Reinfeld Position #621
Black to move
It's readily apparent that 1. ... Kg7 and 1. ... Kh8 fail to 2. Qxe5+, while 1. ... Rf7 gives up the mate threat. If the King steps onto the f-file, then 2. Rf4+ defends, so the answer must be 1. ... Qf7. But how? after 2. Bxf7+ Kxf7 3. Rf4+ again.
We have a mate threat, so the Queen is expendible. 1. ... Qf7 2. Bxf7+ Kf8 ZwischenZugZwang! Hiding behind the enemy Bishop, all the checks are prevented and 3. ... Rh1# is unstoppable.
I really haven't played as many practice games as I should have liked in deference to concentrating on the work of properly learning more basic tactics, so it was good to have the following training game (at 30' + 30") against our team captain yesterday.
The first big decision is at move 6, whether or not to allow the Bg5 pin. It will be more useful for White after Black castles, but after 6. ... h6 White might try to exploit his pin on the King-file by 7. Re1+ Be6 8. Bf5.
10. ... c5 is probably trying to be over-active, offering to allow the isolated Queen's pawn and thoroughly smash the symmetry when Black could just sit tight and plan to chop wood down to a "dead draw". Suprisingly, crafty starts to favour ... c5 at depth 10.
By move 18 I've managed to develop a nice space advantage on the Queen-side, though unfortunately it took me a minute or so to notice White's tactical threats against my castle (based on Bxh6 removal of defender / annihilation of defence ideas). So while 18. ... Nd7 is quite ok, it's a bit of a nervous move. In truth I was dreaming about weak back rank motifs based on ... b3, Bb1 (unprotecting Re1) Bg4 threatening the Queen and Rxe1 mate which anyway will fail to the Bh7+ defence. This "explains" 20. ... b3, yet another move that's playable, but chosen for the wrong reasons!
The same applies to 22. ... Kf8. 22. ... g6 forcing exchanges was fine, but I wanted to play a waiting move first, simply not noticing the self-pin I introduced on my f7 pawn eliminating the possibility of 23. ... g6 due to 24. Bxg6. I had assumed that after 23. Re3 threatening to barrage the e-file I could just start exchanging, but I hadn't even considered The Great Dictator's obvious actual move.
And so came 23. Re5. My first reaction was "Oh my God! I'm dropping the d5 pawn, and the other Queen-side pawns will follow like ripe cliches!". Pleased I am to report then that at least one good thing came from this game. I succeeded in overcoming my natural tendency to panic in such situations for long enough to see that I can still leverage White's weak back rank to defend the pawns tactically.
Finally at move 27... of course I'd like you to believe I had it all worked out to the minutest detail after 28. Rxd5 Re2 29. Ra5 Rxb2 30. Rb5 Rc2, and in fact Black is winning in that line. My reasoning in such end games is that you don't need more pawns, you just need promotable pawns. I was actually acting on the assumption that I'd likely be sacrificing my Rook for the a- or d-pawn to get connected b- and c-pawns on the 6th rank (turns out not to be necessary), although I had seen far enough that 30. Rc5 going after my c-pawn too was overly greedy and losing for White. Crafty wants to play 28. f4 =, but exchanging Rooks as played seems a somewhat simpler draw, neither King will be able to force penetration into the enemy camp.
There's been a few things I've wanted to blog recently, but unfortunately working 12 hour shifts has put paid to extra-curricular activities beyond sleep. The up-side is that the job I'm doing - covering for a guy who got burnt by a furnace - only requires 20 minutes per hour actual 'work', and the other 40 'monitoring', so there's a fair amount of time for pondering Chess tactics.
The down-side is that after a couple of 12-hour shifts my poor little pre-evolved monkey brain runs into trouble of the "how does the horsey move again?" kind. The last shift of last week I was back to my normal job. At 2am I wanted to work out if a job would finish by 4am. 50 units to go. Cycle time 2 minutes per unit. Two fifties are one-forty, that's 2 hours twenty minutes.
Dream-logic had crept into my waking mind. It's a perfectly sensible calculation - we do temporal arithmetic in base 60, so 50 + 50 is 1'40". I just had to take a few minutes to work out where the calculation was going wrong, which were the number of units to make, which were the time to make them, when to stop converting between time and units. Bombaclot!
I know a smattering of words from about 20 different languages, although sadly English is the only one I can hold a conversation in. My favourite word from any language I've ever heard is 'bombaclot', it's meaning is so expressive and self-explainatory.
