Chess improvement by effort (achoo!)

Towards the endgame

2009-11-28T15:30:00.006+01:00

What is the difference between the middlegame and the endgame that makes it so difficult to get a good endgame when having an auspicious middlegame?

In the middlegame the highest goal is to get active. The pawns decide which piece is active and which is not. It remained always a bit vague of what the activity actually consists. In the endgame the activity must be transformed into the achievement of concrete goals. The problem I have is that I'm insufficient concrete in the formulation of my endgame goals.

In the endgame there is for the first time enough space on the board to actually penetrate into hostile territory and to attack pawns from behind. During the middlegame you can only threat to penetrate but usually it is not going to happen when there are still too many pieces on the board.

Logically it must be all about pawns. However mate with pieces in the endgame is not uncommon it is very difficult to show any common tendencies in that. So I better dismiss that subject for the moment completely. That means that it is all about promoting pawns and hunting pawns down as targets.

At the same time it is about piece activity which again has a relation with the pawns. As in the middlegame, the pawns decide which piece is active.

What are the elements in the pawnstructure that make the difference?

The passer.
A passer immediately inflicts the enemy forces with defensive obligations. But often there isn't a passer right away when starting the endgame. In that case the possibility to create a passer acts as a substitute. What are the possibilities in this area?

A local pawn majority. Trade all the pawns and a passer is what remains.
One holds two. Which is a way to emulate a local pawn majority while the total amounts of pawns are equal.
Breakthrough. Both sides get a passer but the most advanced wins.

Targets.
If you can't create a passer in a save way the next thing to do is to create and attack targets. A target is a pawn that can't be covered by its brother. Since you can only shoot sitting ducks the first thing to do is to fix a target so it sits still. Then attack it!

Penetration.
In the endgame there is more space so there is a chance to actually penetrate into the hostile territory and to attack the pawns from behind. Here it is about squares and lines and to extinguish defenders of the invasion route.

Long think

2009-11-23T21:50:00.002+01:00

.
.
.
Despite the risks there are still people who managed to infiltrate the Knights Errant. So we have to dismantle our organization and continue under another name.

The first step of endgame strategy seems to be to acquire a list with endgames which are favourable. That gives direction at the end of the middlegame where to head for. For the time being it is not too important to know how to actually win such favourable endgames. The first step is to recognize them and to get them materialized on the board. Once I'm able to get them on a regular base the need for knowledge how to handle these positions will arise in a natural way.

In general when I think long in a position that is a clear indicator that I have no clue where to head for. Where more knowledge is needed. Now it's the end of the middle game that leaves me clueless and costs me time. Only in very few cases a long think serves a purpose, like working out a long variation or finding a dual purpose move.

In search for the ultimate coat hanger

2009-11-18T22:12:00.007+01:00

.
.
.
This is about the 8th time that I look at endgames. It seems that the time is finally ripe now.

My first attempt to get better at endgames was when I picked up an endgame book by Euwe. Euwe is one of those terrible endgame authors who wanted to give his book a whiff of science, I assume. Which meant that he tried to be complete in his writings. Well, sort of. The result is that his book started with 8 chapters with endgames that you get only once in a lifetime, if you are lucky. An author must protect you from wasting your time. As novice you look for guidance, not for completeness, of course. The idea of an encyclopedia is totally wrong for a novice in endgames.
It took me about a half year of daily study to get an idea where to start with endgame study. That I count as my second attempt.
The third attempt was based on my discovery that all endgames were judged by the underlying pawnending. So I started with SOPE of Muller and Lamprecht. That seemed to work well for some time untill I collided with the habit of those authors to put in lots of beautiful endgame compositions into their exercises with positions you will not even get once in 10 lifetimes. That is so silly in an endgame book when you are a novice and looking for guidance. I had to stop that spilling of my time in disgust.
The fourth attempt was papa Polgars endgame brick which suffered from the same flaw.
An endgame CD with 2400 exercises of Convekta: same waste of time
Sixth attempt was PCT. Darn you, Gregoriev! Darn you silly endgame authors!
My seventh attempt was Lars Bo Hansen's SOCES. Now that was a revelation! Finally a book that guides you in stead of being encyclopedic and wasting my time with beautiful studies! I had to stop that study though since my positional middlegame skills were so poor that I never reached an endgame that wasn't lost anyhow.

Now I have improved sufficient in positional middlegame skills, I picked up the study of Hansen's book again. I really love it! Hopefully I can find the ultimate endgame coathanger to hang all those bits of knowledge on which I have gathered overtime but forget to implement in my games.

