Seeds of Tactical Destruction

Seeds of Tactical Destruction

The following idea is lifted directly from one of the great teachers of amateur chess around, Dan Heisman. While most all games are decided by tactics, not every position has a combination hidden in it. Even if a player gets good at tactics puzzles, finding those patterns in real time in an actual game is where the payoff comes. A player needs to know when it's worth extra time looking for tactical shots. Heisman came up with the Seeds of Tactical Destruction to make that bridge.

Directly from the horse's mouth:

You should be careful about creating/having the following – 

and if your opponent has them, Look for a Tactic!:

·Loose (unguarded) Pieces – “Loose Pieces Drop Off” = LPDO
·Pieces that can easily be attacked by enemy pieces of less value
·Weak Back Rank
·Pinned or “skewerable” Pieces along the same rank, file, or diagonal
·Overworked Pieces (Pieces guarding more than one piece or square)
·Inadequately Guarded Pieces
·Falling Way Behind in Development (overwhelming opponent forces)
·Opponent’s pawns nearing promotion
·King uncastled or lost pawn protection with Queens on the board
·Open enemy lines for Rooks, Queens, and Bishops to your King
·Pieces that have little mobility and might easily be trapped if attacked
·One or More Pieces than Can be Attacked via a "Discovered" Attack"


I have always considered this list to be a little long. As such, I use the idea extensively when I teach, but summarize to the following 4 ideas.

King Safety
Unguarded (or Underguarded) pieces
Lines (Open or vulnerable)
Differences in Development

The added bonus to this list is that is not much different from the elements of POSITIONAL evaluation:

King Safety
Pawn Structure
Development
Open Lines
Best Squares

In fact, pawn structure can be a clue to a tactic as well, showing how closely positional and tactical ideas can be.


White to Play:

In this position, the seeds of tactical destruction might look like this:

1. King Safety: Black has castled and is in the corner but has many open diagonals which white can use.
2. Unguarded pieces: the rook on f8 is unguarded, as is the queen on c7.
3. Lines: the knight on c6 is pinned (Pins are one of the most important basic tactics that come from vulnerable lines)
4. Development - essentially equal. Neither side has advanced further into the other's territory, or has a majority of their weapons pointed in one area.

Based on these elements (thinking about the pin on c6, and the open lines point at the king), the move Bd4 becomes a candidate. The move is checkmate, save for two defenses: the pointless block Rf6, and the recapture Nxd4. Therefore, Nd4 is forced. Unfortunately, due to the vulnerable line, white eats the queen.

I

Tactics and Tactics and Tactics

"Chess is 99% tactics" - Richard Teichmann

This quote has stimulated massive amounts of discussion in chess, but the fact that any great player would even make the claim shows how important tactics are.

So what is a chess tactic? It's harder to define than you'd think. The general idea is that tactics are either single moves are series of moves that win either checkmate, material, or some other advantage. That "some other advantage" is usually a positional consideration like opening up the king's defenses. I often compare strategy to the work of the generals, deploying their forces to make long term, global gains. Tactics would be like the hand-to-hand combat of the soldiers.

The simplest tactic is called "en prise," which means a piece is left to be taken for nothing in return. Such pieces are called "hanging" or free. By far, most beginner games are decided by attrition based on pieces left for free. Therefore, the first skill a chess player must learn is to find the free pieces left by the opponent and make sure no friendly pieces are en prise. This is harder than you'd think as players will often concentrate on their attacking plans or some intense action happening on one part of the board and forget about pieces away from the action.

The next most basic tactical idea, and one that is deceptively complicated is "counting." The idea is to see how many pieces defend and how many pieces attack a given piece on the board. If there are more attackers than defenders, then the attacker will often, BUT NOT ALWAYS, be able to win material by taking that piece. However, one must calculate how the trades happen at each step. The opponent is not forced to continue the trading cascade. If there are equal or greater defenders than attackers, that pieces is USUALLY safe. Again, one must look at the actual trades to determine if material is won or lost.

