Author Archives

Endgame / Lessons — No Comments
29
Aug 10

The Philidor Position

The Lucena and Philidor positions are the most important positions to know when it comes to rook and pawn endings. Here we will be looking at the Philidor position, which allows Black to draw against an opponent that is up a pawn. It’s important to note that the Philidor position only works if the opponent’s pawn has not reached the 6th rank.


Black to move and draw

1…Rb6 This move keeps that White King off the 6th rank. [2.Rg7 Ra6 3.Rg6 Rxg6 Heading into a drawn King and pawn endgame. 4.Kxg6 Ke7 ] The Black rook heads to the first rank, to begin checking the White King. With the White pawn having been pushed, White does not have any cover from the upcoming Black rook checks.

2.e6

2…Rb1

3.Kf6 Rf1+ 4.Ke5 Re1+ 5.Kd6 Rd1+ =

Books / PGN — 4 Comments
22
Aug 10

New York 1924

  New York 1924 has gone down in history as one of the most important chess tournaments of all time. Three undisputed world champions including Capablanca and Emanuel Lasker, and a briliantly annotated  by future world champoin Alexander Alekhine. I have made the PGN of all of the games available here.

Thinking Process / analysis / calculation — 1 Comment
15
Aug 10

Think Like a Chess Engine

In Kotov’s great book “Think Like a Grandmaster” he taught the average chess player the inner workings of how a chess master thinks about a position by creating a tree of candidates and then proceeding along the tree. While there is much to learn from Kotov’s work, I have always been facinated how computers can evaluate positions and how their positional play is derived from these material evaluation algorithms. I believe that the way chess engines derive material evaluations might help the lower rated amateur improve their evaluation skills.

Below is a combination of the Crafty chess engine algorithms as well as Larry Kaufman’s material evaluation processes which is used by the Rybka engine.

Pawns

Pawn = 1

isolated pawn penalty based on file:
a-pawn : -.12
b-pawn : -.14
c-pawn : -.16
d-pawn : -.20
e-pawn : -.20
f-pawn : -.16
g-pawn : -.14
h-pawn : -.12

Doubled pawn (and not also isolated) penalty of -.12 plus add isolated pawn penalty

Backward pawns -.06 penalty +.04 bonus for attack on backward pawn on semi-open file.

Pawn advance in center +.04 / rank increasing to about +.08 / rank in the endgame
Development

Rook pawn is worth 15% less than a regular pawn (.85 of a pawn) (L.Kaufman)

Knights

Knights = 3.25
Centralized knight: +.30
In outpost : +.08

Unpaired knight is worth approximately 3.14 pawns (worth less) (L.Kaufman)

Bishops

Bishops = 3.25
Bishop in endgame +.10
Bad bishop : -.04
Corner bishop : 0.0
Center bishop: +.3
Attacking / good bishop: +.18
Attack against King: +.05

The Bishop Pair

Bishop pair: +.50  Bishop pair is worth .50 more if not pieces exist to exchange them (L.Kaufman)

Bishop pair is worth less than .50 a pawn when most or all of the pawns are on the board, and more than .50 pawns when half or more of the pawns are gone (L.Kaufman)

If you have the bishop pair, and your opponent’s single bishop is a bad bishop (hemmed in by his own pawns), you already have full compensation for 1 pawn (L.Kaufman)

Unpaired bishop is worth approximately 3.14 pawns (worth less) (L.Kaufman)

Rooks

Rooks = 5
Attacking on open-file: +.20
One semi-open file: +.10
On open-file: +.14

Rook and Bishop is better than the Rook and Knight. (L.Kaufman)

Queen

Queen = 9.75

Queen and Knight is slightly better than Queen and Bishop

King
Centralized in opening: -.24
Centralized in endgame: +.36
On open file in opening: -.23
No adjacent pawns: -.08

Special Cases

Hanging pieces: -.10

Exchanges favor the side with a material advantage

Minor pieces lose their value as the endgame approaches

In endgames with no other piece the bishop is worth about 2.5 and the knight 2.25 with other pieces the minors are worth about 3.25

Rooks gain value as the endgame approaches

Note: I have modified the Crafty point values to reflect the Kaufman values.

