Focussing in chess is hard. It's difficult to juggle several chess principles and weight each of them up against each other to determine which one is best. This is especially true for a beginner like me, and too many games at this level crash and burn quickly.
This isn't true just for me. Other players would agree. Sometimes both of us take turns at giving the game to the other player.
And it's games like today's that demonstrate just how difficult it is for beginners to understand simple concepts in the game. Most of the moves I play have a distinct plan behind them, but I lack the skill to make the plan happen.
This is great on one hand, it means that eventually I will become good enough to make his plan work. But in the present, it is extremely frustrating because things end up happening in the game that are the complete opposite of my intended outcome. The way the game flips itself on me is extremely meta, and while I know I simply have to rework my understanding of what just happened, sometimes I can't help but feel lost.
I've been reading 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism and I found a striking parallel between my chessic frustrations and the frustrations of developing countries and their economies.
Or perhaps if I could be so arrogant to use a mathematical term, an isomorphism.
Chess is a complicated game, with 10^123 possible moves in an average game, it is beyond human capability to analyse the sheer number of moves. Now, economics is also complicated, with billions of people, millions of businesses, and politics making for near infinite possibilities, it is difficult to keep up with that many possibilities.
What you'll see in today's game is me have a technically dominating early game. There aren't many pieces taken, but I simply have a much better opening. I developed my middle pieces, I castled, my pieces are generally pointing in the right direction. On paper, this looks like EXACTLY what I should be doing. However, my opponent with his terrible development, manages to land in a dominant middle game, with my pieces floundering.
Now, to make the connection to economics let's describe what a developing economy should do in order to grow stronger from the free-market capitalist standpoint as described by Ha-Joon Chang.
As briefly as possible, the government should stay out of the way of businesses as much as possible and let the market grow on it's own. People have more personal incentive to earn money with their own businesses than governments because they are putting their own necks on the line. They also are closer to the business challenges posed to them and are better equipped to handle them and move forward.
This makes brilliant sense, and if only given that viewpoint on economics one could not help but agree. Yet that does not actually happen.
During the mid 20th century, many poor governments tried to develop their economies through state intervention or socialism. Most of these governments posted higher rates of growth during the years or protectionism and subsidies than when they adopted the free market ideology.
The book goes on to explain exactly the mechanics behind what is happening in the economic machine, and why free market capitalism is NOT in fact the ideal ideology to grow an economy, but it demonstrates clearly how sometimes the opposite result of what you are trying to achieve ends up happening. Regardless of how good your intentions are.
Now, this confusion works both ways. Sometimes happy little accidents happen even when it doesn't make sense at the time.
In 1965 Korea gave the worst business proposition in human history. A steel mill. Steel mills were classic "castles in the sand" that developing economies were fixated on creating in order to give their country some prestige, but let's look at why it was a terrible idea on paper for Korea to build one.
Korea was one of the poorest economies of the world, with very low capital, but high labour. They relied on resource exports, or labour intensive manufacturing to keep themselves afloat. They also did not produce the necessary raw materials for a steel mill, they had almost no iron ore or coking coal. They also could not import these ingredients from China because of the Cold War. The materials had to be imported from overseas. They also planned to subsidize the steel mill heavily with free infrastructure, tax breaks, reduced utility rates etc...
In addition to the terrible environment for a steel mill to be built, they also appointed an army general with almost no business credentials to lead the company. A state owned company.
Yet, even after looking at it on paper, the Koreans went ahead with the plan and used Japanese reparation payments to create the mill. They now have the fourth largest steel producer in the world.
The book outlines time and time again how weird things end up happening in economics, things that are counter-intuitive. Yet, all it takes is just a small perspective shift, or a different understanding of the situation and one can make sense of it.
Hopefully I can demonstrate my confusion in the realm of meta with this game.
I recommend that the blog be read like this, so that you can read my comments throughout while also being able to see the board for yourself.
In this situation, I always take blacks pawn because it represents either a free pawn or his queen coming out far too early. In this case his queen comes out too early with 2.exd5 2...Qxd5, and my plan now is to chase his queen around while developing in order to gain an early advantage.
3.c4
He plays the common reaction of 3...Qe5+, but I don't see this move as a good move, but rather a "not bad" move.
With 4.Qe2 I plan on goading him into a trade. This way, no matter what he chooses to do, he will be in a developmental disadvantage. If he runs his queen, I chase it. If he trades, I have more center control and a semi-developed middle piece.
He chooses to trade with 4...Qxe2+ and I react with 5.Bxe2 so that I continue to give my e pawn some support.
He grabs some center control of his own with 5...e5, and I plan on fiancetto'ing my black bishop because I assume he is going to castle kingside and to simultaneously put pressure on his center.
