So the idea is to challenge 1.e4 with 1..d5 to have a presence in the center, only you don't want to play it right away because then you'd have to recapture with the queen (or try something else more complicated). So you want to play d5 only you want to retake with a pawn. This gives you two options: the French (1.. e6) and the Caro Kann (1..c6). Both are very solid and respectable openings.
21...Bb5 keeps the Two Bishops and the 1/2 pawn advantage derived from their possession instead of exchanging on f3, but a critical decision had to be made here. You haven't gained enough experience to realize that it might be in your interest to give up the Two Bishops here to remove a potential attacker.
Hi Jaglavak, this was also my thought when looking through the game, so I spent a while writing about it and showing the lines until I came to the conclusion that it doesn´t help at all here. The problem is that the white Queen is attacking f7 after taking the Bishop on f3. If Black´s King stays where he is, he is going to be mated on h7; if he starts moving towards the centre, so that his Bishop can block a back rank check, he´s going to be mated on f7 after Rxh7. This danger was not present before, as the Queen was not attacking along the f-file. Is this correct? I can see no way in which Black could protect both h7 and f7 with his other forces.
PS or does 21.Qxf3 f5! 22.exf e.p. Bf8 save the day, unlikely as it looks? The f-file is now blocked by White´s own pawn, and the black Queen is covering h7 and can be backed up by the Rook.
hi everyone. I looked very quickly through the posts this evening, because I haven't been at the computer all day, and I'm sooo touched by how everyone has been posting, and talking to each other. I read McHeath's annotations and FromMu to You's annotations and Jaglavak's comments and Yaroslavl's questions first, because I had only very limited time, and I want to put some time into this tomorrow, because I'm done for the day now. Just bushed.
A few thoughts. 1. The more I read Jaglavak's comments the more convinced I am of the accuracy of his comments; when I look at the board I am blinded by pre-learned ideas, which blind me from seeing the board. And, by the way, I don't think that what Jaglavak writes is in conflict with what Yaroslavl writes; I DID NOT look at my notes after every turn at the board last night. I did not, and it would have helped me to do so, but I thought it would be cheating, which of course it wouldn't be. Jaglavak's brilliant comments are a more specific form of Yaroslavl's, notwithstanding Jaglavak's brilliant warning that we don't want to train 'scaredycat-ness' at the board.
As a piano player who knows something of these things, I know that piano players who are scared of the keys...and classical training in 99.99% of cases MAKES people scared of the keys...being afraid of the keys makes it impossible to ever develop virtuosity. So, Jaglavak, coming at it from one the fields that I DO Know something about, you're bang on the money. Being afraid is a barrier to virtuosity.
That being said, Yaroslavl's rules, which I printed out and rehearsed before the game...I just didn't consult them during the game...do not necessarily produce fear. They are COMPLETELY CONSISTENT with target mindedness, although they suffer from not addressing targets and target-practice and the practice of finding targets. An improvement on Yaroslalv's rules would be to introduce targets.. I have already done so in my rendition of the rules, and I will produce them here tomorrow.
I WAS afraid of things due to Ideological Contraints, which, had I been free of them, I would have been able to think more clearly. I chose to lose a knight over doubled kingside pawns. That was a conscious choice, and one which I, of course, regret, and which was motivated by ideological distortions.
I chose to ..e6 motivated by the ideological compulsion to castle, when ...e6 blocked in my queen and my bishop. The ideological compulsions still overpower the practical.
I must say. I am someone who is very motivated by such ideological brainwashings, in general, in life, so I'm going to be a tough nut to crack, but I am determined to become freed of these ideological considerations.
Chess, besides my work, is the one thing I live for. I have no natural talent at chess. I have no natural eye, no natural tactical sense. However, I have a proven fighting spirit, and a very stubborn stick-to-it-iveness. And I have a huge capacity to work. How much capacity I have to learn the lessons that JAglavak, Yaroslval, fromMuToYou, McHEath, R-Tist, and others have to teach remains to be seen.
I have to tell you two more things.
I felt terrible last night after I realized I was losing. I felt I had let everyone down. And today, I said to myself that although I had let you down, you would not abandon me. You are all getting something from this endeavour too; its not just about me. We are a chess-training laboratory here, with the guinea pig being a particularly untalented, but not unintelligent, very stubborn student. We hope that his stubborness will translate into learning the NEW lessons, not stubbornly sticking with the old, WRONG lessons.
