Monday 10 June 2024

Ten Mistakes

 

Ten Mistakes

"What are the ten most common mistakes in chess (or life, fishing, dating or whatever)?"

That's one of the most frequently asked question on Internet forums. The thinking behind that question is "If I can master the ten most common mistakes, then I'll be a much better chess player". There's a lot of truth in that, but also some caveats:

  • Mistakes are personal. My top ten might not be on your list at all.
  • Most top ten lists focus on technical mistakes, simply because they are easier to describe.
  • You learn nothing from watching other people's mistakes. You have to make your own, over and over again until you decide to do something about it.

 Having sad that, the top ten lists are popular. I can't resist looking at them, even though I find most of them rather useless. One list that caught my attention is from the Innovation Corridor (an unusual name for a Chess Shop). This list is compiled by a grandmaster, and therefore has a high degree of psychological mistakes (grandmasters have already mastered the technical mistakes).

 Here's the list from ten to one. One might argue that the explanations are somewhat lacking in detail, but perhaps it's enough for a grandmaster.

10. Overreacting under Pressure: Players often panic when they find themselves in a worse position, leading to hasty moves that worsen their situation. Staying calm and looking for the best defensive resources can sometimes save a game.

9. Fumbling Winning Positions: Having a winning position doesn't guarantee victory. Many players lack the necessary technique to convert their advantage, either missing the best moves or underestimating the opponent's defensive resources.

8. Making Assumptions Without Verification:
Assuming a move or plan is good without proper calculation can lead to severe blunders. It's crucial to verify every move instead of relying on assumptions, as these can lead to disastrous errors.

7. Misjudging Exchanges: Evaluating exchanges accurately is vital. Misjudging the value of a piece or a pawn exchange can lead to a significant loss of material or a weakened position, altering the balance of the game.

6. Lacking Essential Position Knowledge: Certain positions require specific knowledge, such as endgame techniques or particular opening lines. A lack of understanding can lead to poor moves and missed opportunities, highlighting the importance of continuous learning.

5. Ignoring Psychological Factors: Psychological factors like overconfidence, anxiety, or frustration can significantly impact performance. Addressing these mental game issues off the board is essential to maintain focus and make rational decisions during play.

4. Overlooking Opponent's Moves: Failing to consider the opponent's potential moves and resources can result in overlooking threats and missing counterplays. Always consider the opponent's perspective to anticipate and counter their plans effectively.

3. Miscalculating Variations: Incorrect visualization of variations can lead to executing faulty plans. Accurate calculation and visualization are critical for ensuring that the planned sequence of moves works as intended.

2. Playing Without Strategic Direction:
A lack of strategic planning often leads to aimless moves and poor piece coordination. Establishing a clear plan and ensuring that all pieces work together harmoniously is key to executing effective strategies.

1. Neglecting Alternative Moves: Not considering alternative moves can result in missing better options or falling into traps. Continuously questioning and exploring different possibilities helps in finding the best moves and avoiding blunders.

What's next?

Working on ten different mistakes simultaneously is of course overwhelming, so I suggest that you pick one. There's surely one mistake that gets you into trouble most frequently, so start with that. Look it up in your games, and try to figure out why you made that particular mistake. Be honest about it, we're not looking for excuses, but explanations. Once you understand why you make this mistake, think about what you can do to prevent it.

Monday 13 May 2024

Missed opportunities

I had resolved to not include correspondence chess games in this blog, but no rule without exceptions. This is a casual correspondence game played under OTB rules, so no books, databases or chess engines were allowed. The plan was to play a game resembling OTB, but without the errors coming from fatigue, impatience, or real-life interferences.

My opponent's style is a somewhat different from mine - aggressive like me, a bit more attacking, less positional, more calculating, and less intuitive. So, slow manoeuvring was not to be expected here!

Me - N.N (Casual correspondence game, 2024)
English Opening

1. c4 b6 2. g3 Bb7 3. Nf3 g6 Black goes for an immediate double fianchetto. Other alternatives are:

3... Bxf3 4. exf3 c5, giving up the Bishop pair for a doubled pawn, or
3... Nf6, heading for a standard English Opening position.

4. Bg2 Bg7 5. Nc3 e6 6. d4 Ne7 7. e4

After 7. e4

 7 ... c5 Probably not the best,  as White now can claim the centre and cut off the Bishop on b7. O-O would have been better.

8. d5 exd5 This leads to trouble. A better plan was O-O followed by e5 and d6, and possibly a kingside attack in the King's Indian style.