I play 6.b3, but he plays 6...f6.
Now this poses an interesting question to me, where do I want my bishops pointing? It is not clear at this point in which direction he wants to castle, as his move severely weakens his kingside. I don't particularly know, so I forgo the bishop move and develop my knight. I need to press my advantages right?
7.Nc3
Now I was expecting him to make a move that developed, or betrayed signs of castling. Neither came, as he weakened his queenside with 7...c6. This move prevents me from moving my knight forward to the deadly fork on e7, but both of his knights are developmentally crippled now.
So I plan to castle, 8.Nf3. He plans... nothing at all. 8...a6.
So 9.0-0
Finally he plays a middling piece, and it's 9...Bf5.
My situation looks good to me. I have three developed pieces, a castled rook, and a safe king. My opponent on the other hand has an exposed king, no possibility of castling, and one developed piece.
If the game is to make use of your advantages while minimizing your opponents, I play 10.Bb2 to connect my rooks and activate yet another piece.
My opponent begins to develop further, and plays 10.Bd6, and I go on to put my rook on the center file with 11.Rad1. Because: "when your opponent's king is exposed, prepare an attack."
11...c5 is a move that baffles me, what does this move DO? I go back into my list of chess principles and remember that holes in your opponents structure are good positions for your knights and play 12.Nd5.
To which he responds with 12...Nd7.
13.Rfe1 mounts more pressure onto his center, but I'm shooting in the dark at this point.
13...Ne7 is a move that taught me to be more humble. I'm not so smart after all.
If he's going to play pawn moves to confound me, perhaps I can do the same. 14.h3
Now he breaks down my development, and plays 14...Nxd5, I'm forced to play 15.cxd5
15...e4 and 16.Nh4 later...
What happened to my amazing early game? Where did it all go, it's failing so quickly.
He plays 16...g6. It's not a good move for me to trade my knight for his bishop as that will simply increase his center control by bringing a pawn closer to it.
I decide to play 17...Bc4 to have an invincible d5 pawn. It ended up being a wasted move, because he plays 17...b5 and forces me back to 18.Be2.
He continues to confuse me with 18...b4, so I just go back to 19...Bc4.
The last few moves should not have happened. What I needed to do was to take advantage of my center. Had I played d3, I should have been able to break him and win the game, but I never do it.
I'm just going to stop analysing any further at this point, I believe this was the critical error of the game, and had this not happened then the rest of the game wouldn't have happened either. There was a worse error in the game, the one that ultimately lost the game, but this is the first critical error and that is the most important.
Honestly, I didn't want to make a blog this weekend. My games this week were that frustrating to me. But unfortunately I'm a person who's life is his word and I just don't have the option of simply taking a week off because I promised to write one each weekend. Death before dishonour.
It ended up being a good thing, because I write this blog at the same time that I analyse and came to realize my severe mistakes during the game. Here's to a better next week.
His opening is called the scandinavian an interesting opening that gets his queen out early. c4 is meh after Qxd5, much better is Nc3 right away to develop /attack the queen. c4 over extends. One thing that will help you a lot is to keep the mindset that..
every time you move a pawn you create a new weakness. This will pay dividends later in your chess career.
Also if you havent heard, prolly one of my favorite books that deals exactly with the kind of ideas your struggling with is called the "Amateurs Mind" by Jeremy Sullivan. Such an amazing book that details the ideas of plans/imbalances/theory.
I like your blogs but it's hard for me to give any answer to your problems. I hate games where my opponent keeps moving pawns as I develop. I think it's something that should be taken advantage of, but I haven't found how to do that yet, in general terms.
I like that you traded queens in this Scandinavian. However, I don't like your 3.c4 response, even though it chases the queen. Firstly, it inhibits movement of your light-squared bishop, which could be said to be an anti-developing move. After 5.Bxe2, sure, you have the lead in development, but your pawn on c4 will need to be defended at some point, probably with a loss of tempo.
Yes, you made a few errors, and yes, d4 probably would have saved you. In fact, you could have played it instead of 3.c4, but I am not a fan of playing d4 in the Scandinavian this early.
I think playing 1-2 standard openings a bunch of times against someone you know could really help your positional play. As it stands, rather than simply attempting to mount an attack on the king, I would focus more on finding the weaknesses in your opponent's structure and exploiting them. As you try this, your pieces should develop more naturally, and if you have success in taking advantage of the weaknesses mentioned, you can then mount an assault on the king. I think you will see your attacks will be more effective in this way, instead of trying to attack the king at the expense of the position and structure of your opponent's pieces.
Thanks for your advice, I will definitely read that book.