Another thing I want to tell you is that I am in the Dan Heisman slow chess league, I am new to it, and I played my second qualifiying game tonight. I lost. I didn't have any time to read the notes you wrote today before the game, and I didn't have any time to learn more from your notes or about the Caro Kan, so I just went in blind. I was Black. I played a Caro-KAn. I lost. My opponent was rated almost 400 points higher than me, but he didn't win, I lost. I saw his errors, I just didn't know how to take advantage of them. I failed to apply Yaroslavl's lessons, I failed to apply Jaglavak's lessons. I felt terrible afterward, but not too terrible to face you guys.
Remember, even into his teens Fischer often cried when he lost. Tears rolled down his face. If Fischer could cry, I am not too proud to face you guys. I will not cry. But I will feel that I let you down, my precious team of seconds. I am proud to tell everyone of my seconds. I have nothing to hide. McHeath, R-Tist, Yaroslavl, FromMuTo You, Jaglavak. And some others I will get to know better in the coming weeks and months. I'm not going anywhere. If anyone leaves it will be one of you. Not me. I'm stickin' to my yet-to-be-written story.
a demain. I will post two games per week. I will play a game every Monday night at my chess club, 90minutes/+.45, and will post it. And I will post one other live game per week, prob via the Dan Heisman Slow chess league, which are 45/+.45
Most importantly, I will work my ass off with your comments, with the two games per week which I post, and with my private study, which will be tactics (tactics server and Averbakh's Middlegame Essentials), checkmate patterns and endgames (Renaud and Kahn Checkmate and Averback's endgame Essentials), focus on three openings, two as white, one as black, study of my two games per week with your notes, and one or maximum two master games or annotated-by-master-(like Dan Heisman's Most Intructive Amateur or Pandolfini's Russian or Chernev's Most Instructive or McDonald's Art of Logical) games per week.
Thank you everyone. a demain. until tomorrow. Bona notte. Dobry wieczor. Laku Noc. somebodysson/Alejandro.
ok, one more thing b4 signing off. Yes, I kept my two bishops when it made no sense to. Jaglavak's comment of trading a bishop with no targets for a knight with targets is sooo good. I have found myself in this situation before. Now that I have the two bishops what am I going to do with them? Well, keep them of course, and defend them within an ounce of my life, of course. I have lost too many games already keeping my two bishops. I will not do it again. Bullseye Jaglavak. As for the lesson about the passer and putting the king there, that will take a board in one hand and your notes in the other.
Yaroslavl, yes, clocks, times. I do not play untimed chess anymore. I will play two, formal games of times chess a week. I will play at most two or three additional games, and none will be faster than 15/10, although my preference will be 20/10 or 20/20. And I will play one or at most two cc games as well.
I am musically ignorant, but that is an interesting analogy. When I take up an instrument, and I will I'll be sure to remeber this.
There is no way you are going to learn to play this way quickly. When you do learn it, you won't even be able to tell when it happened. You'll just notice that people seem to be playing weaker. Their moves will make no sense until the post mortem. Then they hear things like, "I kept the two bishops because the position was opened," and you'll frown, and think to yourself that one of those bishops had no targets to attack and was therefore worthless, and should have been traded for your knight.
Or, later in the endgame your opponent will explain that she placed all of his pawns on the color of the squares of his unopposed bishop (like the maxim says you should). But you will realize that this made all of his pawns targets for that same Knight he should have traded earlier.
You won't even remember when you used to let postitional gobbledygook determine your moves yourself. That clutter will be gone and I guarantee your rating will have soared in the meantime.
So keep it up and lok for targets. That 41...d4! was an awesome conception for a beginner to make. The seeds are there, trust me.
Just keep that in mind. When you get stuck in any position you can clear your mind by identifying the targets for both sides and finding a way to direct your pieces as necessary. Target-Mobility Chess. Everything from what to exchange or keep, which piece to develop first and where, whether to attack or defend, can be detrmined just from doing this.
You won't always be right in your assessment, but you will always learn something from your mistakes and victories. You'll think things like, "Oh that K-side attack is more dangerous than I thought. A defense is only possible if rooks are exchanged before white gobbles up his Q-side pawns."
