A Strange Move In The King’s Gambit

The King’s Gambit isn’t an opening in which the theory develops very quickly, largely because it is played so little. But once in a while something happens.

In my 2005 book, Play 1.e4 e5 I recommended the King’s Gambit Declined with 2…Bc5 as a sound and economical choice. But the following year David Vigorito mentioned the move 1. e4 e5 2. f4 Bc5 3. Nc3 d6 4. Nf3 Nf6 5. Bc4 Nc6 6. d3 Bg4 7. Na4 O-O 8. Nxc5 dxc5 9. O-O Qd6 10. Qd2!? as an interesting possibility. And a couple of strong players have played it.

In the following game Black finds an interesting counter in 10… Bxf3 11. gxf3 exf4 12. Qxf4 Qxf4 13. Bxf4 b5!?, the point being that after 14.Bxb5 Nd4, Black threatens both the bishop on b5 and 15…Ne2+. But 14.Bb3 is a good answer and Black would be struggling after 15.a4.

So this strange 10.Qd2 seems to be posing a problem or two, or at least producing an interesting game. But don’t count on it doing so for too long.

Nigel Davies

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The Decision Making Process : Identifying And Using Resources On Hand

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

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Physical Fitness Promotes Mental Fitness

Many great players have emphasized the importance of physical fitness. Mikhail Botvinnik, that monster of self-discipline, wrote in his autobiography Achieving the Aim:

I was a round-shouldered lad and didn’t go in for sport. … As a present I was given a book by Muller which was quite well known in those days. For the half-century or so since then I have done morning exercises. The weak lad straightened up and, as they say nowadays, noticeably “filled out.”

Before Alexander Alekhine defeated José Capablanca in their 1927 world championship match—an upset if there ever was one—he reputedly gave up smoking and drinking and underwent a program of physical training. It seems likely that his surprising victory in their marathon match of 34 games was at least partly due to his better physical preparation. In other words, he wore down his opponent, who probably hadn’t taken the whole thing seriously enough. And who can blame him? He had never lost a game to Alekhine before.

In the recent Candidates’ Tournament, Vladimir Kramnik almost upset the heavy favorite Magnus Carlsen. Before the event, Kramnik worked hard on his physical fitness. Peter Svidler, who tied for third place, did the same. Of course, Magnus Carlsen is 22 years old, while Kramnik is 37 and Svidler 36—no amount of going to the gym can fool Father Time!

Ironically, Kramnik fell short in the end not because he was too old, but because of a “rookie” mistake. In the last round, he abandoned his usual defenses and played desperately, rather than maintaining his veteran poise and “dancing with the girl he brought.” If Kramnik had stuck to his usual openings in the last round, he probably would not have lost. Now we would all be talking about his remarkable come-from-behind victory in the tournament, and no doubt Kramnik’s physical training regimen would be given due credit.

GM Alexandra Kosteniuk, 2008 women’s world champion, wrote on her blog:

Many people ask me what’s the best way to improve at chess and how to prepare for chess tournaments. What should their training day look like, how much time spent on openings, middle game, etc.

I cannot stress enough how important physical preparation is before chess tournaments. Chess competition is tough, requires many hours spent at the chess board, with maximum concentration. You need all your strength and nerves to be in top form. Nothing will prepare you better than being in best physical form. All you need for that is to do some kind of sport regularly….

I try to start every day with a 5K run. …

So good luck in your chess preparation, but remember to go out and do some sports, it will help your chess, I guarantee it!

Mens sana in corpore sano

Descending from the sublime to the mediocre: I myself try to exercise every day, though I do not always succeed. As I have told my two sons, “You may not always feel like working out, but after you have done it you are always glad you did. You never regret going to the gym.”

Of course, exercise is good for you in every way, not just for your chess. It’s good for your heart, lungs, digestive system, skeletal structure, and helps you manage your weight. You reduce your risk of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, stroke. You feel better; you have more energy. You look better. Your clothes fit. You have more self-respect. You get more respect from other people. Exercise even affects your outlook on life: we constantly hear of studies showing that exercise is just as effective as medication in treating depression.

