Chess Tip #7: How to play equal positions
There are many ways to play chess, some people who like tactics and calculation try to complicate the game as soon as possible, creating unbalance, opposite castles, and open positions while others who like maneuvers and positional play try to create calm positions where they can improve their position step by step. It is very useful if you want to improve at chess that you know how to play in both scenarios, thus you will be a strong player who can’t be defeated easily because has a hole in his chess understanding.
Today we will focus on how to play equal calm positions, those where the game looks so slow and the valuation does not change dramatically in some moves. Yes, I know this might be a boring post but wouldn’t you like to improve your chess skills?
First, let me show you an example of an equal position:
Vallejo - Topalov
From this position, it is difficult to think that someone can win, the pawn structure is symmetrical and there is no a clear way to attack or take advantage of something, black has the pair of bishops but white already has all his pieces developed, let’s see what happened in the game.
Vallejo - Topalov
How is possible that from an equal position where the result was near to a draw black was able to win? The answer is easy black knew how to play in equal positions. He did not rush and tried to improve his position step by step. The fact is that in this kind of positions, there are not tactics and there is not a way to attack something therefore we should improve the place of our pieces one by one, in the process, we should take care of possible aggressive moves obviously, but they almost always do not work. Let’s see again the initial position.
Vallejo - Topalov
How can we improve the position of our pieces? Take a look at every black piece and ask yourself “what should be the best place?” Following this question we may notice that the bishop should be on b7, the knight on d7 and the rooks should be placed on the open files d or c. How can we know that they are the better squares for our pieces? Because from there, they control more squares. Now the next moves are pretty obvious.
I would like to stop here. Black has developed his pieces as we already mentioned in the last paragraph, now black pieces seem that they all are in their best place, perhaps we should move our knight again to a more active square like d5 or e5 taking advantage of the move Ne1 of white so that could be a good idea. While we improve our position we should also worse the opponent’s position, they are both similar ideas. In this position, if black just move his knight immediately white can simplify the position exchanging the rooks and the possible final result would be a draw, however black has a way to worse a little bit the opponent’s position with the move a5 this is not a threat right now but if black place the rooks on the c file white will be obligated to play a3 a move that black can take advantage of in the future. Another interesting thing to notice is that black moved a pawn just after he improved the position of ALL his pieces.
We reached the climax of the game and can notice right now the difference between the black pieces and white pieces, now it is time to black to keep improving his position and materialize his advantage.
We can make some conclusions from this game:
- In calm positions, our main task is to improve the place of our pieces one by one. Ask yourself the question “What is the best place for this piece” and all will flow easily
- Often we should improve all our pieces and then make a pawn move (make a rupture or move forward some pawns)
- An equal position does not mean an easy draw. I would like to emphasize this because many people think that they can make a draw from an equal position easily and it is clearly the opposite. In equal positions, the technique makes the difference between masters and amateurs of the game.
I hope this will help you I am Gabriel Salazar, chess player, Fide Master, and coach. Visit https://tres-reyes.com/ for more chess content.
