Help Alison With Her Terrible Moves

Related to tactics and dropping pieces, maybe dropping pieces means that one isn't adequately concerned with the opponents piece position and control when calculating. Being really aware of the threats and range of the opposite sides forces is a good habit to gain though not particularly easy to master, especially in the age of blitz.

One aide, which sounds weird, is to play practice games from the opposite side of the board. So if I'm White I play from the Black side and vice versa. I'm not sure why but it seems to help focus on all the pieces and how they interact rather than over concentrating on one's own plan.

On tactics, it would seem that while doing the excersises can't hurt, OTB its often the lead up to the tactic that counts. It seems that often GM's don't take computer analysis that shows quicker tactical wins very seriously because top players usually see their own winning plan many moves ahead and go with it. I'm not sure it's very common that once they decide on a plan many top players scan the board to see if any better tactics are available. Petrosian for one was well known for not getting sidetracked from a plan he saw even though there might have been possibly quicker wins.

There might be two ways to build the skill of seeing future tactics. First is to recognize an opponents positional weakness. Some sort of weakness is usually necessary for a tactical shot. The weakness is often positional. As Fischer wrote, "As usual, tactics flow from a positionally superior game."

Secondly, the farther out you can calculate maybe the better chance for spotting a good shot. I always thought Kasparov was the best because he just saw farther and clearer than anyone else. Personally, I've seen recently how effective long calculation is by playing my friends Fritz program. It sees so far and doesn't fall for anything. It's not really fair.

Maybe I'm way off but improving awareness of an opponents pieces, getting good at spotting weaknesses, and extending calculation all seemed to help play and I still keep trying to improve on all of them.

(49. Ke2) Should have been followed by (49...Rxc2)

Protects your bishop and takes the other one.

As before I'll go in order so as not to confuse myself -

"Stick with a few openings" - I had a little bit of trouble with this at first because you learn all the names, the basic tabia, and they all look so exciting to play, but these days I play ...c5 exclusively against e4, ...f5 exclusively against d4, and I usually go ...e6 - f5 to sneak into the Dutch against c4 and hypermoderns. With white I go d4 with occasional relapses into Nf3 - the most flexible and fascinating of white's options. So I'm a settled woman, on that front. Thanks for all of your encouragement and advice - it really does help.

"Poor Marshall defense - we hardly knew ye!" The more I look at it, the more I think it's the natural choice for black....taking the pawn is so brazen, it's like "If this is your first night at Fight Club, you have to fight!" Way too much. Marshall says "I want to play normal chess where we castle and get our pieces out," and the fact that it's simply not very good is a shame. Spassky is really underrated - maybe he'll be my next study after I finish with Petrosian, because I don't know Spassky's work at all....to me (and most Americans), he's just 'that dude Fischer beat', and that's hardly fair to someone who is recognizably one of the best ever. 

"The Sicilian isn't a good choice because it's too demanding" - Maybe, but I'm not going to drop it and play ...e5 any time soon, because I like my tabia position in everything except the Alapin - which is a rare bird (for now....maybe Carlsen will beat Annand in the c3 Sicilian to decide the match and EVERYONE will start playing it). Why not ...e5? First, I'm a contrarian, so I bite my thumb at anything I'm 'supposed' to do, but *much* more importantly, as a matter of taste, I just don't like it - I feel like I'm on the back foot for the first 10 moves, even if I'm doing well. Why the Sicilian? Well, at first it was just a try.....I was trying everything. But I quickly discovered that the problem of forever defending f7 was NOT a problem in the Sicilian - because there's counterplay all over the place, and white can easily get duped into a bozo attack, fail, and get pulled underwater. I am comfortable in the Sicilian, so that satisfies half of your requirements......do I *understand* the Sicilian? I feel like I do - at least as well as I understand anything about chess (which obviously is not well, but it'll do for now). 

"Good news - it won't take you forever to become tactically competent" - that is *wonderful* to hear, because I feel like I've been beating my head against a wall. You will be happy to know that I've only used my opening books as reference guides lately (IE, looking up a move I hadn't seen before); I have not spent any time working through some random line on my analysis board for months. As for study time, a lot of it is spent on Petrosian right now, but I would say that the majority is getting spent doing tactics and actually playing - not being a bookworm. 

As for the book suggestion, it looks wonderful! I always thought TT was a bit odd with its counting off points for spending time.......super GMs spend loads of time calculating tactics to make sure they get it right, and getting it right is way more important than moving quickly - snap moves lose games (Annand lost game 6 for exactly that reason!). I will admit, TT has trained me to snap the most aggressive check immediately without looking deeply at the position - because it helps me score points (and scoring points has nothing to do with learning chess). So, yeah, it's good to know I'm not the only one that thinks the timer is rewarding really bad habits. Maybe they should have two branches of TT - a timed one (to train for blitz ) and an untimed one (to train for more serious time controls).