9. exd5 O-O 10. O-O Nf5 11. Ne4 d6 12. Bf4 Bxb2 13. Rb1 

After 13. Rb1

 Black has gained a pawn,but at a price. There are three sleeping pieces on the queenside, and the d6 pawn is vulnerable and under attack. White must now play resolutely not to give Black time to develop.

13 ... Bg7 14. g4 Re8 15. Nfg5? This is the first missed opportunity. The right move is 15. Re1, when Black must give up the exchange with 15 ... Rxe5 to save the pawn on d6.

15 ...h6? Overlooking some tactics.

16. Nxf7 Kxf7 17. gxf5 

After 17. gxf5

 White has an overwhelming position, but it's very sharp, so things can still go wrong. And they will.

17 ... Be5?? Black had to play 17 ... Rxe4. This was a mistake that would cost the game, if only I've seen the crushing 18 ... Qg4!, but...

18. Bxh6?? Apart from missing the winning Qg4, this move puts the Bishop on a vulnerable square. Just look at Rh8 and Qh4, with a lot of firepower bearing down on h2. The plan was to prepare for Ng5+, but that turns out to bad too.

Rh8 19. Ng5+? Inviting Black back into the game. fxg6+ was the move to play.   19 ... Kg8 

After 19 ... Kg8

20. Ne6? Gives away the last shred of advantage. 20 ... Qe7?? 

Evades the immediate threat, but nothing more. But, there's a multi-purpose move here - 20 ... Qh4, threatening both mate and the Bishop on h6. After 21. f4 Rxh6 22. fxe5 Qxh2+ 23. Kf2 Qh4+, Black has time to develop the queenside starting with Nd7.

21. Bf4 Keeps the pressure up, but f4 was even better.  Bxf4 22. Nxf4 Qh4 

After 22 ... Qh4

 23. Nh3?? Black threatens to mate on h2, and also to capture on f4, but this is not the right way to solve those problems. Instead, 23. Re1 avoids the mate, and also threatens Re8+. It's very complicated, but White should win.

23 ... gxf5?? Another missed opportunity. Bc8 followed by Bxf5 would solve all Black's problems.

24. Qd3 Qe2 is better, allowing Rb3. 

24 ... f4?? This is the decisive mistake. I don't know what Black was planning, but I do know it wouldn't work. After 24 ... Nd7, White is better, but there are at least some survival chances.  25. Qg6+ 

After 25. Qg6+
Now the mate is on the horizon, all White needs to do is bringing out a Rook or two. The finish is not perfect, but at least the job gets done. Can you find any improvements from this point? There are several!

25. Kf8 26. Qxd6+ Kg7 27. Rbe1 Rf8 28. Re7+ Rf7 29. Rfe1 Bc8 30. Rxf7+ Kxf7 31. Nxf4 Na6 32. Qg6+ 1-0

Takeaway

There were some technical mistakes in the opening, but starting from move 15, the mistakes were all psychological. Most of the missed chances were caused by blinded by your own plan. This means that when you find a move that fits your plan, you look no further. A useful tool for looking for a better move is the multi-purpose move.

The methods I use to study my mistakes are found in how to analyse your games.

Tuesday 7 May 2024

Multi-purpose moves

We have all seen them - those power moves awarded with double exclamation marks in game annotations. Those moves lurk around in our own games too, but we rarely find them until in the post game analysis. How can we find them during the game? Fortunately, there are tools for that. One such tool is the multi-purpose move

 Every move is made with purpose - we want to attack something, defend something, or relocate to better square. Sometimes, however, a move serves more than just one such purpose, and that's the kind we're looking for. A multi-purpose move is almost like making two moves at once, so it's no wonder that they often give you the initiative. Here's an example:

Can you spot the multi-purpose move?

 Can you spot the multi-purpose move?

White has a better pawn structure thanks to the backward pawn on d6, but right now that pawn is a road block that effectively prevents White's doubled Rooks to infiltrate. Also there's a sad Bishop on e2 with nothing to do and nowhere to go. So, White has two problems that need to solved. Can we do that in one move? Yes we can - 1.c5!

All of a sudden, White has a winning position. 1...dxc5 2.Rd7 wins quickly, and 1...Rad8 2.cxd6 isn't much better.

How to find the multi-purpose moves

In most cases, we tend to look for moves that align with our long term goals, but this approach can make us miss the power moves. So, put on your multi-purpose glasses! A good starting point is to take an inventory of the problems with your position (every position has it's problems). Next, think about how to solve these problems, and finally, see if there is a move that solves more than one problem.

