Fearless Chess

In this game, White plays the initial phase of the opening well enough, but then he starts to drift with some questionable and unnecessary moves, which allow Black to work up a strong queenside initiative. At that point, White: recognizes the problem, evaluates its severity, examines options, chooses one and implements it. All of this is done without panic or self-recrimination. It’s more of a self pep talk: “It looks like you may have messed up here, and you have to do something about it right now. It looks like you can’t stop what he’s going to do, so let it go, think of your best shot, and keep your fingers crossed.” The good thing about this game is that it helped me defeat a master 13 years later from the exact same position this game had after move 11. I eliminated the unnecessary moves and played much more directly. That game can be found under the title “Playing On Both Sides Of The Board”, which has the game Till-Collier (2005). The link is http://brucetill.com/Test/wp/blog/?p=237.

So once again, the steps for saving a losing game are: A) Realise you are in trouble, B) Stay calm, C) Solve real problems, and D) Look for counterplay. The sooner you realise that you have made a mistake, the more options you will have for dealing with it. Just burying your head in the sand and hoping your opponent won’t capitalize on your errors won’t work. A bad plan is better than no plan at all. So just do it.

In this game, the players castle on opposite sides, which usually signals attacks on both sides. Both players pursue their chances on each side, but Black misses something that costs him the exchange. But he stays calm and uses the time White spends winning material to advance his attack, rather than being upset over his error. In the end, everything works out as if Black had planned it all along.

The lesson here is that even losing material can result in new advantages. In this game, White captured Black’s pawn on h3, which (after White’s h- and g-pawns disappeared), resulted in an open h-file for Black’s queen and rook. Also, the white-squared bishop that White used to capture Black’s rook was defending the weak white squares around his king. Once it was gone, Black was able to exploit those squares. Black was in a position to utilise his new advantages much more quickly than White could use his extra rook. Black realised this and even sacrificed a knight to create maximum counterplay. The old saying is true: look at the pieces on the board, not off the board, to see if you are winning. It’s not what’s been captured that matters, it’s what’s left and what you do with it.

This article is the first in a series that will illustrate what a player needs to do and how he needs to think when facing a losing position or one that appears to be going from bad to worse. The first step is to realise that we all throw in a few clunkers now and then and get ourselves in a mess. Beating yourself up, telling yourself how stupid you are, lashing out with desperate, crazy moves is not the answer. What you want to do are the following:

1) Put on a poker face. That is, don’t let your expression show that you are upset or even that you know you have made an error. Sometimes your opponent doesn’t even look for your error unless you tip him off with a sad face. Or they see the error, but don’t know if it was a mistake or a trap, since you look so calm.

2) Evaluate your position to see exactly how bad it really is. Sometimes when things don’t go your way, or when your opponent plays an unexpected strong move, you get depressed, which leads you to believe that your position is now hopeless, when, in reality, there is just one problem that can be dealt with, or you have counterplay that you may not have noticed right away. Let initial panic be replaced with calm analysis.

3) Solve the biggest problem first. If your opponent is threatening mate in one, you have to deal with that immediately. If he is only threatening to double your pawns, you have more options.

4) Look at the unique features of your position. Continuing with the doubled pawns, you could prevent the doubling or perhaps put a rook on the soon to be opened file. Or ignore it altogether and make a move that promotes your counterplay. Think about exactly what would happen if your pawns got doubled. Maybe you are just thinking about standard chess advice like “Doubled pawns are bad” instead of looking to see if they are bad IN THIS EXACT POSITION. There are often unusual configurations of pieces in a position that make standard chess advice irrelevant. Look for those unique counter chances.

5) Never underestimate the role of overconfidence. How many times have you been way ahead in a game only to get lazy and miss a shot from your opponent that turns everything around? So why can’t you be the one delivering the shot this time? Maybe he’ll be the one to get lazy or overconfident or hallucinate and blunder. You need to stay in a good, alert state of mind to see such game-changers.

6) Fighting back often upsets your opponent. You made a mistake and lost material and, objectively, he has a won game. You know it, he knows it, the onlookers know it, your computer knows it. So you will play a few more moves and give up, right? No. Make him show you that he knows how to convert his advantage into a win. He’s not a GM or a computer. If you can make a mistake, so can he. Of course, losing a whole queen for nothing is just about impossible to come back from, but losing a pawn or the exchange is not the end of the game. Some people get nervous when they are winning because they keep thinking about not messing up instead of winning. Or they trade down so much material, that they make the win harder instead of easier. Sometimes the only way to cash in an advantage is to attack and some players are no good at that. Or the only win is in an endgame, and they are bad at endgames. Make him show you he knows what he is doing. Don’t help him out by resigning out of anger or playing dumb moves.

