General tips Flashcards
What level of games should you choose to find plans and idea for openings?
2500-2700 grandmasters who played in swiss tournaments. In these games winning is more important than in the closed super gm round robins (where a draw is perfectly fine in every game).
Theses games will involve more risk and active play.
What a good way to practice openings, instead of memorizing lines?
Build a database of master games (2500-2700 rating in swiss tournaments) and review the games.
This will show plans and what happens after the openings.
What is Steinitz’ ABC of the bishop pair?
A. Make the unopposed bishop as strong as possible by activating it, opening diagonals and placing pawns on the oppsite color.
B. Remove knight outposts for the opposing knight.
C. Open up the position as much as possible.
When up material, what two questions should you ask yourself?
- Can I use the extra material to attack the king?
- Can I exchange pieces into a winning endgame?
When up material, what is a good way to force exchange of pieces?
Play actively and make threats. To relieve the pressure, the opponent will have to initiate trades, which is the end goal of the side being up material!
Against a fianchetto on g7, playing Bh6 can force the exchange of the fianchettoed bishop. But what is another, maybe even more important, point of Bh6?
Placing a bishop on h6 stops black from playing h5, which is a good response to white playing h4-h5.
Even if black trades on h6, the recapturing piece (usually the queen) will then occupy h6 and stop h5.
In the opening it’s important to fight for centre, but during the whole game game there’s a second centre which it’s important to fight for, what is that?
The squares around the kings. The king can be considered the “second centre”.
What are the two plans of the endgame?
- Attack the opponent’s weak pawns, to force them to defend and make their pieces active
- Use your passed pawns
How can we determine what side has the most active position (and probably the one who should then be attacking)?
Count the forcing moves (checks, attacks and simple threats).
Nick’s thought process guide has three steps.
What are these steps and what do they consist of?
- Threat identification
* Checks, Attacks and Simple threats.
* What does the opponent threaten? Especially what did the last move do? - Assessment
* King position: Where is the king? How safe is it?
* Material distribution: Who is up and who is down? Who has what (bishop pairs, exchanges etc.)
* Pawn structure: Is the centre open or closed? Where are the weak pawns?
* Piece placement: Where are the pieces placed, and are there any good or bad ones? - Candidates
* Pick exactly three candidate moves to consider
According to Nick, you should pick exactly three candiate moves to consider in a position. Why?
By choosing three moves you force yourself to consider options. Even if you’re very sure you have the best move, you force yourself to understand the position enough to come up with two more moves, even if they’re at first glance are much worse.
Also, by limiting yourself to at most three candidate moves, you avoid spending too much time on a position. Deeply calculating 5-6 moves simply takes too much time, and you should trust yourself to limit it to three.
How many pieces do you at least need for a mating attack and why?
Three pieces. One to sacrifice and two to deliver mater. Of course this is very generic and depends on what the defence looks like.
The best use of this rule is probably to decide if you should bring more pieces into the attack before initiating a sacrifice or pawn break.
One less considered befenit of the bishop pair is they can be used to trade into a stronger attack. How?
By trading the same coloured bishop for the knight, the position turns into an opposite colour bishop. This usually favours the attacking side, and the unopposed bishops becomes a very powerful attacking piece.
If things are going badly, it could of course also be used to trade into a drawish oppsite colour ending.
How many successful attacks end in checkmate and why is this an important number?
12-18%. The other successful attacks end with being up material or even just a better position.
This means that 80-90% of the time you will be looking for cashing in by winning some amount of material or trading down to a winning ending.
By knowing this, you should know to always look for these opportunities and not push to hard for checkmate.
Why should you alwasy repeat moves if you can?
- More time on the clock
- False sense of safety for the opponent and you lose nothing (you know you won’t take the draw)