From the middlegame into the endgame

2009-11-15T12:45:00.004+01:00

.
.
.
Blunderprone commented on my previous post:

"Being able to reach a middle game position and in my head run through a calculation only to mis-evaluate the outcome is an issue in my mind's eye. Visualization skills are critical for calculation of a position's value at the end of a variation. Much easier to see if it's forced moves with a distinct and clear advantage or loss ( material or space). But to reach a middlegame position and evaluate the correct course is most difficult in static positions. In it's simplest terms, the decision to play a minority attack or try to make your opponent advance a pawn in front of his king first, requires teh ability to see the resulting position and say " then what?" and " who is better?" That's where knowledge of typical endgames from your games could really come in handy. Recognizing a subtle panw structure in your minds eye can give you an advantage."

The improvement of my positional middlegame play happened as follows chronologically:

First there were loose bits of positional knowledge with no interconnections in my mind. Knowledge about outposts, half open lines, king safety etc.. I used to forget to apply this knowledge in my games all the time.
After a period of serious thinking and abstract arcane blogging I found the common idea behind all these different loose ends of knowledge: piece activity. That generalization made it possible to incorporate the knowledge into my play. That helped my positional middlegame play greatly.
Then I found the relation between pawnstructure and piece activity. That it are the pawns which determine which piece is good and which piece is bad or ugly.
Due to this new insight I often reached a middlegame position with pieces which were active like hell but is was not clear to what avail. Allthough it was possible that the pieces could do something "active", the concept of "something" wasn't clear. That is where my latest blogging comes in, it defines exactly of what the activity consists. What the pieces do by being active. And it defines the hierarchy of the moves which should be played first.

The problem is now that towards the transition into the endgame I am in about the same position as I was towards positional play two years ago. That means there are a lot of loose different bits of endgame knowledge which I forget to apply in my play. If the above list can be generalized into a recipe for improvement then that means that my next step should be to find the common factor in those bits of knowledge. Which is what I'm up to now.

If I return to the comment of Blunderprone, all this means that you can't evaluate a position until you have transformed the bits of knowledge into an applicable form. Only then evaluation becomes automated enough to be useful in a game. The visualization he touches upon has a close relation to this internalization of knowledge. If I translate it to my own situation, I have difficulties to visualize the cage. Which should be trainable separately perfectly. Visualization without a relation to internalized knowledge I consider to be luxury. It will have no effect on the outcome of the game. If you can't evaluate two different positions right even if you see them physically on a board, then you will not be able to do any better when visualizing these positions in your mind in stead.

Abstract

2009-11-14T21:56:00.006+01:00

.
.
.
Some fellowbloggers seem to tend to see my writings as abstract, arcane or theoretically. I'm totally to blame for that. I don't make any efforts whatsoever to make it look differently due to other priorities in using my time. Yet I can assure you that they can't be further from the truth and totally miss the point in my writings.

On the contrary, my musings have a 1:1 relation to the games I play. They form the actual guide for my moves during the middlegame. They are very, very concrete.

The past year a drastic change in my middlegame approach has manifested itself due to these very concrete musings. In 90% of the cases I reach a very good middlegame position. Even against players with a much higher rating. Most of my opponents agree with that judgement.

Due to this new middlegame approach, a new weak element has surfaced though. I can't finish off my opponents. I misjudge a position, I'm drawn into an endgame and lose the game, even without knowing why.

I had put the Secrets of endgame strategy of Lars Bo Hansen on the backburner because I had lots of positional middlegame troubles about a year ago. Now my middlegame troubles seem to be corrected, sufficient for the moment at least, it seems to be about right to switch places and put my middlegame computing algorithms on the backburner. Only for a while, of course, but there is a very concrete cause for this change: Corus is nearing.

concrete

A.C.I.S. Arcane Chess Innovation Society

2009-11-14T11:17:00.004+01:00

.
.
.
In a previous post I discovered that chess is the ultimate trap. You might think that that leads to a simple algorithm which closes the trap. Just take away as much squares as possible from your opponent's pieces and you're done.

Matters are somewhat more complicated, though. As I stated in my previous post, you are dealing with a cage. A cage with walls that are closing in on the hostile piece. This are the problems to be solved:

The walls of the cage have a freakish shape.
The walls constitue of many different elements like the rim, own pieces, hostile pieces, covered squares and tempo's.
The walls are partly invisible.
The fabric of a wall can be made of tempo's. That means there are holes in the wall but the opponent cannot make use of it since it takes too many tempo's to walk through it so you can close it in time.
The pieces that form the walls have to cooperate in order to close in.
The walls can be attacked.
Only cages that you can shrink to zero squares do really matter.

