Key Positions to Study

Hello everyone! Over the last week, I came across a very interesting method to study master games: the idea of key positions! We all know that studying master games is a very important aspect of improving one's chess; it allows for one to be able to grasp key patterns, hence being able to apply these patterns in one's own games.

The idea of instructive positions is to note down any position that you find important during a grandmaster game. You then write down important things about it, and next time, if a similar position crops up, note that down too on the same page (if you do this in a book).

I decided to do this using Chessbase, as it is a lot easier to store positions and make notes in it. I found three instructive positions for myself from the game Zuketort-Blackburne, 1883. You might not find all of the positions as important-this is expected as different people are at different levels and you might be too high to consider these basic concepts important!

Hope you understood the concept of making a list of positions as well as enjoyed and learned something from my positions. It does not have to be anything that important: any simple concept is also good enough. Eventually, after going through many games, you will have many positions, and going through them once in a while will teach you a lot! Hope you liked the method and will use it in your games too!