@hp.Shell Thank you for your advice, unfortunately I do not have any friends who are anywhere near my level to play against. So I stay on the online ladder.
This opening happens to me often, so I will keep the c4 move out of it from now on.
As much as I like those blogs, I really think you should make less notes about abstract plans and more about concrete tactical components of the game. It's the pure calculation that fails you in most of those games; just look at this position:
You played 16. Nh4, assuming that the attacked Knight has to move. However, it doesn't! You just had to see a little deeper to find that 16. Bd3 creates the pin against the pawn in front of Black King and also attacks the pawn itself. Now he will lose the e-pawn for free, because if he tries to cover the e-file with 16...Ne5 or 16...Bxe5, you play 17. Nxe5 exd3 18. Ng6+ with a discovered check, which wins the exchange. So, in conclusion, in both cases, you would win healthy material.
Also, once he played 22...Bxh3?? you could cut out all nonsense with immediate 23. Bxd5 Bxd5 24. gxh3, getting rid of his awesome Knight and winning easily. The way you chose allowed some nasty tactics and AGAIN, you missed much better lines of play (like 26. Rxe1 Kxd6 27. Bxf6 and 26. Nxe4 Nc2 27. Nxf6+). After that, it was all downnhill...
Fully agree with Wingpawn. You keep getting caught up in rather static positional principles (I do too) and forget about tactics. Yes, 11. ... c5 is a positional mistake that weakens d5 and you do well to occupy the field with your knight. But then you allow your strong knight to be traded and are left with a blocked passed pawn on d5 - no more positional advantage for you. If you miss moves like 23. .... Nf3+, you'd do much better to train your tactical awareness (http://chess.emrald.net is a good start). At your current level, your games will not be decided by positional plans/elements but by sheer tactics alone. For your level, you handled the opening comparatively well, but afterwards you were crumbling very fast because you lacked tactical awareness to either make something happen for yourself or defend against your opponent's tactic.
Check your thinking process during the game: do you often verbalise your ideas ("There's an isolated pawn, I have to block it with my knight, exchange the black bishops, queens too if possible and then double up my rooks on the d-file") or is it more focused on abstract lines ("23. Nd4 Be6 24. Bf5 Bxf5 (24. ... Bd7 Bxd7 25. Rd2) 25. Qxf5 g6" etc.)? If you "talk" too much in your head during the game, you are more prone to overlook quite obvious moves.
At your level, doing a blunder check before every move ("Is one of my pieces attacked? Can I take/attack a piece of my opponent?") will net you far more wins than abstract strategies (which become important later on). Try moving away physically from the board and/or look at some other point for a short while to refresh and sharpen your tacticial vision. Do lots of tactics on chess.emrald and you will become better.
continuing on the concept of missing tactics (strategy is just a way to gain an advantage in chess, tactics is an immediate way to gain an advantage winning a piece is almost always a decisive advantage, and even 2 pawns usually is, and converting a 1 pawn advantage is the most common way to win a game. Strategy is just a long term way of getting a tactical advantage later. As such strategy is always taken into account after tactical considerations. If a tactical way to take a pawn leaves him at a huge disadvantage strategically, you have to notice that and choose to ignore it, not seeing it can lead to games lost due to material disadvantage.
http://www.chess.com/livechess/game?id=710218216 in this game 1. e4 e5 2. nf3 nc6 3. d4 f6 f6 is a pretty bad move, in a blitz game I'm already looking at sacrifices on e5. They don't quite work here I'd think of playing 4. d5. The knight has to go to e7, anywhere else and you chase it off to the the a-file and then sacrifice the knight for e5 and probably have a winning attack. (Nxe5, fxe5, Qh5+, g6 losses the rook and counterplay chances after Qe7 Qxe4 are probably not enough with the king stuck in the centre and white ready tt castle, and ke7 runs into nasty stuff like d6, Qex5 into Bh5 and stuff etc) anyway so so you miss attacking chances and you play 4. Nc3 a6 5. Bc4 Ne7 6. 0-0 f5 Here you play some weak moves and make mistakes and lose a free rook, and then he makes mistakes and loses a full rook and its messy as hell and you eventually lose. You played the passive R-e1 after his centre break, and he completely takes the tempo with b5 and b4( you should consider playing a3 after a6 if you don't have any immediate way to attack abusing the a6 tempo, leaving a space a2 for the white bishop and preventing b4 is 2 birds with 1 move) Instead you should have played 7. Nxe5! Immediately threatening checkmate, and opening up D1-H5 diagonal for your Queen. D5 is met easily with Qh5 ideas and just taking the free pawn also. He is forced to respond with NxE5. It also moves your Nf3 away from the threat area after fxe4 freeing up a tempo and avoiding your knight moving to somewhere awkward. 7. Nxe5 Nc6xNe5 8. dxNe5 f5xe4 9. Qh5 g6. Qh5 brings your queen out with a tempo. It is optional because you're still a pawn up if you don't play it. If he plays Ng6 you have Nxe4, if Qe7 you play f4, you have a free centre pawn up, a huge development advantage, a big centre and active pieces. He's cramped and you have lots of attacking chances. 10. Qh4. More tactics here. D5 is met with Nxd5 and after NxN you trade queens and win a the pawn. If he tries to protect with Bf5, you go Re1, and if he goes e3 and tries to take c2 you go Bxe3, Bxc2, and R-c1 wins the pawn back and you are way ahead in every way. 10. Qh4 Bg7 Black desperately needs to gain space and repair his kingside structure 11. Qxe4 d6 Black would love to castle here but he can't, because he can't play d5, and he can't play b6 because the Queen takes the rook, c6-->d5 plays are far too slow because Bg5, Re1 and dxe en passant is a winning attack (probably) you can play the slow game with e6, but I think after exd you still have a winning attack thanks to pressure on the N on E7 and lots of ways to attack. (His bishop to f5 leaves the b pawn and rook in trouble, and Bf6 to defend the knight can run into problems with Nd5 forcing the bishop to move away while also attacking the knight, it gets trapped if it goes to h4 so it's you lose the Knight on e7.
