad to see another chess fiend Do you have a FIDE? Or do you play more hobby chess?
I've been trying to improve my chess game recently, though mostly at the pub. There are all sorts of interesting things, like the interaction between the squares a knight can hit and a diagonal of pawns, that I never really thought about. So many simple patterns and little rules you can make to govern your moves that are somehow not as obvious as they seem.
Your list of rules and tips is perfect for me at my level.
On March 03 2011 21:43 Hellhammer wrote: Do you have a FIDE? Or do you play more hobby chess?
I haven't played in a serious event for ages, so you can safely assume it's hobby chess.
And in my country, I had 1800 rating, but it was long ago and my play kinda declined ever since.
EDIT: About Ruy Lopez: I am mostly 1. d4 player and dislike to answer 1. e4 with 1...e5, but I'm working on broading my opening repertoire at the moment. Still, your advice is totally valid.
On March 03 2011 21:43 Hellhammer wrote: Do you have a FIDE? Or do you play more hobby chess?
I haven't played in a serious event for ages, so you can safely assume it's hobby chess.
And in my country, I had 1800 rating, but it was long ago and my play kinda declined ever since.
I'm sure in a few years I'll go back to hobby. But right now I'm obsessed with SC2 and chess. I don't even know if this much is healthy haha. You ever read chess stories? I remember reading the one about Nimzowitch and Lasker BMing Nimzo. It's so funny how childish these great men can be.
Another one (man I really wish I remembered the author) was when a chess player became so obsessed in his game, that the entire time the story sounded like he was playing another opponent. And his wife kept bugging him the whole time to stop being so angry (he always lost) at his friend. One night was too much for him, and he killed his wife. Only to realize after the entire time he was playing only himself. What a great story, I'll probably never forget it.
On March 03 2011 21:49 popzags wrote: EDIT: About Ruy Lopez: I am mostly 1. d4 player and dislike to answer 1. e4 with 1...e5, but I'm working on broading my opening repertoire at the moment. Still, your advice is totally valid.
Yes. I am a rather boring chess player, I admit. I have studied najdorf for eternity. And Ruy lopez variations for as long as I can remember. I guess I like to win more than playing a creative position. King's Indian is always exciting though, I should learn to love that more.
I heard Queen's Gambit and Sicilian Defense are the "standard/most solid" openings for White and Black respectablly. Sad that I learned neither before my interest in Chess waned.... Sicilian Defense Dragon Variation sounded really cool too.
On March 03 2011 21:56 don_kyuhote wrote: I heard Queen's Gambit and Sicilian Defense are the "standard/most solid" openings for White and Black respectablly. Sad that I learned neither before my interest in Chess waned.... Sicilian Defense Dragon Variation sounded really cool too.
While najdorf is better, dragon is still very strong. Knowing those two like the back of your hand will win you plenty of games. Anyway, I'm completely hi-jacking this blog lol. Time for bed!
The only chess story that comes to my mind now is when some millionaire invited Lasker and Tarrasch to play at his residence with crystal chess filled with expensive alcohol. The biggest one was Queen, hiding very strong liquor inside. The additional rule was: you have to drink what you captured. Then, the play ensued (Lasker having Black pieces):
1. e4 e5 2. Bc4 Qh4 3. Nf3 Qxf2+!! and Lasker won 20 or more moves later.
I trained with a Class A/Expert team for a long time and I'd like to offer some gentle edits to your points.
1) Come up with moves from yourself and your opponent that play the position. I don't like using the terms "good" and "bad" because they aren't quite accurate many times. With your King uncastled on e1, Kf1 is dubious 99999/100000, but as Mikhail Tal showed us in his winning WC run way back when, if the positions demands it, so be it. Also, playing the position means you are focused on the plan instead of the exact series of moves.
3) Do not simplify the position material down unless it will improve your position to a win or draw in doing so. Simplifications favor the person with the material advantage or the one with the least space. If you are cramped, trade some pieces, now the remaining positions will have all new life. If you are ahead, the fewer pieces on the board, the more your material will tell. These are good guidelines but a Queen sac to Queen a pawn is a good example of how to properly break this rule.
4) Above all else, play the position! I don't see how someone can surprisingly rip open the board with a Knight sacrifice unless the position encouraged it. Rather than discuss "changes" in thinking, your thinking should have always accounted for moves that fit the structure. No reason to be flexible if you already accepted it was possible.
5) When tempi are NOT important, why do something in 2 moves that you could do in 10? This is a rarity, but you have to distinguish situations with and without counter play. Any counterplay could mean that every tempo you spent trying to get picturesque will be undermined in a single-freeing move. 7) "Before the endgame, the gods have placed the middle game." - Tarrasch" Many opening provide you with a worse endgame and many possible variations of every opening could leave you uncomfortable once most of the pieces leave the board. Rather than let that occur, play to maximize your middle game opportunities when your future prospects look bleak. If your opponent has doubled, isolated pawns, play for the future! Trade trade trade and get that winning King-Pawn endgame. Recognize what phase of the game offers you the most and play to maximize that portion.
