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Haven't posted in a while about chess. It's not like I have a super dedicated fan base though, so I guess no harm done 
Over the last two weeks, I have been playing both my best and worst. At my best, I was taking down 1,000+ ELO ranked players, bringing my ELO to just over 800, and at my worst I had been losing to 550 ranked players, bringing my ELO all the way back down to 700. At the time of writing I am 724 ELO, and that is a pretty terrible feeling.
At the very beginning of my playing of chess online, I was the king of trades. I traded everything I could possibly trade even if I was not necessarily gaining any advantages by it, just so I could clear the board a bit. Over time I began to learn that these trades were not always good.
In this example, it is a good idea for black to throw away his queen, because white would be forced to use his king to take back, resulting in a lot of lost development, and also not being able to castle later on. However, white SHOULD NOT trade his queen, because when he does, the rook can take back and therefore has increased development.
At the time I did not completely understand this concept for all pieces, but later on when hp.Shell posted on my blog Chess II, he showed me a video where-in "To take is a mistake."
The principle of the video is that if you are going for a trade, and your opponent has equal defence on any given piece to your offence, that to take the piece is a mistake because, while the pieces may even out, your opponent gains a developmental advantage. The only time I find this to be incorrect so far is when a queen is used early on in the game to take a pawn, this is because the queen is so valuable, any piece that threatens her forces her to run away, meaning that he is developing his pieces, while you are running away your queen.
The times where attacking is the correct path, is when a piece is undefended, and when you have more attacks on any given piece than your opponent has defences on the same piece.
In this (again silly) example, white has 4 separate attacks on blacks d5 pawn while black has two defenses. In this case it is obvious that it is correct to attack.
So what's next to work on? I need to keep all of my pieces defended, and taking is a mistake!
I recommend that the blog be read as so, so you can read my comments throughout while also being able to see the board for yourself. http://imgur.com/fDqKN
> I open 1.e4, my opponent plays 1.e6 to support 2.d5.
> I play 2.e5 and he responds with 2.d6.
>I support with 3.d4, and he plays an interesting move in 3.c6. I assume that this move is to allow his queen more mobility, but it restricts the knight so I do not quite know where it is going. He may end up playing d5 for a pawn wall.
> I support again with 4.f4, and he plays 4.a6. I don't even know what this move is. It could be to continue the pawn walling.
> The game continues to be boring as I continue to support with 5.Nf3, and he plays another bizarre and passive move in 5.h6,
> With the intention to begin a pawn wall, I play 6.c4. And he plays 6.Be7 which is probably to check my king.
> I play 7.b4 because I don't really care if he checks my king with his bishop, and he he finally makes an aggressive move with 7.b5,
> To take is a mistake, so I push forward with 8.c5. This pawn now has two separate defences against 2 different attacks. However because his attacks cost more than my defences (pawn bishop vs pawn pawn) He should not attack me. Yet he plays 8.dxc5. I just play 9.bxc5.
> He probably realized his blunder and moves 9.Qc7. At this point I have realized that I'm in for a very long and drawn out battle because my opponent is supremely passive.
> I move 10.Qd3 because I realize he could put my king in to check with Qa5, and I need to continue to support my center pawn with the queen, and if I put my bishop infront of my king in the case of a check, I would lose the support that the queen provided in the center. He responds with 10.Bb7, to support already supported pawns.
> I get the pawn wall idea back in my head, and play 11.g4, he plays 11.Nd7 and beings to threaten my center pawns. But again, his attack costs more than my defence, and he should not attack.
> I play 12.h4 since he has been doing to counter my plans to push the kingside, and he continues to ignore my advanes with 12.0-0-0.
> 13.g5 and my wall is done.
> He plays 13.Nf8, who knows why, but he is being ridiculously passive and is REMOVING his development. He does unveil an attack by the rook, but this attack is even more expensive than the last, it is a strange choice.
> I play 14.Bh3 to keep his kingside very cramped, should he move his F pawn forward, I get a free pawn. He plays an Uber passive move in 14.Kb8
> I don't know what to do, I castle I guess?...
> Maybe he doesn't know what to do either, because he plays 15.Ka7.