The next group of tactics are the simple motifs. They almost all involve attacking two things at once in some way. They include:

Forks

Discovered attacks

Skewers

Pins

The fun really begins with the final type of tactics which is the "combination." As the name implies, these sequences involve multiple motifs or trades followed by one of the simpler tactics. Examples include...

Removal of the Guard

Deflection

Decoy

Interference

There are many ways to train tactics. There are books of tactical problems at different levels, but most players now use software. And while you can purchase tactics software (CT-ART is a popular example), again most players use tactics servers online. These servers require logins, but most are free. A few examples are:

http://chesstempo.com/

http://chess.emrald.net/

http://www.chess.com/

Chess.com only allows three tactics / day without a paid upgrade, but has other benefits. Mainly, there are thousands of other players available to play both live games and "turn-based" games which allow multiple days between moves. This is similar to old correspondence chess (chess by mail) which allows very long think times and presumably a player's best possible play. I consider this to be a great way to train, but you have to take advantage of the extra time to think. As an added bonus, on chess.com there is an analysis board that can be used to work out how different sequences of moves might occur in the future. This is not allowed in real games, and the ability to do this work in one's own head is a big part of what makes a player strong.

A player must practice tactics to get better. I suggest 15 minutes, 5 times a week. An hour once a week is not nearly as beneficial. 

So for all my students that haven't already started the process, pick a tactics server and start training!

Metro Chess Practice Begins

Today Metro had its first practice with GM Yasser Seirawan.

Once again, one of the keys to chess improvement emphasized by GM Seirawan was analyzing your own games. It is in this way that you will learns patterns in your own play and those that occur on the chess board in general.

He also introduced his idea of the 3 opening principles:

1. Use pawns to control your share of the center
2. Develop your army onto the most effective squares possible
3. Protect your king

He also introduced his 5 elements of positional evaluation:

1. Material
2. Time (Development)
3. Space
4. Pawn Structure
5. King position

A fair bit of time was spent today on space, with friendly territory being the first 4 ranks and "enemy territory being considered the 4 further ranks. GM Seirawan looked at how much enemy territory each piece controls at different positions on the board. One ideal position with pieces on squares that hold their maximum influence while mutually protecting each other looks like this...





In this position, each knight attacks 6 enemy squares, each bishop attacks 7 enemy squares, each rook attacks 10 enemy squares, and the queen attacks 16 enemy squares. Only 2 squares in the entire enemy camp are not attacked, and every piece is protected at least twice.


Again, we reiterated the assignment for the week is to complete a notated and self-analyzed game by next week.

GCAA Chess 9/30

We had another successful practice tonight, and it's great to see newcomers enjoying the great game!

The theme of today's practice was attacking chess, and we discussed some of the requirements and characteristics of typical attacks.

1. The attacker must have sufficient material to complete the attack. One or even two pieces rarely are enough to complete a kingside attack!
2. Pawn storms (using direct advances of pawns on the castled position) are common way to open lines to the king.
3. When the two sides castle in opposite directions, both sides have the option to pawn storm.

Therefore, we went over a famous game featuring Bobby Fischer.

Fischer-Larsen 1958

This site is a great resource of thousands of games for review. Most do not have much annotation, but you can play over almost any famous game ever on that site.

The following is one of my favorite games of all time which we may or may not get a chance to review later in practice.

TW Barnes - Morphy

We also discussed the following types of players:

Rabbits - jump from idea to idea, react to the opponent more often than they create the action.

Hornets - constantly making threats, though few are truly deadly. Rarely pays much attention to defense. However, sometimes gets lucky as the opponent is constantly on their heels. 

Kingslayer - obsessed with going after the king. Loves to attack, sometimes neglects defense. In order to be successful, must be very good at tactics and calculation.

Stonemason - loves to create a fortress, pick off a few pawns, and wear down the opponent to a winning endgame. Must be very good at positional chess and defense to survive other player’s attacks. Often extremely hard to beat.

