No?

Then imagine the following position.

White to play. What are you going to do?

In this position, the great positional master, Karpov slowly squeezed the life out of his opponent and outwitted him with a clever plan.

He maneuvered his bishop, yes, that odd-looking lazy b1-Bishop all the way to h5! Meanwhile, his opponent ran out of good moves to play, and slowly suffocated to death (uh, not literally). Here’s the full game!

In chess we have the obligation to move; there is no option to skip a turn if you can’t identify
anything to do. This obligation can be a burden to a player without strategic vision. Unable to form
a plan when there isn’t an immediate crisis, he is likely to try to precipitate a crisis himself, usually
succeeding only in damaging his own position.

                     ~ Garry Kasparov in “How Life Imitates Chess”

[Credits: @Bunicomic on Instagram. Ironically that’s how it’s been so for some of us, including me. Got to get back to shape!]

(Morphy isn’t going to be very happy with me gulping down a month’s worth of snacks and biscuits in just a few days )

That agony of our favorite team losing their game and the invective we throw at the person responsible for the loss! We’re all had our moments, be it the NFL or FIFA World cups or the IPL cricket.

But guess what? it happens all the time in our 64-square world. Do we notice it?

Introducing the black sheep: 

I played white in the below position again a talented young player. The position is right out of the opening (Typical symmetrical English style middlegame) and it’s time for black to make a few strategic decisions.

One important decision is where to develop the black queen and the e7-bishop. The general plan for black is based on the pawn formations. Queen goes to a8, and the black bishop goes to the more secure f6 or g7 square.

But my opponent played Bd6 with the plan of going to b8. This turned out to be a strategic error. By playing e4 and forcing e5, we reached a pawn structure where the Bishop on d6 is going to be a burden for black.

Like the proverbial piece of straw that broke the camel’s back, One strategic mistake followed another. After Rfd1 ( Clearing f1 square for future activities), black played Qe7 instead of Qc7. The problem with this move is that it blocks the future Bishop maneuver Bd6 to f8 to g7, and also creates future trouble for the kingside if the bishop doesn’t occupy g7 quick enough. Black also missed another window of opportunity by missing out Ne6 (instead he played Bc7)

Black’s dark-square bishop turned out to be the black sheep that helped white win the game in an elegant style.

Here’s an example where a player is cautious about his possible black sheep and maneuvers it out of trouble. The game is from the book  Maneuvering: The Art of Piece Play by Mark Dvoretsky and published by Russell Enterprises.

The game was between two Grandmasters Stefano Tatai and Larry Christiansen, played in the year 1977 at Torremolinos, Spain.

The presence of such black sheep (or bad pieces) can actually be a good thing, especially if they are on the opponent’s team. I love the chapter Obstructive Sacrifices from the fantastic classics The Art of Sacrifices in Chess by Rudolf Spielmann.

One of my favorite games from the chapter is his game against Salo Landau back in 1933! Try guessing Spielmann’s move when you browse the game, especially where he sacrifices a pawn to obstruct enemy piece coordination and the beautiful final finishing touch.

A similar idea can be found in the advance carokan g4 variation. Here’s a good example to illustrate the idea.

Here are a few exercises to consolidate our learning. Think about which piece is likely to become a bad piece or black sheep in the future, the best square for the piece and how you can maneuver it to the square. The exercises are from the chapter “Pieces” from the book Grandmaster Preparation: Positional Play by Jacob Aagard.

Position 1:

Position 3:

Thank you for reading. I’ll be happy to hear your thoughts.

Signing off for now,

Arun from Forward Chess Team.

The first step to fixing a problem is to recognize that it exists. There is no shame in moving a piece backward. 

Well, it’s your turn to rescue your locked bishops now! Here are a few exercises to solve. You can try out the moves on the board.

Suggest a plan based on these two ideas: 1. Recognize a bad piece. 2. Find an alternative square where the piece can be more active and useful.

Exercise 1: White to play.

Exercise 2: Black to play.

Exercise 3: White to play

The example position and the first exercise are taken from the book Winning Chess Manoeuvres and the last two exercises are taken from the book Grandmaster Preparation: Positional Play.

Free samples for the above books can be found in the given links.

