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That book sketched out a plan for improvement while the present work supplies the specifics. I have returned to tournament chess after a short break of 35 years. Many chess players supplement their over-the-board OTB play with internet chess, and I recommend you do this as well.
These programs allow you to guess every move from the winning side of the game, give you a score based on how strong your move was, and allow you to track your progress over time. If you are a beginner first read the chess rules and then come back here. Chess Strategy for Beginners.
Make sure you learn Chess Notation to be able to read and write chess moves. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders. Written by one of the best chess communicators in the business, chess master and chess journalist Andy Soltis divulges practical advice and explains technical terms that chess books often overlook.
From learning how to train your mind with chess information to choosing the best chess opening, dip in and out of this invaluable guide to improve your chess in a minutes. Is there a proper way to think? Can I think like a chess computer? How do I develop chess intuition? Dip in and out of these great chess questions to better understand the game and the best way you can improve.
Author : C. Studied more carefully it can make you an average player. Both the authors have world-wide reputations as a chess player, writers and teachers. Mark Dvoretsky topped him with his collection of 3, positions. He 92 The biggest study myth arranged them by tactical and positional themes and used them to teach his talented students, such as the future grandmasters Artur Yusupov and Sergei Dolmatov.
This approach inspired Dolmatov to collect diagrams in his own notebook. He selected examples that fell into four themes: exchanges, changing the pawn structure, improving placement of pieces, and prophylaxis. Olafsson - Larsen Reykjavik Black to play Here's one based on prophylaxis that he included. Black made the somewhat surprising advance White didn't appreciate the point.
After 2 g5? White can't play lLlf5 and was worse 3 fxe5 dxe5 4 liJ4f3 lLle6! The lesson Dolmatov drew from this was that Then While Dolmatov was compiling examples in Russia, Yasser Seirawan in the United States was filling up his own notebooks with diagrams.
He eventually found he had 32 notebooks packed with combinations. Some of today's students collect just as many positions as Dolmatov and Seirawan but keep them in their 93 The biggest study myth computer. Whatever the method, turning pattern recognition into intuition should be the number one goal of a student. But this gets it backwards. One of the first signs of talent is the ability to build your intuition from the ground up, one pattern at a time.
Chapter Four: The right way to study an opening If you believe grandmasters, the worst words in chess are 'memory' and 'memorize. This has become the 11 th Commandment: Thou shalt not memorize. But that leaves a student bewildered. Every player memorizes. Grandmasters do it more than anyone else.
GMs spend most of their study time cramming analysis into their long-term memory. They rely on memory when they play their first dozen or so moves of a game. They rely on memory when they play 'exact' endgames. A typical GM has memorized a vast number of moves and key positions at both ends of the game. And this doesn't include the patterns and priyomes he amassed through subconscious memorization. First, all good opening play is part memory and part understanding.
You can argue about which matters more. But what is clear is you use memory first. Inevitably there comes a point when you reach the end of your book knowledge. That's where your memory stops and the understanding is supposed to take over. Black to play lhis point comes later for masters than it does for others. But it still comes. A master might reach this position, 14 moves into a Sicilian Defense, with hardly any thinking.
An expert might have to start thinking at move 11 or 12 because he is less familiar with the variation. Average tournament players would likely start thinking around move eight.
And if beginners somehow reached this position, they would have been on their own since around move two. When masters ridicule memory, they are warning you about the dangers of reaching the end of your book knowledge and not having a clue as to what to do next. That is memory without understanding. But the other extreme - understanding without memory - is just as bad.
Well, suppose you have a solid understanding of the position in the next diagram, which arises from the old main line of the Nimzo-Indian Defense.
You appreciate all the typical tactics and positional finesses. You know which pawn pushes and piece trades are good and which are bad in the middlegame to come. If all you remember is 1 d4, it is extremely hard, if not impossible, to find the ten moves that follow it and leave you off in this position. The same is true of most standard openings. You can't rely on common sense and logic to get to move five, let alone to Even in 1 e4 e5 openings you need to remember some highly unlikely moves.