Resources

Evaluation of Material Imbalances in Chess

GNU Chess Positional Heuristics

http://chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/Evaluation

http://www.chessvariants.com/d.betza/pieceval/index.html

Games / PGN — No Comments
9
Aug 10

Logical Chess Move by Move (PGN Download)

I just posted a PGN file with all 33 games of Irving Chernev’s Logical Chess Move by Move. You can access the downloads section here. The games are unannotated and are for following along with the book.

Chess / Improvement / Notebook / Training — 2 Comments
7
Aug 10

Training Insights

Update: 8/7/2010:
I have been following my own advice for the past two weeks, and I have to say that my training is more focused than ever, and I am beginning to see tangible improvements over the board. If you are interested, I am continuing to post my weekly training schedule at my Chess Notebook site.

Original Post 7/27/2010

I have slightly modified my training in the last week to include a new way of training tactics and a method to focus my training time.

A New Way of Training Tactics

I came across a forum post by IM David Pruess where he gives excellent advice on truly learning patterns when training tactics. Below is his advice:
The original post is titled Chess Advice Most Chess Player’s Don’t Like to Hear and it’s a must read.

or when i give players in the 1000-1800 range advice on improving their tactics, viz: 10-15 min per day of solving simple tactical puzzles. the goal is to increase your store of basic patterns, not to work on your visualization, deep calculation. remember that is your goal. you are not trying to prove that you can solve every problem. if you don’t solve a problem within 1 minute, stop. it’s probably a new pattern or you would have gotten it by now. (with private students i’ll take the time to demonstrate this to them: show them through examples that they can find a 3-4 move problem in 10 seconds if they know the pattern, and that they can fail to find a mate in 2 for 10 minutes if they don’t know the pattern). look at the answer, and now go over the answer 3 more times in your head to help the pattern take hold. your brain can probably take on 2-3 new patterns between sleeping, so you should stop once you’ve been stumped by 2 or 3 problems (usually will take about 10-15 min). there is no point in doing more than that in one day. and any day you miss, you can’t make up for. a semi-random estimate on my part is that you need about 2000 of these patterns to become a master. so you need to do this for 2 years or more.

i would guess that less than 1 in 100 of the people i have given this advice to have followed it to the letter. if they enjoy it, they’ll waste their time doing it for 1.5 hours in a day, choosing to ignore that it’s not helping them [after 15 min]. or some with ego issues will insist on trying to solve every single position (if only they linked their ego to their self-discipline Tongue out).

- IM David Pruess

A Specific CurriculumWhile I am disciplined in spending a minimum of 30 minutes per day doing chess studies, I am usually jumping from book to book and topic to topic which ends up losing valuable time. In the past I have tried to work from a training schedule, but the problem has been that the schedule has been too general. What I started doing is creating a specific training curriculum, where I create a schedule 2 weeks into the future, with the exact content I should cover everyday (an example can be seen here).  The schedule is created on a Sunday, and it takes no more than 15 minutes to create.

Annotated Games / Strategy — No Comments
6
Aug 10

The Bishop Pair Versus Bishop and Knight

Checklist / Downloads / Thinking Process — No Comments
17
Jul 10

Positional Evaluation Checklist

I have created a PDF document that is based on Karpov and Mazukevich’s thought process guidelines, and includes Herman Grooten’s modifications. You can download it here. The idea is to use it when going over annotated games, or when performing Stokyo exercises. Hopefully, by using it during your training sessions, the questions will sink into our subconscious, and we will subliminally use ask these same questions during actual play.

Feel free to leave comments if you have any suggestions to improve the checklist.

Announcements / Notebook — No Comments
8
Jul 10

Redoubling Efforts

I am organizing my chess training, and trying to simplify the material that I will be using in my studies. One of the new changes I have made is to create a site dedicated to my training program, which is called chessnotebook.com. I will be using chessnotebook.com as my online chess training diary and there I will be posting resource and diagrams that will be helping me in my quest for chess improvement.

