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

how true. There is a briliant BBC interivew with ALekhine on youtube where he says ' the past is completely irrelevant in chess. Chess is played only in the present and the future". 

can someone explain/elaborate on this? I don't understand it. 

Somebodysson wrote:

Yaroslavl wrote:

Another item that must go on your list:

(REMEMBER THE ONLY INDIRECT DEFENSES (keeping the initiative/attack) OF THE QUEEN IS A THREAT OF MATE!! , CAPTURING ANY ENEMY PAWN OR PIECE WITH CHECK, OR CHECK

can someone explain/elaborate on this? I don't understand it. 

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First, I will explain (keeping the initiative/attack): When you defend indirectly you are threatening to do something worse to your opponent than he is threatening to do to you (example- your opponent is threatening to capture your Queen, instead of moving your Queen to another square, you make a move that threatens to mate his King on the next move. If he sees the mate threat he will not capture your Queen, he will choose a move that stops the mate threat! If he defends against the mate directly he will lose the initiative/attack because he is not threatening to mate your King with his direct defense against your threat of mate. Only if his move threatens mate against your King and simultaneously defends against your threat of mate will he retain the initiative/attack.

Second, I will explain defensive moves in response to check to your King. A check must be responded to immediately, you cannot ignore the check and make another move and deal with the check with some later move. There are only 3 ways to defend against a check: 1.Move the King, 2.Interpose another one of your pieces between your King and the checking piece, and 3.Capture the checking piece.

I hope the above explanation makes clear what the,Before I Make a Move Checklist, item 7 means.

it explains it very clearly. Thank you Yaroslavl. 

yes, McHeath. You have written one of the great understatements of this thread, and one which I understand intimately. My eyes glaze over when people write the principles, because when I read them I 'know' them; however, in practice, at the board, a whole other set of things go into play.  

It is only with this thread, and esp with Yaroslavl repeating the above list, it finally began to sink in that although I 'know' some of this stuff in theory, I do NOT put it into practice. The goal is to increase the practice of chess.

Also, Jaglavak's hard-nosed focus on material over principles, calculation over abstractions, realities over thoughts...very very important stuff. Priceless. 

I'm going to chess club tonight. I'm going to try to keep Yaroslavl on my left shoulder and Jaglavak on my right, and all the rest of you milling around the table watching. 

I'll post tonight's game tomorrow. First I'll go over it and annotate it more thoroughly than I have ever done in the past. That's a promise. I will not use an engine, I will use my eyes and whatever analytical ability I can summon.  

You played the opening well, but then you didn't know what to do. You didn't have a plan and you began to hang pawns. Study tactics and read a book about planning. Maybe the book by Chernev, THE MOST INSTRUCTIVE GAMES OF CHESS EVER PLAYED (not sure of exact title.)

That conjures up an entertaining picture ... we´ll all be there, breathing down your neck and watching every move, so don´t you dare make a mistake! (Only kidding, good luck, and I´m looking forward to seeing the game!)

well, sir, you hit the nail on the head. I find that I play openings well, because I"m typically careful there, but then the transtion to middlegame and engagement is where I have no idea what to do. Pawn breaks, developing attacks slowly...that's why I'm going to focus on a repertoire where I develop a feel for what to do in a small assortment of openings which I will play over and over, typical plans in those openings, as my middlegame and endgame skills increase. There's been a consensus about a family of openings I'll start to use over the next weeks, as I study them. I won't be able to employ a new opening tonight, because I don't have time today to learn them (but I have time to type on this forum), but I"ll start using them over the next weeks. I will def eventually consult Chernev Most instructive games. Heisman recommends them strongly, but I'll be doing Heismans' most instructive Amateur games first. 

Most importantly, tonight, I will do what I wrote above. I will calculate, I will think thoroughly and as deeply as I can, I will try to consider several moves deep and on every move, I will practice visulaizing  and evaluating different scenarios and acting on those, with prioritizing safety, attack,  and defense, of pieces and squares.

And as McHeath jokes, I will hold myself accountable, in a friendly and serious way, to this forum. 

I know you've already recieved a lot of flak for playing e5 but another reason that it's bad is that closing the position tends to make your lead in development worth less.  When you make pawn moves you have to think about how the corresponding structural change is going to change the scope and efficency of your pieces.

Cramping moves like e5 tend to give you an advantage that's a lot harder to exploit than a simple lead in development.

What you always have to do before you make a move is think about it in terms of compensation.  You can give up space for development, or give up development for material, or give up material for space etc etc etc.  The big thing is recognizing that when you transform one imbalance into another you always lose a little bit of the other, it's pretty rare you get a chance to play a move that increases your advantage in all areas (usually only if your opponent blunders).  Here you lost the development of your pieces for a tiny bit of space, not that the pieces moved back to their home squares but that the resulting structural change made their outposts meaningless and forced you to redeploy them to more active positions.