> I play 16.Nc3 as I plan to mount a lot of pressure on his b5 pawn, regardless of the cost.
> He continues to do nothing with 16.Kb8. If this were starcraft I would have expanded twice already.
> I play 17.a4, and subsequently lose the game. He plays 17.b4, I have to retreat my knight with 18.a2, and he can push forward with 18.a5.
> I play 19.Re1, it was an aimless move for an aimless man. The kingside was impenetrable, the queenside had a steep price if I wanted to attack it. He plays another time waster, 19.Ka7.
> I decide at this point that I will break the queenside, regardless of price and play 20.Rb1. He plays a fairly smart move in 20.Rd7, meaning that should I begin to break down his queenside, his queen itself actually is defended.
> 21.Bd2, I am mounting pressure on the queenside. 21.Ba6, he foils my plan. My queen is out of position and cant get back in position. I should have brought my white bishop back earlier to fully orchestrate this attack.
> 22.Qc2 and all seems lost. He plays 22.Rd8. I have a feeling he didn't actually know the brilliance of that move at the time, else he needn't have moved it.
> I play 23.Bf1, inciting a trade of bishops. Bxf1, Kxf1.
> He plays 24.Rb8 which adds a second defense to his B pawn.
> I have three attacks on his B pawn, but my attacks cost a lot. I don't see an alternative other than playing timewaster moves like my opponent, so I go for it. 25. Nxb4, axb4, Bxb4.
>He then plays Qc8, again it seems like he wishes nothing but to waste time and let me kill myself. This plan actually works because of how terrible I am.
> I play 27.Ba5. stupid move. He responds with 27.Qa6+, making my king retreat to g1, and the queen takes a free bishop.
> I trade rooks when I play Rxb8 and he responds with Kxb8.
> I play 30.Rb1+, if I have any hope of winning, it is that all of his pieces are cramped on the kingside, and I need to keep him moving his queenside units. However I know that I should lose at this point, and it is only a matter of time until he develops all his pieces.
> He plays 30.Ka8
>I play 31.Nd2 with the hope that I can "check" his queen with my knight, but because I cant fork the Queen with anything the move actually is fruitless. He plays 31. Nd7, ushering in my slow defeat as he beings to develop his pieces.
>I play 32.Nc4, and he simply retreats to a7.
>I begin to pawn push, 33.a5. He has a double threat on my pawn after 33.Bd8, but I have a double defence. Should he choose to trade, I know I lose because I am so behind, that any piece I lose is a big deal.
>I have to stay 1 defence up on this pawn so I must play 34.Ra1, and here it should be obvious to even the weakest chess player that my pieces are all locked up, while he still has a lot of time to develop 2 knights, and a rook. He plays Bc7, which begins to open up his rook.
At this point, it is so painfully obvious that I am in an atrocious disadvantage that I do not see a point in further analysis.
Man, I am terrible at chess. However, I know I have the fortitude and perseverance to continue forward regardless of my poor results. I am determined to become good at chess eventually. I'll try to do it in a year. If not a year, two. If not two, seven. If not seven, then perhaps I am inadequate.
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In the first game Qxd1 Kxd1 Bxf1 and black wins a piece. First look for mates and winning material, everything else comes after that.
There are many different ideas in chess but some are more important than others. You have to recognize common tactical patterns and you need to be able to visualize the board and calculate the consequences of your moves. E.g if you ask yourself every time what your opponent's reply will be to your move, you won't lose pieces like you did with Ba5.
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Other than dropping pieces, the main thing I'd say to take away from that game is to take advantage of holes in your opponent's position. Since he's pushed his c and e pawns and you have pawns on e5 and c5, he has a hole on d6. In general, these are squares you want to put your knights.
Particularly after he plays b4, instead of retreating your knight, you could go to e4, followed by to d6. Either he has to take your knight, at which point you can take back with your e pawn and have a protected passed pawn on his 6th rank that suffocates his position and hinders the development of his g8 knight, or you have your knight in the best possible position there and are hitting f7 as well. Always try to figure out the best positions for your pieces and see if it's possible to get them there!
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I'm quite glad you chose to include me in your post! Thanks very much, it makes me feel special. I'm happy the video was of use to you!