You wouldn't know about the strange-looking but correct gambit, Instead, you would rely on reason and logic.
You would end up playing alternative moves, such as the natural - but bad Your lack of memory would punish you. But if you didn't memorize anything except the first few moves, all you might know is that 4 should be met by I doubt it. Nor would you imagine that after 5. Black to play So let's make it clear: Half of 'studying the opening' is memorization. Memory gives you the freedom to play auto-pilot moves. Those moves enable you to reach a point in the game where you feel comfortable to be on your own.
The other half of 'studying the opening' is developing an understanding of what to do afterward. Starting on a new opening We don't study openings, pluraL We study one at a time. And when we begin to consider playing a new opening we need to get 98 The right way to study an opening our bearings. A good first step is to look briefly at a large number of games that were played in that line.
Finding and looking at those games is a lot easier today, and this explains why youngsters can master a new opening so much faster than the previous generations. Vishy Anand began playing chess when there were no computers or databases. He recalled what it was like: "You might look at four games or five games on a board. Now in that same time you used to look at five games you can look at 40 with your cursor key. You might spend only five minutes on each game. Let's see how you would approach the variation of the Vienna Game in which White fianchettos his king bishop, 1 e4 e5 2 ttJc3 and 3 g3.
Your initial search of a database would show you many games that continued You would discover that White often continued 6 ttJa4 followed by knight-takes-bishop. For example, one of the earliest versions of this line that you would find went Mieses - Alapin Vienna Black to play 99 The right way to study an opening By clicking through the moves on a screen or looking at bare game scores with a set and a board, you may not realize how good 6 4Ja4!
And you might not appreciate that 9 b3 is a nice way to stabilize the pawn structure and stop a potentially dangerous Don't worry. Those are the finer points that you'll learn if and when you begin to study the opening more deeply. Right now you're just trying to get a rough idea of the basic themes. You want answers to questions such as: How does White win when he wins? Does he attack on the kingside?
Or in the center? Does he just accumulate small advantages? How does Black win when he wins? How often does the game seem relatively even until the ending? This last question is important if the opening requires more endgame skill than you have. Other questions you should get answers to are: How often does the middlegame become very tactical? Does it seem like you have to calculate to find the best move? Or can you rely on a positional feeling instead? And most important, would you feel comfortable playing White?
By the time you reached the position in the next diagram, you might have some of the answers. You could see, for example, that this opening can develop slowly, with relatively few tactics, and that White has more opportunities to open the position favorably. This became clearer after the game continued White has the option of opening half of the f-file with fxe5 or gaining more space with f4-f5.
He had to allow a trade of bishops, But a White advantage began to appear after Black's counterplay is limited because the position is so closed. The situation remains more positional than tactical, and White doesn't have to calculate much.
If you click through the next few moves, By the end of the game you'd see that White won primarily with strategy, rather than tactics, and he developed an attack thanks to positional moves like 13 fS!. Most important, you'd get a feeling for whether you'd like to play this opening.
When getting acquainted with an opening in this way, you'll want to look at several games, perhaps as many as 20 in one sitting. You may also be tempted to look exclusively at recent grandmaster games. Back then the opening was new and instructive mistakes were being made. They aren't being made today. In addition, grandmasters tend to play only the main lines of openings. But every opening has sidelines which are difficult to play against unless you are familiar with them.
Books usually devote But you will need to know what happens if an opponent replies If a book covers But what if Black replies White to play If White allows a trade of queens, his control of the center will mean little.
Should he avoid the trade with 7 'iVd3 or with 7 e5? The pawn move is tempting. But it turns out to be a gambit because of Both of White's moves are good enough to retain an advantage. You'll need to find the right games to illustrate them. You don't have to buy the book at this point. You can just go to a bookstore, a library or a book concession at a tournament site, and examine the book there. Glance through a few pages. See what it says about the opening's general characteristics.
