what the #$%^was he playing and how did he win?

Nice analysis Yaroslav, a lot of what you say I may have played in my old style of Chess & with an easier time limit. The compromises I made were to deal with the time limit & focussing on targets rather than theory & position.

As I said I was disappointed with the computers play, I've seen it do better at this level but not in this game

QueenTakesKnightOOPS wrote:

Nice analysis Yaroslav, a lot of what you say I may have played in my old style of Chess & with an easier time limit. The compromises I made were to deal with the time limit & focussing on targets rather than theory & position.

As I said I was disappointed with the computers play, I've seen it do better at this level but not in this game

_____________________

One of the best ways to take a shortcut through maze of variations in a position is to be aware of what the pawn structure is. It is the most important factor in finding targets. Pawn structure is terrain of the battlefield on the chessboard. It is the mountains, hills and valleys of the terrain of war. If your plan calls for going through a mountain on the pawn structure/terrain, it is doomed to failure.

Concentrating on the pawn structure will save you a lot of time on the clock finding targets. For example in the game that we are analyzing the pawn structure if White had played 3.e5 the pawn structure would have highlighted the targets as the squares f5 for White and c5 for Black. White's strategy would have called for moves that prepare the pawn break f5 while simultaneously preventing Black from successfully preparing and executing his c5 pawn break. In many of the ensuing positions many of your pawns and pieces would simultaneously be doing both promoting White's strategy and restraining Black's strategy. That is what strong players do even in blitz chess. When you are a strong player the 5 visualization pattern banks that you have built into your mind will cause the move that you should make in the position you are currently analyzing to JUMP UP OFF THE CHESSBOARD AND SMACK YOU ON THE FOREHEAD IN A FLASH!! In the mean time while you are building those memory banks the best thing to do is to concentrate on what is the PAWN STRUCTURE, what is the strategy that the pawn structure is dictating. That perspective goes a long way to cutting down the time of analyzing candidate moves and selecting the right candidate move from among the choices.

I will be adding more analysis of the game a little later until I have analyzed the entire game.

Yaroslav, I agree & I can play more complex pawn structures in my normal game but this exercise was on targets & with the tight time limit I wanted to keep the game open otherwise my centre pawn moves would have been less simplistic. This experiment is not perfect, I may have to adjust the time limit but 1st I need to reset my focus on targets not position if we are going to help Somebodysson to adopt a target style of Chess.

Look foward to the rest of your analysis

@QueenTakesKnightOOPS

I have edited my post #501. Please re-read it. Thanks.

@Yaroslav

I agree, I may test this tomorrow, the computer plays about 5 responses to 1/- d4 so I may be able to reproduce that opening & try what you suggest. I will raise the time limit a bit as I will need a bit more calculating time but if the targets arise as you suggest it will be an instructional game for this thread

Thanks

thanks QTKOops for focussing on targets. That is what I want to do. In my notes to your game I did notate the following 

Or if 3.e5 ...Nf6  Nf3 ...Bg4 Be2 ...e6  0-0 

white has a better position

Or if exd5 ...Bb7 Nc3 ...Nf6 Bc4 ...g6 Nf3...Bg7  

0-0 ...0-0  Re1 ...Nbd7  evaluation unclear to me.)

I had played it out on my little chess set, and tried out the various options in the center. Although I transgressed the 'target-consciousness' I felt I had to evaluate the postion after e5 or exd5, since Black's d5 was screaming for a response. I felt that e5 was 'better for white' and exd5 was 'unclear'.

I think that to do this experiment with target consciousness, I would have had to follow out the variation as far as necessary in order to find targets in white's and/or black's position. 

Yaroslavl, we know already that patterns will helpNo need to repeat it anymore. 

QueenTakesKnight; remember, its not the quality of the computer's play that is the issue here; we don't care how well the computer plays. We care about your experiment with training target consciousness. thanks again. 

@Somebodysson

Just a small point in your analysis. After 3.e5 3...Nf6 loses the N to 4.exf6

yes, the e5 prevents the Nf6! I knew that, for some reason I didn't write it!

He has almost no piece developed and plays ..g5. Do you consider him to be attacking then?

Hedgehog defense! :)

thank you aronchuck. precisely. the answer to zibbit, as aronchuck understood, is 'yes' I considered that to be an attack. I will work at more soberly evaluating such moves in the future. 

hi, two things. 1. aronchuck! You and Yaroslavl don;t have to agree on your analysis. Let's be very careful that we don't turn this into a thread where we argue analysis. That's not what this thread is for. Aronchuck, I like how you handled your disagreement, and Yaroslavl, please leave it at that. I realize you higher ranked players will have an urge to continue to argue finer points of anaylsis, but that will leave me and other weaker players on here in the dust. So good to note the disagreement, and then let the weaker players ask whatever questions we will.

