Chuzhakin's System

A new technique for analyzing positions at the interface of strategy and tactics will considerably improve your playing and prevent you from making blunders.

The PDF book is available at: http://www.neoneuro.com/downloads/chuzhakinssystem.pdf

Why is this system useful for a chess player? 

 •It will considerably reduce the number of blunders, especially combination oversights 

•It will allow you to play with more confidence and  make an efficient  use of time because there will be less squares on the board which need your attention 

•It will instruct you when you should calculate tactical variants and when you can do without it 

•It will help you find unexpected combinations owing to an simple and efficient algorithm 

•It will tell you how to arrange your pieces to create tactical threats to your opponent 

•It will me it easier to search for defense in a poor position 

•It will show a new positional principle for a better strategic maneuvering

•It will reduce the number of variants which you have to calculate to analyze a position or chose a move. 

What is new about the system and how is it different from what was known before?

The main novelty of the system is an idea to create a clear-cut list of tactical prerequisites so that the whole tactics or, to be more exact, 99% of combinations could include the features specified in that list. This offers a lot of advantages that are more significant than just knowing each tactical element separately. Aristotle's famous rule works here: the whole is bigger than the sum of its parts.

1.The idea to calculate the list of tactical prerequisites - the so called hazardous elements - in each position without depending if there will be tactics in it or not. This makes sense, because in a real game we do not know in advance if combinations are possible or not and where they can be possible

2.Standard methods of using hazardous elements. We suggest looking for tactics depending on the hazardous elements available in a position, and give instructions how you can use these hazardous elements and their interactions.

3.A new positional principle: the less hazardous elements we have and the more hazardous elements the opponent has - the better. This can be used in positional maneuvering.

Earlier: many positional principles, such as a center or open file capture, pawn weakness, etc. They are all still significant.

4.Methods for optimization of calculation of hazardous elements. It is specified that it is not necessary to calculate them again in each position; the majority of hazardous elements remain during many moves. That is why it is enough to examine the influence of the last move on the lists of hazardous elements for both sides which we remember from the previous position.  

5.Special, clear-cut algorithms for calculation of attacks and defenses taking into account attacks through your own pieces, possibilities of an attack with tempo on protecting pieces and other peculiarities of the position.

6.Typical methods of using hazardous elements for searching tactics. A new type of classification of combinations where such methods as deflection, decoy, defense destruction and others are isolated cases of using hazardous elements. We give concrete instructions how you should search for combinations depending on the types of hazardous elements and their interactions.

7.Some wordings of the rules can also be considered a novelty, in particular the idea to take into account the so called “-hazard” and “tension coefficient”.

Earlier: the majority of the rules won’t be a revelation for the reader. For example, let’s take crucial hazardous elements: the opponent’s material advantage or a piece under attack is dangerous -  it’s evident without the book. But the system conclusions drawn from it are not evident – e.g. standard methods of play in case both sides have crucial hazardous elements.

8.Algorithms of thinking for a chess player when using this system. The following diagram shows how hazardous elements (HE) are used in a real game when calculating variants.

9.The main novelty of the system is an idea to create a clear-cut list of tactical prerequisites so that the whole tactics or, to be more exact, 99% of combinations could include the features specified in that list. This offers a lot of advantages that are more significant than just knowing each tactical element separately. Aristotle's famous rule works here: the whole is bigger than the sum of its parts.

Earlier: lists of tactical prerequisites and separate instructions what you should pay attention to when searching for tactics – from Emanuel Lasker and Max Euwe to Jakow Neistadt and John Nunn these lists had been developing helping chess players search for tactics. As those lists did not solve the tactical prerequisites search problem completely, it was not easy to use them as a whole. Moreover, all authors gave a very vague statement for some rules. It was not always clear if the king is weak or not, or how you should see a poor arrangement of pieces beforehand, when you should search for a fork and when  - for a deflection combination

The concept of hazardous elements (HE) is the most important in the system. Hazardous elements show you the key points on the chessboard where combinations can be performed. An important advantage of the hazardous element theory is its completeness – ALL combinations and tactical motives that can be in practice are directly connected with hazardous elements.

Hazardous elements are not always a real threat. They are only a “weather cock” which shows from what quarter the wind of tactics can blow. There are a lot of rules for calculation of hazardous elements. This can be a challenge in the beginning, but you have to accept it, because this tactical play is very complicated and diverse and it is quite difficult to use a smaller number of rules.

You will find below simplified rules to calculate HE, which were made as a reminder for those who read the book where all detailed explanations and full description of each rule are given. Though these are only abridged rules, they will provide a general idea of the system to those chess players who have not got familiar with the book yet.

Examples

In the Grand Slam final in Bilbao 2012 the game Carlsen vs Karjakin resulted in the following position: 

was 1.Rd5? Rd8?, with the rook exchange and a worse position for Black. Neither Carlsen nor Karjakin noticed a beautiful combination which means it is very complicated to search for tactics in practice. As we can see the system gives clear directions when and where you can search for tactical strikes and which techniques you should use – in this case the techniques include deflection and destruction of defending objects and catching a piece that has limited mobility. 

Many hazardous elements in this example were not important in the variants. E.g. these are Black's HE a7, b8, g6, g7. So you can ask why you should take them into account. 

This is because HE should be calculated according to the rules and we have to calculate them, otherwise the system makes no sense. On the other hand, many HE are concealed tactical bombs which can explode after some changes in a position are made. That’s why you always have to monitor them. Moreover, sometimes at first glance a hazardous element seems to be of no importance but it can be crucial when calculating certain variants.

Let’s examine an example from a game of a reader.

Nmbers of rules are written in brackets.

Black’s hazardous elements: a7(3), b7(3), d7(3, point d7 is attacked twice, as the attack through the friendly bishop on d3 is counted according to the system), d8(3), e7(3), g8(7.1), h7(4). White wins by making consecutive attacks on all 7 HE of Black. The hazardous element theory allows you to find correct moves in this position almost automatically:

Below is my game versus Genius on mobile Phone, the level of PC is not high, just one secund per move, I also played fast.