You say you don’t have time to exercise? Fix your schedule to make time. As I read once in a book by the time management expert Alan Lakein, and I believe these words and try to live by them: If you are too busy to exercise, you are too busy.

Tim Hanke

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The Art Of Analysis

In the last few weeks I started working with my ten (soon to be eleven) year old son on his chess analysis skills. Earlier than this there wasn’t a chance he would understand the idea.

The way I’ve been doing this is to set up a position (mainly from Tony Gillam’s Simple Chess Tactics and Checkmates) and ask him to see a good move. After he finds one I then ask him to list the possibilities for the defending side and try to figure out if one of them works. Then I might suggest he changes sides again to find the best continuation against the best defence.

This is a tough thing for kids to do and is far from easy for most adults. Not only do you need the ability to visualize the board, you also need deductive reasoning. And probably certain character traits, such as an ability and willingness to falsify.

Disproving or falsifying your own ideas requires readily admitting that you were wrong, at least with your first attempt. This is far from easy for those with a lack of self confidence who will hate, even during their internal dialogue, to admit to their own fallibility.

How much worse might will this be when analyzing with other people? Very much so, which might explain why so few players indulge in this activity. And when they do analyze the sessions tend to be political affairs rather than a search for the truth.

One thing I do wonder about is whether you can the required character traits can be reverse engineered by indulging in lots of chess analysis. I suspect the answer is that they can as one annoying feature of strong chess players is that they will argue a particular point and then take the other side as soon as you agree with them!

Here anyway is a post mortem analysis session between Magnus Carlsen and Etienne Bacrot. Interesting…

Nigel Davies

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Underground Chess

Let me take you back to the year 1961, the year in which I was fortunate enough to win a free place at a leading London school. The journey required two trains: from my local station to Richmond, and then on the London Underground District Line from Richmond to Ravenscourt Park, a journey of about 12 minutes, where I’d be in the company of other boys from my school.

My father had taught me the moves the previous winter, but in those days chess was something you did at secondary school, not primary school. On my first day I brought my pocket chess set into school and another boy gave me a game. He took all my pieces and mated me with his two rooks. I soon discovered that some of the boys on the District Line also enjoyed chess, and was able to play them. Towards the end of the school year I was thrilled to win my first game on the train against a boy from the year above me.

In those days there was nothing strange about playing chess on trains or buses: it was perfectly normal, accepted behaviour in the 1960s. But when did you last see anyone playing chess on a commuter train or bus? In these days of mobile electronic devices of all sorts, there’s so much else to do.

Of course I played at school as well, at break and lunchtime. My progress was slow, but by the end of 1965 I could beat everyone else in my form, so my parents went to the library to obtain details of our local chess club (I’m still a member today) and somehow also found out about the London Junior Championships which took place (and still do) in the Christmas holidays.

What happened to the other boys on the District Line? For most of them, of course, chess was just a passing interest, but there were others who continued playing. One of the boys on the train (in fact on both my trains), a few years older than me, is still occasionally active with an ECF grade of 160.

Another of the District Line boys, a year younger than me I think, was not, as far as I remember, much of a chess player at the time, but he took up competitive chess many years later and is now one of the most active players in the country, with a current ECF grade of 153.

There was another boy on the District Line as well, but as he was younger still I didn’t take a lot of notice of him. I was to get to know him much better when he joined the my chess club. His name was, and still is, Michael Stean, and I guess most of you know what happened to him.

All in all, not a bad chess record, I think you’ll agree, for the boys on the Richmond branch of the District Line.

There’s another branch of the District Line passing through Ravenscourt Park, the Ealing branch. (There were at the time two Ealing trains to every one Richmond train, which was twice as crowded. The Richmond branch boys assumed the man who devised the timetables lived in Ealing.) There would also have been a chess player on the Ealing branch: his name was Andrew Law.

