Middle Game Positional Understanding for Beginners and Intermediate Players- Calculation Part V

In today's discussion, we'll move from concrete calculation ideas to the discrete positional motivation for moves.

This article will be our final post regarding the middle game. Tomorrow we'll go over tips to improve calculation in the endgame.

Today we'll be going over the following:

• Piece activity
• Tempo
• Good Trades vs. Bad Trades

Piece activity

Every piece has a job, and some pieces perform their function better than others.

There are two main concepts to consider when examining piece activity.

1) Improving the activity of your pieces.

2) Decreasing the activity of your opponent's pieces.

Did you know that whether pieces come off the board or not, every time either side makes a move, an exchange occurs?

We traded the position we had for the new one. It's possible to return to the same position in some cases (i.e., draw by three-fold repetition). 

Still, more often than not, we won't return to it again.

Therefore, we need to ask ourselves if the new position increases the activity of our pieces more than it helps the activity of our opponent's pieces.

By making this move, are we creating a weakness that can later improve the fortification of our opponent's pieces, like creating an outpost for a knight, for instance?

It's also important to understand which pieces work best on open vs. closed positions.

For example, closed positions where pawns create an unassailable fortress usually make knights more valuable than bishops because they can go on any square (not just one color) and hop in, out, or over other pieces to maneuver.

However, a position where the center is vulnerable to breaking open or isn't occupied by pieces is better suited to enhance the natural power of the bishops as they can cover more squares.

Sometimes there are spots where every piece is already in its best location, and we aren't currently threatened.

In these scenarios, it may be best to launch an attack or decrease our opponent's piece activity by trading or removing squares that their pieces can go to, reducing piece activity.

Now let's review the position we discussed previously in this series on calculation and see how we can apply these principles.

For now, this is a closed position. If we could find a way to break the center open, our bishop on b6 would become much more powerful, gaining squares and removing pieces between it and white's king.

Our light squared bishop covers a lot of squares and at first glance it isn't doing much.

It's attacking a pawn and pointed away from the king.

However, that pawn is only protected by white's queen and rook.

Protecting a single pawn is a little below the their paygrade so this bishop is basically countering the activity of white's major pieces by attacking the pawn for the time being.

We've discussed white's dark square bishop pinning the knight to the queen in depth in previous posts so we'll just point out that our knight and queen have limited activity and white's bishop is pulling more than it's weight in this spot. That's a sign that we need to put this bishop back in its place soon!

How can we limit the effectiveness of white's dark square bishop, and break open the center to make our light square bishop, knight on e7, and queen useful?

Tempo

Anyone who has studied chess for at least a bit has heard the word tempo, but it's one of the trickier concepts to apply.

In our discussion about punishing an opponent's queen for coming out too early, we learned how to push her around with all our minor pieces, and our development became superior. Our piece activity increased as a result.

But this isn't just an opening principle.

Anytime you have the initiative (where your opponent must react to you, AND you don't have to respond to their reaction immediately), you are in the driver's seat, and they are just along for the ride.

Later in this series, we'll talk about the exception to this rule when it's terrible for you to be the one making the first move (zugzwang). Still, generally, this is how you want to play.

Not every move that is forcing is helpful, of course. In the grand scheme of the game, forcing moves that lead to checkmate, gaining material while maintaining king safety, and improving the effectiveness of your pieces are what you want to look for because:

1) They're the most straightforward variations to calculate correctly, as the number of moves your opponents have as a response is now limited.

2) IT LIMITS THE NUMBER OF MOVES YOUR OPPONENTS CAN MAKE!

3) It usually offers the opportunity to improve your pieces, reduce the effectiveness of your opponent's pieces, attack, and get in the driver's seat.

Standard moves that often gain tempo are "in-between" moves, checks, attacking a piece with a weaker piece, clearance sacrifices, etc.

Now that you know what to look for, it's time to double your responsibility.