Serpent - slowly coils around the opponent but very happy to strike when the opportunity arises. Requires first a good positional sense but also good tactics. However, does not require deep, genius level knowledge of either.


I personally think the Serpent style is a goal for all students, but there have been Grandmasters with all of the bottom 3 styles. However, one of the easiest clues for me that someone is less experiences is when that person plays in the rabbit or hornet style. 


Homework sheet this week is Knight Mazes.

Notes for Metro and a Game Analysis

We met yesterday over lunch to discuss the Metro High School Chess Club. We will be meeting for practices twice a week, after school on Wednesday and Saturday mornings 10:30-12 at the Chess Club in the Central West End.

I mentioned in the meeting that there are generally three activities that have been shown to improve your game.

1. Lots of tactics practice
2. Going over Grandmaster Games
3. Analyzing your own games

I asked that everyone bring in a game of their own that they've analyzed. Some of you may have not analyzed your own games before. There are many ways to do this, but I'm going to include an analysis I did recently on one of my own online games. I am white playing as "Negoba" in this relatively fast game (g/15).  Note: I do not expect you to put this many notes in your game. However, the more work you put into analyzing, the more you learn.


[Event "Live Chess"]
[Site "Chess.com"]
[Date "2014.09.23"]
[White "Negoba"]
[Black "fractalfreak"]
[Result "1-0"]
[WhiteElo "1388"]
[BlackElo "1347"]
[TimeControl "15|10"]
[Termination "Negoba won by resignation"]


1.c4 e5

This is the English Opening, Reversed Sicilian Variation. The English is a less common opening that allows me to often have more familiarity with the position than my opponent. The e5 response is the most common one I see at my level of play.

2.Nc3 c6

The c6 move usually has two functions. First is to block the long diagonal as most people fiancetto the white squared bishop on the kingside in the English. The other is to prepare d5 to break up the center.

3.d4 exd4

d4 is a move I’ve read about in response to c6 in this opening, with the idea of grabbing the center. Since c6 is blocked, after the trade, black can’t knock the queen away with Nc6.

4.Qxd4 b6

I assumed that this move was to prepare c5 to kick the queen out of the center.

5.Nf3 Nf6

Normal development

6.Bg5 Be7

Bg5 was an attempt to be a little more aggressive and active, but the move is easily defended.

7.e4 c5

White grabs a little more center, with a thought to e5 attacking the “pinned” piece. This is a misjudgment on my part, as the knight isn’t really pinned anymore. Black pushed the queen and opens the long diagonal but allows holes for white’s knights.

8.Qd2 d6

Black now has a classic positional weakness. A “hole” on d5 and a backward pawn on d6. White gets so excited about this that he misses a tactic that would have won a rook.

9.Bxf6 Bxf6

This trade allows white to use the d5 square.

10.Nd5?? O-O

Having a knight in an advanced outpost (a square that cannot be attacked by a pawn, with protection by your own pawn) is a great goal. However, Qd5 wins at least the a8 rook. Balancing tactical and positional ideas at the same time is one of the complexities of chess!

11.Be2 Nc6

12.Rd1 Re8

Some normal development. White is looking at the weak d6 pawn. In fact, trading on f6 again would win the pawn, but first the hanging e4 pawn must be protected.

13.Bd3 Bf5

Attempting to overload white’s weak pawn. The pin on the e-file makes life tough for white. Should have castled on move 12 and this wouldn’t be a problem.

14.Qc2 Bg4

White defends the e4 pawn again by x-ray. Qf4 would have done the same thing and attacked the bishop at the same time. Moves that do two or more things at once are always superior! Bg4 now threatens to trade on f3, destroying the castled position.

15.Be2

So the bishop goes right back where it was to defend this threat. (14. ...Qf4 would have aleady defended against it.) Still one attacked and one defender on e4. Pin still really annoying. Computer says black is winning by about half a pawn (-0.6)

15. ...Nd4??

