Recently I read an article of Jonah Lehrer on Carlsen and chess intuition http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2010/01/18/chess-intuition/ . According to Lehrer, The use of computers actually enhances chess intuition but I am not agree at all with Mr. Lehrer as Mikhail Tal, possibly the most intuitive player in chess history who was not having computers what I understand is that chess Intuition is the reflection of your chess knowledge.

To support my view more, I would like give example of myself from recently played Parsvnath International tournament at New Delhi with net 42 points loss in my chess rating. After analysing my games from opening point of view I came to conclusion that I scored very well with the line that has reputation of most drawish opening ever. That is Slav exchange; I scored 3.5 out of 4. In above games I didn’t calculate much, just played on my intuition with a better feel that oh in this position if I got endgame I will win. From where did the feel come? As before 2 years, neither I was having such kind of feel sense nor did I play games against computers. So I realised it is nothing but a result of a systematic training given by my mentor Nigel Davies. In my view, intuition is not skill that person obtain with born but it can be acquire with good amount of practise and gaining of sensible information/ knowledge. I found below video on youtube in order to support my argument.

Chess is consider as a war over the board, and by reading about chess strategy I came across a book called ‘ The Art of War’ (Book on military strategy) written by Sun Tzu who was an ancient Chinese Military general, strategies and philosopher. He has had a great impact on Chinese and Asian history and culture. Sun Tzu lived in the 4th century BC that never lose a battle.

Here some of idea’s which is very useful for chess strategy which has been explained by Mr. Crowley on his blogs :

“a military commander must attack where the enemy is unprepared and must use paths that, for the enemy, are unexpected …” – Principle of Surprise;

“If you discover the weakness of the opponent, you must affect it quickly. Capture, initially, what is very valuable to the enemy. Do not reveal the time of the attack.” – Principle of vulnerabilities;

“Invincibility is in defence, the possibility of victory in the attack. Who defends shows that his strength is inadequate; who attacks, shows that it is abundant.” (In Chess is important to defend when we are in the lower position and attack when we are in advantage, attack in lower position is suicide);

“If it isn’t advantageous, never send troops; if it yields no profit, never use your men; if it isn’t a dangerous situation, never fight a battle hasty …” (Attacks must be planned, there should be harmony between the parts, attack without activate all the parts is precipitated);

“If you know the enemy and yourself, you needn’t fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you don’t know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will lose all the battles. ” (Knowing our strengths and weaknesses is extremely important in chess, in order to choose the best ways to trick our opponent);

“Keep them under stress and tire them.” (All moves should improve our position, the pressure must be constant);

Here is a full documentary (Educational) on the Art of War sun Tsu.

When we talk about chess sacrifices most of us remembers Mikhail Tal but today I am going to talk on Tigran Petrosian who was not only famous for his positional chess but for also his prophylaxes method and ‘Positional exchange sacrifice’.

In Kasparov’s words …..Petrosian introduced the exchange sacrifice for the sake of ‘quality of position’, where the time factor, which is so important in the play of Alekhine and Tal, plays hardly any role. Even today, very few players can operate confidently at the board with such abstract concepts. Before Petrosian no one had studied this. By sacrificing the exchange ‘just like that’, for certain long term advantages, in positions with disrupted material balance, he discovered latent resources that few were capable of seeing and properly evaluating.

There was a joke between Russian masters, which said “if Tal makes a sacrifice against you, then accept it, offer a draw and pray. If Petrosian makes a sacrifice against you, there’s no need to do anything: resign immediately”.

Here are some of the examples

·                    Exchange Sacrifice to create blockade the advance of pawns. (Reshevsky vs. Petrosian,1953)

·                    Sac against M. Tal 1958

·                    Sac against Gligoric to escape from difficult position 1962

Recently Alexey Dreev has given his views on ‘classical chess v/s rapid chess’ where he favours rapid chess reason being… in his words

“What differs rapid from classical chess? In classical chess 20-30 moves made by the players aren’t their own. Not in every game, but in most of them. The recent encounter Jakovenko – gelfand is the best example of it. Dmitry decided to check his opponent; Boris forgot the theory on 41st move! Classical chess loses popularity under pressure of computers… This process has already started, but not everyone pays enough attention to it. Rapid is more entertaining. You should have preparation, but you don’t have time to learn all that variations by heart! So, the one whose overall chess skills are stronger – wins. I consider this to be fairer. It’s absolutely wrong to think that rapid chess is not objective! Only the strongest wins in it. You may play a classical game against the opponent whose rating is 2200, but who has memorized what Houdini has advised him, while rapid shows who is who immediately. What is more important, in rapid the role of computers goes down!”

Here’s what Dreev answered on a question regarding deepness of his analyses:

“Depends with whom you are comparing. Let’s say, Vishy Anand with his team, or Sergey Karjakin if talking about Russia. Sergey’s preparation is focused on computer preparation. He has assistants who do analyze with the computer. Actually that’s just a huge work, hard labor, hellish work. I’ve done that as long as I’ve been helping different players. Those analyses may be just endless. The main problem is how to memorize all that. At least that’s a problem for me. There are people with exceptional memory who have a huge advantage against others. As Garry Kasparov had once. Well, of course I write down some variants, but only to a definite point in analyses, not to absurdity!”

To criticize or to go with Dreev’s views I am not the proper chess person but here I would like to share an advise which has been by my master GM Nigel Davies that rather than going for deep analysis for searching moves or series of moves with the help of chess engine, it is better to go for soft reasoning to find the good moves in the position. This Advise is specifically, gave me relief as to be honest I do not like to calculate much in those cases this is probably the best method for playing good chess. (My opinion)

May be my master would like to throw some lights on it!!