"Don't play closed positions to avoid tactics" - I like playing positional chess and spending all day to find the best squares for my pieces....that's been noted, but I don't actively *avoid* tactics. Since you've looked at my games, you may have noted that my queen's gambit accepted response is e4 - the most tactical move possible in that position - because it's the most punishing way to meet dxc. Black wants to monkey around and start punching on move 2? Well, OK, let's get bloody. I don't do a lot of hack hack sac attack (sometimes in the KID I will play the Averbakh setup, castle queenside, and hack......but I'm not proud of it), and I don't have a lot of appreciation for that approach to chess, but I absolutely try to play the best available move - tactical or positional. 

"Setting up tactics is at least as important as spotting them - maybe moreso". Totally! Romanovsky's Soviet Middlegame Technique is a book that really inspired the way I play chess, and, if I were to sum up the book in a criminally tiny sentence, that sentence would be "find weak squares and stick a piece on them." When a mommy piece meets a daddy square she loves very much, they hug in a special way, and baby tactics are born! When we hit the middlegame, I do my best to take stock of which pawns will be easy to pick up, which squares I might stick a piece on, and which spot on the 7th rank will make a good home for my rooks. While I'm doing this, I sometimes miss my opponent's threats, so your analysis was pretty much spot on. Playing from the opposite side of the board is a really fascinating way of studying! I will *definitely* have to try it - such a cool suggestion. 

Thanks to all - my chess is iproving by centimeters, but it was improving by millimeters before, so all of this 'chess therapy' is just incredible. 

"On tactics, it would seem that while doing the excersises can't hurt, OTB its often the lead up to the tactic that counts."

I disagree not because I don't think the lead up is important, but because it's less fundamental. You definitely need to know enough about tactics that when a textbook theme comes up, like a clear pin or fork, you will see it very quickly. That doesn't even necessarily entail deep calculation -- it's more about just being able to see themes when they are in front of you. At lower levels blunders are so common that games can be decided very suddenly -- one side can play really well but then play an inexplicable blunder or miscalculation, even from a stronger position, simply because they haven't built in themselves the knowledge and discipline to avoid missing these things on a regular basis. So this is the priority at first.

I do think you need to be able to see enough tactics on some basic level first before one has to worry more about sophisticated ways of setting them up. This is because blunders are happening all the time waiting to be taken advantage of, simply due to ignorance of a theme or lack of concentration. This doesn't mean become houdini; at a certain point your tactics will be good enough that you will only blunder when under serious pressure, and then having a good position is much more important. But if you don't know the basics you will blunder regardless. Even if it's just one move of a long game, that one blunder could cost you depending on how big it is.

First - Sicilian update: I've been playing the Kan, and it's very good. I like the structure quite a bit as a nice medium between the Taimanov and the Najdorf - we get our ...d5 break and our early ...a6 - horray!

Now to a game I played earlier today with white (no Sicilians today!) - the time control was 15-10, and I was playing someone rated about 1500

It's clear to me that a lot of my troubles started with trying a little too hard to preserve the bishop pair after an inaccurate move, but I felt pretty stuck the whole game and ended up totally uncoordinated and hopelessly lost. 

14 OO?! why not just snap the knight Bxh6 giving him double pawns.

16 g4?? Makes the king very vulnerable. 

19 Qe4?! if you are losing... Try to keep your queen on.

Thats what i think. Dont be too harsh, im a patzer myself.

Edit: i just saw 18 Bxd4?? Qxa8 and u missed it again and again.

Hi Alison,

It looked a hard game. Gambits are fun but tough to play. Maybe this opening needs some home cooking for possible improvements.

A lot of gambits hinge on getting significant counterplay for the pawn. Could be 6. a3 might be a bit too passive, Given Black's slower dev possibly opening the position and putting pressure on b5 with a4 might be called for. The move...b4 is a pain but it does making defending c4 tricky and a pawn on b4 maybe better for White than the B.

I'm not sure the opening gave you everything you wanted by 7...Bb7. It appears most of the Qside play is Black's with potential in the center with a nice lock on d5. Plus you're down a pawn. Could be 8. e5 is needed. While you're right it weakens the light squares it does cramp Black from easy dev on the bare Kside and could offer chances there. Especially when it puts questions about castling to Black. It would seem to fully advance his plan the Qside has to be opened, so I'm guessing he probably won't want to castle there. Keeping the King in the center weakens the darks squares Kside, so maybe ...0-0 can be expected offering White some decent play. Maybe it helps, maybe not but like Fischer said, "To get squares, you have to give squares."

Just wondering. I didn't look at it long but was taking the Rook at 18...Qxd4 booby trapped?

Have your moves gotten less terrible yet?

Nope, still absolutely, unapolegetically, morbidly terrible. My endgames are way better.....but the plurality of the whole thing? Nope, hundreds of pages of reading, hundreds of games, thousands of tactic puzzles, and I play about as well as I did when I was six......it's pretty discouraging. 

~49 days ago I gave you a course of study that could be completed in "45-60 days".  Did you do it? 

I didn't get Bain's tactic book - which I should have. I've been working through tactics daily - puzzles etc. - but as for working through that particular book, I did not. I'm probably improving bit by bit, but it certainly doesn't feel like it. 

Bright side, now that I've waited until after Xmas, I can get the book cheaper!

