Game of the week: Fire on the chess board!

That's how it's done! Hanging pieces, attacking f7, creating mating nets!? Max knows all about those chess term, as he demonstrated in his game. How does one find such good moves in their own games? Like I said in the previous article, read the position and the position will tell you what needs to be played. Well, how do I read the position?? You first have to get familiar the chess imbalances, once you do that you'll see chess in a completely different light. Examples of imbalances included a space advantage, extra material, a weak King just to name a few.

If you want to be a strong chess player, here's another key. This is a quote from Jeremy Silman's How to Reassess Your Chess. "If you want to be successful, you have to base your moves and plans on the specific imbalance-oriented criteria that exist in the given position, not on your mood, tastes, and/or fears!" This is the key, the key to chess enlightenment! 

Here is how you do what the quote is asking you to do, how to use the power of imbalances in your own game. It's a skill that can be trained rather easily.

1. Create plans in all of your games, play long games for this, it's next to impossible to create plans in blitz games, and don't even get me started on bullet! Practice this a few times then move on to step 2.
2. Learn the chess imbalances, watch youtube videos that talk about these imbalances and write them down on a notepad. 
3. After learning multiple imbalances, go back to your past games and analyze them, make sure to have that notepad with you. As you analyze, try to find as many imbalances in those games as you can. And try to come up with better plans than what you played in your games.
4. Next, repeat step 1 with your new knowledge of chess imbalances and watch how much you improve. You'll begin to notice that you see a lot more than usual, you may even get into time trouble more often but like I said, this is a trainable skill, and with time you'll be able to use your skills in less time. To the point that reading imbalances will become second nature and as simple as breathing!

This entire process should take at least a month to start seeing results, BUT you have to constantly play practice games. Don't play 3 practice games in one month and expect to see results, try to aim for 1 game a day or at least 3 a week , that should be perfect. After you notice improvements you're not done! You should do this process multiple time throughout your chess career. Even stronger players, class A and above, do a process like this, among other things.

That's it for our Easter Edition of "GAME OF THE WEEK", please leave comments and ask questions down below. If you would like to have one of your proudest games feature please send them to me to check out! Thank you all for reading, I wish you all good health and to have a good one!