How to Analyze Grandmaster Chess Games?
You're not garbage at chess just because you don't understand grandmaster games, but it means you need to learn more concepts in chess. When grandmasters are playing chess, multiple ideas are happening simultaneously. So, knowing chess principles by heart and having the experience is essential. Reading this blog will not help if you don't put in the needed work ethic to learn these tips. Let's get started.
- Understanding the permanent and temporary advantages of chess will help analyze grandmaster games. Identifying positional factors with pawn structures, piece activity, king safety, and space control matters when deciding the best move to consider. Grandmasters consider these concepts with each move that passes. Sometimes, controlling a file can decide an entire game.
- Recognizing tactical patterns is a MUST. When there are forcing moves in the position, looking for tactical motifs like pins, forks, skewers, and discovered attacks can help find tactical opportunities. With grandmasters, this is an automatic procedure. You can compare this to how a truck driver can back up a trailer in under 30 seconds or how a musician can play "A Thousand Miles" by Vanessa Carlton just by listening to the song's tune. So, to work out this muscle memory habit, it takes first studying all the tactics there are in chess and completing chess puzzles to memorize the pattern. Here is a list of all the tactics to learn:
o Attack the f2/f7 Weakness
o Fork
o Pin
o Sacrifice
o Hanging Pieces
o Simplification
o Bank Rank Weakness
o Interference
o Skewer
o Smothered
o Clearance Sacrifice
o Decoy/Deflection
o Trapped Pieces
o Desperado
o Overload the Defender
o Underpromotion
o Discovered Attack
o Discovered Check
o Vulnerable King
o Double-Check
o Perpetual Check
o Windmill
o X-Ray Attack
o Zugzwang
o Zwischenzug
o Removal of the Defender
o Positional Tactic
o Decoy
o Demolition of Pawns
o Draw Tactic
o Endgame Tactic
- Recognize the activity and coordination of pieces. Grandmasters tend to improve the activity of their pieces while deteriorating their opponent's mobility. One of the main questions tough chess players ask themselves is which piece could be better placed or which piece is placed horribly. Acknowledging the garbage pieces can benefit the thought process of finding the best moves, especially in a position with no forcing moves, and the position is boring. The best move must be made when strategy matters most.
- Grandmasters always look for prophylactic moves, which are moves that prevent the opponent's plans or counter potential threats before they arise. Every time the opponent plays their move, the first question to occur should be, "What is my opponent's threat?" When used to this habit, a chess player's gameplay can increase tremendously.
- Learn from Annotations and Commentaries: Review annotations and commentaries by experienced players on grandmaster games to gain insights into their thought process and move analysis. Nowadays, acquiring this advice is WAY easier. There are multiple chess streamers and YouTubers to learn about any chess concept. Plus, websites like Chess.com host chess tournaments and commentate on recent chess tournaments by grandmasters.
This should be a GREAT start to help see what grandmasters are doing over the chessboard. Never be confused again once you put in the hard work to study Chess Knowledge, Chess Wisdom, and Chess Understanding!