I don't know what puzzles you've been doing daily, but the point of the Bain book is the specific patterns/building blocks it contains.  They are what makes doing the harder problems possible.  It's why you want to become intimately familiar with them.  You want to know their hopes, dreams and regrets.  You want to laugh about that time you got arrested for drunken disorderly conduct when you were in your 20s.  You want to remember that time you got mad at each other and didn't speak to each other for two whole weeks.  You want to look deeply into that book's eyes and wonder if things had turned out differently, would you be married?

Good work on sticking with it and making progress Alison. Don't be discouraged with that loss. You made some good moves. I actually think you may have had chances and may have even resigned too early. I think you could have turned it around there.

Stay mentally (emotionally/psychologically) tough and determined in those frustrating positions and you might just be pleasantly surprised when you see your opponents cracking first instead. 

Checking in on Alison's terrible moves - I think I'm getting better! Rating-wise, we're a little stagnant, but, on the whole, I'm making fewer catastrophic mistakes. Here's a game I played yesterday with a much higher rated player (we've been playing a lot...and he always crushes me...oh well) where I almost managed to pull out the win. It should be noted that it's a blitz game (5|2), so imperfections are a little more forgivable. 

There's no trick at the end -- try to give black some motivation to move his queen away from d8 -- not gonna happen :)

Blitz honestly isn't great to analyze if you really want to get to the core of your problems. Because since when you're in time pressure you won't find the right moves anyway, it sort of masks the real problems.

Indeed on move 10 your pieces have a lot of potential -- the c1 and c2 bishops, and your queen can get into the attack if you just get your knight out of the way... that's why sacrifices on h7 can be so strong, because the king is sent to h7 from where Ng5+ will check and gain time for the queen to come in and black has no time to react. To get too concerned about a bishop coming to g4 is to give black too much credit -- black's idea will create a pin that isn't necessarily even good; you on the other hand have the chance to attack and totally push black back. Whose plan is scarier?

Great game. I'm not sure 29. Rc7 deserves a !. Maybe the White Queen is better placed on d2 covering both c1 and e1 plus the a5 diagonal with the Qside pawn targets. An endgame idea might be to trade the passed pawn for the two Qside, hopefully exchanging rooks in the meantime. Lots of times with an opponent's equal material and good defensive position, it's difficult to promote so usually you trade the passer for hopefully a winning advantage.

So the tempo 28... g6 could be a decent time for 29. Qd2, Black probably wants to threaten the passer so maybe expect 29..Re6. Then 30. Rd1 allows the Queen to b4 then a3 which might be good for White. Best case is Queens on with two White passers Qside but even a 2-1 majority with Queens on appears good for White.

Thanks for all of the great analysis here - it took me a little while to process everything: h3 felt like a cute positional move - luft for the endgame, creating a square to re-route my knight (and potentially the DSB), stopping black from playing a minor piece infiltration on g4....I had a lot of strategic reasons outlined in my head, but I missed a forced win *facepalm*. With Qd2, I just wanted to prevent structural breakage after trading bishops - my plan was d5, trade some minor pieces, and then gnaw on queenside weaknesses with the hope of winning an extra pawn and converting it in an ending (of course, as Nckhrls indicates, I passed up an opportunity to do just that by becoming too attached to the idea of promoting my premature passer). 

In defense of 22.Nh2, the other options didn't look attractive: Nd4 and Nd2 hang the d pawn with a tempo against my queen (is there a trick I'm missing? 22.Nd4 Nxd5 - then?), and Ne1 doesn't offer any attractive re-routes whereas Nh2 offers the f1 square for defense and the g4 square for offense. Certainly *leaving* the knight on h2 is a dim idea, but re-routing it *through* h2 doesn't feel wrong compared to the other options.

Thanks again!

Oh, by the way, I'm getting a little tired of old Petrosian - he's a wonderful player, but I think it's time to move on to someone else, and I haven't decided who. Probably not Bobby Fischer, Mikhail Tal, or Alexander Alekhine - because they're all studied very heavily - but any suggestions for my next historic chess teacher are very much appreciated!

Morphy is a good start.

You shouldn't avoid someone because they are commonly studied. Don't be a chess hipster.

I agree that h3 is a useful move, but when you can do so much more, you should take advantage of it -- your opponent is just begging that you let him off easy and let him try to defend a worse but still intact position. Maybe you experience this too -- the feeling of making that "small improving move" gives me this cozy feel, which might make me forget that I could be playing moves that are not just "microscopically useful," but rather, very useful, or even, immediately decisive :) Of course sometimes the slow moves are the right ones; but the key is to not let your aesthetic appreciation for the move hurt your objectivity about what plan of action makes the most sense.

So yeah in my case I often have the temptation to play one of these slow moves when in reality, it's just me being too lazy to play a line where I have to be more specific about exactly what I will do next, or lines where I have to calculate tactical sequences of moves to get some clear cut gain. And of course sometimes you don't need to do this, but when doing so could potentially be very beneficial, I don't want my temptation to play something simple, and requiring little thought, to make me miss a huge opportunity. It's easy to throw in moves like h3 because you "know they can't be bad," but if you play them too fast you may find you missed something that gives the opponent immediate problems.