This way of understanding chess is how chess players reach the highest levels. While simple, it is not not something that I undestood as Expert strength chess player. Little is written about it, though I am told that Soltis is spilling the beans in his recent works.
Finmally, playing chess this way makes it more beautiful, and less like an academic subject. Ideology is OK in chess. Your friend who believes castling is a mistake must love to trot out his Hippo variation and defend its honor. He certainly isn't following any maxims, and every game is a chnce to prove his original way of thinking right. Chess must be exhilarating to him, and it should be the same for you.
beautiful, Jaglavak, just beautiful. I hope tmkroll and batgirl and Crimsonknight7 make it over to this thread. Would somebody please tell them to read this last post of Jaglavak, at least 
?
about 'not noticing the learning', Jaglavak..., beautiful... the soviets didn't just have interesting pedagogical ideas about chess. I first learned about soviet pedagogy in piano. When their piano students got frustrated with their progress their teachers told them not to worry, "You'll learn while you sleep".
Now, even this donkey-stubborn night owl (pardon the mixed metaphyla) must go to bed.
hi everyone. Its going to have to wait for the weekend for me to go over all this information. Be well until then. thanks.
After 1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Nf6?! e5 you have played into a bad variation for Black of the Advance Variation of the Caro-Kann. If you feel like 3...Nf6 is the right move, play it only after 3...dxe4 4.Nxe4 Nf6 there you are in an equal position in a variation of the Caro-Kann known as the Tartakower Variation. There is also a transposition possible if Black plays 3...g6 into a completely different opening known as the Modern Defense, but I just mention this as something that you should keep in the back of your mind for reference about 2 years from now.
All of the above is for information purposes only. What you need to pay attention to is the type of characteristic pawn structure the position has assumed after White's 4.e5. The name of the pawn structure is the Closed Formation. All pawns on the board, middle-line crossed. The indicated pawn breaks are c4 and f5 for White. The indicated pawn breaks for Black are c5 and f6. The pawn breaks have to prepared by arranging your pieces to overpower your opponent's at the squares c5 and f6 while at the same time arranging your pieces and pawns so that White does not overpower yours at the c4 and f5 squares. Those are your main targets, as Jaglavak writes, along with others depending on how the game develops. The last thing I will mention is that White has a space advantage on the Kingside. Black's basic strategy in the Advance variation is to complete his development and then undermine White's pawn center with ...c6-c5 and (more rarely) ...f7-f6. After ...c6-c5 Black should make good use of the c-file. Black's main prospects are on the Queenside. White's main prospects are on the Kingside.
That is enough for now, I will post more later.
thank you Yaroslavl. I will go over this very carefully on the weekend. I can't look at it carefully until Saturday. Saturday and Sunday will be filled with this thread, a few boards, and a couple of chess books.
He won because you hung 3 pawns and he took them. It's a lame opening by black. There was no mysteriously effective strategy or anything involved with the win. Just grabbing hanging material.
+1
hi, I haven't forgot about everyone. I've been practicing tactics on the tactics trainer. I'mn learning that I hadn't really been playing chess. I'd been making moves without looking at what I was doing and what I could do. I need to do tactics for awhile. I'll post my tournament club game on Monday, and my online live chess slow tournament game also. I'll focus on tactics for now.
Congratulations!!! I will comment a little later.
2..Nf6 is actually an inaccuracy. I know it seems crazy but after 3.cxd black has to recapture with either the queen or the knight and both can be harassed later with a tempo.
An early e3 does trap the bishop but I think a lot of people play it this way anyway. I'm not too sure the theory on it though because I don't play 1.d4
The bishop pair is nice, yes, but I think you are getting too caught up with it. Personally I don't ever take the pair into account. I think being really concerned with the bishop pair is more of a grandmaster thing. The reason I say this is that bishop you spent a move saving was bad at the time, was bad at the end, and stayed bad throughout most of the game.
"desperate measures are needed to protect that nicely placed knight"
Just wanted to point out f4 doesn't save your knight. It might still be a decent move though, not sure.
Cool rook sacrifice. Looks like black is totally lost after Qxc1 (significantly more lost than before).
Hey, a few things.
First of all, I want to thank everyone for this thread. I mean, it's just great. So much one can learn from this, it's a jewel. I'm taking all of this advice to good care!
