Ratings

GM Smirnov on *most* equal exchanges: "It's not just wasting time, but it's helping the opponent".

The idea is that your active pieces are advanced, but still relatively on your side of the board, and the opponent's pieces are also advanced, but on their side of the board. So when you take your turn to make an equal exchange, you lose your advanced/active piece, and your opponent just replaces his/her advanced piece with a piece that was behind (protecting it). This is the situation most of the time, and hence the result is you help your opponent. 

Yeah, basically this.

Hope it helps your son improve!

Mine are ancient.

My USCF Correspondence Rating is 2116 and my last game was in either the 1977 or 1978 Golden Knights Semi Finals - back when you didn't have to worry your opponent was cheating with an engine.

My USCF regular rating is an awful 1295, mostly from the '70's and, unfortunately, most of my '90's games were against 1700-2000 players because I tended to play in small, coaches and chess teachers tournaments I met as a high school chess coach: since the '70's I haven't lost to anyone rated less than 1600 except one unrated guy who had just arrived in the USA from Russia and probably had a 2000+ rating soon after.

When I get back to OTB 30 min or, hopefully, 45 min or more games, i expect my rating to settle around 1600 and would love to see 1800, but after being away from the game since 2000 I'm definitely not "up to snuff" yet.

Thanks for your input. Reality is that he is only a 1400 to 1500 player and so does have a ways to go. My main point was that tactics seem to be a smaller part of the game as u move up the rating scale as many of his games aren't decided by a mistake that costs material even at his level.

As far as being too willing to exchange  pieces I don't believe it's as simple as that. You are implying that he chooses to exchange his pieces instead of making a stronger move and he is doing that from the outset. In the second game the first exchange only happened at move 15. When the game is run through a deep analysis every exchange is scored as the best engine move. Similar story for most of the exchanges in game 1 with only 1 exchange not the best engine move and that is off by 20cp. It's hard to argue the exchange is wrong if that is what Stockfish/Komodo would do in that position. Maybe his playing style  lends himself to that type of game, who knows? Thanks, again.

@Mozeg

I thought your son was white in the French Exchange game, but actually I saw you wrote he was black.

Luckily, my point holds still. White was the one who liquidated his/her advantage in that game by offering exchanges, and black had to take them due to tactical reasons (Be6 attacked twice, Nc6 would've gotten damaged pawn structure). 

Black equalized by taking the white exchanges. But this doesn't show that black knows when *not* to make an exchange - your son still made exchanges at every opportunity, and of course some of them will be correct moves, as in the second game.

In the second game, 6.Nxd4 is well known in theory as being absolutely non-challenging by white. The move exd5 by white is not the top engine recommendation at all, and just gives up center control and activates the black knight, while the move Bxd5 gives up white's only somewhat active piece, and is not my engine's top recommendation at all. 

The next moves by white were just shuffling pieces around, and there was little to do. 

I 100% guarantee you that your son's main problem is taking equal exchanges indiscriminately - he is clearly choosing to exchange without considering stronger moves, and that he will get past the 1500 level if he learns that he shouldn't liquidate all his activity by taking everything that's equal. The first game alone showed at least 3 violations of that rule within the first 20 moves. 

That is the score graph from the lost game, using Stockfish to a depth of about 20 ply. While I haven't looked at the game very deeply, I'm sure there are likely some of those moves, with the larger score changes, that were tactical in nature (by one side or the other) and that includes the loss of pawns (which are still tactical). 

While there certainly are strings of moves where he played good moves, there are plenty where he didn't play the best and either provided a tactical or positional benefit to his opponent. There are potentially some of the moves in the graph that might not be as bad with deeper analysis (from en engine perspective) but there are a few places where the evaluation jumped significantly.

Also, there are many subleties of engine use that should be mentioned, that you probably don't know.

The one most applicable to you is that engines don't consider how easy a position is to play (the number of decent/challenging moves you can play in a position). You are playing against fellow humans who will make mistakes, not other engines. 

Anyways, this is the best advice I can give, and I'm pretty sure it's the most practical advice that can help your son improve. Up to you now...

According to the engine analysis every one of the exchanges black made in that game was the best possible move. Wouldn't any other move in other words 'not exchanging' have been inferior? You may have a point though. Perhaps making moves that are weaker but potentially trickier may be the difference between stronger and weaker players?

Even at a GM level, the ability to find short tactical sequences of just 2 or 3 moves is very important. Not always on the board, also in future positions... in other words finding a 2 move combination that exists 5 moves deep that refutes (or validates) your strategic idea.

I think it was Botvinnik who said after a tournament that he needed to work on seeing short combinations.

Any positional rule is made usually worthless given tactical possibilities.

Your son was *forced* to exchange or make serious concessions in the French Game. 

However, it doesn't disprove anything I said, since it doesn't show that he understands when *not* to exchanges. Again, I got the colors mixed up in the 2nd game.

And no - keeping the tension, *barring tactical considerations*, is simply a stronger move, and provides more opportunities tactically. Watch the video I posted, it's one of the best for it's length. 

When I was 1400, I tended to follow the advice of stronger players, not question them, and less than 2 years later I reached my current rating. 

I really can't make it any clearer - my recommendation is you show your son the video I posted, and tell him to apply that idea as much as possible in his games. 

I think this supports my point. Even at lower level long time control games they are more often than not decided by a series of weaker moves or inaccuracies rather than tactical blunders that win a piece or an exchange. All that time spent on those tactics where we evaluate complex positions to win a piece may not be worthwhile since the opportunity seems to come up so infrequently, even at the 1500 level.

Absolutely, but it's a little misleading to say weak moves. One thing you can do to help is set the engine to show  you its top 3 choices. If all 3 moves are very close in evaluation, then it means the engine doesn't know. Engines rely on calculation, and need forcing moves to make sense of a position. In openings, endgames, and quiet middlegames small differences in evaluation between the top few moves are often meaningless.

Also as said before, if you can pose problems to your opponent while your moves are easy to find, that  has value beyond what an engine can tell you.

Thanks, I will.

This is what I wanted to express actually. Very close evaluations should be broken by humans - after all, we are playing against other humans!

Well, if "the 1500 level" means both players willingly trade most of their pieces off as soon as possible, then yes, it's not going to come up at the 1500 level, or any level for that matter.

Right but part of the game is to make sure they don't happen and even 1500 players are pretty good at that, at least when they are matched with players at a similar level.

Actually, if you watch the video right now, in the very first example, GM Smirnov shows how avoiding initiating an exchange leads to an immediate tactical opportunity, winning decisive material, while making the exchange leads to equality, with no opportunities for either side