You seem to have taken a huge step forward in your understanding of the game. I don't see many huge mistakes in this game other than the queen forking your king and bishop. This is a good thing and a big improvement in the quality of your gameplay since the game in your blog Chess II. Well done! I'm sure you can see now how big of an impact losing even one minor piece (bishop/knight) can have on the rest of the game.
Closed positions like the one in this game are tough to play. They require a lot of tactical understanding and often the best move to make is simply a waiting move like king moves, or rook moves but continues to defend/attack the place he wants to defend/attack, etc. I do not have a lot of experience playing them but they seem to be games that require a lot of thinking and I burn out quickly if I play too many of them.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/rY13B.png) position after 27. Ba5
In these types of situations it is bold to sacrifice your knight (here you have already sacrificed it) and go for an attack. Sometimes this can be a good idea especially because black's pieces on f,g, and h cannot easily join the battle to defend the king. If only your king had been on another square!  Disregarding that, this type of position is good for white, and I recommend doubling up rooks and your queen here, with something like 28. Rb4 29. Reb1 30. Qb2 or Qb3
This type of thing is common knowledge among many players but you seem very new so I will say it anyway. You can see how this type of situation, with multiple "rook" type units on the same file, can be powerful. Here white has a 1rook advantage if black does not attempt to get his rook on h into the fray quickly. Here an exchange can be amazing, for example, with this same black position after 30. Qb2/Qb3,
31. RxR QxR 32. QxQ forcing the king to move to a6, (32...Ka6) and then 33. Qb6# checkmate!
Of course the black knight on f can come to help by moving to d7 but these types of situations can be good for white. What I'm trying to say is, black's pieces are all blocked up in the corner here, which gives you an advantage. If you can find a way to trade pieces in this type of situation to keep black's other pieces out of play it could lead to some nice checkmates.
Okay so that was quite a lot of rambling but frankly there is a lot to say. Don't get too discouraged by playing people on chess.com, it's a pretty competitive site and it is mostly inhabited by people like us who like to play chess. In other words, 1200, the average/unrated rating, on chess.com is a lot stronger than in other places. If you don't live in a big city I would think the average player would be a lot weaker than chess.com 1200. I find that I am rated higher on other sites. It's kinda like playing BW on iccup. You might be E on iccup but you could easily beat your friend if he doesn't know about iccup/fish. I hope you keep improving and don't hesitate to ask questions. I know there are a lot of people here who have deep knowledge of the game and some who might be willing to help!
For now I recommend learning the fork, pin, and skewer tactics and looking for them in your games. Of course you know what a fork is already. (the knight fork on c7 (king-rook) can be fun to play if the black queen is absent! ) Have fun and keep playing!
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pushing c5 e5 g5 like that really weakens your center, you really should not do that so quickly
"> I have three attacks on his B pawn, but my attacks cost a lot. I don't see an alternative other than playing timewaster moves like my opponent, so I go for it. 25. Nxb4, axb4, Bxb4."------ your position was fine and you throw the game away through faulty logic--- while the position isn't amazing you should consider that the queenside issue would hae been completely dealt with had you put a knight on d3- principle being always blocked passed pawns then you could focus on the kingside and win with your enormous space advantage ie playing f5 to break up the black kingside
im only 1600 uscf what do i know? 
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I actually think you're in a decent position there at the end, and that you could have even won it. I'm not 100% on my nomenclature here for spelling out moves though, so bear with me going from your last screenshot there:
Kb6 check. He likely captures it with his Knight or Bishop, but which one doesn't matter. Your next move is to take whichever piece with your pawn from c5. From here there's 2 things he will likely do. Either move his queen, or capture the pawn.
If he takes the pawn, your next move is Queen to c6 check. From there he either moves his King or blocks with the Queen. From either one I think its possible to maneuver into a checkmate using pressure from your remaining pawn, queen, and rook.
If instead of going for the pawn he just moves his Queen, again I think its pretty possible to pull out a win from that spot too.
I haven't played really for quite a few years, but I think those lines of thought stand up pretty decently. Sorry again if those moves were a pain to follow because they weren't formatted correctly.