I'm not running engines for analysis so some of this can be wrong. But can't you see how much rich and elegant attacking play you missed by not looking for tactical opportunities and instead just blindly trying to follow beginner guidelines? In your game it was a total shitfest of mistakes, badly played pieces, en pris and trapped pieces everywhere. When someone plays f6 like that, it should have alarm bells ringing strategically. Opens up his king to white square attacks, cramps his kings knight and bishop, doesn't develop at all, opportunities for an open f-file if you decide and can castle before he gets a chance (if you castle through an open f-file he can't castle through capture so he's stuck to queenside or the centre)
As everyone has already said, focus more on your tactics. Stop trying to look for moves that fit your strategical opinions and focus on finding the best move at a given position. Try doing like 2 or 3 chess puzzles a day; you'll be able to spot pins, discovered checks, exchanges where you get material back a turn or two later (there's a name for this, i forgot what it was called though), etc.
The instant the moment he played ...f6 was when you should've immediately pointed everything at his king side. You should've played 7. d5 instead of Nc3, then maybe an eventual Nh4 to gain tempo for an f4 pawn push, move your queen's rook to e1, etc. All the moves you played were "good moves", but at the wrong time. "A good move played at the wrong time is the wrong move" - somebodyfamous.
I would especially work on basic fundamental chess plans, like attacking the base of a pawn structure, removing the defender, securing weak squares, etc. You can also throw in a little fpawn theory in there, as that'll net you some easy games
I made a genuine effort to improve my tactical skill this week. I played about 50 tactics puzzles a day on chesstempo.com, but I failed to put it into practice.
Next week hopefully we will see some improvement from me.
@marvellosity
Hindisght is 20-20, thanks for your input.
@Grumbels
The game's first major blunder is the most important because it dictates the course of the rest of the game.
If an onion is rotting, you can peel away the rotten part and eat the rest of it fine.
After the first major blunder, the game is waste and not useful. None of the situations after that should have happened.
You can twist this logic to say that I should then look at moves 3, 4, etc.. as there are better moves to be found there, but this was the huge colossal mistake of the game. I'm not looking to win games, I'm looking to get better at chess.
@Quint
I will incorporate blunder checking fully into my play from now on. It's a focus issue.
@Slayer91
Thanks for your detailed analysis on the games, it is very useful to me.
In regards to strategy vs tactics; I am making a genuine effort to improve my tactical skill. It's just not up to par. My positional analysis is a result of that being the only (weak) skill that I have at this point.
@imBLIND
What would you suggest as the best resource for learning these chess fundamentals?
youtube is pretty good. There are a lot, but just try to narrow your search down to particular openings.
There are also a bunch of chess puzzles that are around the easy-intermediate level; those are the ones that most often use a pin or some kind of easy to apply move.
things like these are pretty good for building up your tactics. There are a lot of videos that go over the different variations, why they do it, why the alternatives arent as good, why moving fpawns early is a giant risk, etc. Just take your time, look for the tactical advantage, and press it.
The first critical blunder is only the most relevant if your opponent never gives you a chance to get back into the game. The nature of chess is that you can learn something from every position and that chess is a battle between two players where you should always continue to look for winning chances.
Also, patience is valuable. Don't do 200 tactics in a week and expect improvement. Rather, study tactics for several months and also get some reading material about tactics and it should be more useful.
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