Understanding Counterplay: How to Make Comebacks and Swindle Losing Positions

I'm sure we've all been there before: you're down a bishop, a rook, or even a queen, and it seems impossible to even draw the game, much less win. But, you keep playing on, despite the odds. Why? Because no matter how bad your position, how unlikely it is that you'll win, there are still chances!

We play human opponents, after all, (if you play Stockfish 16 for fun you should get your head checked), and humans are not infallible! Even the highest rated grandmasters have their bad days and make blunders that seem obvious!

One of the most recent examples of this was Ding Liren's mate-in-2 blunder in Norway Chess.

Whether it's because we've had a bad day, or we got distracted and weren't paying attention, we as humans blunder a lot, and being world champion doesn't exclude you from blundering!

Turns out, I myself am not bad at finding counterplay, even in terrible situations. Check out the graph below:

According to Aimchess, I win 29% of my games even when I'm down the equivalent of 4 points of material! Usually, a 4 point deficit would be a death sentence in my rating range.

But, keeping the advantage is just as important as trying to create counterplay against your opponent's advantage. Check out this graph:

I have a 96% winrate when I'm up the equivalent of just 2 points of material, giving my opponent a massive 4% winrate when they have a bad position.

Granted, 2 points is not an insignificant advantage, but coincidentally it's an advantage that frequently evaporates when I'm the one playing with the short end of the stick.

When I'm down the equivalent of two points of material, I have a 41% winrate, more than 10 times the chance that my opponents have to win when they're in a similar situation!

This is one of the main reasons that I've climbed so much in rapid rating recently: I'm dangerous even when I'm in a bad position, and just as importantly, I understand how to crush any hopes of counterplay when I'm the one with the advantage!

So how can you do the same and use an understanding of counterplay to create chances when you're losing? I'll share a couple of the most important ideas today, then get into how to maintain advantage and prevent counterplay in a future post.

1. Don't trade pieces when you're down material

It seems obvious, but the more pieces you trade when you're losing, the less chances you have. It's difficult for your opponent to blunder a tactic when they only have a couple of pieces on the board to keep track of!

Additionally, it's very easy to win endgames with only pawns when up material, but it's much more complicated when other pieces are involved!

For instance, would you rather play this endgame as white:

2. Ask your opponent difficult questions

This especially applies to faster time controls. What I mean by this is that you need to make moves that are difficult to figure out and that your opponent has no clear plan against or is uncomfortable playing against. The more time they spend figuring out difficult-to-find moves, the more likely it is they will fall into time trouble.

For instance, consider the following position:

While Black is up three passed pawns, a significant material advantage, White has two knight outposts and two half open files with the rooks and queen stacked. This position is definitely winning for Black, but for Black to convert their advantage they need to answer lots of difficult questions:

How am I going to deal with the double knight outposts? How will I prevent infiltration of the Black queen? How will I support the advance of my pawns while they are under the attack of the doubled rooks and queen? How do I solve my space disadvantage?

While Black is trying to sort out their problems, White will have easy moves to make: keep the knights anchored on their outposts, blockade the advance of the black pawns using the rooks and queen, keep the position closed, and delay the exchange of pieces for as long as possible while maintaining the space advantage.

While perfect play will likely lead to a loss for White in this situation, with the clock ticking while Black struggles to solve their positional problems, the game is far from over. When trying to create counterplay, don't always try to make perfect moves: in many cases, making moves that create extremely annoying positions that are difficult to convert for your opponents can be more effective!


3. Find Perpetuals and Hunt the King

Commonly, people will miss perpetual check tactics because they are not as common as tactics to win: this is to your advantage! Play for positions that the King is extremely exposed in or positions where you can get stacked rooks on the 7th rank:

I was down the exchange and a pawn with an extremely vulnerable king and badly placed pieces, but I still managed to swindle a draw, followed by my opponent blundering into a win for me after they tried to avoid the perpetual!

As you can see, there are many different ways to keep the game alive when in a bad position: the most important thing, however, is never giving up and continuing to search for chances!