While you can use these resources to gain tempo, so can your opponents. So your moves must ensure they cannot use this principle to their advantage.

Good Trades vs. Bad Trades

The first thing I learned about trading is that equal trades are good if you're up in material.

If you're down in material, equal trades are bad.

This is a good rule for beginners. Let's say you're a rook up, and you trade everything off equally. Now it's just the kings and the rook on the board!

That's a straightforward win.

But let's switch it around. Now your opponent is a rook up, and he offers to make equal trades.

We'll say that if you don't take the trade, you'll still be a rook down, but this position has no other downsides.

Don't take the trade! Try to improve your pieces and wait for only transactions you have to take and ones that benefit you more than your opponent!

We also briefly discussed what types are better for knights vs. bishops. When the relative strength of the knight is better (like in closed positions), it's often worth trading your "bad bishop" for a knight. And the opposite is true in open positions.

Naturally, this should also tell you which trades you don't want to make.

Suppose our development is better than our opponent's. We want to avoid a trade of our improved pieces for their undeveloped or underdeveloped pieces for two reasons.

1) We've already taken the time to get that piece to a good spot. They haven't. Make them put in some work while you focus on more critical tasks.

2) When they recapture, it creates open or semi-open files where rooks and queens can become more powerful, or it allows them to bring another piece into the fray with tempo. At the same time, you eliminate an active piece.

In short, when you develop your pieces properly and your opponent isn't as well developed (with all other factors equal): equal trades are BAD.

When you're underdeveloped compared to your opponent and your pieces are poorly coordinated: equal trades are GOOD. 😊

So in this position, should we want a trade of the bishop for our knight?

Their bishop is their most active piece, and it would free our queen so trading would be good. Unfortunately, there isn't a way we can force that trade so what other resources do we have at our disposal?

Final Thoughts Before Computer Analysis

Given all of the positional analysis that we've gone over through this middle game, I am going to stick with my initial suggestion of f6.

This attack's white's dark square bishop with a weaker piece, threatens to break open the center, removes the pin of our knight and queen, and has enough support to follow through with an attack if a series of exchanges occurs with further central control while maintaining king safety and increasing the activity of our pieces while reducing the effectiveness of white's most developed piece and opens lines toward white's king.

You'll notice that there are many reasons that I think this is the best move for black. Multipurpose moves are a major key to any successful strategy.

Now let's see what the computer suggests (I still haven't looked yet).

I have bad news...

I was wrong!

Not only was my suggestion not the top move, it wasn't in the top 5 moves!

For fun, let's look at how close my valuation was to the best move, though

The good news is that if your opponent plays perfectly, it's still an even game. The computer and I had less than a pawn difference in our valuation of the position.

The great news is that if the opponent makes any move except for the perfect move, you're actually in a better position than any of the suggested computer moves!

We had many options that were either basically even or better. Now, our opponent only has the one to stay in the game!

While this may not have been the exact result I was hoping for, I am still fairly satisfied with my results because we're not playing against computers who can take full advantage of a 3/4 pawn advantage from position alone.

We're playing against humans who are (as I have demonstrated) capable of finding adequate but subpar moves.

If I (a person in the 99th percentile of all chess.com users) can make this mistake, you can be certain that your opponents at lower levels will make even worse errors.

In time, I'm certain my process will improve but for today, I'm only human and that's okay.

I feel like there were plenty of reasons to support my move, but more importantly, I learned something new!

If you came up with one of the top results, please feel free to share the reasons why you liked those moves and maybe we can all learn together on this one!

Until next time, keep improving, keep learning, and most of all, enjoy every moment!

To catch up on our calculation series, from opening to endgame, check out part 1, When to Ignore Opening Principles.

To be eligible for a FREE coaching session, check the comments in Nowhere to Run! where we discuss how you can easily cripple players who are tricky with their knights with one simple move!

If you found this blog helpful, remember to follow me! I put out new posts daily to help improve the level of your game.