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

thank you aronchuck. On third reading, carefully, I get this. And I get the whole idea of white moving the pawns forward with the rooks behind. I knew white's exd was wrong, but I didn't understand fully why. 

12. Bb3where are the weaknesses? what is white's idea/plan? what is my worst piece? If Black can blockade the c3 pawn, the white pawn centre will be immobile and weak. The c4 square is the blockading square. White is also weak, with undefended pieces on the a1-h8 diagonal. So white's plan is to push c4 and to place his Rooks behind his pawns. He will then have solved many of the problems in his position. So Black must prevent this plan and his move must prevent c4. Therefore, the candidate moves are b5 (with idea of Na5 to Nc4 and Bb7) and Bg4 with the idea of being able to win the d4 pawn if the c-pawn is advanced.

@qtko: I"m working on setting things up on chess.com so that I'll be playing two 90/30 games per week on chess.com tournaments, and one otb game also 90/30 per week, at the chess club. So three slow games per week. The rest of the time will be drilling tactics puzzles, annotating games on this thread, and reading and studying the posted annotations. 

a simple question, that comes from a chess.com blog I've just been reading:

How does one choose candidate moves that are not forcing? In other words, if I have no captures, threats, checks, how do I narrow down a reasonable number of non-forcing moves to calculate?

Does the answer to this lie in aronchuck's rule 'where are the weaknesses'? Do chessplayers look for forcing moves first, and, if no forcing moves then we look for weaknesses, in order to find candidate moves to calculate and evaluate?

I'm remembering Jaglavak's rules, now. He said 1. first, tactics patterns instantly recognized. 2. Second, look for Targets . 3. Improve a piece third. 

Instantly recognized tactics patterns, I think, coincides with forcing moves, and in assessing the opponent's plan, should probably start with forcing moves.

If I don't find any forcing moves in the opponent's plan, then I'm free to look for weaknesses in my position (improve a piece) or for weaknesses in my opponent's position (find a target). 

It is the next step, which Jaglavak called targets and which, I think,  is precisely what aronchuck's 'where are the weaknesses' leads to...which I'm finding concpetually challenging. 

How do we get better at finding weaknesses? 

I'm thinking that these annotations we're doing may be part of the answer. 

sorry for all the posts. I guess I'm feeling a bit lonely. 

Here's my analysis of the recent game. Thanks for the reviews of the game, very insightful, particularly the depth of aronchucks analysis. A little background as to why I chose this game. It was early in my Chess life, I was studying openings as we all did back then & it was my first tournament that I went into armed with book opening knowledge & a plan, so I thought that Someboddysson may be able to relate to it. As aronchuck pointed out my execution of the Grunfeld was a little flawed but my opponent failed to take advantage of that as often happens at that level. This game may be of help to Somebodysson as an example of what can happen if you fail to punish your opponents mistakes. My wife pointed out that (in her words) my opponent suffered from some form of passive aggressive syndrome. He made a number of very passive moves in the opening & then launched a very aggressive & premature attack around move 19. Well that's inter club Chess in the lower ranks for you & its how we learn.

My annotations are what I was thinking OTB so I'll explain some of the reasons behind it here. My move 16/- ...a6 which has been rightly criticised did have a plan behind it even though it was somewhat flawed. After retreating my Bishop to c8 I was kicking myself for what seemed to me a backwards development move. The plan was to launch a Queenside expansion, undermining Whites centre & creating a nice home for the Bishop on b7 aimed at Whites now weakened Kingside. I got away with it because of Whites dubious counter a3 which reduced his DSB almost to pawn status & cost him a tempo.

The Knight sacrifice on move 20 really threw me, I thought I had analysed the refutation to it but when it came at me OTB it looked different & I suddenly had a moment of panic. I was particularly proud of the refutaion 21/- ...Nxd4. It was the only response & it lead to the win & I had to calculate it OTB with the clock ticking & a lot of doubt in my mind. So it was a game of inaccuracies by both sides but it does give some insight into how a club players mind works & thanks to the analysis by the others here numerous options as to how the game could have been played better.

haha, what your wife said just about sums up much of my play. Passivity in the wrong moments, and premature aggression. Passive aggression. Perfect. I like how you wrote 'I need to calculate carefully here' and 'thinking thinking'. Nice. Good to hear that good players go through these kinds of self-doubting and self-checking moments. 

I've been playing tactics all night. The importance of aronchuck's 'falsifying' becomes increasingly evident. If I don't falsify, I'm not playing chess, I'm gambling. good night. Great to hear from you QueenTakesKnight. I'll go over your notes in more detail tomorrow, and I have a game tomorrow, so we'll see what a few days of tactics puzzles with nothing else produces. I'm still puzzled by how to improve pieces, and I fear that all these tacitcs puzzles do not give me much pracitce in ascertaining the opponent's plan, since, knowing its a tactic, I don't have to really figure out the opponents plan, just to find the tactic. 