My favourite tactical motifs to play and to solve are decoy and interference. With other motifs, you see the key move and say "Aha! of course!". With decoy and interference, you see the key move and still say "huh?", it's not until the point arrives that you slap your forehead and say "Agghhh! how could I be so stupid?".
A girl I once knew lived next door to a Jamaican gentlemen. Now and again, we'd hear something in his apartment go crash! followed by the inevitable forehead-slap and the cry "Bombaclot!".
Teamleague 37 Round 1 will be played in 2 weeks, so it's time to review my '100 Days to Chess Improvement' while there's still time to make some last-minute adjustments.
Did I put in enough effort, do enough work? The answer to that question will always be "No!", no matter what I've done. On the surface, I've added about 100 points to both my standard and blitz ratings. One point a day. If I can keep that work rate up I'll be a Grandmaster in 2 years. You all believe that will happen too, right?
I'm reasonably happy with my progress studying tactics. Ideally I would like to have 'completed' all 1001 positions and now be able to do a rapid review of the entire book, visualising each solution in a couple of seconds. I am at this stage with about 600-700 of the problems.
I had originally hoped to reduce the tactical motifs to the fewest possible basic ideas, but I have come to understand the opposite is more useful. "Did you know that Eskimoes have 70 different words for snow?". Of course they do, they live in it and naturally notice and name subtle differences. The same should be true of a Chess player. So we have a 'pin', and the term 'absolute pin' (a piece is pinned to the King) is also common. But a Bishop pinning a Knight to the Queen is a different sort of a pin to a Rook pinning a Pawn to a Rook. Perhaps the next objective should be to find a name for 'Knight pinned to Queen by Bishop that can capture a Pawn creating a mate threat' and such like. The point is to be able to describe a position by expanding the 'Chess vocabulary' in a way that is more descriptive and meaningful than by saying "everything is a double attack".
I am getting much better at deliberately naming the tactical motifs present in the problems although this has not yet fully extended to practical play, I still have to remind my internal dialogue to do it.
My board geometry and visualisation skills have noticeably improved. I can put the book down, wander off to do something else and conjure up quite an accurate representation of a position in my mind's eye. Before yesterday's game I did review problems for half an hour or so and was seeing the board quite well. Today I had not done that and found it much more difficult to 'read' the board. Un-solid... like words floating round on the page when you don't wear your reading glasses.
I'm more confident with my solutions to problems. To begin with, I checked the answers even on the second or third review. Now even at the first review I can say "here's the solution; Black might try this, but it doesn't work because of...".
There are a couple of Bette Noir problems that I stumble on every time, no matter how often I look at the solution. Some of them are sadly simple, I'll start noting them down to try and find the psychological blockage with solving them.
I had hoped to have time to review some strategy. I'd earmarked one of "Chess Praxis" (Nimzovitch), "Masters of the Chessboard" (Reti), "Pawn Power in Chess" (Kmoch), or "The Middle Game" (Euwe and Kramer) to work through again before Teamleague starts, but there won't be time now. Maybe I can spend next Sunday afternoon whizzing through "Judgement and Planning in Chess" (Euwe) or "Modern Chess Strategy" (Pachman), but I think doing such a quick rehash will be of limited value.
What to do about openings? My only Chess teacher who hasn't been dead for 50 years, a Master strength player who guided me when I was a teenager, told me that no one below 2300 need study openings beyond "sortez les pieces" ("get your pieces out!"). I still believe this is sage advice. Anyone who has had the pleasure of watching FlorinC(FM) play P-R4, P-R5, R-R4 in the opening, or DonConchi play the 'King Attack Opening' 1. e3 2. Ke2 3. Kd3 against strong computers and win will understand the folly of "opening theory".
Teammate Mapleleaf did some excellent work in the last teamleague providing us with a database of our upcoming opponents' opening preferences. I think I'll use that to get a basic idea in the systems they play then aim to duke it out in the middle game.
I'd wanted to apply my new-found tactical vision to playing through master games. I've always loved playing through master games and absorb the strategic ideas quite easily, but I haven't done it much lately. Rather than do it for pure entertainment I need to start applying the same technique as playing a real game, and review the tactical problems before I start.
Is the monkey ready for Teamleague 37? "So place the board that the sun shines in your opponent's eyes." I'll take any help I can get...
Chess teachers talk a lot about identifting 'critical positions' in games. Then they spend a lot of time arguing amongst themselves about what a 'critical position' is. For me, a critical position is any position that tests the boundaries of your understanding of the game.