A very good example of all these elements of a cage is mating the king with bishop and knight.
I will not start with such complexity though. I start more simple with an algorithm to mate the king with two rooks in an attempt to optimize the coordinating of the pieces. I will not bore you with the details.

More boring stuff

2009-11-08T08:19:00.001+01:00

.
.
.
Writing the previous post I was pleasantly surprised that the proposed algorithm "The position to strive for is to maximize the difference between the current potential of your own pieces and the current potential of the pieces of the opponent" lead to a tendency to walk towards the center without any additional programming. After some thinking I realized that this very same algorithm would create a few other tendencies as well without extra programming:

the tendency for a pawn to walk to the promotion square, which brings him closer to its full potential.
the tendency to capture pieces.
the tendency to trap pieces.
the tendency to occupy open lines and outposts.
the tendency to base exchanges on the dynamic value of a piece.
the tendency to trap (mate) the king. Maybe this should be stimulated by letting the potential of the enemy drop to zero if that happens. This would cause the game to go in the right direction any time.

The programming of this algorithm will by no means be simple. It isn't guaranteed that it is even possible with less than an infinite amount of calculations. My attempt to avoid the tree of analysis will be based on formulating the ideal position and working backwards to the beginning.

First of all I have an important problem to solve. A problem that I haven't even formulated yet.

What is the exact relationship between tempo's and squares?
The fact that you can only make one move at the time makes that the squares don't have an equal value for a piece. The fact that you don't occupy a square 7 tempo's away is not as pressing on the performance of a piece as the fact that you don't own a square just 2 tempo's away. But how many squares of the 7th order have the same value as a square of the 6th order (=6 tempo's away)?

After some thought it becomes evident that it isn't sufficient to look at the future of one piece only. It is the combined effort of different pieces that constructs a cage in which pieces can be trapped. This needs separate investigation.

How potent is my piece?

2009-11-04T21:39:00.009+01:00

.
.
.
This is the hypothesis:
All kinds of positional topics like piece activity, king safety, outpost, color complex etc.. can be described using only a few elements. Space and time are two of them.

If I am able to express every topic in these same few elements than I can compare them on a realistic basis in stead of awarding them with arbitrary statistic bonuses. I want to stretch matters even further, even the tactical elements can be expressed using these very same few elements. Everything isn't worked out completely yet. That's the reason for this post. Let me give it a shot.

What happens when a piece is dumped on the board?

Diagram 1

.
.
.
In 7 tempo's, the King can reach every square of the board. That must be his potential in the shortest time from his position on h8.
Potential from h8:

Space = 64 squares
Time = 7 tempo's

That shows immediately that there must be better squares on the board. If you place the king in the center of the board, for instance on e4, he becomes even more potent.
Maximum potential:

Space = 64
Time = 4 tempo's

Even if you give the king more tempo's, he cannot accomplish more than reaching 64 squares.

I'm a bit afraid that you might find these posts a bit boring. For me they are very important though. Without them I would never be able to find the third element as I just did:

Position on the board.

Only on d4, e4, d5 and e5 the king will have his full potential and hence his greatest future possibilities.

What happens when other pieces are being dumped on the board? It is evident that they can only limit the full potential of the king by influencing the elements.

Diagram 2

.
.
.
The blocked pawns are lengthening the pathways of the king. To go from h8 to g7 the king needs 15 tempo's. To go from h8 to h7 he even needs two tempo's more.
The king can still reach all 64 squares. But he needs an incredible amount of tempo's to do so.
It is possible to place the pawns in such way that a certain part of the board isn't accessible to the king at all.

Conclusion for now:
The position to strive for is to maximize the difference between the current potential of your own pieces and the current potential of the pieces of the opponent. Potential can be expressed in squares and tempo's. Not every square has equal potential for a piece. Hence the inclination for some pieces to head towards the center.

Hanlon's razor:
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

PGN viewer almost ready

2009-11-01T22:56:00.007+01:00

.
.
.
On my quest to find the pot with gold I'm almost ready with my new PGN-viewer. It took me 3 days of programming and I need another few hours. Of course only when it is finished the actual work begins: writing analysis-algorithms that answer my questions.

In the comments on a previous post there were different methods proposed to find the static value of a piece. A static value is some kind of average based on a statistical method. What I'm looking for though is the dynamic value of a piece. Based on what a piece actual does in a position. In the corner a rook sometimes has merely the same function as a pawn, just covering the pawn in front of him. Especially if he has little prospect in the future his value is about 1 (pawnunit, that is) . While a rook that is about to deliver mate has a value that approaches infinity. Usually the dynamic value will be hoovering somewhere in between and can change drastically during the game.

The algorithms I intend to write are meant to shed light on how it can be calculated what a piece actually does and how to calculate its future prospects. Since that is what you want to maximize.