The first blunder by black in this game (missing the free rook was also a true blunder by white earlier). This move probably felt good, it places a knight in an outpost square and adds an attacker on f3. But it is a tactical counting error

16. Nxd4 cxd4
17. Bxg4

Nxd4 leaves the bishop on g4 “en prise” or basically able to be gobbled for free. Either black takes back and then loses the bishop, or if the bishop trades on e2, white takes back with the knight (sometimes called the “boomerang” tactic). Either way, black is now down a minor (3 point) piece.

17. ...Be5

Black in turn takes a more active square which eyes the h2 pawn.

18.O-O Qh4

And white castles right into the attack. h2 (or h7 for black) are often the “soft spots” in the castled position and a perfect place for an attack. White had been wanting to castle so badly a few moves ago, that he didn't look at the consequences this move.

19.Bh3

Clearly I didn’t see the attack coming, and spent a fair bit of time thinking about possible defenses. Bh3 works but h3 is probably better. Since black is down, he decides to get very aggressive and it works. He decides to ignore his king safety and pawn storm in the hopes of finishing off the attack. I don’t defend well and end up being forced to give back the material I’d won to avoid checkmate. But at least I deflect the checkmate attack.

19. ...g5
20. Qe2 h5

At this point I’m still ok, with the computer evaluating the position at +6.0. I spent some time trying to figure out how to save my bishop from f4, prevent checkmate. I made a common mental error of playing a move that I’d already eliminated during my calculations. f4 by white and the attack is over.

21.g4?? Qxh3

Doh! ...and Chomp! Computer now scores at +0.8. Chess is a game of mistakes!

22.f4 gxf4

Not a great continuation

23.Qg2 Qxg2+

I’m still scared of the attack, and basically force a queen trade to end it. In 3 moves I’ve went from a completely winning position to a slightly worse one.

24.Kxg2 Rac8

Takes the half-open file, attacks an undefended piece.

25.b3 hxg4
26.Nxf4 Kg7

The kings become important factors in the endgame, but black is working in two places at once.

27.Rd3 Kh6

I’m looking to pick off the annoying g4 pawn. I tried to do this with the rook, which was too slow and allowed black to defend. Kg3 would have accomplished this faster. However, with two pawns ahead, black should be looking to trade down to an endgame. This likely should have been done by working on the queeside to destroy white’s pawn chain and then get a rook in from that side.

28.Rg3 Rg8

I spent significant time calculating and keep eliminating possible moves. h3 is playable, and continues my plan. The x-ray on my king is dangerous, and again I was a little worried about those possibilities.

29.Rf2 a5

Two positional errors in a row by both players, picking the wrong moves to execute the wrong plans. The computer scores this position at -0.7, so we’re still basically even.

30.Rd3 Kg5

I abandon my kingside ideas, and go back to center control. I’m also noticing the rooks in forking position which miraculously actually ends up happening.

31.Nd5 Kh4?

The knight goes back to the outpost square I’d coveted from very early in the game. This move threatens the fork and attacks the undefended f7 pawn at the same time. Black continues to try to force the action in the kingside corner.

32.Ne7 Bxh2??

The fork psychologically feels like a dagger, but the computer scores this position only as +1.0. At worst it loses an exchange and possible positional consideration. The Bxh2 feels like a desperation move.

33.Nxc8 g3?

It is very tempting to take the bishop immediately. But I didn’t like the idea of a revealed attack on the h-file, and I thought I’d have a chance to get it later. By taking the c8 rather than f8 rook, I assumed I’d be drawing off the rook from the action. Instead, he makes a few last ditch moves to try to keep forcing the action.

34.Rf4+ Kg5
35.Rf5+ Kg6??
36.Ne7+ 1-0


Some points to notice...