I still need to practice finding the opponent's plan and evaluating weaknesses. tjhey really do seem key, along with finding candiadate moves with a borad brush informed by 'where are the weaknesses'. good night. 

@ Somebodysson

You seem a bit worried about finding weaknesses yet you do ok in it when you analyse a game, maybe you aren't getting them all but that comes with time & board vision. I'm wondering if your balance of study v games is slowing you down. 3 games a week versus the amount of study you are putting in may not be enough. There is no substitute for actual play against real opponents rather than computers & puzzles etc.

If you need more opponents maybe some of us in this thread can help. A friendly unrated game with no time pressure may allow you to work on what you have been studying & you would get the benefit of analysis from both sides of the board.

Just a thought, I used to play about 10 games a week plus tournaments at least once a month sometimes more. I also had a coach after a couple of years & working with him took me to another level. I also had at least 2 Correspondence tournaments running at any time so that was 18 more games though with snail mail they took up to 2 years to complete. Correspondence was very good for improving game depth although I'm not sure how it goes today when everyone has a computer, but I found it gave me another dimension as it eliminated blunders & allowed me to work on technical stuff in an actual game that I couldn't try in OTB Chess without jeapordising my rating.

@ aronchuck, as I mentioned in my previous post I played quite a bit of Correspondence Chess & it helped me a lot in analysis & more technical play. The game of mine you just analysed was OTB at about the time I started to get serious. 2 years later I was winning those tournaments. Do you think Correspondece or its online equivelant is relevant today?

aronchuck wrote

<You must think wide - not deep as most moves can be dismissed within 2-3 moves<

Yes. I do not think wide enough. I find a candidate move and I analyze it, and for some reason I stop looking for more candidate move. I start foing my version of deep long before I scan for many possible candidates. A key weakness I have, besides all the others, is not looking WIDE enough. thank you for this aronchuck. 

@qtko: I'm open to scheduling some more games. I just thought that playing fewer games, and practicing more eould be the better way. I def don't want to play any games faster than about 45/45. There's just too many bad habits already, the worst being not looking wide enough, not assessing weaknesses, and not assessing opponent's plan. I need to take the time to do those in games, and so I need very slow games. 

about correspondence play: I'm interested to hear what aronchuck says. I've played a bit of correspondence, but found that I wasn't playing it slow enough, and I played correspondence before I knew aronchuck's thinking rules, so I was playing it like blitz! I'd like to play some correspondence now knowing aronchuck's thinking rules. I'm open to it. thanks. 

@ Somebodysson

I couldn't agree more about avoiding fast games, they do nothing for you at this stage of your game.

There are a number of ways to balance out games versus study. You can do a predominantly game oriented week followed by an analysis & study week with just a couple of games or just raise your number of games each week to what you can manage but what you learn OTB sticks much more than in study so the correct balance of the 2 is what is needed. It varys a bit from person to person.

I would be interested to hear from some of the others about this but my experience is that what I did OTB really stuck in my brain & then I focused on study to correct the mistakes I analysed from my games & then it was back to the board again to test it out.

@ aronchuck

I agree, Blizt & Bullet are just for amusement with one possible exception & this is only for higher level players. When I was training for an important tournament in the last few days I would back off a bit & play some 5 or 10 minute games just to relax a bit but more to test my board vision & to test my ability to handle time trouble.

I think there is way too much emphasis on fast games today as a result of the Internet & its insatiable appetite for instant gratification & its a recipe for disaster for beginners, it creates a see & move without calculating mindset that is of no benefit whatsoever to beginners.

I lost. but I did my best. I'm going to go annotate it now. 

 I thank you aronchuck, both for the time you took for your analysis, for your teaching, and for your kind words. I definitely am playing differently than a month ago. My different play is completely due to asking where are the weaknesses, what is my opponent's plan, and what tactics can I find or am I subject to.

Still, I am not playing differently consistently. I do not search widely enough for candidate moves, especially when I am feeling surprised by my opponent (panic). I do not falsify my choices consistently.  Some (though not all) of the surprises for me in this game were due to my not falsifying my moves. I do not see tactics against me quickly enough to prevent them, by seeing weaknesses ahead of time, because I do not look for my own weaknesses, especially. I need to look for my own weaknesses, in order to also  understand my opponent's plan. I need to do this more consistently.

I thank you for your time aronchuck. After jojojopo and QTKO and any others put their hand to this game, I will post my analysis, and I will post a revised analysis based on your comments.

I look forward to your analysis, jojojopo and QTKO if you have the time. 