Chess is a trap

2009-10-27T22:42:00.005+01:00

.
.
.
In this post I will take a few huge steps that may be hard to follow. Or swallow. But I feel the intrinsic logic behind it allthough I don't spend much time to write it down clearly. Don't let that keep you from commenting though. I hope you can bear with me. I will try to clarify matters later.

In a previous post I defined the following triptych for what to do when there is nothing to do, I found:

a bipolar goal to strive for. Decline the possibilities of your opponent while improving your own.
A hierarchy of moves based on the amount they attribute to the optimal position and the amount of tempo's needed.
A hierarchy in piece move vs pawnmoves.

I looked close into this and realized that you are actually trying to trap your opponent by denying him possibilities. Mate is just the ultimate trap. Unfavarouble moves arise as the only options when trapped. I wrote about traps as one of two tactical methods here. Now I found out that the trap is the basic of chess. Even of the duplo attack.

To identify the elements that are involved in a trap I start with looking at simple positions. In the hope to derive more complicated laws from it. Take the following position.

Diagram 1

.
.
.
Investigation of the relationship between space and tempo's.

The rooks have to take away space of the black King. From a limiting point of view, the move Rh6 comes to mind. But you can't mate a king in the middle of the board. Why not?:
An uncovered rook can only take away 3 squares of a King. Two rooks can take away 6 squares. But to trap the king you should take away 9 squares. Where do the last 3 come from?:
The edge of the board is able to take away another 3 squares. In fact you can treat the rim as a piece, when it comes to write an algorithm of mobility. The corner even is able to take away 5 squares.
The King needs tempo's to attack a rook. You have to put your rooks out of reach, in that way you add tempo's to the counterattacking King.
On a board with 3x3 squares you can't mate the King since your rooks cannot be placed out of reach.

These are the key ingredients of a trap. Every move that isn't driving the King by force gives the opponent free tempo's. Tempo's he can use to prevent the trap.

From this point of view the duplo-attack is a special case of a trap.

Diagram 2

.
.
.
Black to move.
The black King cannot go to the 6th rank due to the double attack Rf6+
So the double attack limits the posibilities of the black king. Thus adding to its trap.

My own chessanalysisprogram

2009-10-25T21:40:00.006+01:00

.
.
.
Finally I found the time and energy to write my own chess analysis program. That is to say, I wrote the first step. I wanted to do that for about seven years. The problem with chess programs as Fritz etc. is that they don't give you a good insight in how they arrive at a certain move. When I tried to get insight lately in what aspect of piece activity causes the most problems for the opponent I missed that dearly.

The idea is as follows. The program reads a PGN file and shows it. For every aspect I want to investigate I write a specific algorithm that will show the development of that aspect during the game. For instance, I want to know how much every piece is standing in the way of other pieces. Or how many squares manoeuvring room each side has. The questions will change overtime when insight grows. The sky is the limit.

The parser for PGN games is now completed and it works like a charm. To be continued.

When to move a pawn

2009-10-22T19:23:00.004+02:00

.
.
.
Initiative and symmetry.
There are some remnants to be dealt with first: initiative and symmetric positions.
I will do that by disqualifying the initiative. The scope of my investigation is what to do when there is nothing to do. When there are no weaknesses to provoke and the preconditions of a kingside attack aren't met. The initiative works by means of threats which have to be dealt with. An extreme example is a quite symmetrical position. None of the sides can claim a positional advantage, since everything is equal. Yet the game can be lost due the other side having the initiative. So the initiative is clearly beyond the scope of this research. For now.

When to move a pawn.
Pawns are a means to reduce the space of your opponent and to improve the manoeuvring room for your own pieces. Whenever you can do it unpunished, you have to move your pawns. In practice unpunished without preparation means in the opening. Further in the game you have to improve your position first before you can move a pawn unpunished. So that gives another hierarchy to the moves.

Summary.
I have now come to the end of this triptych about what to do when there is nothing to do. I have found:

A bipolar goal to strive for. Decline the possibilities of your opponent while improving your own.
A hierarchy of moves based on the amount they attribute to the optimal position and the amount of tempo's needed.
A hierarchy in piece move vs pawnmoves.

Now it's time to work with these idea's and to see what they are worth in practice.