In the following game, Black gets too many ideas in his head and plays all of them at the same time, which invariably leads to trouble. At one point, he realises that he is getting in trouble, analyzes the position, decides exactly what is wrong, deals with it, finds some counter chances, then White panics and ends up losing a rook. Then White finds counter chances, but Black is able to find a shot that takes the full point.

So the lesson here is to A) Realise you are in trouble, B) Stay calm, C) Solve real problems, and D) Look for counterplay. Sometimes a good attitude is worth more than a good move.

The weak dark square complex is a group of squares that are undefended by nearby pawns on white squares. For examples in this article, Black has pawns on f7, g6, and h7, and the squares f6, g7,and h6 are undefended by Black pawns. They form a weak dark square complex. The weakness of this complex can be reduced by a dark-squared bishop defending the complex (e.g. a fianchettoed bishop). Conversely, the weakness can be accentuated by trading off Black’s dark-squared bishop, especially if White gets to keep his.

In the first example, Black’s pawn on h7 is attacked and Black makes the ill-advised decision to protect it by playing 13…g6, blocking the diagonal instead of 13…h6, moving it off the diagonal. This minor decision has major consequences as White exploits the weak dark squares around the king.

In the second example, Black plays the opening well, but in the middlegame, he decides to prevent a move by White that would have been mildly annoying by creating a permanent, serious weakness in his own position that White is able to utilize for the rest of the game.

In the third example, from Grandmaster play, White sacrifices a pawn for the sole purpose of weakening the dark squares around Black’s king. Black valiantly tries to cover the weakenesses, but White brilliantly finds a way to penetrate Black’s defenses.

The lesson of these three examples is clear: do not create a weak square complex in front of your king and then trade away defenders of those weakenesses. Conversely, if your opponent creates a weak square complex in front of his king, notice it, get rid of defenders, and exploit it. Having your queen and a bishop of the proper color will be extremely helpful in taking advantage of this weakness.

If any of us were asked “What makes some chess players better than others?”, we might come up with a number of different responses. Some replies might be: They are better at seeing tactics, They have a better memory for openings, They can calculate better, They can see further ahead, They play more, They practice more, They read more chess books, They have a coach, etc. All of these reasons have some validity, but I believe they overlook one of the primary reasons stronger players are stronger: They evaluate positions better. That is, they may see ahead no further than their opponent, but judge the resulting positions better. They avoid positions that they judge to be inferior for them and try to move towards positions that are superior. The weaker players just play up to any position they have evaluated as equal using only crude techniques such as “Is the material equal?” or “Do I have doubled pawns?” and the like. Stronger players use these also, but supplement them with evaluation parameters based on more dynamic criteria. That is, they may say “I am a pawn down, but I have a huge kingside attack” or “I have doubled pawns, but the open file is worth it” or “I am up the exchange, but his knight is so powerful on d5 I should probably sacrifice the exchange back if I want to have any winning chances” or “Material is even, but I have to trade queens somehow or his attack will be crushing.” As you can see, the stronger player stays aware of the material balance and the state of the pawn structure, but evaluates them not as always good or bad (as the weaker player does), but within the context of all the other factors of the position. The weaker the player, the more rigidly they evaluate static factors. For example, some very weak players are almost ready to resign after a queen trade because they “lost their queen” (the best piece). Or their opponent plays BxN and they don’t recapture the bishop because “I didn’t want to get doubled pawns.”
I would say that, at lower ratings, tactical skill (not losing pieces) is the predominant factor in the outcome. At the much higher ratings, positional evaluation predominates, since at that level, tactical skill is almost a given for both players. That is why professional chess players don’t usually play sharp, tactical opening gambits. They assume the other player will see all of the tactics and when they are over, the resulting position will be somewhat lifeless and easy to evaluate, negating the stronger player’s main advantage. Rather, they tend to play slower developing, more positionally complicated openings where the emphasis is on the evaluation of each changing position (should I move this pawn, should I trade this piece, etc). This ability to evaluate positions as good, bad, or equal is where their advantage lies, so naturally they want things to be as complicated as possible, positionally speaking. At the lower ratings, the stronger player wants things to as complicated as possible, tactically speaking.
In the following game, Black plays the opening phase well enough, but misplaces one piece which causes him to lose the fight over a key square, which ultmately gives White a winning position, which is finished off with a tactic missed by Black.

