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...
(adapted by Herman Grooten)
The following thought process which is recommended by Karpov and Mazukevich is used to detect the important features of an arbitrary position in order to devise a plan that conforms to the positional assessment derived by using this thought process.
This thinking process is based...
Black to move (Stefanova – Shirov 2005)
r3rq1k/8/p2p3p/P1pPnp1P/1p3Q2/5PNR/1PP2K2/R7 b – - 0 29
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Evaluation
The first thing I did was to evaluate this position, and I gave it the following evaluation: Material =, King Safety +/=, Activity =/+, Pawn Structure =. So the game in my...
Why is it that beginners fail to choose simple plans that are right before their eyes? One answer may be that beginners do not evaluate the position before choosing a candidate move. Beginners briefly scan the board, choose a move they like and quickly analyze and play this move. The problem with this...