Focus on the words, not the moves. Edmar Mednis, a splendid teacher, said you should first get a "clear verbal description" of what the opening is all about. That's what good books can do and databases can't. Some, but not all, books that cover a single opening manage to do this well. An example was a book about the Modem Benoni Defense 1 d4 ttJf6 2 c4 c5 3 d5 e6 4 ttJc3 exd5 5 cxd5 that was written by Andrew Kinsman in The lion's share of the page book was devoted to technical analysis of the main Benoni lines.
That's for you to look at later, if you get serious about the opening. What's important at this early stage is a verbal introduction to the Benoni, and this book did it well: - It explained that the main Benoni feature is the imbalance in the pawn structure. White has an advanced pawn at d5, an asset. But in compensation a Black pawn controls d4 and he has a queenside pawn majority. This could reduce the effect of the g7-bishop, would give White access to e4 for his pieces and may turn the d5-pawn into a powerful passed pawn.
Then after If we forget about several pieces for the moment, a typical Benoni middlegame might look like this: The book explained that despite his isolated a-pawn, this is a good setup for Black.
His pressure on b2 is at least as good as White's pressure is on a6. That's a sophisticated concept and one that it would take a Benoni player many games to figure out on his own.
All this, and a lot more, was said in five pages - an excellent preamble to one of the most complicated openings. This is the kind of material you should seek. You are walking straight toward the minefield called Too Much Information. The opening's main lines will likely stretch 10, 12, 14 moves or more. That's a huge amount of material to digest. It may seem that every position in a main line is a must-know. But you can set priorities. Among the positions you should familiarize yourself with most are those called tabias.
They are the forks in the road of each major variation. Let's consider one of the main lines of the English Opening. After 1 c4 c5 2 ttJf3 ttJf6 3 ttJc3 Black has many options, beginning with breaking in the center, Each option will have its own main line.
One of the lines begins with Black to play This is a tabia, a point of departure for the variation that began at moves To be able to play 4 g3 with confidence if you are White - or to play But then the storehouse of games branches off in different directions. For example, in this position the two biggest branches are Less traveled branches are WcB, These are the lines that you'll have to investigate when you become more serious about playing the variation.
Like most tabias this one is either 'roughly equal' or a 'slight advantage for White,' depending on which authority you believe. Besides the tabia, there is another kind of position you should be aware of when learning an opening.
It is definitely not 'roughly equal. Black to play This is what happens when White succeeds in exerting pressure against d6 It comes about from the tabia when Black plays He has been stopped from playing the critical move, While tabias are important to know because they are jumping-off points, positions like this are important to know because they show you what White can aim for - and what Black should avoid.
The threat of 16 g5 is strong because Black's knight defends both his bishop and the target pawn at d7. Black tried to dissolve the weaknesses with But his kingside turned out to be fatally undermined by 18 ttJeS! If you find a book that gives you this kind of information - the tabias and the illustrations of successful strategy - as well as a clear, verbal outline of what the opening is all about, then it is probably worth your money and, more important, worth your time.
Next steps When you go beyond tabias, you need to figure out what is worth learning about the opening. Or to be more exact, what isn't. This is because you will never be confronted with the problem of TMI more than when studying an opening.
If you open up an opening book you will see alternatives for one side or the other at every point in the main line. The alternatives will lead off into analysis or game citations that run five, ten or even 20 moves deep. Trying to digest all this just isn't worth your time when you are just starting to learn an opening. A good way to budget your studying is: Play through the moves of the main line of a chapter. But focus on the explanatory text.
If there isn't any text - if it's all just moves - then this isn't the book for you. Don't examine side variations yet. Look instead at the explanations of the main line moves. With them as a guide, you can try to figure out why this variation is played this way. Suppose you wanted to adopt the English Attack, which is characterized by White advancing pawns to f3 and g4 and playing i.
White to play Mikhail Tal said that when he was a beginner he followed the principle "The more incomprehensible, the more interesting. This is a natural place to be puzzled: White is following the usual English Attack formula. But why did Black move a knight for the second time before developing his other bishop? And why is he blocking his b-pawn, which usually goes to b5 and b4 as a counter-attack?