Time is on my side

2009-10-21T19:30:00.008+02:00

.
.
.
Count down to the hypothetical ideal position.
While thinking about tempo's in chess I realized that we tend to count them in the wrong direction. When the chess pieces are in the begin position, I can imagine an ideal position where all the pieces are on their best squares. There is a minimum amount of tempo's required to reach that ideal position. You can only do it slower, by spilling moves, but not faster. As long as your pieces haven't reached their optimal positions, tempo's do play a role. If your opponent spills some tempo's, you can afford to do the same, without being punished. Once the ideal position is reached, the word tempo starts to loose its meaning. So you count down the tempo's until have reached the hypothetical ideal situation. From the start of the game, to become well developed is the ideal situation. In the opening you can lose tempo's. Once well developed, you can't. That is what Nimzowitsch meant by "there is a difference in falling asleep during your work or after your work".

Hierarchy of moves.
An ideal situation is the goal. There are moves that contribute much to that goal and there are moves that contribute little to that goal. Some moves even are counterproductive for the goal. This is important to realize, since it gives an hierarchy to the moves. Those pieces that contribute the most to the goal with the fewest series of moves must be played first. So first the one movers, then the two movers etcetera. Finally, when you are close to the ideal, you can permit to improve your worst piece with a long series of moves.

Continuous shift.
Due to the moves of the opponent, the ideal places for the pieces do shift continuously. One side can decide to deviate from the ideal line. For instance he can decide to start an attack while not fully developed. That can have great implications for the ideal placing of the pieces. Ofcourse you must then act accordingly and change your plan.

Mutual exchangebility of time, space and matter.
To a certain degree, time, space and matter are mutually exchangable. Time manifests itself as geometrical or spatial patterns on the board. Take for instance the rule of the square in the endgame. By drawing an imaginary square around a passer you can see if the king is in time to stop it.

If you can deprive your opponent of space, he may need too much time to shift between attacked targets.

In a gambit you sacrifice matter to gain time and space.

Time is up.
Ok, time is up now. Still to cover: the initiative, symmetry, when to move a pawn.

Where to aim

2009-10-20T20:21:00.006+02:00

.
.
.
When all my pieces are active as can be but there are no weaknesses to aim at I often ask my self "now what?". What should be the goal of all my manoeuvres, moving of worst pieces, pawnmoves and piece activity? In order to find out I have been counting covered squares, attacked pieces, manoeuvring squares, amount of pieces on the covered diagonal etc.. I read articles about piece activity and mobility. I compared the outcomes of my countings in problempositions with the final solution.

Slowly it dawned upon me that everything boils down to two principles which are two sides of the same coin. There are two aims to strive for:

Disrupt the hostile communication lines of the enemy pieces and deprive them from possibilities.
Do the opposite for your own pieces. Ask yourself which piece or pawn is standing in my way?

If no targets have cristallized yet, the battle is about possibilities. He who has the most possibilities has the biggest chances to come up with something that the enemy can't parry. Once formulated it is almost too simple for words.

The next thing to think about is about time, tempo's and initiative.

What to do when there is nothing to do?

2009-10-17T09:12:00.010+02:00

.
.
.
When the preconditions of a kingside attack aren't met and a weakness cannot be provoked, the game is in such a stage that it is not evident what to do. I have a whole bunch of loose idea's that can be applied at this stage. But there is no cohesy nor hierarchy in this bunch of idea's. At a certain point I bundled a lot of these idea's together under the same noumer piece activity. This is no longer sufficient. This is a first attempt to bring somewhat more order. First of all I have to give this stage a distinct name for convenience. Let me call it the stage of improving the position.

Summing up the ingredients.
Before order can be applied we must know which ingredients play a role. Sofar I have identified the following topics:

Prophylaxis.
Piece activity.
Flexibility.
Manoeuvring your pieces.
Preparing for potential targets.
Attacking two weaknesses.
Outnumbering.
Pawns.
Manoeuvring space.
Dual purpose move.
Improving your worst piece.
The tempo of the game.

Prophylaxis.
Dvoretsky defines in his Secrets of positional play prophylactic thinking as the habit of constantly asking yourself what the opponents wants to do, what he would play if it were him to move, the ability to find an answer to this question and and to take account of it in the process of coming to a decision.
The main principle of converting an advantage is the restriction of the opponent's possibilities.

As a gambitplayer I was used to totally neglect the moves of my opponent since initiative is everything and I usually had no time to consider other moves than answers to my threats. So I definitively have to learn a quite new habit.

Piece activity.
A lot has been said in this blog about piece activity. There is no necessity to repeat that. My latest dicovery is that I treat it way too static. I remember well an experiment to try to invent my own opening by placing my pieces as active as possible in as less moves as possible. That lead to some kind of Colle-Zukertort kind of position. I played it in about 20 cc-games. The opponents found 20 different ways to defuse the threat of Qc2 and Bd3. Once defused, the position of the teamed up Queen and bishop continued to be harmless.

A concept related to piece activity I often use is when a pawn is very well defended by pieces it probably stands in the way.