@jojojopo, what about you posting a game on here, without saying which side you played, so that we can have a go at it? I'm quite sure you will find it interesting. It can be any game you like, of course 

@QTKO: how was the experience for you of posting your game on here? I realize you did it for my benefit, and I thank you for that, but I also want you to benefit from this. Would you like to post a more recent game, that you and I and all of us may benefit from looking at together? Maybe another game of you and your wife playing? Or any other you may like?

@aronchuck your comment about the bishop to e2 and not d3...is this something I should have been able to figure out at the board?  I realize that this was not the reason for my losing the game, but I just wonder if I should be able to figure out things like this in the opening. 

I'm just going to say something else, that probably aronchuck understands already, but I think its worth saying anyway. Jaglavak had an important contribution when he talked about targets, looking for targets. However, his hypothesis, that finding targets was all pattern recognition, was, I think now, wrong. I think looking for weaknesses is the prior step to 'finding targets'. One is not necessarily looking for targets first, but for weaknesses first. By developing the ability to see weaknesses, perhaps, in part, by recognizing weakness patterns, we will develop our ability to find targets. Targets are the children of weaknesses, not the other way around; weaknesses are not the children of targets. 

aronchuck, QTKO, do you feel like commenting on this. As I'm sure you understand, I am completely open to being told I'm wrong, and I am completely open to hearing your comments about this, as I'm sure is true for anyone else who may be reading this.  

Well it was a loss but not a disaster. I can only echo what aronchuck has said about most of your play. I would call the opening solid, you followed the centre control & development rules well. I assume you haven't studied this specific variation because the development of the DSB became a problem & I wouldn't expect you to solve it OTB & play h3 to make a space for it as aronchuck pointed out, that only comes with more experience or studying the opening in depth. Your other Bishop also had problems finding a good home. Its always a challenge when you opponent kicks a piece & you have to relocate it. Remember the problem I had in the game we just analysed. My Bishop went to g4, got kicked, I parked it on f5 & it got kicked again so finally I reassessed the whole position & took it all the way back home & then to b7 where it eventually participated in the final winning position. As aronchuck pointed out the best home for your Bishop was c2 & then b3, so that's another lesson to take from the game. Its often the more subtle things that make the difference as you play improves

Your calculating power seems good but you lost the exchange with the sequence on move 20. This is another valuable lesson, when you counter an attack with a direct counter attack you must calculate it all the way out. It usually has more possibilities to consider, so that's when you calculate one extra time before you play it. For intermediate players it can be the ultimate test of your ability to calculate under pressure.

Just saw your next post, I'll put this up then address the questions in it

thanks QTKO. That pretty much sums up how I felt about it. 

 I assume you haven't studied this specific variation because the development of the DSB became a problem 

actually, its very very interesting. Much of the mental energy I spent was dealing with the ...e5 attacking the Bf4  and after moving Bf4-Bg5  the threat of...e4 forking my Bd3 and Nf3.  The bigger problem was my Bd3 instead of Be2. aronchuck pointed out that in this opening its Be2 not Bd3, and I see why now. But I didn't foresee this, and I doubt I will make that mistake again!!

I just run the risk of thinking 'never develop your king bishop to Bd3 if you have Nf3, because you run the risk of ...e5...e4 forking them. It is the generalizing that is so deadly, when a little knowledge is deadly. 

and, ahem, @QueenTakesKnight, you know I haven't studied this or any opening!!! I know the first small handful of moves, the first three or four moves, of a small handful of openings. A very small handful!!

I actually thought this black was a grunfeld, and during the beginning of the game when I saw 'the grunfeld' I regretted not having studied your game more in depth, particularly the grunfeld opening!!!

I didn't know it was King's Indian until aronchuck pointed it out! let alone the Biguier variant!!

I tried the finding targets approach & found it had a lot of merit, it got you going in the right direction & helped me regain some of my calculating power & board vision after a long abscence from the game. I am still using it. However in the overall scheme of things it is a bit 1 dimensional & chess has many dimensions. I'm very glad you raised this point because to me it is the ultimate proof of your evolution as a player.

"Targets are the children of weaknesses" is a very succinct way of putting it & the fact that you have recognized this by yourself tells me a lot about how you are evolving as a player.

Posting a game for analysis is something I always enjoy & benefit from, I am working on something to post when its my turn again, probably something between my wife & I as the computer games are not really producing anything of quality until I start playing it on a higher level.

very nice and concise. 

@QueenTakesKnightOops: sweet post. Nice. Thanks. We look forward to your game. And more of mine! And jojojopo's when he can tear himself away from those christmas presents he just got! And yes, queentakesknight, the emphasis on targets was and is important, and aronchuck has shown us how to find targets. In our annotations we can answer the three questions, and falsification will distinguish real targets from illusory ones. 

wow aronchuck, you have a capacity for very clear and very understandable explanation. I was amazed at how I could follow everything you wrote above! Awesome, thank you! 

I will not be on anymore today. I wish everyone a safe and cozy new year. somebodysson.