Better safe than sorry!

How to usefully conceive of the game

This is the first of a four-part blog-post in which I will share my thoughts about how a beginner or an "adult improver" can usefully conceive of the game of chess and quickly gain a good general understanding of the game.

It's really all about errors 

If I were to teach the game to an adult friend (children are a different case), I wouldn't start by recommending any book at all, other than perhaps a very simple primer, ideally interactive in nature, such as this one: https://www.chessable.com/smithys-opening-fundamentals/course/21302/  

Instead, I would start by giving this person a general framework to underpin his or her relationship to chess. And that framework would simply be: chess is a game of errors. I would also explain that we evaluate errors in chess by using three concepts: 1- inaccuracies, 2- mistakes and 3- blunders. 

Begin by focusing on safety

Now that these concepts have been introduced, the beginning student could probably more productively mainly think in terms of "safety", as mistakes and blunders - certainly egregious or avoidable ones - are almost always tactical in nature and a failure of the player to recognize a safety issue in a timely manner. The reader may be interested to learn that NM Dan Heisman, who has dedicated his life to the subject of improvement, defines tactics as "The science of piece safety".

Always remember that a conclusion reached by a chess-engine because its number-crunching capacity allows it to see so far into the future should be taken with a big grain of salt unless one has reached elite levels of play. A beginner might be much better served by such engines if it could simply spit out "Warning: safety issue!" and help the player focus on that foundational aspect of play.

Statistics don't lie

Why? Because the vast majority of games below a certain level of ability is characterized by wild shifts in the advantage within a single game. Often at least one in the opening, middlegame and endgame. It therefore stands to reason that the player who blunders less, on average, than members of his or her rating pool, will perform better relative to that sample of players. As said previously, these egregious or avoidable blunders are almost always a "safety" failure. 

Engine-checking is useful, to a point

In part two of this series on "What chess is really all about", we will see how one would be well-served to develop the habit of "engine-checking" every game to identify this fundamental "safety issue" and its typical consequence at lower-levels of play, "avoidable blunders".

(If you liked this blog-post, please leave a comment: it means the world to me.)