Previously I believed that human is superior to machine in positional aspects of chess but as far as calculation is concerned, machine can calculate much more than human. Very few are having doubt with the above statement but recently I come across a gambit in the Caro-Kann Advance Variation where white offers rook. To my surprise computer failed to calculate or analyse the position.

1. e4 c6
2. d4 d5
3. e5 Bf5
4. h4 h5
5. Bg5 Qb6

Just wanting to gain tempo against an early Bg5.

6. Bd3 Bxd3
7. Qxd3 Qxb2
8. e6

Computer considers it to be a blunder but after playing the game I am giving !! to this move, a powerful move which boost your greed. I went for 8….Qxa1, later on I have checked the same position with some of powerful engines which states black is having winning advantage due to material deficit on white side. 9. Qb3! from here I went wrong in the game and played 9… b5 10. Nf3 Nf6 11. 0-0 a5 and lost the game (the game was played on playchess.com and my opponent’s title was GM).

I have searched database for the following position and found some games with great results for white. Here is the game of GM Milos Perunovic (Rated 2630 Current) played the same gambit in 2009 against GM Lalith Babu (Rated 2572 current).

After 8….Qxa1 the computer believed that black has superior position but as game proceeding computer was losing interest in black. I believe that it is very hard or near to impossible to calculate the given moves where intuition can make difference. Though it was my opinion, I leave it on reader whether to go for intuition or calculation.

Ashvin Chauhan

Experts don’t need advice. So this article is for intermediate players and for the players who do not want to memorize opening moves, variations and novelties. I have invested some years, bucks and faced some painful losses in order to develop such understanding. I am sharing the same information with you that might be useful to you to improve your chess game.

I have divided this study into three parts.

Pawn Structure:

First of all try to recognize the typical pawn structure that your opening produces. For better understanding we will go through an example.

See the diagram (^), captioned pawn structure is product of exchange variation in Caro Kann defence.
1. e4 c6
2. d4 d5
3. exd5 cxd5

The same pawn structure can be produced by playing the Queen’s Gambit Declined Exchange Variation but colour reversed with following moves

1. d4 d5
2. c4 e6
3. cxd5 exd5

My point is that, your work can be reduced to huge amount as you can apply different opening plans in different ones.

What Do Particular Pawn Structures Offer?

Every pawn structure offers something for both, for example in our example it offers White a half open e-file, a good squares for knight on e5 and c5 and better chances to play on king side by playing f4 and bringing rook in to the actions. On the other hand it offers black a half open c-file, c4 and e4 square for knights and better chances to play on queen side.

Finding pawn levers

White is having pawn lever at f4-f5 which generates the weakness either on e6 or isolated pawn on d5 and in some cases c3 to c4 if black plays f6 (weakening the a2-g8 diagonal).

Black is having pawn lever at b4 which produces weakness on c3 and d4 in white’s camp. And if you have exchanged white knight on e5 then you have pawn lever on d4.

How to use above information?

Now if you aware about your pawn structure, its offering and pawn levers, you will automatically find the piece placement and plans for your game.

Considering our example,

Plans for white:
- Placing the rooks on e and f file.
- Knights on e5 square.
- Dark Square Bishop on h2-b8 diagonal and light square Bishop on b1-h7 diagonal.
- Placing queen on e2 to transfer on king side and pressuring on e6 square with the help of f4-f5 lever.
- Playing f4 to bring king side rook into action (Rf3-Rh3 sometimes) and preparing f5 break.

Plans for Black:
- Placing rooks on c and b file (for b4 lever) sometimes on e file in order to prevent white’s f4-f5 break.
- If you have exchanged white’s knight on e5 then you can place rook on d file for d4 pawn lever
- You may exchange white’s dark square bishop by playing Bd6 and placing light square bishop on b1-h7 diagonal by Bg4-h5-g6 in order to reduce white’s light’s square bishop’s pressure on the same diagonal
- Plan for b5-b4 lever and attack on c3 weakness and if your knight is exchanged on c4 white has new weakness on b2.

Of course you have to watch out for your opponent’s plans too.

If you observed carefully I didn’t memorize any moves or I didn’t work too hard to find right plans because of understanding of pawn structure and its offerings but invested so many hours behind developing such understanding of given pawn structure.

Some tips on developing the understanding of pawn structure

- Play the structure from both sides and choose the opening accordingly.
- Study games and observe pawn levers and piece placement rather than memorizing games.

You can also divide same kind of information into pieces for the pawn structure you are playing. That enables you to play with clear plans in your game with related piece placements.

Ashvin Chauhan

This is my continuation to ‘Decision Making Process’ series. I already discussed ‘Define the Problem’ in my last post. In order to make a better decision one must be having some resources, as even a Grandmaster can not win a game with his king alone. In chess what kind of resources do we have? And how can we use those for making better decisions? You may find the answer in the following following discussion.

The answers are different from player to player because of a difference in their chess knowledge. However, what follows can be considered, factors given by chess experts in different forms and books:

- King Safety
- Time
- Tactics
- Space
- Manoeuvres
- Piece positioning
- Pawn Structures
- Initiative
- Sacrifices etc.

Sometimes only a single resource is enough to take decision while sometimes you have to consider two or more simultaneously. Here are some examples:

When there are tactics or sacrifices involved, he choices becomes simple:

The complexity of sacrifices can increases with the level of player:

Making decisions becomes more complex when you have to consider two or more resources simultaneously. Here are some examples:

1. Boris Spassky considered series of exchanges to reach nice bishop vs bad knight

2. Lasker played the whole game based on strategy, a virtual pawn majority (pawn structure!):

I could give more examples, but leave this as an exercise for the reader. Next time you look at a game try to identify which resources are involved, but bear in mind that everything depends on a player’s level and knowledge.