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Foolishness
United States3044 Posts
To elaborate on what hypercube said, the first thing you want to do in any position is look at all moves that check the opponents king (no matter how silly they may seem at first glance). Second you want to look at all captures. Then, and only then, do you want to find moves to play. This simple mentality helped me a lot when I was first starting to play and was around your level.
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United States5262 Posts
You should try playing on FICS using a graphical interface like Thief. There's a lot of free chess lectures going on there ranging from beginning level to advanced level. Tactics, strategies, openings, endgames, middlegames. I also regularly play there since I've been getting back into chess. My handle is jkillashark. I like to play standard mostly but blitz is supposed to be good for tactical awareness.
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United States5262 Posts
http://chess.emrald.net/
Get an account and sign up here. Doing like 10-20 puzzles a day will help you be more alert during games. They are timed but to start off just work on trying to get the right move.
I've been doing for a couple weeks now and I've become more tactically alert during games.
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United States5262 Posts
I think a good way to progress in your chess thinking is control of the squares. What squares are important in each position. In the beginning, control of the center squares are very important. If you want control over e4, pushing a pawn onto the e4 square actually exerts zero control over the e4 square. Occupying a square and controlling a square is different.
An opening variant in the Accelerated Dragon called the Maroczy Bind shows two pawns on e4 and c4 creating a BIND on the d5 square. Add another knight to c3 exerts even more control on d5. d5 is an important square for black in the Accelerated Dragon.
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United States5262 Posts
www.chessgames.com is an excellent resource to look at master games. I would suggest looking at some of Capablanca's games since opening theory wasn't crazy analyzed back then and his games are very straightfotward. Some games are annotated and can be very helpful.
In the beginning though, master games can be absolutely confusing. You don't understand the purpose of moves like Kh1 after castling or how it seems like they leave pieces hanging. Why the heck would they trade a rook for a knight (known as an exchange sacrifice). Giving up the bishop pair and then realizing they traded a bad bishop for a good knight. Why would they move a6 when there's not even a piece at b5 in the Sicilian Najdorf. Of course as you keep playing you'll realize themes like prophylaxis, exchange sacrifices, discovered attacks, x-rays, mating themes, and etc. Chess has become so intriguing again for me!
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On October 29 2012 12:22 Foolishness wrote:
To elaborate on what hypercube said, the first thing you want to do in any position is look at all moves that check the opponents king (no matter how silly they may seem at first glance). Second you want to look at all captures. Then, and only then, do you want to find moves to play. This simple mentality helped me a lot when I was first starting to play and was around your level.
This is always good advice. I'm ~2200 CFC and FIDE, and it's still applicable to me. There are so many things you'll miss if you don't look at the checks and captures.
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If you wanna get good fast look up the article 400 points in 400 days, amazing
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After looking through the 400 points in 400 days, a lot of it seems incredibly tedious and unnecessary. While it's true that being strong tactically is the most important thing as a class player, you don't need to spend your time putting the knight on every square to see where it can move to or doing the same 1000 problems over and over for four months. The learning how to think part is kinda ridiculous as well. Spending 5 seconds wiggling your toes after your opponent moves? Looking at the board with chess vision? What?
Just do some tactics every day on Chesstempo.com or somewhere similar and play games. If you really do have troubles seeing knight paths, then sure, take out a board and move it around to see how fast it can get to different squares around it. It really doesn't take long to figure out; you don't need to make it into such a tedious exercise.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i217.photobucket.com/albums/cc47/warrockdot/q1.png)
![[image loading]](http://i217.photobucket.com/albums/cc47/warrockdot/q2.png)
![[image loading]](http://i217.photobucket.com/albums/cc47/warrockdot/ch1-1.png)
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![[image loading]](http://i217.photobucket.com/albums/cc47/warrockdot/ch3-1.png)
![[image loading]](http://i217.photobucket.com/albums/cc47/warrockdot/ch4-1.png)
![[image loading]](http://i217.photobucket.com/albums/cc47/warrockdot/ch5-1.png)
![[image loading]](http://i217.photobucket.com/albums/cc47/warrockdot/ch6-1.png)
![[image loading]](http://i217.photobucket.com/albums/cc47/warrockdot/ch7-1.png)
