For those of you that are fans of tactics, you'll love this one. There are plenty of them. But it will be the positional factors that win this game for White.
First, some perspective. This game, played over the board on Saturday, was the final round of a 4 round event. White, myself, a 47-year old with 2 points going into this game, needs the win to finish in a tie for first. Black, an immature 14-year old kid, has basically never spent more than 20 minutes in any game, and was 3 and 0, blasting away opponents with tactics.
You will see Black this game try to use tactics to grab a pawn, which White has tactics himself to show that the temporary win of the pawn is nothing. The difference between this game and his other 3 is king safety. His king is wide open most of the game. White eventually pawn grabs himself, but only when it is safe, and he looks out for his king first.
White wins this game as seen below, and afterwards, Black is spouting how he had me, and I gave him a taste of reality that he is immature and thinks material and tactics are everything, and that he has a long way to go, and that he is absolutely clueless about king safety or positional play. His father tries to tell me that he is only 14, but I then tell him that if his son cannot accept reality and the harsh truth to send him to scholastic tournaments.
Off to the game!
(Note - slight error on my part on the note to move 40 White. Ignore the "For Example" part. White is winning though if he grabs the pawn.)
Moves like ...h5 and ...gxf5, and being all giddy-up about grabbing pawns, did Black in. Chess is more than just computer tactics. Computers have done kids in. They think computers, tactics, and material count (which computers over-estimate) are the end all, be all of chess, and they are not, as shown in the game above.
Computers are a great source of finding very long, multi-dimentional sequences of forcing moves, but they are not great at positional evaluation, and should not be used to completely replace sitting down with a board and pieces and THOROUGHLY analyzing GM games, especially those from books on Strategy and Positional Play!
Please share your round 1 game from this tournament.
http://www.uschess.org/msa/XtblMain.php?202211120752.1-12663277
For those of you that are fans of tactics, you'll love this one. There are plenty of them. But it will be the positional factors that win this game for White.
First, some perspective. This game, played over the board on Saturday, was the final round of a 4 round event. White, myself, a 47-year old with 2 points going into this game, needs the win to finish in a tie for first. Black, an immature 14-year old kid, has basically never spent more than 20 minutes in any game, and was 3 and 0, blasting away opponents with tactics.
You will see Black this game try to use tactics to grab a pawn, which White has tactics himself to show that the temporary win of the pawn is nothing. The difference between this game and his other 3 is king safety. His king is wide open most of the game. White eventually pawn grabs himself, but only when it is safe, and he looks out for his king first.
White wins this game as seen below, and afterwards, Black is spouting how he had me, and I gave him a taste of reality that he is immature and thinks material and tactics are everything, and that he has a long way to go, and that he is absolutely clueless about king safety or positional play. His father tries to tell me that he is only 14, but I then tell him that if his son cannot accept reality and the harsh truth to send him to scholastic tournaments.
Off to the game!
(Note - slight error on my part on the note to move 40 White. Ignore the "For Example" part. White is winning though if he grabs the pawn.)
Moves like ...h5 and ...gxf5, and being all giddy-up about grabbing pawns, did Black in. Chess is more than just computer tactics. Computers have done kids in. They think computers, tactics, and material count (which computers over-estimate) are the end all, be all of chess, and they are not, as shown in the game above.
Computers are a great source of finding very long, multi-dimentional sequences of forcing moves, but they are not great at positional evaluation, and should not be used to completely replace sitting down with a board and pieces and THOROUGHLY analyzing GM games, especially those from books on Strategy and Positional Play!