So how does one improve his ability to evaluate positions? One method that I find useful is to play over master games that are annotated by a master, preferably the master who won the game. In the annotations, he will relate what he was thinking and why he played as he did. Playing over master games that use the openings that you use is even better. You will get a feel for what is right or wrong in certain opening positions, as well as the resulting middlegames. In the game above, I had never seen the maneuver 10…Ba6, 12…Nxa6, 13…Nc7 in any of the dozens of games I had played over from books, as well as games I played myself over the board. This does not necessarily constitute proof that a move or sequence is bad, but it certainly makes you think a little longer about what might be wrong with it and how you can exploit it. In other words, you are in a position to EVALUATE the move as wrong and the position as better for you and know why. In this game, I evaluated the position of the knight at c7 to be wrong because it did not participate in the struggle for e5 as it normally does from the usual squares d7 or c6. Also, never having seen …f6 played to kick the knight off of e5, I evaluated that move as an error due to the weakening of e6. If Black had made the same evaluations BEFORE playing those moves, he probably would not have made them at all. But his calculations seemed to be of the nature “My white-squared bishop is bad. Get rid of it.” “The knight on e5 is strong. Kick it out with f6.” While this is an improvement over much lower rated players, who often do not even have any concept of a piece being “bad” or “strong”, as the rating of one’s opponents goes up, so does the depth and subtlety of the evaluations. For example, A GM may dismiss a certain pawn capture on move 6 in the opening with a comment like “This is bad because it gives Black a lost endgame.” And one might wonder how he can make such a comment on the endgame when it only move 6. What he means is that now Black is compelled to win the game in the middlegame, since he has eliminated any recourse to an equal endgame by having damaged his pawn structure on move 6.

Improve your evaluation skills by playing over master games and your rating will go up. Trust me.

It’s nice to win games by playing amazing moves, surprising tactics, and slashing attacks, but we all know that those are rare and that we can’t expect a steady diet of brilliant wins. It’s like the lottery. It would be nice to win once in a while (or ever!), but we need a reliable source of income. But how do we produce a steady income of winning chess games? We can’t always force things with crazy attacks, but then shifting pieces around endlessly waiting for blunders won’t work either. What we need is a method for generating a constant flow of winning chances. Not winning moves, winning chances. And what exactly are “winning chances”? Well, as the term suggests, they are points in the game where you have a chance of winning. Not the lucky, praying for a blunder chance, but the chance that your opponent will misplay a move and make his position a little worse and give you some sort of weakness to work on. Then, while defending that weakness, he will slip again and give you another advantage to work with. Depending on the severity of his errors, it may take one or two slips or it may take four or five to make the game irretrievably lost. The reason these are called “winning chances” is that there is no guarantee of winning. Your opponent may make one error and then recover and play good chess the rest of the way and render his earlier error inconsequential and arrive at an equal position. Even GM’s make errors and get into tough positions, but they pull themselves together and draw the game.

So what is the “method” for generating winning chances? You need to ask your opponent questions. Not out loud, of course, but with your moves on the board. What do I mean by “questions”? A question is when you make a move and your opponent has to make a decision. It can be as serious as threatening mate in one or as common as a capture after which he has two ways of recapturing. Any series of poor decisions can lead to a lost position or they can lead to a poor, but defendable position. The point is that you must, as often as possible (it’s not possible to make every one of your moves into a tough question), make your opponent answer a question about how to continue. This means your focus on each move must be on generating IDEAS. Ideas about how to create some sort of plan to gain some kind of advantage. It can be as simple as pinning a knight and threatening to double his pawns. It can be a plan to open a file and then double your rooks on it. The main thing is to never run out of IDEAS. As soon as you run out of ideas, either propose a draw or resign. Ideas are how you generate questions for your oppnent to answer, questions that he can get wrong. And every wrong answer adds to your increasing advantage until the position is too far gone to hold, at which point there are no correct answers and all moves lose.

Where do we get ideas? From playing over master games, both old and new. After a while, you will find yourself thinking during a game: “I remember a game by Morphy where he had a position like this and he did such-and-such and ended up with a big attack.” After checking for particular neccessary similarities in your position, you try it, and it works! Just as it did in the Morphy game. Sometimes you can synthesize two or three ideas from two or three different games into one grand plan in your own game. Master games are a goldmine of great ideas.

In this game you should notice that White didn’t play any incredible, wininning-on-the-spot moves. He just made moves that made his opponent make decisions, and he made a number of bad ones. But at each point, until near the end, he could have played better and recovered. The point is he was CHALLENGED to hold the game. White constantly came up with IDEAS to force Black to ANSWER A QUESTION. White didn’t always play the “computer move” that was 0.03 points better than the move in the game, or the “book” move that all of the GM’s play. Maybe computers and GM’s can see through all of your threats, but can your opponent? You have to ask him the questions. He can’t give the wrong answer to questions you don’t ask. The reason GM’s are GM’s is that they ask tougher questions and when asked, give better answers than you or I. But even at our level, we can concentrate on forcing our opponents to earn a draw or a win, not just hand it to them by making aimless moves.

