Guide to Winning the Won Position:- 5 Important Tips to Convert Winning Positions

Hello everyone! Hope you all are doing well.

Have you ever experienced the emotion of dominating the game for 40-50 moves and then making 1 blunder and losing?

I guess you must have. It is a very common mistake players do. I myself have done it and blundered checkmate in 1 in rook up positions.

The interesting thing which I have noticed in these positions are that they occur when there are queens on the board.

Which means.. trading off queens is an effective way of reducing such losses.

But..your opponent would not be ready to trade queens. This makes sense as with a queen he could get in a perpetual or a mating attack with some tricks. 

So in such cases what do you do?

1)Be calm.

Just like @samarjithbiju told that in difficult positions, you must be calm, you have to be calm. Get some fresh air. Getting nervous in a winning position may make you lose.

2) Calculate deep.

When u have time above 5 mins and 30 seconds( I assume u must encounter such positions in rapid. 15+10 or 10+0), you could divide your time easily. For example, let's take the worst case scenario and say u have 5 mins and 30 seconds with no increment while your opponent has 10 minutes more. Effectively you are in trouble , but you are safe if.. you can find forcing variations. Yup, force the moves. Use the first 30 seconds for candidate moves. With practice you can do this much faster. Then the next 1-3 minutes for calculating and finding forcing variations atleast 8 moves deep. Now since we are taking the worst case scenario you would have 2 minutes left. In that 2 minutes, you would try to play as fast without premoving. 

Last 2 mins guide:- Try to trade and avoid blunders. If you have a passed pawn then just hurl your king over and then promote.

With more time , this is more effective and more easier. With practice, it is much more easier.

What if you have less time and less than 3 minutes? Look for checks. Checks which are safe. After a series of checks you would be able to find a trade easily. 

3)King's Safety is Top Priority

The most important thing which you have to do is to ensure that your king is safe. Sometimes you might get carried away like in the diagram below:-

Therefore in such positions moves like h3 seem to be very slow yet are the safest as king's safety is top priority. 

4) Watch out for threats!

A key mistake all players do is miss tactics. In winning positions missing a tactic could give your opponent a chance to come back into the game or even defeat u. The most important part to converting these positions is to trade off pieces like I said before so your opponent doesn't have pieces to create tactics.

5) Play positionally if there are many pieces on the board.

Set mini-goals and play. Try to assess the position and exchange your opponent's best piece. Thinking like this takes some time but is very efficient. Try to look at what your plans , your opponent's plans, etc and play. On the other hand if you see an opportunity for a tactic which is safe , feel free to go for it.

Converting into an endgame is always the best way to win these positions as with an extra piece or extra pawn or extra two pawns you can easily promote in most situations and win the game. Promoting to two queens is also the best way to finish your opponent off but is sometimes risky as u might stalemate.

Hope you enjoyed this blog!  If you have any doubt, please ask in the comments. 

Stay Safe and Thank You!

Regards, 

Drago