This game played yesterday is typical of how I lose at Chess. The first critical position is at my 19th move where I came up with the same two plans that Crafty considers. The idea in both is to utilise the half-open c-file pressuring the c2 pawn and later have play against White's extended King-side pawns. The direct way of doing this is 19. ... Na4 20. Nxa4 Bxa4 21. Rc1 Rc4 or 19. ... Na4 20. b3 Nxc3+ 21. Rxc3 Rxc3 22. Qxc3 Rc8.
Instead I chose the second way, first building up on the c-file before undertaking action. The decision was a result of my anxiety to develop the h8 Rook before commencing action. 19. ... Rc7 is not wrong, but it allows white to spark a tactical skirmish. My planned defence to the pin on my Knight was that after 26. Qf2 I would use the mating threat on the weak back rank to cover everything and have two acive minor pieces against rook and two pawns with a good game. But my opponent played 26. Qe3 attacking the Knight and defending the back rank, the second critical position (for me) because I immediately hit the panic button.
Having missed 26. Qe3, I didn't take the time to even consider the simple 26. ... Rd5 (Crafty: 0.00 at depth 16) and started looking for ways to swindle my way out of it with predictable consequences.
There's an old rule that the first mistake is rarely a game losing blunder, but that the blunder occurs in trying to correct the first mistake. As in this game, 19. ... Rc7 was fine it just didn't turn out as I had expected, so instead of calmly searching for a new plan I went into panic mode.
I probably should have played a few more standard time control training games this weekend, but that's how it often goes living in the Antipodes... just as I'm logging in, my European and North American team mates are logging off.
So I settled for a couple of 5' + 12" rated blitz games, before which I spent half an hour or so reviewing about 80 positions from "1001 Winning Chess Sacrifices and Combinations". Prior to each Teamleague game I intend to use at least an hour doing this.
It worked quite well, but I will have to seriously consider my use of the French Defense in 'serious' games. I love playing the French. It is the ultimate game of counter-attack. The idea is that you practically give White the whole board and let him think he has the space advantage, the initiative, the attack, until he realises he can do nothing with it. And then you strike back. Either the central 'mess' of pawns becomes a 'mass', or the Queen breaks free with the support of a minor piece with unmeetable threats, or that beautiful 'bad' Queen's Bishop, so long trapped behind it's own pawns suddenly dominates the board (after, say, a timely d4 push).
It's walking the edge of the precipice - that's the fun of it. In my first game today my opponent employed the Nimzovichian strategy of sacrificing a pawn for the blockade, making my central mess block my own pieces. In the early middlegame I found an "anti-combination" that cost a piece for a couple of pawns, then in the late middlegame I saw one move further and won my piece back with a simple barrage / pin (thanks, Fred!). So I had a couple of extra pawns in the Rook endgame and nearly managed to botch it allowing a too-close-for-comfort pawn race. My saving grace was another neat little pin / decoy tactic (thanks again, Fred!) allowing me to promote first and settle the issue.
Normally against the Petroff I play 3. d4 which sometimes gets back into the mainline a couple of tempi ahead although in theory doesn't promise White anything more than anything else. So on the spur of the moment I decided to try an Italian 4-Knights (with Bc4) which is equally unenterprising but perhaps less likely the sort of game my opponent expected to be playing. After the usual sort of arguments around Black playing Nd4 and trying for the Bg4 pin (my Queen was already on d2), I was able to attack an immobilised piece and play a couple of simple pins and forks in successive moves which netted material and convinced my opponent to resign after 18 moves.
I could hardly say I showered myself in glory, but the technique of reviewing a few dozen tactics before playing paid dividends, it put me in the right fighting frame of mind to recover a bad position and press on in an otherwise equal one.
Teamleague 37 is confirmed to start on September 30th! I don't know yet if our Great Dictator Plebusan will enter Current_Affairs in the U2000 or U1800 section, but we have some good talent to call on in either division. bash of course will be if he continues to maintain 'other interests' during the season, but I understand we welcome strong newcomer cynick to our higher boards. Mapleleaf, our dear leader Plebusan, and myself will be regulars on the middle boards, and we have blizkriegstryke, Mejdanblues, and chestutr to call upon when they don't have far less useful things to do.
So we thank blkmagic for taking over the mantle of Teamleague Tournament Manager after HyperMagnus' much appreciated tenure in that role.
NOTICE: Do not read the next paragraph if your name is Plebusan.