Flexibility.
A more dynamic approach is not to put your pieces on their best squares but to stop one move short. On a square where you have the most possibilities to reach a good square in one move.

Manoeuvring your pieces.
When the effect of a piece at a certain square peters out you have to regroup it. There are several different elements needed for this. First you need time. There mustn't be urgent tasks to accomplish elsewhere. Furthermore you need space to manoeuvre. Such space is typically created by pawns moving forward. At last you need a new square to go to.

Preparing for potential targets.
At some point you want to provoke a weakness or start a kingside attack. How on earth do you prepare for that? what does a potential target looks like? How do you know you are ready?

Attacking two targets.
This is commonly known. But how do you prepare for it?

Outnumbering.
You have to outnumber your opponent on a certain square on the board. But how do you choose your targetsquare? How do you know which square is important?

Pawns.
Pawns can have multiple functions. To claim space for manoeuvres, for instance. How do you know it is time to move a pawn in stead of a piece? How do you judge the irrevocable effects of a pawnmove?

Dual purpose moves.
How can you learn to design them?

Improving your worst piece.
How do you know it is time to move your worst piece?

The tempo of the game.
In the opening you can't waste tempos. But once you have developed the tempo of the game can change. Sometimes you can permit to dabble around a little. Sometimes it is time to improve your worst piece. Sometimes there is time to regroup. How do you judge this?

As you see there are a lot of ingredients and a lot of questions. I going to look for some order.

Improving my position

2009-10-14T22:33:00.005+02:00

.
.
.
There are two obvious targets in chess: the opposite king and a weak pawn. I can attack the king if the preconditions of Vukovic are met and I can attack a weak pawn if I have induced one (see previous post). If the preconditions are not met or if I can't induce a weak pawn I have to:

Improve my position.
I can move pieces or pawns in order to reorganize my pieces. But how do I improve my position? Logically I suspect that my organizing manoeuvres must be related to the two targets mentioned above. But how? One of the preconditions of a kingside attack is that I have to outnumber the defensive pieces by 3 (2 in the case of a pawnstorm). But I cannot force that!

Yet the moves I do must have at least some relation to the main targets. Otherwise I'm just moving back and forth.

Outnumbering.
Now I mention it, outnumbering seems to be an essential element of every attack. The problem is, that if I do pile up my pieces against a target, my opponent can do the same by piling up his defensive pieces. The trouble is that I can move only one piece at the time.

The problem bears a lot of simularity with two possibilities to gain wood by force in tactics: the duplo-attack and the trap. With a duplo-attack (all variations of attacking two pieces at the same time with one move) the opponent has a lack of time. That is to say he cannot save both pieces with one tempo. With a trap the opponent has a lack of space.

Logically time and space are the ingredients to work with. This implies two methods to get an edge. The first one is the multipurpose move while the second method is claiming space. With the multipurpose move you win time by accomplishing two things with one tempo. Claiming space is best done by pawns. Claiming space has two results: it diminishes the manoeuvring possibilities of the opponents' pieces and it improves the manoeuvring room of my own pieces.

Dynamic vs. static.
It now appears that my view of the much praised piece activity has been fairly static. I put my piece on an open line from which it starts to stare into enemy territory. Once my opponent coped with that he doesn't need to use any tempos anymore to continue parrying the threat.

In order to pose threats I must not put a piece on its best square and leave it there, but I must put it on a flexible square from where it can reach two or more good squares with one move. The threat is stronger than the execution. If my opponent starts to defend against threats that aren't manifest yet, he is basically wasting tempos on phantom threats. In stead he has to keep his pieces ready on flexible squares too, ready to defend when necessary.

The use of flexible squares demands another approach to the pawnstructure.

Enhancing the toolbox

2009-10-12T20:19:00.002+02:00

.
.
.
After a half year break of chess study I restarted this weekend. There are two main problems: first of all I have now two other hobbies which consume time, singing and geology. Secondly I have the feeling that I have found a way to improve and have a tendency to see that as the end of the road. So I must force myself to actually prove my case.

A good help is that the chess season is now in full swing here and I feel that I have become rusty. Ok, what am I up to?
Previously it was my intention to keep radio silence untill I reached 2000. I have re-evaluated this and asked myself if blogging is going to be helpful. During the break I have forgotten every knowledge about chess that I didn't "own". It was very helpful to reread my old posts while mapping out the future. So I have come to the conclusion that some dosed blogging will be helpful. Which is what I'm going to do.

