Advanced Chess Concepts

The Basics of Advanced Chess Concepts

What this page will be trying to emprise is that to rise up in your rating levels
there are certain thing you will be required to do. Just like going to collage if you
expect to get a degree in a subject you must master the subject material or you
will not graduate with that degree. You are expected to study on a regular basis
and pass the exams. Of course if your subject is overly simplistic requiring little
study or none at all and you are only going to collage to party, meet girls and
have fun then good luck to you when you get out. There are many who do just
that and so it is in the chess world also. Which one are you?
How do you study?
One of the secrets about studying chess is that you can only get as much as you
give. So here are some tough questions for you to answer about improving your
chess skills. 1. How badly do you really want it? 2. What are you willing to give
up to get it? 3. What sacrifices are you willing to make to get it? 4. How much
value do you place on it? 5. How much time are you willing to spend to achieve
it?
If you answer not much. Then you should know that Mediocrity means, bare
adequacy. If you want to be like the rest of the below average chess players and
follow in their examples in mediocrity then just continue on at your present
attitude of indifference towards the advancement of your chess skills into the
basics and the heart of chess, the important basic chess principles, of the
Endgame and Strategy.
The Basics
No chess players can ever hope to advance to a higher level of play unless he has
first become somewhat proficient in all of the basics. But the facts seem to tell us
that few average players have made any concentrated effort to do just that.
Many will tell you I don't really have any problems understanding these basics,
but if you were to give them a extensive quiz on these basics you will find that
most have only a general idea of how to solve the problems given them, they are
not proficient in all of them. Of course some will have more expertise in some
areas than others. But few will be really proficient in all the areas.
What you have to know is that the more you know in each area the more
stronger a chess player you will become. Just knowing the basic ideas of how
they work is not being proficient. What is needed is a program of study on a
regular basis. Just like playing a instrument you become a better player if you
practice each day and conversely a poorer one if you don't. Its just that simple.
Most will say well I just like to play chess I don't intend to study to become a
master player and so spending a lot of time in this study is just not for me. That
may be so, however if you want to progress to the higher levels of play this is
what you need to do on a regular basis. You don't have to spend a lot of time
doing this, only that you do it on a regular basis. Remember that practice makes
perfect and Proper preparation prevents poor performance.
Tactics and positions
Mating Combinations
Double Attacks
Sacrifices
Strategy
Forks with Knights
Pins with Bishops and Queens
Discoveries
Rook Development
Bishop Development
Knight Development
Queen Development
Effective Play Based on Pawn Structure
Endgame theory and Practice
The Study of The Openings
Now lets discuss why spending too much time in the study of the openings can be
counterproductive to winning games. Yes you do indeed have to be familiar with
the important main openings that you will encounter or you will be at a complete
loss of how to begin your games and avoid important opening mistakes and
blunders. But what is more important than trying to memorize variations is
instead to try to find out the important ideas behind an opening and what it is
trying to accomplish. Like quickly taking control of the center, or quickly
developing all of your pieces or planning an attack from the wings.
For example the Sicilian is for those that like sharp tactics, a fighting attacking
game and spending a lot of time in the study of the variations. On the other hand
the Caro-Kann is known more for its solidarity and positional play.
But that is why I say that even if you are not familiar with many of the most
common openings and their variations, you may still gain a good advantage in
the openings if you follow the advice in our very important training page entitled
The Opening Principles. This page has been upgraded four times now to make
sure beyond a doubt that the most important Basic Opening Principles are
clearly pointed out and proctored to stress that if you violate or ignored any one
of them with indifference, you surely will pay the penalty for doing so by your
opponents who do know them well and uses them to their advantage.
I have always stressed that in a large part the studying of the openings is simply
memorization. Especially lately in this century much of the opening theory has
come about through a lot of research in the use of computer analysis. In addition
to computer analysis, GM's use a lot of research of what people have played.
They may do very profound, deep tactical analysis, and strategical analysis of an
opening to proctor it to suit their style of play. But then they may try to
memorize these lines and are reluctant to change either the order of play or the
moves of a position when the position calls for it.
Or even after spending months working on a opening they may in a game not
trust all of that work and think that maybe in this position they should deviate
and change the position of a piece to maybe a more advantageous place. However
in many cases that piece, maybe a knight, may have been there in the first place
as a blockade to a pawn to prevent a open file to attack his king position with a
sacrifice of his opponents rook, and then the protection of his king's position
starts to fall apart and eventually like a house of shaky cards his whole game
starts to fall apart and he loses the game because of just one single mistake of not
following his plan and more important to not follow the basics principles of
preventing your opponent from developing.
Amateur players can be even more reluctant to accept change when it is needed,
thinking that if this opening was instrumental in successfully helping a GM win a
game surely it is the correct way to play it.
The biggest problem with the memorization of an opening variation is that when
your opponent does not follow the moves of your memorized opening variation,
then you may be at a loss of how to proceed because now you no longer have the
crutch of following moves that were worked out by highly skilled chess players
who over time may have spent hundreds of hours developing this variation.
GM's may follow certain opening variations to the letter because they may know
all the nuances of a variation opening that an amateur does not and so are aware
of the pitfalls of making deviations. But at normal average rating levels at most
internet chess servers it is not important and probably makes little difference at
all if they are followed or not. In fact most probably after only the first 4 to 7
moves there is little point in memorizing any further because most players are
going to deviate from accepted lines anyway.
Another problem is that if you spend most of all your time in just studying and
memorizing opening variations then when your memorized opening moves play
out you then may be at a loss of how to proceed towards the middle game and
more importantly how to win in the endgame.
However if you study the endgame, you're really studying the heart and soul of
chess. Don't believe that, because you may know a few of the openings very well,
that you can just win the game when you end your analysis of the opening. You
can't. You have to play chess. Many chess players make mistakes in the moment
when their profound opening analysis runs out because they are not equipped
with other basic chess skills that are needed besides just opening theory.
Now here are some of those very important chess skills to know about for
winning games. My guess is that the average chess player who usually plays
mostly just blitz games is not going to know about these ideas because he is
rarely involved in any complex endgames where he has previously studied
endgame theory so that he might win in the endgame. He is mostly just interested
in winning quickly and not interested in playing longer games for an endgame
win.
In the middle game or opening, you should focus on central pawns that are fixed
when evaluating bishops, while in the endgame; you should focus on all pawns.
A good way to win in the endgame is to use the very strong endgame principle of
two weaknesses because two weaknesses are just too hard to defend against and
usually result in a losing situation for your opponent. The best way to do this is to
create pawn weaknesses in your opponents pawn structure on both sides of the
board that can allow a passed pawn through and queen. Planning ahead for this
type of endgame by creating weaknesses on both side of the board in your
opponents pawn structure can be a very sharp strategy for you to plan for.
Knowing this you will get into situations where you may have to know how to
maintain the opposition and know how to maintain the opposition by using
triangulation to lose a move forcing your opponents king back so that you can
move on a unprotected pawn to take it. These are the kinds of tactics and
strategies you will have to know about and practice if you want to win games in
the endgame.
How to get a passed pawn and other basic endgame principles and procedures
are absolutely essential to know if you expect to win more games against stronger
players you will want to play against to increase your present rating. When was
the last time you visited our Endgame training site and looked at what is there?
In the Endgame If your Bishop is on the same color of your opponents fixed
pawns then you have an advantage in that you have targets for your Bishops to
try and capture. If your bishop is on the opposite color as those pawns then you
may want to trade off your bad bishop to get rid of that handicap.
You must also consider that if your fixed pawns are targets for your opponent's
Bishop then you will want to capture that opponents Bishop to save your pawns.
In the endgame you must be aware of the weakness of a bishop in the endgame.
If your opponent only has a dark square Bishop then there's no way for him to
defend all of the light squares and he may have problems defending his light
square pawns. So usually when you are advancing pawns in Bishop Endgames,
you advance them on the opposite color of your Bishop. So that way, for instance,
you can control the light squares with your pawns and your Bishop controls the
dark squares. Or, the light squares with the Bishop and the dark squares with
the pawns - Keep that in mind when playing an endgame.
Knowing how and when to use your king as a fighting piece can be crucial to
winning games. In the middle-game, you should defend him, and aggressively
protect him; in the endgame you must use him actively as soon as you safely can
because in the endgame a active king over a passive king will win the game.
It is very important to know that in the endgame the bishop has to guard the
queening square on rook pawns in order for it to be a winning endgame. So if
your pawn is going to queen on a light square in the rook corner on a8 then you
need a light square Bishop to protect that corner or your opponent's king can
occupy it and prevent your pawn from queening and the opposite is true for the
other corner. You must keep this in mind before trading off your Bishops if you
plan on doing this.
On the opposite side of the board with an a-pawn a light square bishop is
winning because it guards the queening square and a dark square bishop is
drawing because it can not protect it as long as your opponent's king occupies
that corner.
What should you do with pawn weaknesses. The answer is that pawn weaknesses
must be pushed, just the same as passed pawns must be pushed. When you have
pawn weaknesses, you push them up forward and make them into pawns of
strength that now your opponent has to decide how to deal with them because
now they may queen.
Everyone knows that the most difficult endgames of all is rook and pawn. But
how many know what is the most important rule in rook and pawn endgames? It
is that the Rook belongs behind the passed pawn. A lot of players think you
should put a Rook ahead and move towards your Rook. That would be a bad
mistake. the optimal placement of the Rook is behind the passed pawn.
If you really want to know a lot more on how to win in Rook and Pawn
Endgames you must go to our training page Secrets of Key Concepts and go to
the bottom of that page to see the Discussion of the Rook and Pawn Ending. This
really is a discussion of the secrets of rook and pawn endings because you will
never see this material in any book.
Here you will find that in a rook and pawn ending you should not be concerned
with obtaining just a better advantage but rather in terms of one of three
possible factors.
1. A better rook 2. Better pawns and 3. A Better King position. And here you will
find out all about how the correct play of any ending can be viewed and
transformed into an advantage for you. This is the kind of information that can
win games for you because your opponents do not have access to such valuable
training materials.
When should you trade pieces.
1. First, you're ahead in material,
2. Second, you have a spatial disadvantage,
3. Third, an exchange will make one of your surviving pieces more powerful,
4. You'll be getting rid of a very powerful piece of your opponent.
When should you trade pieces. You should trade pieces when; 1. First, you're
ahead in material. The reason for this is the more you trade down, the bigger
your advantage actually gets. In other words the ratio in percent gets larger in
your favor the more you trade down. If you're ahead in material, by trading
down, you actually increase your advantage because your advantage ratio
increases.
For example if you trade down in pawns from eight pawns to your opponents 7
pawns you have a advantage of only one pawn, not much of an advantage in that
difference eight to seven is a small ratio. But if you continue to trade down and
now you have two pawns to your opponents one pawn now suddenly you have
twice as many pawns as your opponent and that is now double, a two to one
ratio.
If you trade down one more pawn, suddenly you have a pawn and you're
opponent has no pawns. A very big advantage. Another reason for trading down
especially in the endgame is that there is less pieces on the board to worry about
as threats and you may have a far better chance of Queening a passed pawn with
the aid of your king.
2. Second, if you have a spatial disadvantage. an exchange will make one of your
surviving pieces more powerful.
The second principle of trading is that "When you have a spatial disadvantage,
it's good to trade". If your position is cramped, trading pieces will relieve your
pressure. On the other hand, when your opponent is cramped, you want to
increase pressure without allowing the liberation of exchanges.
One of the biggest plusses of having a spatial advantage is that you can develop
freely while your opponent may be cramped and his choices to move are limited.
If you find your self cramped you need to trade off some pieces to gain some
breathing room and shrink your opponents advantage over you.
So, when you have a spatial advantage, you want to increase pressure on your
opponents cramped position and avoid most exchanges. When you're defending
positions with a spatial disadvantage, on the other hand, obviously the reverse
holds true. You want to trade down as much as possible.
Remember this rule well, if you want to win Endgames. Don't trade off pieces or
pawns when you have a positional or spatial advantage. Why? Because in the
Endgame your king needs to have support pieces in order to queen a pawn.
3. The third principle of trading: "When an exchange will make one of your
surviving pieces more powerful, it's usually a good one". For example, you've
already learned about good bishops and bad bishops. Well, sometimes trading off
your opponent's last knight will make his bad bishop even worse.
4. The fourth principle of trading is pretty straightforward, "When you'll be
getting rid of a very powerful piece of the opponent"
Let's review the four principles of trading. First of all, you trade down when
you're ahead in material. The more material that comes off the board the bigger
your advantage gets. Next, you trade off when you have a spatial disadvantage. If
your opponent is crunching down on you, by trading off pieces, you relieve the
pressure on your position. Third, you trade when an exchange will make one of
your surviving pieces more powerful. For example, when trading bishop for
knight, will leave you with a position with a very strong knight against a bad
bishop of your opponent's. And fourth, you trade when you'll be getting rid of a
very powerful piece of your opponent.
A basic principle of king safety is that you don't want to push the pawns ahead of
your king, which gives breathing room to your king. It's like a draft, and the
king can feel the draft. Also it gives your opponent an opportunity to attack your
king because his pawn protection is now gone. Except in the end game where it is
essential to activate your king to assist in trying to advance the pawns.
Most every one knows the principle of a pinned piece. The principle is that when
you have a piece pinned, you should attack it. But, in some positions, when
somebody is relying on you having a pinned piece, a very good way of responding
to it is to attack the pinner! to unpin your piece.
! Making Plans
Often in a game you may be at a loss on what is the best way to proceed.
Especially if your opponent is poising threats that you may have to defend
against. You think should I defend against this threat or do I create a threat of
my own? However when it comes to trying to decide on how to proceed against
threats you must always keep in mind of how may I defend and at the same time
continue on with my plan. For example, a more obvious way would be to move a
rook in front of your king to protect your king and at the same time prepare an
attack. When ever you are at a loss of how to proceed you must stop and think
what is your plan? What moves must I make to prepare for this plan. In other
words don't just aimlessly make moves because you think you are attacking. If
you have an attacking plan on your opponents king side than keep focused on
that plan and don't let your opponent try to distract you from it with threats.
Above all else stay with your plan, stay focused don't move any pieces unless they
are going to help you further your development of that plan. This may sound
overly simplistic, and logical, but you would not believe how many times I see
others apparently start with some kind of attacking plan and then change to
some thing entirely different because of an opponents threats. This may be
exactly what your opponent had in mind, because he saw the advantages you
were developing and had to try to distract you from making more of them and
completing your plans.
This is exactly the kind of discipline you will have to work on if ever you expect
to advance to the higher levels of play. And that is to stay focused in the face of
adversity. Keep your cool and try to spend the time to just work out developing
or solving the problems at hand and continue on with your plan.. Don't let your
opponents rattle you with meaningless threats.
Often a lesser opponent will make a bad move, or take a piece just for its shock
appeal. Or he may try to use a bad unorthodox opening for its unusual opening
moves to throw you off. Don't panic and just make a knee jerk reply. Stop and
think, calculate out what happens if you instead just calmly look over the
position and see how you can develop and strengthen your position at his
expense. Control the changes, improved your position and take advantage of his
mistakes is what you have to do.
Thunderduck use to take a castled pawn with his bishop just for its shock appeal
early in the game before he had developed his pieces to try to quickly win the
game. If you were to let Fritz analyze that position, Fritz will just take the bishop
and then defend his king. Fritz is now up a Bishop and will proceed to go on and
win the game even at a very low rating setting. Because taking that castled pawn
was not followed up with other pieces to continue attacking the king, it was a
serious blunder and loss of a major piece and instead of helping to win the game
it actually did just the opposite. Often after making such a blunder the amateur
will often bring out his Queen to try to check the king and bring about an early
win. Of course now that queen will be attacked at the expense of the other player
developing his pieces and improving his position with tempo. Many players panic
at such a radical attack and the psychological effect stifles their ability to calmly
calculate the effects of that mistake.
Schemes and Endgame Planning Plots.
What might be a typical plan for you to follow in the Middlegame? Sometimes
simple and direct plans can work best based on solid principles that we have
previously studied about.
As you have previously learned about the opening phase of the game one of your
goals is to try and create a weakness or imbalance to take advantage of and work
with like a pair of Bishops over knights. We also know from our discussions of
the endgame of the advantage of Bishops over knights in the Endgame that it
would be a good idea if we could create a environment that favored Bishops in a
non-locked pawn structure so that the Bishops have open lines. Next we want to
let our Bishops home in on our opponent's pawns of the same color of our
Bishops so that they will be vulnerable in the Endgame. Next we want to try to
make anti-knight moves taking away the advanced squares of your opponents
knights.
So now we have a long range plan to work with. We have some concrete ideas
that make a lot of sense insofar that they are practical ideas that are going to be
possible to achieve.
Lets go back at this time and summarize what they are so that we don't lose focus
on our goals. Remember it's very important to stay focused at all times especially
in the face of adversity.