Unfortunately I'll be unable to play in round 2 due to an annual "boy's weekend away". While the lads are out trying to whack a little white ball down a tiny hole half a mile away, my task will be to see that the 19th is adequately watered (the game they play truely is "a good walk ruined"!), and to meet them at the 10th tee to ensure they have sufficient refreshments for the back 9. Plebusan, I told you not to read this paragraph. I am certain that the elbow bending exercise I get awaiting their return will fortify my performance in round 3.
NOTICE: Plebusan, you may continue reading here.
Unfortunately I'll be unable to play in round 2 due to an intensive weekend Chess training session I have organised with several top GM's coming over to my house to analyse my play, give me coaching, and pass their knowledge on to me by osmosis which will leave no time for tournament praxis. However, I am certain that this excercise will fortify my performance in round 3.
I left off with position #144 from Reinfeld last time, which no doubt you will have solved by now. 1. Qxg8 Rxg8 2. Nf6+ Ke7 3. Nxg8+ Ke8 4. Nf6+ Ke7 5. Nxd7 picking up the exchange (although crafty prefers to cede it with 1. ... cxd5). Why the problem? First time around I found it easily enough, but the part of my brain that recognises faces remembered a different position, and was hell-bent on finding the sacrifice on f7. As I mentioned in the last post, rote learning undoubtedly increases the number of ideas you can have in a position; but knowledge is no substitute for understanding. It is nothing without doing the work every time. 1% inspiration. 99% perspiration!
I've completed all the problems in chapters 1 to 3 (294 positions) at least a couple of times each, so here's the good and the bad of it.
Tonight at work I went through 143 problems (mainly pinning). I was mostly able to refrain from simply looking at the position and saying "the solution is Ne6", and paused long enough to identify "here is the pin, here is the decoy motif, the mating threats are here, here, and here...". The pattern recognition is coming along nicely - the three things that aid learning are repetition, repetition, and repetition.
Visualisation is improving too, I can see through the solution and the variations of nearly all the problems without too much trouble - identifying the specific threats at each move is an enormous aid to doing this.
So the 'database' is expanding, 'sight of board', and analysis skills are moving in the right direction too. This was the basic idea of doing this excercise with Fred. So far so good.
Towards the end however, I hit a couple of positions I didn't instantly recognise. Sad to say, my initial reaction was "OMG! what happens here?". Having got into the groove of projectile vomiting memorised solutions, switching gears and actually doing some work proved more difficult.
So comes the point of applying theory to practice. Rote learning of tactics undoubtedly increases the ideas one can draw upon during a game, but in a real game it is necessary to work through the motifs piece by piece, calculate the variations move by move. There is no "you to play and win" hint in a real game. "They" say an IM has an internal database of 50,000 positions, a GM has 100,000... I guess that means 98,999 to go for me. One day I'll dig out that Scientific American article about "how to be an expert in anything", written by an expert Chess player who's daughter is a WIM (iirc) - the conclusion was basically "work really hard at it". Well... duh!
Surely you didn't think I'd leave you without a pretty picture to look at today? This is the one I was pondering before I pulled up stumps at work tonight.
Reinfeld position #144
White to move
I'm concentrating my attention on the first 3 (and longest) chapters of "1001 Winning Chess Sacrifices and Combinations", 1. Pinning, 2. Knight Forks, and 3. Double Attack.
Chapters 2 and 3 are really the same thing and I breeze through the problems at an acceptable pace. Find the un(-der-)protected piece and fork it, usually to a check or mate threat. They represent the joy of being able to 'do' Chess.
As I mentioned at the outset, chapter 1, exploiting pins, gives me more trouble than it should and represents the frustration of amateur Patzerdom. The reason for this is that a pin is rarely a tactic in and of itself, it's a semi-static position feature requiring the discovery of additional dynamic tactical motifs for it's exploitation.
Reinfeld position #47
White to move
White is a piece down, a7 and Nc6 are pinned and natural attempts to capitalise on this with obvious moves like Nxc6 are resisted by the counter-pin ... Qd7. Getting tied up trying to work the pin, I too easily overlook other features of the position. Far from the main 'field of action', Rh8 is both unprotected and immobilised. Can anyone spell 'TARGET!'??
1. d5 clearance of the a1-h8 diagonal 1. ... exd5 2. Nxc6 completing the clearance 2. ... Qd7 the counter-pin 3. Na5 attacking both the unprotected Bb7 and g7 trapping the Rook.
It really shouldn't be that difficult, but the lure of the simple and obvious tends to provoke blindness. There were other things I had intended to work on before Teamleague starts up again, but I'm seriously considering using the next month to force myself through every pinning problem I can find.
Reinfeld Position #621