When you have a lead in development, aim to open the position.  When you're behind, aim to close it (or just get developed).  

very very clear and concise. And new information for me, and makes sense.  Very very clear. I see now that e5, a 'gain in space', gave me less space for my well developed pieces to manouvere in. (sp)  Thank you.

@Jaglavak

I understand where you're coming from but I've always considered the maxims of positional chess to be heuristic shortcuts in lieu of raw calculation.  Simple positional ideas can help us cut down on calculation time and have a smaller, better list of candidate moves to look at.

I like your target-centric approach and I understand the ideas behind it, but I think that you have to tie in some classical positional ideas to that way of thinking.  Targets are very important, but we need to know what to do when there are none and I think simple positional maxims like: "A knight on the rim is dim" help guide us when we don't have targets, or find ourself reconsolidating after an attack.

thank you Jaglavak. This is great and important. It is verrry verry easy for us to delude ourselves that ex-post facto storytelling  is the way to create the story. What someone else wrote, I think it was McHeath, corresponds perfectly with what Jaglavak is teaching, i.e. that we have to look at the board and try to win, and try not to lose. Trying to win and trying not to lose will involve gaining material and not losing material, which will, of course involve looking for combinations which may deliver mate or paralyze our opponent so that we can take some of their material.

EvenSemenoff, do you see how your story -- 'closing the position blocks white's lead in development'-- do you see how that is an abstract concept, and one which you haven't backed up with any variations on the board? Cioncrete variations might give credence to your analysis, but your analysis, as it stands, is just words if its not backed up with variations which show that closing the position came at the cost of taking away some targets that I would have had had the position remained open. 

You still may be correct that e5 was a bad move. Everyone agrees on that. The issue is how to explain its 'badness'. I think that what Jaglavak is saying is that we can only explain its badness by showing variations. Explaining its badness by talking abstractions is not how chess players play chess well.

Thanks again Jaglavak. Now I go eat, and on toward chess club.  

You lose because you play extremely passively. Check out my instructional games for how to dominate.

Usually I don't even think about making a pawn break like e5 in OP's game until I see it will give me some kind of advantage.  If you look at the game I posted back a few pages I didn't play e5 until I knew I could bully the knight to d5 where I could exchange it and leave black with a weak e pawn as a target.  Or black has the choice of moving the knight backwards instead which is even better for me.  But yes, more than either of things, opening the position was very important because once you are fully developed if you don't generate some kind of play the game will move closer and closer to equality.

I wish I had a like button for that post Jaglavak!

Doubled pawns are good in many situations so you can't say they are bad as a rule.  Two knights are sometimes better than two bishops so you shouldn't as a rule try to maintain the bishop pair.  It is not uncommon for a minor piece to be worth more than a rook so you shouldn't generalize rooks as being worth more.  When does it end?  Along this line of reasoning your studying should consist of nothing but reading engine analysis.

These short sayings are not intended to be all-encompassing, they are just a helpful tip for beginners who may not completely understand yet why 1.Na3 is not such a great move.  "To take is a mistake" is not aimed at discouraging anyone from ever capturing, it's goal is just to make beginners question whether they are capturing on impulse or if something is actually to be gained.

 "Futhermore, many maxims are not true even half the time,"


"To take is a mistake" is true most of the time. 
"A knight on the rim is dim" is true like 95% of the time.  Only in a few openings (usually with black) do you ever develop a knight to the side unless you have a very specific threat to deal with.
"A pawn is a pawn"  Extremely true.  When all is said and done and pieces are traded off, an extra pawn gives you the winning chances 90% of the time.
"When you are weak generate complications at all costs."
"When you are up in material trade down pieces."
These two are dead obvious when you consider that even the best chess players are much more likely to make errors in a complex position involving lots of calculation.
"Holes in the opponent's position should be occupied by pieces, not pawns."  Very rarely is this wrong.

I could go on but I think you get the point.  Personally even now I absorb as many motifs I can.  One I learned very late, much later than the others.  "Rooks on the 7th are worth their weight in gold".  Being hinted how much power a rook on the 7th possesses helped my game a ton.

Not at all! I've never heard it expressed so well and directly :D

Somebodysson wrote:

Hi everyone. I lost, with a rudimentary Caro Kan that I only knew the first two moves of. On move 4 I moved my knight to the vulnerable Ng4 and then on 6...e6 I blocked the defence of my knight.  Then on 8 ..Nh2 I felt I could not save the N so I sacked him to bust open the white king.  My opponent blundered on 19. Nh2 but I did not know how to turn the game around, as my pieces were so poorly placed.  For some reason my annotations are not being saved in the games editor; I have to contact customer service to find out why its not working. I'm sorry I lost; I really wanted to win. My move e6 was a YaroJagvak blunder; I think we'll call them that now.  I didn't look to see the consequences of the move, and I made the move on the 'principle that it would be good to castle, not with any target in mind, and ignorant how this would make my knight an undefended target. 

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Was this game played with a clock? If so, what were the time controls?

Did you write the, Before I Make A Move Checklist? Did you look at your list before every move during the game?