1. The momentum swung fairly widely. Both sides made major blunders at several phases of the game. This will be the case in virtually every game between players less than 1800. Some would say all games, even at the grandmaster level, are decided by errors. It’s just how subtle or devastating those errors might be.

2. Psychology played a huge part in this game. White felt some confidence building up positional strengths, while Black felt some confidence while attacking. Both players tended to unravel when they were in positions that were unfamiliar or uncomfortable. Even in bad positions, some moves are much better than others. It is your job to find the best continuations. Defending is especially difficult due to the emotion involved.

3. In the end, the d5 hole was indeed an extremely important aspect of the game. Discussing vague positional ideas like this can seem dry and not very practical when you’re getting started. But this game is an example of a centrally placed knight exerting influence at multiple stages of the game.

Links for GCAA Practice 9/23

Today was the first day of practice for GCAA and it went great! Awesome to see so many new faces.

For those of you who still need the registration forms and general info for GCAA...

GCAA Chess 2014-15 Information Sheet and Permission Slip

One of the first orders of business was to get back into the swing with chess notation. I've put together a sheet that summarizes modern chess notation.

Chess Notation Basics

There is perhaps no better foundation for chess study than the most famous game of them all, Morphy's Opera House Game. Every game has a story and this game's backstory is as dramatic as the sensational checkmate that ends it. Here it is with a few of the learning points from today.

Morphy’s Opera Game

1. e4 e5 

2. Nf3 d6

Philidor's Defense

3. d4 Bg4?

What is the goal of this old move? What are some other options?

4. dxe5 Bxf3

Why do some consider this move forced? What would happen with 4. ...dxe5?

5. Qxf3 dxe5 

6. Bc4 Nf6

7. Qb3 

What are the two threats that this move makes?

What are the possible defenses to these threats?

7. ...Qe7 

8. Nc3

Why didn't Morphy follow through on his threats?

8. ....c6

9. Bg5 b5?

And follows the famous ending sequence.

10. Nxb5! cxb5?

11. Bxb5+ Nbd7 

12. 0-0-0 Rd8 

13. Rxd7 Rxd7

14. Rd1 Qe6

15. Bxd7+ Nxd7

16. Qb8+! Nxb8 

17. Rd8#

We also went over checkmate patterns which comes with a worksheet.

Checkmate Patterns

Here is a link to the homework. Note - there are a few errors that some students have caught. Extra credit for finding them! I'll correct the sheet a bit later.

Homework Mate in One for Both / Identify Checkmate Pattern

You Have Found the Right Place!

This page will be home of Coach Jay's chess blog. As I help out with a few different teams, I will be consolidating teaching material here this year. This will also allow students to review lessons, catch up on material they might miss, or perhaps help a random passerby.

I am not a chess master or even expert, but I have been teaching chess to younger players for 8 years with some success. I collect information from numerous sources. Most of the basic ideas are not my own, but the organization of the information is mine.

For 2014-2015 I will be using the following grid to organize my teaching:

Openings	Middlegame Tactics	Middlegame Strategy	Endgame
Opening Principles	Chess Vision	Identifying Weaknesses	Checkmate Patterns
White Opening	Snap Tactics	Piece Play	Basic Endgames
Black Response  to e4	Seeds of Tactical Destruction	Static Positional Principles	Pawn Endgames
Black Response to d4	Calculation	Dynamic Positional Principles	Rook Endgames

Here is the grid in pdf form just in case you lose yours. :)

Instruction Grid

Of the four columns, tactics is almost certainly the most important. In addition, more foundational concepts are in the top rows while more advanced ideas occur further down the chart. However, a good chess player needs skills or knowledge in all of these areas.

Individual lessons will often focus on a specific cell of the grid. In many cases, books and books have been written on each of these topic areas or subtopics within them.

In general, I feel that the more foundational ideas (basic tactics, checkmating patterns) need to be committed to memory. Some skills need to be automatic. Other ideas require more theoretical study and thought.

In any case, welcome to the blog. I hope you find some of this information useful.