How I started being a practical player

Are you a practical chess player? I consider myself to be, but it wasn't always like that. In this post I'll talk about my first contact with "being practical".

I want to share a story of when I started consciously thinking about practical play as an important factor of competitive chess. I hope you find the story and my insights useful for your own chess development :-)

The game

It was January of 2015 and I was playing an OTB classical chess game against an opponent of a strength similar to mine. The game was approaching a phase of mutual time trouble while the position was still very complicated:

With all the major pieces on the board, both kings a bit exposed and several weaknesses to target and pawn breaks to attempt, calculations were time-consuming and exhausting, as there were so many things to consider. For example, in the given position I'm sure most of these thoughts were in my mind:

• My opponent is ready to hit me with b4, making d4 unstable and opening lines to attack my king.
• Rb6 is also a threat, as it would force the queen trade. Would b4 be more dangerous after such trade?
• If I play Ra2 to escape the queen trade, then after Rb6 and Qa3 maybe b4 is still a problem.
• Then maybe Ra1 is better, to answer Rb6 with Qa2, but what's my plan if Black plays b4 there?
• What about active play on my part? Is g4 a brilliant break or suicide? It weakens both kings at the same time.
• Or what about the pawn break d5? It also creates weaknesses for both sides, but it may be more forcing.
• ...

Even in the most forcing line (the one starting with d5) I had so many subtleties to solve (after Rb6 should I trade on e6 or play Qa7 first? Should I trade rooks and queens, or only rooks, or none? ...). The tree of variations had really many branches and my brain wasn't fresh because the game had already been long and sharp up to that point.

I truly can't remember exactly what I calculated, but I know I spent at least 20 minutes on this particular move. As the perfectionist I was, I tried to find the best move. And after all my calculations, I decided that the best move was d5. Or more specifically, the next forcing sequence:

Of all the lines I had calculated I thought this was the most challenging for Black. With the subtlety 37. Qa7+ I won a tempo to bring my king to f2, and because after that move the rook on b8 is hanging, Black can't play b4 just yet. That wasn't much to claim an advantage, but it was a little improvement over all the other lines I calculated, in which Black could get the break b4 sooner. So I played that sequence and the game continued.

I won the game a few moves later, although that's not entirely relevant to our story. What's relevant is that moment when I decided to play d5, as it turned out to be one of the most practical decisions I've ever made. I just wasn't aware at the time.

Later in the game analysis my brain started to click.

The analysis

As I used to do with OTB classical chess games, I did a complete analysis of the game the day after, not just finding mistakes and improvements with the engine, but also writing my own comments to the game. I think it's a good practice to do this before it's too late and we forget what we were really thinking during the game.

The perfectionist part of me was sad to find out that 34. d5 was a mistake, because the best move was 34. Ra1. However we humans are not (and won't be) perfect. There was actually a practical value in 34. d5 that 34. Ra1 didn't have. It took me a long time to realize, and only because I also did the self-reflection about my own thoughts during the game.

About the move 34. d5 I wrote:

"I thought the endgame was equal but it seemed that I had pressure. The resulting position after Ra1 didn't appeal as much to me."

And about the endgame that arose:

"I was surprised to find myself very comfortable playing the endgame. I calculated with accuracy and confidence in the endgame and converted it surprisingly fast."

My brain was starting to click. I didn't know why, but things were surprisingly easy after d5.

Sometimes our brain clicks. It finally observes something that has been in front of our eyes for so long, and we finally accept that there's some value in it.

A few days later, I went back to that d5 move when writing an article for my chess blog on the topic of "losing subjectivity". My main point was that sometimes we focus too much on not losing our objectivity and trying to find the best move or the perfect assessment of a position, while in actual fact we're humans and not machines and our subjectivity should also be of value during competition.

I noticed the move d5 had a clear advantage in practice: by forcing some trades it drastically reduced the complexity of the game. Without changing much the objective evaluation of the position, it suddenly made everything much easier to calculate (for both players). That is a great advantage to have when you're tired and in time trouble!

Amongst other interesting points I wrote the next paragraph:

"A great amount of complexity was immediately reduced by my decision of trading pawns and rooks. I did not foresee how much more comfortable the game would become both for me and for my opponent, as we suddenly didn't need to spend so much time and effort per move. As I was the side putting pressure, it turned out to be a great decision, as I managed to not lose control of what was happening and ultimately convert. As opposed to the lottery that would be a highly complex position in mutual time trouble. The sad part though is that I just took that decision "by accident", after calculating and deciding that it was the best move, when actually the best move to the engine's eyes was Ra1 instead."

I have nothing to add to those words.
As it usually happens to me in chess, I learnt something by accident, but it only became apparent after analysis and self-reflection.

Take-aways

This story might not teach you anything, because it's hard to learn from just reading about other people's experiences. As it's hard to learn from seeing an engine's output. We can have all the right facts in front of our eyes, but that will not magically change the way we think.

I didn't have a breakthrough immediately after that game and I don't expect any of you having it after reading this story. I just hope it's enough food for thought for some of you :-)

As we don't know what we don't know (a big challenge in learning), I hope sharing my experience will help you discover something you didn't know. 

For me the big take-away of this story was:

Practical decision making is a resource we can discover and train, because we're humans and so are our opponents.

I truly believe chess strategy when it comes to human competition is not about perfection. There's never only one best answer to every question. To me strategy is about finding the balance between taking enough risks to have winning chances and securing enough comfort to not lose control. Looking for ways to be comfortable, or to make our opponent uncomfortable, is strategically valuable, regardless of the objective evaluation of the moves that lead to that.

Finding ways to minimize risk and to keep things under control can be of great value in certain situations. And therefore I dare to say that in practice, as it happened to me in that game, the best move sometimes is a bad move to the eyes of an engine.

Another take-away for those of you who analyze your games with an engine:

Don't neglect the human aspect of the game

You are not perfect.

If you find the perfect move but it leads to a position you cannot handle as a human, the time and effort you spent to find that perfect move might have just been a waste.

If you find a not so perfect move (an "80% move" as GM Maurice Ashley would say) that makes your life easier, chances are you can be saving good energy while keeping things under control. We can't play like engines, so we shouldn't focus all of our efforts in finding the perfect move on every position.

And finally:

Don't analyze your games only with an engine

To improve how our brain works, we should look at our brain.
Reflect on your decisions during the game, why did you take them and what effect did they have. Chances are you discover something :-)

Complete game used for the story: