The Tactical Endgame series: The crazy rodeo: 2 Knights against a Rook!

Another episode of the on-going serie about interesting Endgame studies aimed at improving your tactical imagination (if you need to be convinced, just read here).

This 2 Knights against a Rook is an interesting fight...and quite painful for the weaker side!

Even though the bishop pair can be extremely powerful in open positions, the 2 knights duo are monsters in blocked or "messy" situations!

Also you certainly don't want to face them at the end of a Blitz game or in Zeitnot!

Below is a list of studies that will hone your skills and should demonstrate how powerful and difficult to face this duo can be.

A special mention of Alexey Troitsky (composer of two studies below) who is considered the father of the modern endgame study. If you are interested to know more about him, here is an interesting article about his work and legacy.

Enjoy!

What's the best opening?!

This is a recurring question among beginners and intermediate players as opening theory often plays a major role in their overall Chess training unfortunately.

As always, there is no clear cut answer to that.....

So the best opening? None!....or rather all of them!

There are lots of good and perfectly playable openings out there but really the best (for you) is the one:

• you understand!This seems pretty obvious but you'd be amazed how many players are just memorizing long opening lines and just don't know what to do with the resulting positions!So know, at least, the main standard strategic plans (and keep in mind that a wrong plan is still better that no plan at all) and tactics
• you enjoy playing!This is very important as Chess is a game after all!
• you feel comfortable playingThe opening fits your style of playing and provides room for growth and improvement.

Your next steps to improve your opening repertoire

• For each of your main White and Black openings, ask yourself:
  • Do I know the standard plans well enough for this particular opening?
  • Do I know the standard tactics well enough for this particular opening?
  • Do I feel that my middle games out of the opening are reasonably playable/well balanced?
  • Do I enjoy playing it?
  • What is my success rate with it?

Experiment...

• Based on the answers to the questions above
  • Try new sub-lines, plans and tactics
  • Learn new openings

and practice, practice, practice!

To wrap things up, I cannot resist to post a fairly well-known game, and a great one, between to fantastic players of the 80's, Anatoly Karpov (the ultra-dominant World Champion at that time,and, in my opinion, one of the greatest player of all times) and GM Tony Miles ....if you don't already know this game, you're in for a treat...Enjoy! (also with comments here):

Chess Tips: the 15 seconds rule

During regular games...

To blitz or not to blitz?

Like dogs who sniff each other when meeting, chess players have a ritual at first acquaintance: they sit down to play speed chess.
- Anatoly Karpov

That shows how prevalent and widespread Blitz (speed) chess is in the Chess culture!

But what is Blitz Chess exactly anyways?

It's a game where you have to play the entire game within 15 minutes. Usually, this is less than that and the most popular time controls are 5 minutes or 3 minutes plus a 2 seconds increment for the entire game.
Faster than that it's called "Bullet" usually 1 to 3 minute games but I have to say that I agree with V. Kramnik's statement:

To be honest, I consider [bullet chess] a bit moronic, and therefore I never play it.
- Vladimir Kramnik

That being said Bullet Chess can be fun....but, to me, this is not Chess anymore....

One thing for sure: Blitz Chess is fun....but is it hurting my level of play?

Well, You can see the glass whether half-full or half-empty...

Why Blitz can be good for you....

• It can help you develop an opening repertoire:
  As I said in a previous post, if used properly, Blitz Chess can be a great tool to help you developing, enhancing and broadening your opening repertoire.
• It leaves room for experimentation:
  You definitively have less inhibitions in Blitz games than longer time controls games so it is an opportunity for you to be creative or, at least do things you wouldn't normally do in regular games.
• Being a good blitz player helps when in zeitnot:
  That one is pretty easy to figure out
• You learn to keep your composure when things go awry:
  Because of its very own nature, your Blitz game can go from huge plus to a huge minus in a split second!...so this usually teaches you how to regroup quickly, look for opportunities, develop tenacity and a "can do" attitude, skills very useful during regular games

But not till you drop....or your chess strength will too!

• No deep thinking is involved in Blitz:
  You tend to rely on what you already know (standard tactics & plans, same old openings and so forth);
  Most of the time (but not always) no real creativity is involved, just Pavlovian reflexes!
• Bad habits can develop pretty quickly:
  You tend to rely more and more on tricks (because it works!) rather than healthy tactics or true strategy;
  Also sometimes positions to be avoided in Blitz (declining an obviously incorrect sacrifice for the sake of "Blitz pragmatism" for example....) could be playable and even desirable in regular games...
  and per the various reasons listed above Blitz Chess is not to be advised for true beginners...

In conclusion  Blitz is fun and, to some extend, has some upsides but, in my opinion, you should never play it more than 10-20% of your Chess time if you want to make any significant and steady progress...

To wrap things up, below is a video of Hikaru Nakamura playing Blitz Chess with the white pieces: there are several great Blitz players in Chess History (R. Capablanca, A. Karpov, M. Tal and the much lesser know Genrikh Chepukaitis) and Nakaumura (CapilanoBridge on ICC) is without a doubt among the very best today...

Enjoy this fantastic fight!

How to study an opening?

Studying opening theory came shortly after I learnt the game. I discovered with amazement that you could get "a decisive advantage" right out of the opening if you know the "right moves". Wow! pretty interesting and intriguing stuff!

So I started studying openings...which probably sidetracked my true Chess development for many years.
I am not saying that studying opening Chess theory is wrong in itself but it has to be approached the right way.

Opening theory and GMs

Nowadays, being up-to-date on the latest theory development (as well as coming up with new, fresh and unexpected ideas) is definitively a pre-requisite for very strong players (GMI and above).

The trend was probably set by Garry Kasparov over 3 decades ago or so (even though, before him, Lev Poulougaieski was also known to have very deep opening preparation, see his famous and excellent book Grandmaster Achievement) where games can be won...without playing!

This is still true (to some extent) at the highest level; As an example, you can watch the following game Kariakin Mamedyarov 2013 (nicely commented by GM Daniel King) where a strong theoretical novelty, in a rather well-known position, basically wins the game.

Chess Opening theory for mere mortals

But I would definitively not recommend this approach for players below 2200 FIDE and for many reasons:

• It divert the player's efforts, energy and time from more important topics mainly:
  • Practical play
  • Tactical training
  • Practical Endgame theory and Endgame studies :-)
  • Game Analysis
  • and the list goes on and on...
• It can be viewed as somewhat the "miracle" recipe to climb the ELO ladder but the truth is that opening preparation, at lower levels, backfires more often than succeed

But we still need to have some opening knowledge, don't we!?

Right, but instead a theoretical one, it should be a practical one, based on experience and also, but not only, opening theory.

As far theory is concerned, a minimum opening theoretical knowledge is sufficient.

Ok, but what is minimum opening theoretical knowledge?

Well, the goal, when entering the middle game, is to have a good (or at least a descent) position where we know what to do next!

So knowing the various possible standard plans for an opening is extremely valuable.

You still can come up with something on your own of course but there is a great probability for a given position that a proven strategic plan already exist for it.

That being said, you should use your common sense and judgement as much as possible: this might not work well with certain openings though, like the Sicilian Dragon and Poisoned Pawn lines, so try to avoid them!

Opening study: the process

Depending on the scope of your study, a whole opening(!) or a very specific variation, the process remains more or less the same:

• Study Few GMs or important games for that opening and/or system. This allows you to:
  
  • get a general feeling of the opening/variation
  • identify tactical and strategical ideas
  • build some reference points
    It is important to stay away from opening manuals!....at first.
    The number one thing to avoid is memorizing lines; You will eventually know the moves because of the practice and games! The objective is to rely on ideas, not variations!
• Practice, Practice and Practice!
  
  • Try some 5-minutes blitz games first, a few dozens of blitz games to get a feel of the opening
  • Then switch to longer time controls (15/20/30 minutes games), obviously the more the better; practice make perfect!
• The Oracle...that must be challenged!
  
  • Finally take a look at some opening manuals:
    • a comprehensive yet general manual like Batsford Chess Opening is usually more than enough
    • Compare your thoughts / analysis with the assessments and lines given in the book:
    • no needs to be shy about having your own opinion; quite often analysis/assessments presented in this kind of book are just wrong!
    • The key thing is to develop one's own opinion: Be an explorer and challenge every analysis!
• Start playing your opening in tournaments/serious games!
  
• "Rinse and repeat" to refine your repertoire
  

Good luck with your opening explorations!

The Tactical Endgame series: The deadly Triumvirate, 2 Bishops an Knight, against Queen

Another episode of the on-going serie about interesting Endgame studies aimed at improving your tactical imagination.

2 Bishops and Knight against Queen is an interesting fight: where the queen is unsually viewed as supremely powerful (and from a purely math standpoint, the material balance is there), the 3 minor pieces are most of the time superior to the Queen.

Below is a list of studies that will excerce your skills and uncover some interesting abilities of my favorite trio. Most of those patterns used in these studies are omnipresent in regular games.

A special mention of Henri Rinck (composer of three studies below) who was one of the greatest composer of all time

Enjoy!

The black art of calculation - Blindfold Chess with a Twist!

En route to the next level of training!

In a previous article, I showed how much fun and valuable it is to play (or at least try to play) Blindfold Chess.
I'll introduce today a modified form of blindfold play that will provide even more benefits to your over-the-board game.

BCT! (Blinfold Chess with a Twist!).

This is a little known training exercise that I used to practice at my Chess Club "Caissa" in Paris during the days when the extraordinary Mme Chaude de Silans was the owner of the club; You'll need a chessboard, a partner (no computer GUI can play this as far as I know) and a clock (optional though); This goes as follows:

• Decide upfront how many moves who want to "skip":
  • let's call it the "skipping factor; "The best pick is between 2 and 5, so let's say 2 for the purpose of this explanation but I usually pick 3
  • the game can now begin!
• The white player announces his/her move but without playing it on the board i.e. e2-e4
• The black player announces his/her reply but without playing it on the board i.e. e7-e5.
• At this point, the board is unchanged but the players already played 1 move each.
• Then The white player announces his/her next move but without playing it on the board i.e. Ng1-f3
• The black player announces his/her reply but without playing it on the board i.e. Nb8-c6.
• At this point, the board remains unchanged but the players already played 2 moves each.
• The white player announces his/her next move, say, Bf1-b5 but, as we reached the "skipping factor" (3 in this example), the white player has to play on the board the move announced 2 moves earlier i.e. e2-e4.
• The black player announces his/her reply, say, a7-a6 but, again, we reached the "skipping factor", the black player has to play the move announced 2 moves earlier i.e. e7-e5 in this example.

At this point, the board shows the position below:

Where, in reality, the game already reached the position below:



and then you keep playing along the same lines; In our example this could go like this:

• The white player announces Bb5-a4 and play Ng1-f3 on the board
• The black player announces Ng8-f6 and play Nb8-c6 on the board
• The white player announces O-O and play Bf1-b5 on the board
• The black player announces Bf8-e7 and play a7-a6 on the board
• etc...

This exercise is both fun and extremely useful when it comes to improving your visualization and calculation skills, give it a try!

The black art of calculation - Blindfold Chess is easy!

It is easier than you think!

For some reason, I was always, right from the start, interested, if not fascinated by blindfold chess, probably because it seemed to me like a amazing "tour de force"!

So very early in my Chess journey, I tried and eventually succeeded in playing reasonably good blindfold chess.

In fact, I was able to play my first blindfold game as a 1500 elo player... and then 2 games simultaneously...and up to 4 games simultaneously! That was pretty cool!

Of course, the games' quality was not super high (even thought good enough to win more than several games against late 80's computers) but this was not the point: I was playing BLINDFOLD CHESS! ...and I was reasonably good at it!

More importantly, I was having fun and my Chess skills were improving in the process.

So...just try it!

You can play with the help of family and friends or against a club mate if you belong to a real-life Chess club. :-)
But probably, the easiest way to start is to play against a computer.

First off, you will need to weaken it a bit as you don't to get demoralized right of the bat!

Then, we've got 2 options:

• Playing a computer program (like Fritz (Commercial)/Stockfish for iOS or Mac/Windows/Lunix (Open source, Free)) with a Graphical User Interface (GUI) that allows the user to play without showing the pieces: this is usually available in the settings. Then, you can play as usual except that you do not see the piece on the board, only when they move!
• Playing against a Winboard Chess engine (like Delfi) where you need to enter the coordinates (i.e. e2e4, e7e5) of each move via a command line.For some, it might seems a bit hardcore but I found this is a better option for me as it helped me to be comfortable with the algebraic notation and removed the "distraction" of an empty board in front of me...but this is really a matter of taste.

How to play your first game

Now, you are all set up and ready to go for your first game...

Well, I hate to break the news but you'll unlikely play a whole game at your first attempt! It'll take many attempts (but not that many; actually less than 10 for me) before you can complete a full game (i.e. a ~ 40 moves game)

This is how I proceeded:

• Play a certain number of moves depending on your comfort level (5, 10, 15, ...)
• Stop and try to visualize
  • the position of each pieces as clearly as possible and more importantly interactions between them (who is threatening who / what)
  • the pawn structure as clearly as possible
  • the various threats and possible plans
• Try to continue the game as much as possible but stop when you start to make "obvious" tactical mistakes or do not "see" the chessboard anymore
• Repeat the process above until you play your first blindfold game!

Some additional tips:

• For the first few games, start with the white pieces (should be a bit easier)...but, after some time, do not forget to play the black ones too!
• Play an opening you are familiar with.
• Ideally, this opening is rather solid and not too complex from a tactical perspective (forget those wild crazy poisoned pawn sicilian lines!)
• Pace yourself!...as this can be a very tiring experience but...

Benefits are immense

• Improve your calculation and visual representation abilities
• Increase your capacity of concentration
• Boost your self-confidence during over the board play.
• This fun and rewarding! Playing (and winning) a blindfold game against a family casual player will establish your Chess reputation in the family for years to come! :-)

If you want to learn everything (and a little bit more) about blindfold Chess check http://www.blindfoldchess.net out: some of the positions below are taken from the fantastic book "Blindfold Chess: History, Psychology, Techniques, Champions, World Records, and Important Games"

To wrap this post up, you will find below fantastic combinations and great blindfold chess games!

The longest combination ever played during a blindfold game: Blackburne announced mate in 16(!) in the position below:

This is one of A. Alekhine's most famous combination, played during a blindfold game!

Famous, high quality, spectacular blindfold games

So start practising and have fun! 

A remarkable position {1}: Anderssen - Zukertort

A recent post from the excellent Hufftington Chess blog caught my attention. It talks about the quite amazing story of a training game between Adolf Anderssen (famous for the "Immortal Game") and his pupil (!) Johannes Zukertort (who will eventually become one of the strongest player of the 19th century).

I encourage you to read the whole article for the background story (which demonstrate, one more time, Alekhine's amazing blindfold skills).

After reading the whole thing and with the help of my silicon friends, Hiarcs, StockFish and Komodo, I decided to take a crack at the intriguing starting position: I felt that the attack could be improved somewhere...and I was right!

Minor pieces in action!

The analysis below shows how agile can be minor pieces when it comes to attacking the King: here is one more example...enjoy!

Feel free to comment, praise or demolish the analysis and share yours!

The Tactical Endgame series: The devilish Bishop duo vs. the clumsy Rook

Here we are: the first hands-on session on endgame studies!

After my lenghty, and hopefully convincing, post about including endgame studies in your Chess training, below is the first serie of endgame studies for you to practice ... and enjoy!

Beware that after working hard on those puzzles, you may experience serious improvements in your tactical abilities! :-)

The Bishop pair

I chose to start those endgame studies series with a special piece duo: the Bishop pair.
Often, the bishop is viewed or considered as a definitive asset in open positions but not that often we see it operating at full force.....now it is time with those great studies!


Should you know other interesting studies of this kind, feel free to share!
To wrap this up, below is a nice game showing the power of the "duo inferno" from a player who is largely overlooked, Rashid Nezhmetdinov, but who was one of the greatest attacking player of all time!
Cheers!

Endgame Studies...Really?

Why on earth would we want to solve endgame studies to improve our chess skills?

Well...this is not exactly a theoretical novelty and I am not exactly the first one to talk about that...
In fact, the famous chess trainer Mark Dvorestsky advocates quite heavily solving endgame studies to improve our Chess skills in his book "Secrets of Chess Training".

So what's the big deal about endgame studies?

There are a number of reasons why those are so useful for your chess development and your over-the-board (OTB) skills:

• Improves your calculation skills: Endgame studies often require accurate and lengthy calculation.
• Enriches your tactical imagination: Endgame studies often feature usual or imaginative ideas or unexpected solutions to common problems. They also favor non straightforward patterns or means to achieve a surprising outcome.
• Get to know each piece better: Solving Endgame studies will show you on a different light the pieces you thought you knew. Knights' forks, Bishops' double attacks and rooks' short moves will keep you awake at night!
• (Re)-Discover how a set of pieces can really work together: The bishop pair or the knights duo will shine differently when you see them in action! Discover how the rook and knight team can be devastating against the (not-so-often) powerless queen.
• Get use to material imbalance: A lot of endgame studies feature unconventional material balances: NNB vs. Q, BB vv. RR, etc: this will help you getting used to unusual material imbalance and also help you wrestle your way out of tricky situations or, on the contrary, baffle your opponents with surprising sacrifices. All in all, you will be more confident in your ability to navigate in muddy waters and find either the decisive move or the saving one!
• Strengthen your intuition: Being exposed to so many unusual and unconventional ideas will broaden your intuition and help you come up with imaginative solutions during your own games

...and, best of all, they are fun!

To wrap this up, below is a well-know, yet amazing, study from Alexey Troitsky who "is considered to have been one of the greatest composers of chess endgame studies. He is widely regarded as the founder of the modern art of composing chess studies" (Wikipedia).

 
More to come on this topic in the following weeks.

Finally, I cannot resist to show you a great and entertaining game demonstrating, once again, the power of the bishop pair: Ravinski - Panov, it should make your day!
Cheers!