Wednesday 24 April 2024

You've Got to Have a Plan

We hear that all the time, but is it really true? And what is a plan anyway?

The whole concept of plans is a mystery to many chess players, and that's probably because the word is used too loosely. Sometimes you see a sequence of calculated moves, and the author calls it a plan. Other times, someone says "My plan was to attack on the kingside". No wonder people get confused!

I find it easier to talk about goals and milestones. The goal is what you want to achieve ("my goal was to attack on the kingside"), and milestones are subgoals on the way there. Typical milestones are trading off a defending piece, and preventing counterplay on the other wing. Once your goal is set, the plan is the move sequence to get there, ticking off the milestones along the way. In other words, your goal is your strategical plan, and the moves to get there makes up your tactical plan.

How to find a plan

I common misconception is that you can make any plan you want in a given position. The truth is that it's not for you to decide, the right plan is already there in the position. Your job is to find it.

Talk to your pieces. Ask every piece and pawn about their dreams and ambitions, and how they'd like to work together. Eventually, they will reveal the plan to you. Talk to your opponent's pieces too. They might have enemy secrets to disclose.

Sometimes, there's more than one plan available. Which one to choose is a matter of your chess personality. If you're an attacking player, don't pick the consolidating plan if there's a good attack plan on the table. When you hesitate between two plans, there's often a way to postpone the decision by playing a move that fits both plans. Those moves are multi-purpose moves, but that's the subject of a future blog post.

An Example from the King's Indian

This position is the Classical King's Indian main line after the moves 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 Bg7 4.e4 d6 5.Nf3 O-O 6.Be2 e5 7.O-O Nc6 8.d5 Ne7.

King's Indian after 8...Ne7

 The main plans here a carved in stone - Black will attack the kingside, starting with Nh5 followed by f5, and White attacks on the queenside. The most popular choice is 9.b4, immediately declaring intentions.

If you don't like mutual all-out attacks, then the King's Indian isn't your style, and you'd do best to pick some other opening. Black must push forward on the kingside, if you attempt any other plan, you will be crushed (as long as White knows what they're doing). The same is true for White, you must advance quickly on the queenside, otherwise Black breaks through.

There are also secondary plans involving prophylactic moves to slow down your opponent's advance. The current state of the KID is that you can't completely ignore your opponent - at every move you must carefully balance attack and defence.

A third feature is the the pawn on d6 - it will become vulnerable as soon as the c-pawn moves. That's why we often see the manoeuvre Rf7 and Bf8. That Bishop move is actually one of the multi-purpose moves mentioned above, it protects d6 and at the same time vacates g7 for the Rook.

Takeaway

Don't make up plans from what you want to do. Instead, let the position tell you what you should do, and make plans from there!



Friday 12 April 2024

What's Your Style in Chess?

Style is a combination of your chess personality traits and your self image as a chess player. The personality is more or less determined by your genes, and will not change much over time, although you tone certain aspects, such as hold back aggressiveness in order to play more solid.

Your self image, though, is made up by yourself and your environment, and can change a lot if that's what you want. A common factor is that your self image is affected by role models, books and videos, sometimes a bit too much. If you're a fan of Bobby Fisher, you might want to play in his style. If your natural styles are similar, it's all good, buy if the differ, you'll just end up playing positions you're not comfortable with.

At ChessPersonality, you can do a simple test of your style. Based on just 20 questions, it's not exactly scientific, but it will give you a hint. Below are my results (rather similar to Bobby Fisher's, by the way). What stands out here is the 100% Intuitive and 0% Calculating. That's absolutely true - I just hate calculations, and chess intuition is my biggest strength (and also my biggest weakness).

Chess Personality

Another way to find your style is to play through games, both your own and other player's. Look for positions where you feel comfortable, and where the right moves comes naturally to you. Find out which openings produces these positions. These are the openings you should focus on.

Now look for positions you don't like. An uncomfortable position is one where you can't find any natural moves, and you don't feel good about the moves recommended by theory. These are openings you may want to dismiss for now (but you might have to study the later to become a more well-rounded chess player).

To wrap this up, here's a story from my early days. My very first chess book was Chess Openings by the German master Theo Schuster. That book did a fine job helping me to build my first repertoire, but it also caused me a great deal of problems. The biggest problem was that I, as Schuster recommended, played d5 in response to d4. Queen's Gambit is a respectable opening, but not in my style as I at long last found out. In the mean time, I got rather poor results as Black against d4.

The last (and shortest) chapter of the book was Indian Openings. It started with Playing these openings requires a great deal of experience, so I will just summarise them briefly. As I didn't see myself as a very experienced player, I ended my reading there.

