Chess Training

Black/White to Move and Win Here is a good exercise I lifted from a recent book I read. I've started doing this with the The Week in Chess files I download every week, located at The Week in Chess Downloads  . Load up the TWIC pgn file into your favorite database. Fire up a decent chess engine. Go through GM games (both sides) that are a win result (i.e., skip draws), starting about 10 moves or so back from the end. Note the victor - White or Black - that is who you will be playing. Find the point in the game where your chess engine shows the victor being up > 2.00. (This can be adjusted to a lower or higher value depending on how you want to set up your practice: +/- of 1.00 would more difficult to win, and higher values would be easier to win.) Here is an example. (26) Agdestein,S (2565) - Bacrot,E (2710) [E73] FIDE World Cup (1), 2013 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 Bg7 4.e4 d6 5.Be2 0-0 6.Bg5 Na6 7.Qd2 c6 8.Nf3 e5 9.0-0 exd4 10.Nxd4 Nc5 11.f3 Nfxe4 12.Nxe4 Nxe4 13.f...

Specialization #6 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 g6 4.0-0 Bg7 5.c3 Nf6 6.e5 Nd5 7.d4 cxd4 8.cxd4 0-0 9.Nc3 Nc7 10.Bg5 h6 11.Bh4 * Black has a couple choices here: a) 11....Nxb5 12.Nxb5 a6 13.Nd6!? - What does white respond with after 13...g5. or b)11...g5 12.Bg3 Nxb5 13.Nxb5 a6 14.Nc3 d5! This is a fun position to play against your computer from both sides.

Knight for a Bishop Exchanges Here is something to think about. Exchanging a Knight for a Bishop usually has a profound effect on the game and the color complexes you should be seeking to forward your Initiative and play on. To get our minds thinking in the right direction, here are some general rules you can use. Here we use the terms "Knight Side" and "Bishop Side" to denote the side that traded off that particular piece. If you own the Knight, and you exchange it for an opponent's Bishop, then you will gain an advantage of the Initiative on the same color as the Bishop. Ex.; Your N x wB = + White Initiative for "Knight Side". This makes perfect sense as the opponent no longer has the Bishop of that color to defend with or play on that color squares. If you own the Bishop, and you exchange it for an opponent's Knight, then you will gain an advantage of the Initiative on the opposite color of the Bishop. You should attempt to follow thi...

The Bangiev Method Decomposed     I do my best to operate within this strategic framework, with mixed results. So I've been trying to decompose this method into something a bit more concrete. The B-Method begins by asking the same three questions at each move of the game: 1) The Strategy Question (SQ) 2) The Direction Question (DQ) 3) The Color Question (CQ) After answering those three VITAL questions, we can continue with three more questions: 4) Put to Question which pieces, i.e., challenge. In turn, this will determine... 5) ...Candidate Moves, and one will be noted as ... 6) ...The Game Move. Naturally, one has to understand the question before one asks, so lets try and decompose each question in simple(r) terms. The Strategy Question (SQ)  The Strategy Question is the starting point in Bangiev's B-Method. It seeks to give the player a consistent starting point from which to develop the correct plan from the central pawns based on the players' pers...

"...out of the lingering mist appeared the devil with a chess set..." Not dead yet. Because of my nature, I sometimes get carried away with trivial things that occupy my time, diving headlong into the fray only to come out the other end completely churned and sand-tossed by the surf. So was the past few years with regards to games. Euro games to be exact. They left a bad, unsatisfying taste. I ran the gamut. Found that I dislike them for the most part, prefer 2-player games of war, and so I have arrived back to where I belong. I did retain several 2-player war games in the process, which I hope to get played here and there. I have to rediscover my love of chess. Today begins that journey. In this post, I want to further define the GCTS and how it relates to actual chess books that I use. This is more for my own benefit than anything else. I find it useful to enumerate such things so I don't have to "reinvent the wheel" at a later date and not recall the deta...