Endgame / Lists / Purdy — 1 Comment
7
Jul 10

Five Preliminary Endgame Rules

1. Before even beginning to think of making a passed pawn, put all your pieces into as good positions as possible.

Queen – Center of board

Rooks – seventh rank for White, second rank for Black. But if the enemy has two or more minor pieces the rook must be careful about leaving his own camp and must be content with commanding the open file.

Knights – Square in the center or in the enemy camp, supported by a pawn which is cannot be attacked by a pawn.

Bishops – Center diagonals; pawn support is not essential but desirable.

King – Central, provided that he is not dangerously exposed.  If the enemy has a rook, the King is best posted at or adjacent to e2(e7) or d2(d7) – fairly near the center, but still preventing the enemy rook from seizing the second (seventh) or first (eight) rank. 

2. Avoid pawn-moves while you are getting your pieces well positioned because pawn-moves create lasting weaknesses and thus make your task harder.

3. Try to free your position from weaknesses; and if possible, make it hard for the opponent to do likewise.

4. When trying to win, keep pawns on both wings. When trying to draw, play to eliminate all the pawns on one wing. With pawns on one wing only, a pawn plus is usually insufficient for a win.

5. If you are a pawn up or more, exchange pieces (not pawns) wherever you can do so without losing in position.

Exception: do not rush an exchange that will leave you with a single bishop running on the opposite color to the enemy’s single bishop. Also, refrain from exchanging if it will give your opponent two bishops against bishop and knight.

CJS Purdy

Purdy / Rules — No Comments
16
Jun 10

Purdy’s Chess Opening Rules

Below are a few guidelines from C.J.S Purdy on playing the opening. Purdy had an incredible gift of explaning difficult chess concepts, and these rules are no exception. I also haven’t seen these rules in many other chess books, so it is important to learn and apply them in your games.
 
1. When you don’t play 1.e4 (…e5) early, never block your c-pawn
 
2. Don’t financhetto a bishop if an avenue is already open to it.

3. Don’t move any pawns other than e4(e5) or d4(d5) in the opening, the general rule is not to move any until development is complete (minor pieces out and the rooks have been connected and one of them placed on an file that is likely to become open or semi-open). With the following exceptions:

a. If you have played e4 (…e5) and it is impossible to play d4 (…d5), keep the option of f4  (…f5) and play it if you think the time is right.
 
b. When a piece has come down to b4 (b5) or g4 (g5), you can ask it to move with a3 (a6) or with  h3(h6). DO NOT PLAY a3(a6) or h3(h6) to stop the piece from coming down, that gives up a move for nothing at all.

4. An exchange loses a move if the opponent captures with a developing move. This should be avoided unless you have to lose a move in development in any case.

5. When considering in taking a center pawn the rule is:

a. If the pawn is threatening to take your pawn or advance and hit a piece, usually take it.
 
6. When capturing, usually capture towards the center. An exception is when something has to be recaptured on c3 (…c6) or f3(…f6), here it is usually good to take with the center pawn instead of with the flank pawn as that makes an avenue for the bishop that was previously shut in by the center pawn.
 
7. In the opening never hesitate to exchange a knight for a bishop.
 
8 Exchange a bishop for a knight in the following scenarios:

a. If bishop is on b5(b4) or g5(g4) pinning a knight and you are hit by the a or h-pawns, exchange rather than lose a tempo retreating – provided that the opponent cannot recapture with a  developing move.
 
b. If opponent can recapture with a developing move then you lose a tempo regardless and it is best to maintain the pin by retreating to a4(a5) or h4(h5).

9.  As a general rule develop all other three minor pieces before the Q-bishop.

a. Only time to develop the Q-bishop early is when you are White in the Queen’s Pawn Game, and you wish to develop the bishop in one move before playing e3.

10. Develop the rooks on their most effective files as soon as you can.

11. The Queen has to be moved off the back rank to free the rooks; but she should usually be moved only one square, to the file that is least likely to be opened (usually e2 (e7) is a good square for the Queen).

12. It is bad to put a Queen on an open file; it only means the loss of a tempo later, when the file is taken by an enemy rook.

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