Let me recapitulate my starting point. I have found that the pattern recognition in itself is not the problem but the building of the database with patterns to be recognized (read this twice, it's essential). In order to build that database I make use of the problemsets in Dvoretsky's books. I make use of shortlists which help me to find the right move. Every time Dvoretsky comes with a problem I can't solve with the aid of my shortlists I re-evaluate and rewrite my lists. Topics I'm already used to apply during problemsolving are removed from the lists. Which makes the lists very personalized.

What's on the lists right now?

Are the preconditions for a kingside attack met?
This is based on the ideas of Vukovic.
SSOWN:

Safe center. To rule out counter attacks
Safe queenside. To rule out counterattacks.
Outnumber. You have to outnumber the defensive pieces at the kingside by 3. One piece to break open the position by a sac, two pieces to mate the king. The rest is exchanged. If there is a lever in the form of an advanced pawn, you can open lines by a pawn storm. Then there is no need to sac a piece.
Wedge. A pawn on e5 is helpful.
Noescape. The king can't escape to the queenside.

If the preconditions are not met I'm not going to attack, but I'm going to
Create a weak pawn.
IFA:

Induce a weakness.
Fixate the weakness.
Attack the weakness. According to the principle of the two weaknesses, attack where your opponents pieces are not.

If I can't attack the king and can't create a weakness I'm going to
Reorganize my pieces.
PM:

Pawnstructure. The pawns decide which piece is active and which is passive. There are 3 things pawns can achieve: create an outpost, open a line or claim space for manoeuvres.
Manoeuvre my pieces towards their best positions.

What I'm going to think about:
What is the relation between the last point (reorganize my pieces) and the first two points (kingside attack and creating a weakness)?

Meeting other bloggers.

2009-10-10T16:25:00.006+02:00

.
.
.
Internet promotes definitively the contact between people.
It was fun to meet two of my fellow bloggers in real lately, Polly and CMOB. Polly conformed remarkably well to the stereotype I had in mind of American women who in my prejudice always carry around a camera and taking pictures all the time while speaking with a slow nasal accent. CMOB is a silent guy who has some nervous energy hanging around him. As I already expected on basis of our blogs, we all three had clearly very little in common besides chess. Nevertheless it was quite enjoyable and we had enough to talk about. We met at hotel Krasnapolsky in Amsterdam where a tournament was going on. We looked at the games and we talked about chess. After some time we decided to go to "chesscafe" Batavia and play a few games.
I played a Polar Bear against Polly. What can I say about her playing style? She blundered alot during her games. I wondered why. I guess it is a habit of her to don't evaluate the moves of her opponent. I sensed some mental laziness behind that (sorry, Polly). She probably would do much better if she strives to overcome that. CMOB has clearly improved alot over the past years and impressed me with a good feel for tactical opportunities. If he can force himself to absorb some positional knowledge he will have a bright future in chess.
For some reason CMOB insisted to buy all the drinks. Since I always hate it to bargain over such things I accepted without much resistance. Usually that's the fastest way to inspire reconsideration of irrational behaviour:)
CMOB, if I can ever buy you a drink. . .

CMOB remembered an appointment and Polly and I went for a dinner in some Indian restaurant. She is very nice and it was a relaxed evening.
Until we decided to fetch the underground in order to visit another chesscafe, that is. The metro in Amsterdam had just adopted a new ticketsystem which was clearly still in its infancy. Most vending machines were out of order. By talking to the officials I could get Polly into the metro but since there weren't any officials when we arrived we had to fool the gate by staying close together while walking out.

The problems with the underground took so much time that it was too late to go to the next chesscafe and I brought her home through heavy weather.
All in all a quite enjoyable experience.

Midlife crisis

2009-07-14T21:14:00.003+02:00

.
.
Begin this year I reached the age of 50. As you might know that is the age where every selfrespecting man will start to exercise his midlife crisis. It's the age where you make up the balance of your life. If you are egoistic you ask yourself if you have gotten enough out of your life. Since the answer is probably no you leave your wife and get a younger woman. Or a sportscar. If you are religeous then you realize that you haven't done enough for your salvation and start to do charitative work. You start to ask yourself if you are not wasting your time.
And so I started with geology.

The what and the how

2009-06-02T09:09:00.005+02:00

.
.
.
This weekend I played in a tournament with stiff competition. From the 42 men in my group there were 2 grandmasters and 15 (international) masters. And 3 Dimitri's, which is an indication of the east-block caliber. The opponents I faced hoovered between 1919 and 2140. I was the lowest rated player with 1874. I played 7 games and got 2.5/7 (+1 3= 3-) which is about what to expect.

What can I say about it?
It was very instructive.
In the 3 games I lost my opponents admitted I was better in the opening untill deep in the middlegame. Due to my (relatively) well understanding of the Polar bear and the resulting positions. My opponents had little clue. But in the second half of the middlegame I committed a slight inaccuracy and was invariably heavily punished for that. I played 6 Polar Bears and 1 Caro Kan.

