interesting. very educational
Elaboration on FFA tutorial : detailed but crucial factors to take into consideration
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Nice post. Think it's a bit advanced for most on this forum. My guess is only 2200+ players will benefit from it. Lower than that, people are better off looking at your first post.
In case you decide to make a post 3 or beyond, a tip that in analysis board you can hold down 1/2/3/4 to draw colored arrows. Think they'd make the boards a lot more accessible for readers to know what areas they should be focusing on, and what pieces are moving/threatening/threatened.
Jan 16, 2021
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#4
As usual with you, straight-to-the-point and very clever. Thank you very much! Shall have to digest.
Jan 14, 2024
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#7
the red made a mistake that he can checkmate blue in the last example
Hello chess folks
It’s been a long time since I wrote about a topic but after a long break, in which I collected plenty of tacit knowledge, I have some promising insights for those who are interested in the finesses of FFA. In my last post I pointed out the most essential variables and divisions to help understand the main idea. A lot of players have improved ever since and the quality of the games have noticeably increased.
Here in this particular subject I’m going to dive in into the lesser known factors that might seem as trivial details to the naked eye but once added up in a set or combination it becomes lethal.
I will talk about :
-Time pressure [important]
-Emotional state of a player [more important]
-Why breaking defence is worth sacrificing material [most important]
-Correlation between King’s safety and victory [most important]
The rate of significance of the above mentioned subtopics goes from important to most important. Each subtopic will then be divided in two structures. The internal focus and external focus meaning what you can do about it and what other players should do.
Again I will use visual content to illustrate and make sure my point has been delivered properly. The names of the players have been blurred out as usual to prevent any personal attack. No disrespect nor humiliation is ever meant and cannot be tolerated.
So without further ado, let’s start!
Time pressure
“The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.”
Leo Tolstoy
Whenever time is of the essence a hotbed for mistakes is created. Being low on time causes you to lose accuracy in your moves and hence you become vulnerable. As a player you should always strive to make the best move within as less time as possible. If the latter is not possible you should take your time and strive for the best move anyway. Make one good move instead of 5 sloppy ones that could result in a possible checkmate on you.
However, the angle I would like to cover is what you should do when another player is experiencing time deficiency.
As you can see there is a double attack on red from both blue and green. If you remember from my last post I mentioned that you should keep a player long enough in the game to maintain a balance until the scale numbers in your favour. At this point the balance is distorted for green and beneficial for blue. He is leading in points and is about to have a queen. Thus green would be advised to not pressure red any further.
At this point green makes a wise move and decides to retreat his knight from red’s camp. The reason why he does this instead of further attacking is because he needs red in the game to harass blue until a certain point. What would happen if he didn’t retreat and kept pressuring? Well, if green would have kept pressuring red with the possible help of blue, red might have run out of time. This is good for blue but bad for green. (Notice how both blue and green have sufficient time).
Therefore the strategy for blue here is to pressure red and the strategy for green is to counterpressure blue to give red some breathing space. So this game is not merely attack and defend and queen up. Playing the game on a psychological level will help you better understand the moves of your opponents and anticipate their play.
Emotional state of a player
“Anger doesn’t solve anything. It builds nothing, but it can destroy everything.”
Lawrence Douglas Wilder
In a game it can happen that one player infiltrates your camp and the third player benefits from this. This makes many furious and causes them to lose control. Their chances of winning have been diminished so they seek payback at the cost of their own game. It is extremely difficult to keep yourself from the nudge to take revenge but this is a small yet key difference in success and failure.
Most players who are higher rated (above 2800) have trained themselves to keep their composure and not lose their head under utmost pressure. This is one of the reasons why they are so great and stay great. At all times they seek for the most accurate move that can be played rather than going for a kamikaze. There are many examples of these kind of games and I am pretty sure you can find at least one in your own archives where you play the role of the kamikaze player. Analyse those games to help yourself better realize that it only leads to destruction of oneself. If you are willing to win you should embrace the path of the controlled warrior and subdue your anger. Victory will come to you.
Also there is no point in expressing yourself in chat with some horrendous curses (yes, I am also guilty of this). Once the game is over there is nothing you can do to change it. Everything you can do is in the moment itself. Who cares what could have been or should have been done? The game is done and yes it could have been played better, definitely. People make mistakes and sometimes you get to pay the price but the only thing you can do is again keep your composure and focus on your own mistakes. Make this a habit in your own analysis and you will notice that your defence is more important than relying on another player.
Just as you should know yourself on how you react to certain moves you should also learn to recognize a player. You can simply divide them into two kinds. There is the emotional player who is willing to give up his win to punish a player who has destroyed his chances of winning. These types of players don’t look at their own mistakes and pin the blame on the one who made them angry. For this kind your strategy must be to show your good side and not tempt him much unless his inability to do harm is guaranteed. Patiently wait for the third player to tempt him and then join the attack on that player. You will be surprised how easily you won that game.
The rational player on the other hand is a lot more tricky. This type of player plays the best move possible in every situation and will not engage in revenge. If you encounter this kind of player you can trust him that he is keeping an eye on the balance. He won’t kill you unless he is sure he will win the game. Try to see the game from his perspective and deduce : “…if he mates me then he won’t be able to go 1vs1 on the third player. Therefore he needs me…”
Understandably you don’t want to rely on another player’s stratagem. So the rational player’s enemy is unpredictability. You might want to keep such a player as weak as possible. Hence doing good damage but keeping them in the game is a good plan. Although as I said these games are very tricky and need a lot of analysing, focus and emotional resistance. Also it depends on the game and many other factors. So take the last advice with a grain of salt.
Why breaking defence is worth sacrificing material
“The opportunity to secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself.”