Andrew, who sadly died very recently, was an exact contemporary of mine, but fortunately for me we were never in the same form so at the time I didn’t know him well and probably never played chess against him at school. If I had done, perhaps I wouldn’t have sought stronger opposition elsewhere, in which case I wouldn’t be writing this now. Andrew, as my English readers will know, was a very strong player, achieving two IM performances and just missing his final norm. A less self-effacing person with the same talent as Andrew would have gone much further.

It may or may not also be significant that there was no real chess club at school while I was there. There was at one point a small, student-led group, but I don’t remember anything else and we never played against other schools. Michael Stean mentioned a chess club in an interview in CHESS a couple of years ago, so perhaps there was something after I left the school. I played bridge for my school, but chess for my club. If there had been a school club, I might never have joined my local club, and, again, you might not be reading this now.

Now turn the clock forward more than half a century, to the present day. I’ve written in a previous blog about the three main services a children’s chess club can offer: instruction for beginners, opportunities for casual play with low-level instruction, and more serious instruction for competitive players. We get enquiries from all three categories. The players we really want are those who, as I was, are doing well at school and want to take the game further. This is what Richmond Junior Club, as an aspiring (and former) Centre of Excellence, is all about. The only problem is that we increasingly get parents of younger children who know little about chess themselves and are deluded about how good their children really are. We also get parents who want their children to learn chess but don’t know enough to teach them. At present we’re not geared up to do this but if there’s sufficient simultaneous demand we might be able to do so in future. For those parents who just want to give their children the opportunity to play other kids, the obvious answer is to join their school club. If their school doesn’t have a club we could help them set one up.

Isn’t there another solution, though? If they enjoy playing chess why don’t they just do what I did back in 1961: bring a chess set into school and find someone to play against. Then, if they find they can beat all their friends, they’re probably good enough to join Richmond Junior Club.

What is this all about, then? Why is it that all the kids who enjoy playing chess in their primary school chess club don’t seem to play against their friends at any other time?

Why does everyone seem to think that, because there are such things as chess clubs in some primary schools, you’re not allowed to play chess any other time? It almost seems that chess has gone underground, but not this time on the District Line. Can anyone tell me why?

Richard James

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The Dark Side of Bright Moves

So often, when we make a seemingly great move on the chessboard, we fail to examine that move for any potential negative aspects. Each month, I take on a new student, Pro Bono, from another country. They say you can’t keep (in life) what you don’t give back and I take this to heart. I just took on a new student (a beginner) and decided to examine one the games he lost. I teach my students that the greatest lessons in both chess and life are learned by studying our losses. The game in question looked great at the start. However, it took a sudden turn toward disaster after a series of middle game exchanges that left an even position. What went wrong? My student didn’t think about the squares left behind after making a series of moves. This is the realm of the dark side of bright (or good) moves.

I first heard about this idea (drawback chess) through a fantastic video done by American Grandmaster Maurice Ashley. Up until then, I didn’t think about the squares I left behind when making a move. Often we see a great move that gains an obvious advantage. This advantage is to us what a flame is to a moth, irresistible. Like the moth, we become blinded to the danger because we are fixated on the flame or, in the chess player’s case, the seemingly obvious advantage. We quickly make our move and smile. We’ve gotten control of the position. Then we are subject to the rude awakening that arrives when our opponent makes his or her move, turning the tables on our position.

Often, students discover the square or squares left behind when on the receiving end of an opening trap. They suddenly see the opportunity to capture an opposition piece, thinking their opponent has made a mistake. Then they discover that the piece in question was sacrificed, serving as the trap’s bait. Suddenly the tables are turned and disaster strikes. I don’t teach my students traps in the traditional sense. I know plenty of other chess teachers who teach their students traps they can use to gain the upper hand (especially in the opening). Instead, I teach my students how to discover traps and disarm them. I have nothing against traps, having used them on occasion. However, beginners have a tendency to build their games, especially the opening, around these traps rather than using sound chess principles. Often, a trap will lure a piece away from a good defensive position. Examining the squares that piece defends can serve as a strong indicator as to whether or not to make the move in question (avoiding the trap). This way of thinking applies to all moves.

Even the best moves can have a downside! To get my students into the frame of mind needed to understand this concept, we make a small list for each and every move they make. This list must be considered before moving the pawn or piece in question. I call it the plus and minus list. Each student has a pad of paper and a pencil. Eventually, they will do the following calculation in their head. However, the concept is easier for young beginners to understand if it’s written out. First we write down the move we want to make. Underneath, we draw a vertical line. On the left hand side we write “plus” and on the right hand side “minus.” The plus side represents the positive aspects of the move while the minus side represents the negative side of the move (with younger players we often write “good” and “bad”). The student then looks at the move in question and tallies up the positive and negative aspects of the move. We use a simple grading system: A good move will have at least a 3 to 1 ratio (positive to negative). A fair move will have a 2 to 1 ratio and so on. This allows students to see if their move has more advantages than disadvantages. It also forces students to really look at the position with some depth. However, this is only the start of the process.

One of the most exciting aspects of chess is the idea that a perfectly sound position can fall apart after a seemingly decent move. I see this most often in beginner’s games. A student will have a winning position one moment and have it fall to pieces the next. I always make a point during practice games to have the student whose position suddenly crumbled go back a move or two. What I find more often than not is that the move leading to the bad position gave something up that was more vital than what was gained. Let me explain:

Here’s an example of not examining the square or squares left behind: Let’s follow a chess game in which the student playing white doesn’t look at the square or squares left behind. The game starts out 1.e4…e5 2.Nf3…Nc6 3.Bc4…Nd4. White thinks “Wow, black has blundered!” Why does the student think this is a bad move? First of all, black has moved the same piece twice during the opening which we’re taught is not a good idea until we’ve moved our other pieces at least once. Black has also left the e5 pawn unprotected. Our student sees that his Knight on f3 is now under attack and decides to capture the undefended e5 pawn with 4.Nxe5. Black now reveals the true nature of 3…Nd4 by playing 4…Qg5. Now the white Knight is under attack as is the g2 pawn. If the g2 pawn is captured, white will have to forego Kingside castling and move the h1 Rook to f1. How did this happen? White didn’t look at the square or squares left behind when capturing the e5 pawn. Had the Knight remained on f3 it would have protected the g5 square, keeping the black Queen from launching such a strong attack. Of course, there are simple ways out of this position but the point is made.

This idea of examining the square or squares left behind needs to be applied to every move during every phase of the game. After students have become used to making their plus and minus list, we add another element to our list, the squares protected by the piece we’re considering moving. Before a student makes a move, I have that student list the squares the piece in question protects. The student then looks at the opposition pieces and sees if there are any that can take advantage of the square or squares left behind. While it takes some time initially, students develop their observational skills and can look at the board, mentally note the squares left behind to see if the opposition can take advantage of them and then make an informed decision about their move. Try this with your own games. It is frustrating when you make a bright move only to discover their dark side. However, if you carefully examine the squares you leave behind before making any move things may look a bit brighter! Here’s a game in which a master level player breaks some of the opening principles discussed in earlier articles. What what happens and look for squares left behind.

Hugh Patterson

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English GM Richard Hall Silver Medallist at ICCF 25th World CC Final

The English GM Richard Hall has finished one point behind GM Fabio Finocchiraro from Italy, who scored 10 / 16, to finish in Silver Medal position in the 25th World Correspondence Chess Final. This is the best performance of any English player at the World Championships. He has also qualified for another Final so has another chance of becoming World Champion. He will receive his medal at the  ICCF Congress in Poland in July 2013.

Another English player, GM Dr Ian Brookes, scored a credible 9th position in the same Final.

You can view all the games and the tournament crosstable here: -

http://www.iccf-webchess.com/EventCrossTable.aspx?id=19811

Here is one of the games: -

John Rhodes

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The Heir To The Tromp

During the 1980s and 90s the Trompovsky Attack (1.d4 followed by 2.Bg5) was all the rage at UK club level, partly due to successes of Julian Hodgson. But with the ultimate Trompeteer having retired from tournament play it seems to be on the decline.

Instead of this new bishop move is on the rise, 1.d4 followed by 2.Bf4. This is a kind of London System but one which ignores the rather sensible advice of developing knights before bishops. Is it a good move?

My personal take is that its main value is surprise, but I don’t think there’s very much more than that. Plus in many lines it stops Black getting much active play, thus encouraging him to beat his head against the wall.

What should Black do about it? Well I have my own ideas which I’m not particularly willing to share, you can work them out for yourselves! But if you look at the following game by Vladimir Kramnik you might be on the right track, and perhaps in years to come White will want to discourage 2…c5 with 2.Be3:

Nigel Davies

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Decision Making Process : Define The Problem

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

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The Best Chess Training Program

Time spent on tactics is always well-spent. You may have heard the maxim, “An hour a day keeps the blunder away.” Solving tactical problems is always useful to maintain alertness and sharpness and should be an important and regular part of every player’s study program.

In a perfect world, perhaps the chess student should ideally break up his daily study session into several different areas: say, one hour of tactics, followed by one hour of endgames, etc. There are some arguments in favor of this approach. The student who thus organizes his time does not neglect any one area. This scatter-shot approach to learning is time-tested by the standard program in schools which has the student moving between several classes on widely different topics during the course of a single day.

However, amateur players are not likely to have several hours a day available to study chess: instead, they are likely to have only scattered hours and half-hours here and there, time stolen from other activities of daily life. They may even have to squeeze in their chess study while riding the train or bus to work. (This is true not only of chessplayers. The writer Andre Dubus III, author of the bestselling novel The House of Sand and Fog, which was made into a critically acclaimed movie, told me he wrote some of the book sitting in his car in his driveway, during odd quarter-hours and half-hours between his other tasks.)

For most amateurs, it may be simplest in practice to follow a program in which they start and finish an entire book and then move on to the next book, without jumping around constantly by working through a few pages in a tactics book, then a few pages in an endgame book, then a few pages in an opening book, etc. That way lies madness, and I am not sure how much good solid learning would occur. Perhaps it is better for them to start a book and go all the way through to the end, covering the material from start to finish without interruption as the author presents it, and without multiple confusing detours into other books.

I suppose, if you do have time available to study chess while riding the train to work, you might want to allocate that time solely to solving tactical problems, for reasons of logistics; reserving other studies, that require a board and uninterrupted reflection, for quiet time at home.

Probably no chess training program is perfect, let alone an amateur’s self-directed program. A perfect chess training program, if it exists at all, is likely to be one that is prescribed by an experienced chess trainer who knows you and your individual needs well. If you have access to such a trainer, good for you: most of us have to do without.

But even a perfect chess training program, if it could be devised, would only be as good as its execution. Perhaps there is an analogy to exercise programs. Even an ideal exercise program would be useless if you failed to follow it—perhaps because the gym was inconveniently located, or you found the routine boring, or the fees were too expensive, or the program took too much time out of your day, or the effort left you too tired for other activities of life. Therefore, as experienced fitness professionals understand, the best exercise program for you is the one you will actually follow!

Similarly, the best chess training program for you is the one you will actually follow—because you enjoy it, it suits your schedule, and the financial burden is manageable (books, software, teacher’s fees, tournament expenses).

So don’t overthink your chess training program. Make a realistic, even modest plan that you believe you can follow. Any plan will suffice, as long as you actually do follow it. Then follow it faithfully, making sure to log your work accurately, at least long enough to see where it leads you. As a guideline, one Russian trainer suggests at least six months is required before your chess work will show up in your game results. You might resolve to follow your new program for six months, then reevaluate. Rather than continually chopping and changing, pick a direction and follow it. Any direction is better than no direction: at least you are likely to get somewhere, and it will be a different place than you are now. Of course, if you are happy with the results you are already getting, don’t change anything!

Tim Hanke

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