Ashvin Chauhan

Earlier I wrote article on ‘The Decision Making Process – Management and Chess’ where first step of the process is to ‘define a problem’. I will try to elaborate the same in depth with some common issues.

- Which Side Of The Board Should you play?

There are many factors to be considered in choosing a side to play. Some of them are as follows:

1. Play towards the side to which your pawn chain points at if the pawn chain is pointing towards the king side, so you should be playing on the king side. The reason for saying this is, you stand better on that side due to a space advantage and have better scope for creating a piece majority on that side.

2. In case of opposite side castling, you need to attack the opponent’s majesty with pawns storm. Though you may be able to find some interesting games where both players have pushed their pawns on side where they had castled. In chess you always find exceptions to rules!! You can enhance your attacking skills for these positions (Castling on opposite wings) by studying games of chess genius. Here is the master piece of Alekhine against Marshall

- Should You Attack Or Defend?

I am not addressing this issue to experts. It is a common problem for club players and amateurs, which can be cured by gaining chess knowledge. Here are some factors which you can consider while deciding
-Space Advantage
-Pieces Majority on wings
-Mobility
-Pawn Structure etc etc

- Are My Pieces Coordinated Well?

Sometimes you may feel that you are not able to find anything on the board, in which case it can be time to improve piece placements. Here is a good illustrative example of Anand’s game.

Ashvin Chauhan

Chess is game for gentlemen (ah looks good in books) but most of us have been in a situation where either we or our opponents have used some tricks to turn the table. Here are some of them:

- Offering a draw to your opponent when you are in a lost but still tricky position and you need a mistake from your opponents. I have used this sometimes.

- Playing insulting moves, best example is Tony Miles’s 1…a6 on very first move against Karpov.

- Uttering some nonsense words during the game (often seen at club level)

- Changing rook files or ranks, knight moves to 3 and half step as nobody watching you and the game is not recorded.

- Making comments about each other before a tournament, which has been seen at the highest level.

- Exploiting time trouble via some means.

Nowadays even children are doing this kind of thing, and so frequently that ‘credit’ should be given to their coaches in most of the cases (my observation). I also observed that those tricks work very well most of the times in spite of being unethical. I have been a victim of scoundrels so in my search about how to deal with those scoundrels I found Nigel’s DVD. Here is a trailer.

Where Nigel has covered most of feints with examples taken from expert’s games and discussed counter ways. Everyone hates those scoundrels so here are some strategies which might be useful to you while dealing with scoundrels and their nonsense.

- Best one is Nigel’s one in my view. Just don’t pay any attention to them as they are self distracted and soon they will blunder.

- Complain to the arbiter

- Not the best but my favorite, use same thing against them as I believe in tit for tat.

Here’s the game in which Miles played 1…a6 on very first move against the then World Champion.

Ashvin Chauhan

Kramnik and Carlsen both lost their matches on Monday and I tried to identify the reason beyond the game of chess. I feel that they lost because both were under pressure to win and pressure to prove themselves, as after all it was semifinal for them. Both played risky games and the result is in front of us. I am not doubting the capabilities of Ivanchuk or Svidler, but if it was not a ‘High Voltage Drama’ Match, there are some chances of different results. This pressure creates emotional instability which may creates some hurdles in thinking rationally.

“Emotional instability can be one of the factors giving rise to a failure by chess players in important duels. Under the influence of surging emotions (and not necessarily negative ones) we sometimes lose concentration and stop objectively evaluating the events that are taking place on the board” – Mark Dvoretsky

I 100% agree as I am victim of the same, I often lose concentration in critical moment/match. A few days back I lost 3 games in a row against a weaker opponent who was just playing swindle chess in order to break my concentration. As a coach I also observed that some times parents put pressure on their children for winning for ‘xyz’ reasons and child lost interest in chess. I think, Hugh Patterson and Richard James can throw some more light on this.

Pressure can be anything, it may be pressure to win, pressure to play against high rated player(often seen in chess amateurs), fearing defeat etc etc. I tried to find out some ways to come out from this kind of situations which are listed below:

- Meditation / Yoga/ Deep breathing, suggested by my mentor and to be honest it works really well for me though I am not 100% cure but far better from 2 years back.

- Convince your self that it is just a game not the life, so enjoy it.

- Do not expect too much from yourself and others (For parents specially).

May be you will find some ways of getting out from emotional instability if you are suffering; that is the only aim of this article.

Ashvin Chauhan

Most of us would like to see the chess games which involves sacrifices (immortal games), bold attacks, heavy tactics and deep calculations. Books are sold with the ‘winning’ tag (winning Strategy, winning tactics etc etc). Even when someone ask us that which is your best game ever played, we show the game which we win with some awesome attacks (iIncluding me!).So I thought this is not fair with the defence and searched for some games where chess legends have played some beautiful defensive games in worst positions.

Games selection was a difficult task for me so I’ve taken those which were selected by experts.

Game 1 : Emanuel Lasker – Aron Nimzowitsch (1914)
The game is given in the chapter entitled Defending Difficult Positions in The Art of The Middle Game. Paul keres considered Lasker among the few masters who can save the a position which is both bad and offers almost no active counter play.

Game 2 : Capablanca – Marshall (1918)
I found this game by searching ‘beautiful defensive chess games’ on Google. In This game Marshall has launched a dangerous attack against Capablanca in Marshall attack line in Spenish game but with beautiful defences; Capablanca managed to win the game even.

Game 3 : Fischer – Petrosian (1958)
The game below is taken from ‘My 60 memorable Games’ by Bobby Fischer. Fischer’s words after move number 23: “My first free breath.” And he managed to draw the game in the end.

Ashvin Chauhan