Also, @aronchcuk and Yaroslavl: yes, I recognized when I read Yaroslavl's notes that he confused target with pawn break. A pawn break is definitely not a target in the way we are using target on this thread. Aronchuck gets it. 

aronchuck wrote : <In the game, Black's first mistake was really 2..d5 as this just transposes into a Scandinavian where Black has played the pretty useless b6 after 3. exd5 Qxd5. Since the Scandinavian is already OK for white where he usually gets a slight edge we can say with a reasonable degree of confidence that the best move would be exd5 highlighting the uselessness of b6 in the Scandinavian and ensuring white gets a fairly lkarge plus out of the opening. By contrast 3. e5 gives Black the opportunity to simply reply 3...e6. This transposes to an advanced French where the move b6 IS useful and is often played with the idea of playing Ba6 to trade light square Bishops.  Black would have a good game and no complaints here.  However, I think the discussion on move orders and tricks and transpositions from one opening to another is too advanced for this thread and should be left out normally.  I am commenting on it specifically to illustrate the point that 3.  e5 was not the best move and that exd5 was fine and correct.

3.e5 does not kill counterplay at all. It sets up a French structure where Black is already prepared to exchange light squared Bishops and play c5 attacking the centre with plenty of counterplay.>

very interesting. I'm going to look at this in more detail. I am 'happy' that in my notes to QueenTakes game I also marked 2...d5 as a questionable move. 

@QueenTakesKnightOops: do you have a preferred nickname? I hate typing out QueenTakesKnightOops...I think I'll call you qtko from now on. I hope that's ok qtko.  you can call me op or sombody or anything else that works.

The problem is that the post in which "target" was defined got deleted. :/

I like the fact that more experienced players can give their reasons in their analysis as to why they consider a move good or bad, and if they disagree it is interesting to hear their reasons explained (without turning it into an endless debate, but stating reasons is a great way of sharing opinions and allowing people to learn from both points of view). Regarding this being too advanced, I frankly don't think that the difference in opinion regarding how to reply to 2...d5 is really advanced, but it does require a basic understanding of a few of the openings involved to be able to grasp Aronchuk's point. I say this because I want to recommend this YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCa2Ezoefyh5Gm9gXwg0kCdA. Honestly, this guy is an awesome teacher, his videos are short and to the point, and in the openings he covers the ideas behind the moves and not endless lines and variations, and this is REALLY interesting and opens your mind to ideas that you can apply in games. As I said, I really recommend it.

I think QTKO and SBS will do for me. Jojo is fine if you want, I'm used to people calling me that on the Internet.

jojojopo, we're trying to keep the topic at this point to target mindedness, with targets being tactics/combinations aiming at material advantages. Yaroslavl has been following the discussions, he just disagrees with the target definition. Let's try to keep to the target definition as understood by aronchuck QueenTakeKnight and me. aronchuck and QueenTakesKnight have it. thanks. 

I was asking QueenTakesKnightOops. 

I thought that the definition of target was "a piece that can be attacked or captured by other piece", which can be exploited with tactics/combinations to win material (like the loose Na6 on QTKO's game, or pawns that can't be defended by other pawns, or the enemy king, for example), the simplest of those tactics being attacking two targets simultaneously. Please clarify this so that we can all refer to the same thing by the same words.

@jojojopo: aronchuck wrote of target this way < A target is a weakness NOT a plan or a pawn break/ lever. For clarification to beginners an unprotected or insufficiently defended piece is a weakness and hence a target. I say this as many on the thread have pointed out that this may be the only weakness a beginner player may be able to spot.>

thanks for pointing to my own misunderstanding of the topic I want us to be talking about !! It will surely hapen again. 

I'm going to just type out aronchuck's move-choice rules from memory here, to test myself. 1. what is my opponent's plan? In other words. a. what is my opponent targetting with the move they just made? or b. what did my opponent just do to improve his position which may put him in a position to target something of mine.  (I'm not sure about this part b. aronchuck, you can comment on this...). 2. where are the weaknesses, both mine and my opponent's. I assume you do this evaluation after every move of either side? 3. what is my most pooly placed piece and how can I improve it. 

We have not discussed 3. poorly placed pieces, but to keep it simple we probably can agree for now that the most elementary understanding of a poorly-placed piece is a piece that is loose, a target, undefended or insufficiently defended.  We have also not discussed how to discern weaknesses, but we can go with any of the tactical patterns for now, lined up on the same file or rank, in the range of a knight fork, along the intersection of two diagonals...and we will (or I will) have to learn about pawn weaknesses eventually. 

Jagalvak's rules, to the best of my recollection were, 1. look for a tactic or combination pattern that you can see;if you can't see any,2. look for a piece to target and check to see that none of your pieces are targets;and, if none of those apply then,3. improve a piece. 

Yaroslavl's rules include, at least as far as they stand out as ones I can remember are 1. beforeyou move a pawn, make sure it is not weakening, and make sure you don't have a better move to make with a piece (something I often do.. move a pawn when I can't find a good piece move) and 2. sit on your hands and recheck.