Our Plan Summary
1. Create a weakness or imbalance to take advantage of and work with of say a
pair of Bishops over Knights or at least one Bishop of a color that homes in on
most of our opponents pawns of the same color.
2. Create a environment that favors Bishops in a non-locked pawn structure so
that the Bishops have open lines.
3. Change the pawn structure so that our Bishops home in on our opponent's
pawns of the same color of our Bishops so that those pawns will be vulnerable in
the Endgame.
4. Make anti-knight moves taking away the advanced squares of your opponents
knights so that our Bishop can out maneuver the Knight in the Endgame.
5. Now it is possible for our Bishop advantage to gobble up our opponents pawns.
In summary we are going to use the principle of Bishops over Knights to create
an imbalance in an environment that favors Bishops over Knights and use that
imbalance as a distinct and significant advantage in the Endgame where Bishops
can excel over Knights. We are going to use our knowledge of Chess Basics to
win games.
Another simple plan could be to use the principle of two weaknesses in the
Endgame. All that needs to be done here is to try again to get two Bishops or at
least one Bishop over your opponents Knights. Then try to get two passed pawns,
one on each side of the board. Then use your Bishop and King to protect those
pawns or pawn to queen. Your opponents King and Knight can't stop both
pawns on either side of the board from advancing. The two weaknesses could be
those of your opponent's failure to have seen this possibility of two passed pawns
on either side of the board in advance and provided in advance the necessary
steps to have foiled your plan.
High Level Chess
In observing games, one of the ways you can tell who is the weaker player is to
notice who is trying to force things and just concentrates on threats and
attacking. That is often the way to distinguish a stronger player from a weaker
player. The weaker player tends to always force things, push things, and make
drastic changes. The stronger player will just control the changes to improve his
position, work around those changes and take advantage of those mistakes. In
other words the stronger player is playing positional chess by constantly
improving his position, developing his pieces for his plan, and using the
principles of strategy to strengthen his game. Often there is dynamic potential in
a position. Whoever changes things drastically will be making disadvantaged
changes within that change and losing the dynamics of that potential. Instead of
improving on that potential the drastic changes may in fact just reverse it to the
players discredit. You have to try to improve within the dynamic equilibrium
that exists and reverse your opponent's mistakes to your advantage. This is the
basis of high level chess.
In chess when you are defending one
weakness you suddenly expose a new one.
Let us examine just how this comes about
Often players play the move h3 as a prophylactic move to prevent a Bishop pin of
their Knight against their Queen preventing pinning the defender. So by playing
h3 what you are trying to do is to stop them from playing Bg4. What you will
also notice is that by playing h3 you weaken terribly a square in the middle of
your kingside structure. The g3 square. Once again, the pawn on f2 may not
really exist for the defense if a Black Bishop is on b6. So if you play h3 and your
opponent plays a move like Ne4 or Qd6 then what is threatening is - say that you
play h3 to stop Bg4 and Qd6 is played. Immediately the threat, Bxh3 or a
potential threat because the g3 square is weakened. So h3 is a possible move yes
but to do that move - the best move after h3 would be for Black to play Ne4. And
now you have to deal with the situation. By playing h3 you have weakened the g3
square terribly. It is a good possibility, but it provides a weakness and a lot of
times in chess when you are defending one weakness you suddenly expose a new
one. Do you want to give that space to your opponent to take advantage of?.
What may be even worst is to try to chase the Black bishop on g4 pinning your
knight on f3. You move your h2 pawn up one square to attack the Bishop and it
moves to h5. Now if you move your g2 pawn up to g4 to attack it again and it
moves to g6. Now if you attack it with your Knight going to h4 and you take it
and your knight is taken by the h7 pawn, you have just opened up the h file for a
Rook to attack your vulnerable kings position. You now have really weakened
your castled pawn structure to the point that now your opponent is going to
throw everything he has on that position to attack the unprotected king.
You played h3 to prevent one weakness but now you have a g3 weakness and a
target pawn weakness of h3 for your opponent to sacrifice a Bishop for to
severely weaken your kings position.
The h3 move
Mates
In this lesson we will be concentrating on
Mate Basics. If you know how to mate a
castled or uncastled King, then this
information gives you the knowledge you
need to know for making plans to get to that
position to make that mate. Trying to play
chess with out a plan is like trying to drive to
some far away obscure place with out a road
map. You may go around and around in
circles until you eventually run out of gas.
Don't run out of gas. Make a plan and then
follow it.
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