On March 03 2011 21:56 don_kyuhote wrote: I heard Queen's Gambit and Sicilian Defense are the "standard/most solid" openings for White and Black respectablly. Sad that I learned neither before my interest in Chess waned.... Sicilian Defense Dragon Variation sounded really cool too.
The only opening with a cooler name than the Sicilian Dragon Variation is the Accelerated Dragon.
On March 03 2011 21:43 Hellhammer wrote: Most important things for a chess player to improve:
Learning openings. Stick to the most common for now, which are:
Sicilian, Najdorf variation.
Ruy Lopez.
Since you enjoy defense, king's indian is so much fun and really strong. I would study those three, probably Lopez more deeply than anything else though.
Tactical chess. This helps you understand 'hanging' pieces and tightens defensive play soooo much. Looks like this may conflict with #4 though. I hope you don't discard tactical play, as that style is very successful if you can memorize an opening.
Trap chess. At anything 2100 FIDE or below, traps are very viable. My favorite trap opening is trompowsky. You should probably learn a couple variations from trompowsky attack, as this can lead to very early games. And embarrassing at that.
Edit: some people say trap chess is bad for your game, but quite the contrary.. while they are cheap wins and losses, traps are awesome to have in your tool kit. They not only give you more options and knowledge, but gives you much better defense. PM if you want to hook up and play some games. Not tonight though, I'm surprised I can still type after watching GSL. GO NADA
I've had a few conversations with Ng5. Haven't seen him on stream in ages - last time I spoke with him he was still working on his Ph.D I wonder how that is going for him? Anyway, glad to see another chess fiend Do you have a FIDE? Or do you play more hobby chess?
Ruy Lopez is a good opening to learn, Sicilian Najdorf isn't really a great learning opening. If you want to play a good "learning" sicilian, play the dragon.
Traps are not viable at 2100 FIDE, I should know, I'm 2100 FIDE :-). Trompowsky is not a bad opening, but I still suggest not playing it. The types of positions you get are really limited which will hinder you development of learning how to play different positions. Also I wouldn't call the Tromp a "trap opening", I would say that as long as your opening doesn't just grab pawns he won't get trapped into anything, but even the heavy pawn grab lines can be okay theoretically.
@OP
I think actually most of your suggestions are way too vague. I would say up until you get to at least class A there are 4 main parts of the game to study, most of your learning will not come from playing games, chess doesn't require actual games quite as much to improve like starcraft because it isn't really mechanical, that being said, playing should take up about half of your study time.
4 parts: Study Openings: **WARNING** this does not mean memorizing moves, this means learning the basic themes and plans of an opening, these will set you up by far the best both for practical results and long-term learning. For example, when is d5 a good move for black in 1. e4 openings? It's most common after white plays c3 because now the square is not longer available for a knight to attack the queen recapturing on d5 (this is a really basic example). Understanding some typical positions that you're aiming for in the opening, knowing which pieces are good to exchange and which ones are not. For example: On the black side of the king's indian main line, white would love to trade either a bishop or a knight for black's c8 bishop which is one of his most important pieces.
Study basic positional themes: At a low level this could be something as simple as learning about good bishops vs bad bishops or active pieces vs passive pieces, but at a higher level it could be about 2vs1 queenside minority attacks or positions where BB v B+N is a big advantage and when it's a small advantage. Exchange sacrifices for long-term compensation.
Study TACTICS: You need to be tactically aware to convert large positional advantages or to defend difficult positions. I highly suggest CT-ART for this, it's ridiculously good. Chess.com has a reasonable set of exercises. Along with studying tactics is practicing calculation, but I wouldn't worry about the latter as much until you're at a higher level. The basic idea is to find some appropriately difficult endgame studies that require very a very accurate calculation to figure out, preferable ones that are not "trick" moves, but obviously "trick" moves can be very beautiful as well.
Study basic endgames: The most common type of endgame is a single rook endgame where both sides have one rook each and pawns. These endgames are famous for being drawish, but this is an illusion and at even very high levels there is a lot of play in the position. You absolutely need to know the themes of pawn endgames to try to evaluate them and have a basic idea of how to play all endgames with one piece vs one piece (QvQ, RvR, BvN, NvB, BvB same color, BvB opp color, NvN). Jeremy Silman's a complete endgame course is actually pretty good for this and not as dry as Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual (but this is a classic as well).
1. e4 e5 2. Bc4 Qh5 3. Nf3 Qxf2+!! and Lasker won 20 or more moves later.
you mean Qh4? you got me confused there.
I think he means 1. e4 e5 2. Qh5 (hoping for 2..Ke7 3. Qxe5#) Nc6 3. Bc4 Nf6?? 4. Qf7#
Edit, nvm, I didn't read his post carefully. He sacked his queen to make him drink a lot. This story doesn't sound real though, most chess players I know would still be thirsty after drinking a tall glass of vodka.