In the following game, played in a simultaneous exhibition against a well-known senior master from Maryland, White plays a variation of the Bayonet Attack vs. the King’s Indian Defense, throwing in 9. Nd2 before 10. b4. A war is waged over control of the d6 square, after which, Black stakes all on his kingside attack and leaves the queenside to fend for itself. He comes within one move of delivering a brilliant checkmate on the kingside before White narrowly escapes with his life. The game illustrates how every move is judged by the questions “Do I need to play this move?” and “Does this move help my attack along?”

If you are going to play the King’s Indian Defense as Black, you have to have the mindset of being committed to your kingside attack. Halfway attacking gestures, unnecessary defensive moves on the queenside, and fearful moves just don’t cut it. You’re either going to attack and play for mate or you’re not. If you don’t like attacking, play the Queen’s Gambit. The main idea you have to keep in mind is this: “If his queenside attack works, he wins material. If my kingside attack works, I checkmate him.” That thought will give you courage as your queenside gets decimated. Think of his captures of your material as a good thing, that is, he is spending time over there and giving your attack more time to develop over here. Time is the important thing, not a rook on a8 that is contributing nothing to the attack. Walt Whitman expressed the feeling in his poem, Pioneers, O Pioneers (currently being used in the Levis Jeans “Go Forth” commercials):

COME my tan-faced children,
Follow well in order, get your weapons ready,
Have you your pistols? have you your sharp-edged axes?
Pioneers! O pioneers!

For we cannot tarry here,
We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger,
We the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

As I noted in the previous article, “No Fire From This Dragon”, English GM Jonathan Mestel recalls receiving a telegram from the British Chess Federation at the World Student Chess Olympiad in Mexico City in August of 1977 that read “Miles says beware of American analysis of 13. Rdg1.” He said he had not the slightest doubt as to which position the telegram referred. It was the Soltis Variation of the Yugoslav Attack vs. the Dragon Variation of the Sicilian Defense.
In the following two games, White gets to try two different followups to 13. Rdg1 against the same opponent two years apart. Black helpfully duplicates his moves up to move 16, at which point White tries two different continuations. In the first game, the rook on g1 plays no factor in the attack due to the way Black played, but sometimes I think the move may influence the way Black plays. Just as some police never use their gun in 20 years, criminals may give up just by knowing that it could be used on them. Similarly, Black may allow the h-file to be opened just to keep the more sensitive g-file closed.

In the second game, I try a suggestion that I saw in the notes to another move in a book on the Soltis Variation. It really unleashes the rooks on g1 and h1.

So while I can’t claim that 13. Rdg1 is the winning move against the Soltis Variation, it does create certain opportunities for White not available to him in other lines. And if White is familiar with these motifs and Black is not, they can form a potent surprise to the unprepared Dragon player.

The Dragon Variation of the Sicilian Defense has always been considered an enterprising, adventurous opening for Black. The Yugoslav Attack vs. the Dragon has always been considered the “acid test” of the variation and is one of the most heavily analyzed openings in chess, with entire books devoted to popular subvariations. This game follows main line theory until White’s little-played 13th move. Black’s response is not quite energetic enough and gives White the initiative, which, as is typical for this opening, proves fatal.

The Soltis Variation of the Dragon Sicilian (12. h4 h5) is often a tough nut to crack, so White needs to have a few tricks up his sleeve to get the job done. In this game, 13. Rdg1 worked like a charm, not because it is objectively best in that position, but because Black did not respond to the move well and played moves designed to combat the main line move 13. Bg5. This just goes to show that sometimes just a slight deviation from the norm is enough to throw some players off of their game and swing the balance in your favor. It’s a lot like a drag bunt in baseball or an option pass in football. They aren’t the best plays in the book, but they often work because they are unusual and catch the opponent off guard. A little research in the books to find such moves can pay off again and again.

One of the goals we aspire to in each game is to make every move count. That is, we want to make moves that threaten something or at least contribute to some objective. We try to avoid pointless moves that put our opponents under no pressure. But rarely do we play a game where we create threats and move forward almost from the beginning of the game to the end. This is just such a game. From his first threat at move 3 to the very end, Black presses forward with threat after threat until he wins material leading to a won endgame. Especially notice the remarkable sequence from moves 15 to 19, where Black plays 5 developing moves in a row, all with tempo.

The point of this game is that we should always try to make the best move possible. Don’t play moves that prevent non-existant threats, or make aimless developing moves just to make a move, or checks that are easily blocked and just waste time and misplace your pieces. Take time on each move and ask yourself “How does this move help me or threaten my opponent?” If you can’t come up with a good answer, maybe you should consider a different move. Things may seem to move slowly in chess, but opportunities are sometimes fleeting, so you have to stay alert and try to make every move count.