Besides, somebodysson, I'd love to play some friendly training games with you. Correspondance if you will, or maybe we can manage to arrange a longer time control. Besides, I'm a classical pianist too, and you seem like a sensible person, so I see the potential for a good conversation!
4.Bg5 is preferable to 4.e3 since the QB at least has a target on f6.
e3 locking in the bishop is much, much more common than Bg5. After commenting on this thread I was curious myself why this is (as locking in bishops is generally bad). It seems that if Bg5 the bishop can be harassed with tempi, easily traded off, or both. And even if black ignores it for a while, it's not particularly well placed. Bf4, although it looks active, is doing even less for white. So I think somebodysson played the opening flawlessly, although I do think Bg5 makes more sense for someone trying to keep it simple and logical.
11.Be1! If you cannot find any targets, then you need to preserve material.
What's good at all about this move? The bishop wasn't hanging.
hehe, what a nice bunch of posts to wake up to. I read all of your comments carefully, and went over them carefully. Jaglavak, FromMu2You, LIMark, and Yaroslavl, thank you.
I found the comment to h5 very enlightening. I definitely did not see taking h5 as a way to gain entry to f7; I definitely did NOT see f7 as a target, and therefore I did not understand the power of the outposted knight. So my outposted knight itself was a half move.
I was puzzled by this comment; I could not see how my fear of ..Nxh2 was unfounded. I looked at it several times, and wondered why Jaglavak was telling me that Black would lose a knight for a pawn, given Black's bishop.
<Jaglavak wrote
19..Ng4 is met by the fraidy-cat "I"m a little concerned about Nxh2, given Blacks' bishop" This would give up a N for a pawn, and blacks QB (your other concern) doesn't have a single target it can reach on the whole board. Besides, 19...Ng4 threatens not Nxh2 but Ne3! winning an Exchange.
This shows you need to memorize combinations, since you are seeing them where they do not exists, and thinking they do not exist when you do not see them. Eventually, your fears should be founded and so should your lack of fear.>
It was only by examining it several times that I finally realized Black's bishop was not protecting his Nxh2, and Nxh2 was not a threat at all, as JAglavak said. And all that time I thought the Black bishop was pointing to h2!! I thought Black's bishop had a target on h2. Phantom threats indeed!! Unfounded fears indeed. I failed to see the diagonal correctly. ITs is not an eyesight problem. It is a combinations-familiarity problem.It will improve this week.
Hey, a few things.
First of all, I want to thank everyone for this thread. I mean, it's just great. So much one can learn from this, it's a jewel. I'm taking all of this advice to good care!
Besides, somebodysson, I'd love to play some friendly training games with you. Correspondance if you will, or maybe we can manage to arrange a longer time control. Besides, I'm a classical pianist too, and you seem like a sensible person, so I see the potential for a good conversation!
jojopo, sure! About correspondence games...sure! I'll play one!
Yes, about piano, my sister also plays piano, and I always felt she had a fear of the keys that I didn't have. I once wanted to write a book called "Pianophobia" about how piano pedagogs teach pianophobia, and how that interferes with virtuosity. I developed some techniques to remedy pianophobia, which I still use.
I also had a whole bunch of thoughts about piano pedagogy which are PRECISELY analogous to Jaglavak's indictment of ideology in chess instruction; I saw how piano teachers taught principles to their students WHICH WERE NOT HOW THEY, the teachers, PLAYED WELL. I had a piano teacher who would say, 'you need to do it this way. This is how to play it well'. I would ask him to play the passage for me. And I would point out to him that he was not following his own instruction, that he was not following his own instruction, and THAT IS WHY he could play it well. I saw firsthand in piano how gobbledygook instruction ran counter to playng well.
But now I need to follow Jaglavak's instruction to counter my chessphobia, particularly my fraidy catness of phantom threats which interferes with targetting, and my lack of familiarity with real threat patterns!
Hi Somebodysson, bad luck! You certainly caused yourself problems with that Knight, but later on I think you played quite well. And I´m almost certain that you could have at least held the draw in the endgame, maybe even won.
Please don´t consider my annotations to be as correct or illuminating as those of our masters here ;) I just wanted to give you some feedback to be chewing on before they arrive!