That's some good advice. But in the end good advice is only valuable if you can apply it.
And finally: strategy and deep plans give the game its structure but tactics and accurate calculation almost always decide the result. Most good positions can be destroyed by a single careless move.
On March 03 2011 21:43 Hellhammer wrote: Most important things for a chess player to improve:
Learning openings. Stick to the most common for now, which are:
Sicilian, Najdorf variation.
Ruy Lopez.
Since you enjoy defense, king's indian is so much fun and really strong. I would study those three, probably Lopez more deeply than anything else though.
Tactical chess. This helps you understand 'hanging' pieces and tightens defensive play soooo much. Looks like this may conflict with #4 though. I hope you don't discard tactical play, as that style is very successful if you can memorize an opening.
Trap chess. At anything 2100 FIDE or below, traps are very viable. My favorite trap opening is trompowsky. You should probably learn a couple variations from trompowsky attack, as this can lead to very early games. And embarrassing at that.
Edit: some people say trap chess is bad for your game, but quite the contrary.. while they are cheap wins and losses, traps are awesome to have in your tool kit. They not only give you more options and knowledge, but gives you much better defense. PM if you want to hook up and play some games. Not tonight though, I'm surprised I can still type after watching GSL. GO NADA
I've had a few conversations with Ng5. Haven't seen him on stream in ages - last time I spoke with him he was still working on his Ph.D I wonder how that is going for him? Anyway, glad to see another chess fiend Do you have a FIDE? Or do you play more hobby chess?
Ruy Lopez is a good opening to learn, Sicilian Najdorf isn't really a great learning opening. If you want to play a good "learning" sicilian, play the dragon.
Traps are not viable at 2100 FIDE, I should know, I'm 2100 FIDE :-). Trompowsky is not a bad opening, but I still suggest not playing it. The types of positions you get are really limited which will hinder you development of learning how to play different positions. Also I wouldn't call the Tromp a "trap opening", I would say that as long as your opening doesn't just grab pawns he won't get trapped into anything, but even the heavy pawn grab lines can be okay theoretically.
I guess I shouldn't have thrown out a number, for I am not 2100 FIDE. Sorry about that. What about bullet? I play at 1750 and traps always make easy wins for me. Especially since I like to play tromp and found a youtube video showing me a bunch of variations.
On March 03 2011 21:43 Hellhammer wrote: Most important things for a chess player to improve:
Learning openings. Stick to the most common for now, which are:
Sicilian, Najdorf variation.
Ruy Lopez.
Since you enjoy defense, king's indian is so much fun and really strong. I would study those three, probably Lopez more deeply than anything else though.
Tactical chess. This helps you understand 'hanging' pieces and tightens defensive play soooo much. Looks like this may conflict with #4 though. I hope you don't discard tactical play, as that style is very successful if you can memorize an opening.
Trap chess. At anything 2100 FIDE or below, traps are very viable. My favorite trap opening is trompowsky. You should probably learn a couple variations from trompowsky attack, as this can lead to very early games. And embarrassing at that.
Edit: some people say trap chess is bad for your game, but quite the contrary.. while they are cheap wins and losses, traps are awesome to have in your tool kit. They not only give you more options and knowledge, but gives you much better defense. PM if you want to hook up and play some games. Not tonight though, I'm surprised I can still type after watching GSL. GO NADA
I've had a few conversations with Ng5. Haven't seen him on stream in ages - last time I spoke with him he was still working on his Ph.D I wonder how that is going for him? Anyway, glad to see another chess fiend Do you have a FIDE? Or do you play more hobby chess?
Ruy Lopez is a good opening to learn, Sicilian Najdorf isn't really a great learning opening. If you want to play a good "learning" sicilian, play the dragon.
Traps are not viable at 2100 FIDE, I should know, I'm 2100 FIDE :-). Trompowsky is not a bad opening, but I still suggest not playing it. The types of positions you get are really limited which will hinder you development of learning how to play different positions. Also I wouldn't call the Tromp a "trap opening", I would say that as long as your opening doesn't just grab pawns he won't get trapped into anything, but even the heavy pawn grab lines can be okay theoretically.
I guess I shouldn't have thrown out a number, for I am not 2100 FIDE. Sorry about that. What about bullet? I play at 1750 and traps always make easy wins for me. Especially since I like to play tromp and found a youtube video showing me a bunch of variations. + Show Spoiler +
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QNvo0RBugs
Well yes, in bullet you can win with a lot of traps, but if you're fast enough you can get to 2000 by playing g3 Bg2 b3 Bb2 and just playing ridiculously fast every game, but bullet is as much like chess as spanish is like portuguese. They both have the same structure, but one doesn't really resemble the other. I'm sure after 1. d4 g6 2. Bh6 would win >70% of your games in bullet.
EPT
Not tonight though, I'm surprised I can still type after watching GSL. GO NADA