Years later, I was just about to play my very first tournament when this weakness struck me. My white openings were okay, as were my defences against e4, but I had nothing to show against d4. When I brought this up with one of the top players at the club, he said "Play the King's Indian. That will fit your style perfectly." That was shocking, as I didn't now what "style" was, and Schuster already told me that Indian openings were for experts only.

But, being desperate, I went to the chess store to pick a couple of books on the KID. With little more than a week to the tournament, I started reading. Much to my surprise, I felt right at home. I could understand the plans, and the moves came very natural to me. As Lex said in Jurassic Park - "I know this!" Why didn't anyone tell me this before?

The tournament went well, two King's Indians scored me one win (against a stronger opponent) and one draw.

The King's Indian is since then a stable corner stone in my repertoire. Other openings have come and gone, but this one is for keeps.

Takeaway

Don't play against your style. It's easy to be impressed by brilliances in books and videos, but they may not be for you. Don't be fooled by book titles like Winning with the French. If the French doesn't suit your style, you might end up with Losing with the French.
 

Thursday 4 April 2024

A Sense of Urgency

Sometimes when you spot a move that seems to get you out of trouble (or initiate a strong attack), you may feel an urge to play that move immediately. That false sense of urgency is probably the most common cause of mistakes in chess, so let's have a closer look.

The sense of urgency is entirely based on fear. Apart from the usual fear of losing the game or making a fool of yourself, there are deeper fears at play here.

In general, when you have a bad position, you don't want to know just how bad it is. You don't want to accept defeat until in stares you in the eye, and therefore you immediately play the first move you see that holds some kind of promise. That's why bad positions often crumbles to pieces much quicker than they need to. Some players are very good at rescuing bad positions - when you think they're completely lost, they launch a counter attack, or when they have two pieces hanging, they hang a third only to complicate things. What they are doing here is exploiting a particular fear in their opponents. When you think you're winning, your worst fear is to screw it up, even a draw would be a terrible defeat.

The normal reaction to a frightening or stressful situation is the fight or flight response. That's an automatic psychological reaction that temporarily disables the logical thinking. It may serve you well when you meet a lion on the savanna, but a chess board is a different environment with zero risk of physical injury. So, what you have to do is to take a deep breath, sit on your hands, and wait for the fight or flight response to fade away. That's not what my opponent did in the position below.

A sence of urgency

Black is clearly winning here, mate will soon follow after Qa8. I knew that I had a lost position, so defence was not an option. I decided to play gx5, a very unexpected (and also very bad) move, and let my opponent work out the consequences. Black was stunned by the threat to their Rook, and immediately played 1...Rh6 to get out of the line of fire, but 2. Rg1+ won the Queen and the game.

Takeaway

Never give in to the fight or flight response. The worst thing that can happen is that you lose the game. If you have a bad position, see it as a training session. There's always a chance to save the game, and if you don't, you have at least learned something!
 

Tuesday 26 March 2024

Are You Afraid of Ghosts?

No? Maybe you should be. Ghosts can cause a great deal of harm, even if they only exist inside your own mind. In chess, ghosts can be a piece, a move, or a sequence of moves. They are ghosts because they aren't real, but you perceive them a real, and also quite scary. Here are two examples:

 This is from an earlier post, Double Delusion. The ghost here is the move Bd6+. It's not real (the Bishop is pinned), Still, the ghost lured Black into playing Rc7, believing that the Rook couldn't be captured because of the Bishop fork on d6. However, the Bishop is still pinned, so the Rook can safely be captured, winning the game. Instead, having reality obscured by the same ghost, White moved his Rook into safety with Rd5, and soon lost the game.

 This one is from a game of my own, played the day after the Double Delusion was published, and appeared in the A Strange Coincidence post. This time, it's the Knight on d5 that will become a ghost, but not until it's captured. This will happen soon if it doesn't leave it's post, being under attack from both Queen and Rook.

The reason that the Knight looks so fearful is the potential fork on e7. This becomes a real threat if the Queen moves away from the e-file, but at the moment, she has nowhere to go. So, White played Re1. Is Black doomed now, since Qxd5 fails to Ne7+, forking King, Queen and Rook? A closer look reveals that the Knight becomes a ghost after Qxd5, and can no longer interact with the real world. Qxd5, and White resigned.

Takeaway

Try not to be intimidated by ghosts. Put them in the spotlight, stare them in the eye, and they will vanish into thin air. It's not the ghosts that are dangerous, it's our fear of them that causes all the damage.