Chess mentor- try Silman's. That's very instructive.
When you have more space, more development, try to find your opponent's weakness. Is his king unsafe? Is his pawn loose? Target it.
If there's no weakness, try to avoid any good plan by him. That is, stop all counterplay. If successful, prepare your pieces, pawn storm on his king's side, and watch his king slaughtered. But remember - stop all counterplay.
Thanks a lot man
. 'will try Chess mentor and focus on those things. I also checked a thread of yours and found there a reference to the book Simple Attacking Plans by Fred Wilson, which also looks great.
It doesn't have to be a pawn storm on the enemy king. The basics of using a lead in development / space is to play a pawn break to open lines for your pieces. This can be in the center, kingside, or queenside. Then you infiltrate to their side of the board. When you're in their position, you come into contact with their weak pawn (the pawns that can't be defended by other pawns). Once you do this (with your lead in development/space) then tactics will usually appear for you and you can win material.
You don't have to play for mate all the time, in fact in some positions it's unreasonable, and it can even hurt your position to try.
"Mate is for the upgraded pawn. The rest is for promoting it." - William
So I'm pretty bad to okay-ish at chess. I not seldom notice that I play a better opening - in terms of development, positioning of pieces etc. - but don't seem to 'use' that advantage and waters down and equalizes or worse.
I was wondering, what is the best way to practice capitalizing on positional advantages, early on, but also in later phases? Solving tactics puzzles doesn't seem to remedy this problem.
Kind regards
One good method is setting up an example of the sort of position that you do not handle well, and playing it out against the computer. You can repeat this several times, finding improvements over your mistakes each time. If you choose a position from a text book or an annotated game it is a good idea to leave aside looking at the explanation and notes until you have attempted to work it out for yourself a few times.
Of course I am better at giving advice than following it, but you don't need to trust me on this. It is a method recommended by Dvoretsky.
So I'm pretty bad to okay-ish at chess. I not seldom notice that I play a better opening - in terms of development, positioning of pieces etc. - but don't seem to 'use' that advantage and waters down and equalizes or worse.
I was wondering, what is the best way to practice capitalizing on positional advantages, early on, but also in later phases? Solving tactics puzzles doesn't seem to remedy this problem.
Kind regards