I hope you enjoyed reading this blog  

Looking forward to seeing your comments!

Best,

Arun from Forward Chess team!

Odd, isn’t it? It’s good that there weren’t any zombie-based movies a millennium (or so) ago, when the inventors of chess were pondering about which pieces would go into the board.

I read a chapter from this interesting book called “Under the Surface” (Quality Chess) by GM Jan Markos on “Infected Pieces” a couple of nights ago when I was alone in my house. Only the cold monsoon winds were around to give me company, as I was gulping down one page after another until I landed on that fateful page (below). Ever since then the image of a zombie pawn wouldn’t leave my mind, and it always seems to be floating around even when I play online these days.

Let’s define a Zombie Pawn – A zombie pawn is a weak pawn that is so infected that it creates other direct or indirect weakness in your position.

Take this position for example:

Thank you for reading!

This is Arun from Forward Chess team signing off for now. See you next time!

For more information about the latest books & deals, visit ForwardChess.com Or say hello to us on Twitter here.

All you have is the good old hammer and a couple of folks to help you. This is a very simple situation, but the profound realization can be applied to chess in every possible way.

– The Rookie’s Way Forward:

Let’s assume we have ten amateurs of equal strength who shoot for the wall in ten different directions when I say GO. It is so obvious that they’re not going to make a hole at the quickest possible time.

In the Chess realm, the biggest problem I see in beginners is that their game looks as if half the moves were played by one person and the remaining by a couple of other people in his/her head. There is no coherent plan. It is as if the pieces are all working on their own.

– Looking for Cracks: 

An intelligent person would suggest that maybe they should be breaking down the wall starting with where it is weakest. Maybe there’s a crack in a corner and a plant growing out of it.

In chess, weaknesses are defined based on different criteria. There are the ones that can walk away, and the ones that cannot – the permanent & temporary way of classifying weakness. There’s also the simple way of just calling them for what they are – a Piece-based weakness (Bad piece position without mobility & lack of coordination, weak king position, etc), Pawn-based weaknesses (Isolated pawn, doubled pawns, backward pawn & hanging pawns) or Square-based weaknesses (weak squares).

There’s also the perspective that a weakness that cannot be exploited should not be called one! So, over the years different chess experts right from Lasker, Steinitz, Nimzowitsch to the present generation of chess experts have all suggested their ideas on how to define a “Weakness” and have been classifying the same set ideas in different boxes through the history of chess.

So, for simplicity’s sake, we’ll assume that the d5 pawn in the below position is just horrible (Or use the chess jargon – A Weakness).

– Putting all your pieces to work.

Now that we found our little crack in the huge wall, the next step would be to put all our pieces to work. The secret to positional chess is to apply steady pressure, so your opponent cracks at some point of time. Botvinnik, the legendary former world champion knew this very well. He simply brings ALL his pieces to attack that one point – d5. That’s the secret to breaking through that big wall we talked about!

Hit where it’s weakest, and hit with all your forces!

 

 

– The second weakness: Let’s just assume that on the other side of the wall, I hired
an equal number of folks to cement up as you start breaking the wall. Armed with quick-drying stuff borrowed straight from science fiction, they are on the other side stopping you from whatever you are doing.

It’s the same with chess. There’s a person right in front of you trying to stop whatever you want to accomplish on the board. You attack, they DEFEND.

– Principle of two (more the merrier) weaknesses:

Alright, let’s get down to the serious chess part of the story. Botvinnik attacked d5 with all his pieces, but alas black had an equal number of pieces to defend. In such situations, one crack in the wall will not suffice. You will need two or more. It’s like your opponent is juggling with a chain saw. If he’s good at handling three chain saws, give him ten more! He’ll do the damage to the position himself.

Botvinnik figured out that since all the pieces are crowded to protect the d5 pawn, Black’s Kingside is now left unprotected and vulnerable. So, he charged! And then the story ends with Botvinnik’s pieces ripping out every brick out of Black’s fortress.

FULL GAME:

We hope you enjoyed our story about weaknesses and walls. If you like to explore books on the subject of chess middlegame, do check out the link below. All books have free samples for download, so you can check out a few chapters before buying a book.