Sun Tzu
Some players are quite passive but it benefits them in some way. They decide to turtle up until the dust is settled and then open up to claim the win. To such players, defence is really important. They try to stay away from every possible threat in order to deflect attacks.
Your approach to this kind of play must be aggressive. It might even require you to give up your queen but this is extremely dependent of the context. Let us have a look at a few examples.
In this particular game yellow decides to open up blue’s defence. At first it might seem like a free bishop but when you analyse it thoroughly it is a good move in the long term. Blue needs to adjust his position and he is already two essential pawns down. Now the red bishop is looking straight at the b pawn of blue.
Look at how later blue needs to find a safe square to preserve his king. It makes blue consider more about defence rather than offense. This is also a good sign to recognize. Strong players often counterattack. Mediocre players always look for a way to defend and hence are sometimes too late to attack.
Later on blue finally finds a window to counter and decides it to be a good idea to eliminate the harasser. The rook on i12 is a capture of the yellow knight. And just look at how quickly events escalate into a mate.
At this point green notices the weakness around yellow king and sees an opportunity in helping blue to finish the job. You can already guess what comes next. You would be surprised to know how effective the element of opportunity is. Most people are opportunistic and when they see an easy win they go for it. That’s why we sometimes see an unconventional ‘treason’ in high rated games.
Another example of how a simple knight sacrifice opens up red’s structure. Blue joins the attack as he sees an opportunity in the potential defeat of red.
So now the road to victory is open and red cannot stop both bishops. If he takes the green one it is mate with the help of blue bishop. He can desperately try to prolong the game by sacrificing the knight but the game is practically over for red. A good example of how important it is to break defence.
This brutal exhibit shows us how quickly events can turn into your disadvantage if allowed. Red’s plan here is to completely annihilate blue’s defence by exchanging both bishops and leaving blue open to green’s doubled queens.
This move is really a crusher for blue. He cannot take the red bishop or he gets mated by green. But he also cannot defend discovered check by red and moving king is not an option either. Totally destroyed by 2 bishops. It costed red 2 bishops but he successfully broke blue’s entire defence.
This last example illustrates a queen sacrifice in order to open up blue king. Red could prevent that from happening by moving his queen to the same line as blue king but regardless of what he does green’s plan was to open it up anyway. This leaves blue’s king in the open and buys green time to further develop his pieces while opportunistic red can keep harassing blue. It is truly a subtle move that is rather played on a psychological level. Green knows that people in general are opportunistic so by opening blue he indicates that blue is now vulnerable and must be chased. At the same time he makes himself look smaller. By sacrificing the queen he is not a threat anymore and can be underestimated. Absolutely brilliant!
Shortly summarized, leaving a player open to threats and checks is worth sacrificing material in the long term to gain an advantage. It can in some cases even lead to checkmate but must be used carefully. You must not forget that by sacrificing your pieces you also make yourself vulnerable. So unless there is a good compensation you should not consider giving up material. After all you are not only eliminating one player but three. Make sure you have enough material to fight them all in the end.
Correlation between King’s safety and victory
“The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy.”
Sun Tzu
This statement is not based upon scientific research and is entirely a product of my very own tacit knowledge sourcing from my experiences and observations in my own games. I have no collected data nor conducted any study. (Here I am winking at the statistic experts among us who can make a case of it 😉) With that said, I would like to explain that whenever I see a player whose defence is impenetrable, he tends to be left in peace. According to the law of people being opportunistic, it makes really well sense. I will enlighten this with an example.
Look at green’s immense defence in this position. His forces are nearly impenetrable. Both red and blue need to make tremendous sacrifices to open up green’s position and make him vulnerable to checks and threats. This turtle position of green causes the other two players to not even bother attacking him. The defence itself is not as strong as the deflection it creates. Every position can be broken if you wait too long, no matter how perfect your defence is. It is a matter of sheer will and determination, which most people lack. Therefore they don’t even bother to go near green and attack each other.
It is convenient for red to attack blue because he is somehow more vulnerable than green. He is within reach and can be damaged. Notice how red is taunted by the easiness of blue’s weakness. He sacrifices the knight to open up the position even more. Furthermore, he does not allow blue to get another queen.
Blue triggered red by his last move. He pushes the pawn to get another queen. This alerted red to stop him at all cost out of fear that he might become too strong. Thus he breaks his defence leaving the king in the open and vulnerable for multiple checks and threats.
Meanwhile green is still not a target because “he has no queen” and is way too strong protected to even bother. These two elements add up to green’s victory. This is called the normalcy bias.
A. He is not dangerous due to lack of queen
B. His position is too solid to penetrate in a few moves
Realize how all of this happens on a psychological level and is rather a cold war.
In the mean time green gets a new queen since no one bothers to even poke him. Red and blue are way too hard engaged in each other and are thus in a state of tunnel vision, in which their focus is only based on one thing. Destroying each other and completely neglecting green’s rise to the throne.
At this point blue offers green checkmate on red. Temperament players would be quick to take that mate but if you just take a step back and look at what’s going on you will see that taking that mate leads to defeat. Once green captures that pawn he get +21 points but that is not enough to compete with blue. Also he loses a queen and must now fight against an already existing queen and one that is about to promote. Not a good deal.
So instead green goes for blue with a joint attack of red, since red finds it quite easy to attack an already vulnerable player, and blue gives up all hope. Now victory is as good as guaranteed and green needs not fearing red as he is destroyed and in the open as well.
Look carefully at green’s structure. Completely impenetrable and structured. The whole game he was not harassed even once. This is mainly because none of the players were tempted to approach green. Deflection successful!
It is a long post and if you made it all the way to here, congrats!
Hopefully you will have more quality games and will this post serve as a study from which you can learn and perhaps teach 😊
I wish you best of luck in your games and stay safe!