These are the kind of questions you should be asking whenever you look at a new main line. You shouldn't look further, to move 10, until you get answers. Fortunately, the excellent books on this opening provide them. Black wants to play That works faster than Now he has both knights and his queen lined up to support When you return to reading about the main line, you'll find it goes 10 g5 liJh5.
This is another point of obvious puzzlement. Black cleared the d7 square with his previous move. Why didn't the knight retreat to there, rather than going out on a limb at h5? Aren't books always warning you against putting your knights on the side of the board?
If the book doesn't explain the why of In this case you would see that one of White's principle ideas in the English Attack is to open up the kingside with h2-h4-h5 and g5-g6. That gives you some answers. By posting his knight on h5, Black stops the advance of the h-pawn. In addition, there is a tactical reason, after main line moves such as 11 'iid2 i.
White to play The consistent move would seem to be 13 h4. However that would allow The knight forks White's rook and bishop. After 14 l:tgl liJxfl Black's other knight is free to land on the golden square c4 when it wants to.
Thanks to Only after you understand a bit about the last two diagrams and more about the main line should you go back and look at the side The right way to study an opening variations.
That's when you can examine Black's alternatives along the way, such as If, however, you try to learn an opening in a linear manner studying everything there is to know about move 9 in the main line before moving on to move 10 - you will be sidetracked by side lines. You may give up in frustration before you get to move Another point worth considering: Many of today's opening books use illustrative games as a framework.
But you may find better explanations - in words rather than just moves - if you consult other sources, such as the best-games collections of masters. For instance, it's hard to find a better explanation of the Queen's Gambit Declined line that runs 1 d4 d5 2 c4 e6 3 tiJc3 i.. They appeared in his best-games collection and in the tournament book of Leningrad By delaying Black's move order also helps solve the problem of what to do with his QB, which rarely gets a chance to occupy the b 1-h7 diagonal in other versions of the Queen's Gambit Declined.
White to play But Both players are violating the 'knights before bishops' rule. White does it because he hasn't decided whether to play liJf3 or liJe2-g3, Taimanov wrote. Then, after Black had to choose between the weakening He chose the latter, and after 12 White had won the battle of the opening - and soon the game as well. Without going deeply into sub-sub-variations, the author had provided excellent insight into how this variation is played. Detours After you've learned about the main line tabias, you will want to know what your opponents can do to stop you from reaching the tabias.
But you don't have to know every possible detour. This leads to TMI. You just want to know the important ones, the ones that are likely to occur. How do you know what's likely? You can check databases and see what is played and what isn't. Chessplayers are creatures of the habit of the herd.
If most of them have been playing, say, But fashion changes. That's the nature of fashion, and when it changes you will need to find ways to avoid the newly popular detours. I met 1 e4 c5 2liJf3 with In the vast majority of my games I reached a tabia I liked after 6 if.. This led to middlegames I enjoyed playing. I was able to reach my tabia for several years because my opponents almost always played 5 lLlc3 and the other moves.
After all, that was what the grandmasters played, so they copied the GM moves. But then my opponents began to prefer 5 c4, the Maroczy Bind. Fashion had changed. In addition, I was facing stronger opponents who happened to be more positionally minded than the ones who played 5 lLlc3 against me.
That was when I realized I didn't like defending against 5 c4. I was in danger of losing my way to my tabia. Fortunately, there was a remedy. I learned a different move order. With In this way I was able to head toward my tabia from a different move order - 6 if..
This gave me a new lease on the Dragon Variation. But the lease expired when fashion changed once again. More and more of my opponents preferred 9 O-O-O!?
I didn't like the positions that came out of that. And, when I couldn't find another move order to reach the tabia, I had to give up on the Dragon. It was sad to see it go. Leaving the station If you are like most players, you have two basic goals when you study the opening: a You want to delay the point in a game when your book knowledge ends, and b You want to prepare yourself well to carry on from there.
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