I felt that there was little difference in our tactical ability. Allthough I'm somewhat slower. In two of the drawn games my opponents played a (pawn)gambit. But my understanding of gambits helped me to outplay them tactically. In one case I was a piece up, in the other two pawns. But in both cases I had to accept a draw due to time trouble. So in the world of what could have been I would have had a full point more:)

Provisional conclusion.
Tactical exercises have prepared me quite well to meet 2100 players. I know how to play against them. I lost my fear. But in certain middlegame position I simply don't know well enough what to play. That's why I play inaccurate. I'm not able to judge between two positons due to lack of knowledge and experience.

What and how.
The how I associate with tactical ability and the what with positional knowledge. It is obvious that at the moment I can make the most progress when I work on my positional knowledge. Which is what I'm doing lately. No matter how well you are in tactics, if you don't know what to to play it doesn't help you. If you execute the wrong plan in a tactical brilliant way you will still lose the game.

Why?

2009-05-02T04:10:00.003+02:00

As you could read in my previous post, two positions of Dvoretsky's book took me a weekend each to adjust my ideas about chess. Now I'm working on a third position and a weekend proved to be not enough to overhaul my ideas. See diagram.

'
'
'
Dvoretsky says that if it were black to move it speaks for itself that he would trade queens since 1. ... Qf5 2. Qxf5 gxf5 is good for black.

Why?

In my ridgid vision the creation of an extra pawn island is not good. So of what comprises the advantage of black? Or is it his only way to maintain equality and are other moves worse?

Rating update

2009-04-28T20:29:00.011+02:00

.
.
.
Rating progress or regression is sufficient reason to break the radio silence since I promised you to keep you informed about my path to 2000. I reached another all time high with 1874 (=+18) points according to the new dutch ratinglist. In the past year I surpassed a whole bunch of guys against whom I was looking up before. Margriet improved to 1552 (+44)

I noticed lately that I was more talking about chess improvement than I was actually working. The break from blogging has indeed boosted my study efforts as I hoped it would.

This is my approach: I made a checklist with which I have to verify each position in order to assess the characteristics and to find the best move. Then I lookup the answer and usually I haven't found the right answer. Then I adjust my checklist so that it will help me to find the right answer the next time. Since I switched over to Dvoretsky's positional problems lately this usually means quite an overhaul of my idea's. Unbelievable how ridgid, shortsighted and vague my ideas about chess are!

Take the following example from Dvoretsky's book:

.
.
.
This is a position of a game of Anand. One of the things Anand said about this position was: "the black knight at b4 is bad". Well, according to my checklist it was quite good. So it took me a weekend to overhaul my idea's about good and bad pieces. I used to advocate the term "piece activity" as the nec plus ultra for the middlegame. But now it proves that that idea is way too vague. As BDK tried to convince me for a long time to no avail.

Piece activity in itself is not enough. The activity has to have a relation with attacking targets.

Or take the following example:

.
.
.
White to move.

The move Dvoretsky proposed here was Bc2. For me, with my gambit background, h6 was screaming to be played. It simply blurred my thinking. It took me another weekend to overhaul my idea's so that Bc2 would fit in them. I had to revert back to Vukovic and his preconditions for a kingside attack before I realised that it is way too soon for an attack. So I had to add the preconditions in my list.

And so I'm moving along. I'm convinced it is the best way to improve. Thus closely following the ideas of Phaedrus.

For the time being I don't worry about visualisation or calculation. There will come a time when it will be appropriate to move that from the backburner to the frontburner. But that time is not now.

Everything has been said and done for now

2009-04-12T00:48:00.002+02:00

.
.
.
For the third time my reasoning has lead to the same conclusions on how to improve at chess. This means that there must at least be some truth in it. Now the time has come to just execute what I have formulated. Otherwise I would just continue to talk for the sake of talking. I will shut up for now and keep radiosilence until I have reached 2000.

Another missed characteristic

2009-04-08T21:01:00.005+02:00

.
.
.
Who would have thought of e6 as the best place for the night?
I didn't.

It seems it is all about building a database of cues in stead of patterns or ideas. Most patterns are already there, in my system, ready to be recognized. It just needs cues to be triggered.
Lack of cues means that you forget your ideas or patterns during play. It is maybe the key of Phaedrus' transferproblem.

Let's animate

2009-04-06T22:07:00.005+02:00

.
.
.
.
Let us see if we can make this animation stuff practical.

The idea I missed here is the regrouping of the knight. It stands in the way on c3.