On Calculation, Visualization, and Positional Analysis

Note: This article was originally published on April 13th, 2015 on chess.com

One of the most critical skills a chess player can have is actually a combination of three other skills.  Let's look at a practical example to demonstrate the concept:

This game of mine played at the 2015 Arkansas Open featured a Scotch Gambit (declined).  On the seventh move, white allowed a common tactical idea, the "center fork trick."  If black captures on e4, white's knight and bishop can be forked with d5 after the recapture.  One question we could ask about this position is "should black play Nxe4?"  However, let's look at this from white's perspective by asking two related questions:

1) Should white have allowed this?

2) If white just missed the idea and black plays it, how should white respond?

Our "most critical chess skill" must be put to use here.  First, we have to calculate white's possible responses to Nxe4.  In this example, there are three main options which preserve material equality (black captures a pawn with Nxe4 so white must regain a pawn to stay even materially).  If you want to play along, try to figure out three separate main ideas that do this.

Once, we have discovered our options, the second critical skill must be utilized.  The lines must be played out mentally to "quiessence" and the ending position visualized.

Finally, the ending positions of each of these lines must be evaluated positionally and compared to each other.  The line that leads to the best position for white would then be played.  Or, if possible, if the best option for white is worse than other options available, white should not allow the tactic.

So, let's look at the result:

A 7...Nxe4 8.Nxe4 d5 9.Nxc6 bxc6 10.Bxd5 cxd5 11.Nc3 c6

B 7...Nxe4 8.Nxe4 d5 9.Nxc6 bxc6 10.Bd3 dxe4 11.Bxe4

C 7...Nxe4 8.Bxf7+ Rxf7 9.Nxe4 d5 10.Nc3 Nxd4 11.Qxd4 c6

These were the three main lines to be calculated.  Is one of them clearly better than the other two?  One clearly worse?  Is the best one good for white or black?  Why?  Let's look at the positions.

Position after A

White has a slightly better pawn structure, but black has a better center and the bishop pair.

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Position after B

Black's structure is critically weak.  The position is otherwise even.

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Position after C

Black has a slightly better center, two bishops, and a rook activated by the half-open f-file.  White has a slightly safer king and a slightly awkward knight on c3.

In my opinion, the ranking of these three positions for white would be B, A, C.  In fact, white would probably be pretty happy to have the position after line B.  

In order to make the correct decision in a game situation, all of this must be done mentally while looking at the first position (or after Nxe4 has been played, depending on the situation).  To review, this requires three separate skills used in succession:

1) Calculate the possible responses.  Here, we calculated three lines that retained material equality.

2) Visualize the resulting positions accurately.

3) Positionally evaluate each position and compare the evaluations.

If you had trouble with this procedure, hopefully this exercise helped diagnose the problem.  Improving in these areas should help your chess skill immensely.  Be on the look out for errors in this type of procedure in your games to monitor your progress.

Learning Openings Thoroughly with Lucas Chess

Note: This article was originally published on April 9th, 2015 on chess.com

Studying openings is, for some reason, a very controversial subject online these days.  I feel strongly that learning a solid, consistent opening repertoire is part of becoming a strong chess player.  Some will tell you to ignore openings until you are (variously) 1600, 1800, or even 2000.  I've even seen one person say not to touch them until you are a master.  To me, this is just silliness.  I'm not going to get into that topic here, but suffice it to say, you should be learning openings.

Your first step should be to select a system to learn and grab some detailed resources about it.  For my example here, I have selected the Hyper-accelerated Dragon (Sicilian) system and the book Chess Openings for Black Explained.  The resource you choose should have recommended moves, of course, but should also include as much detail about why the moves are being played and what plans are being acted upon and should be put into action for the middle game as possible.  A simple tree of variations is not really enough to learn a system for most people.

For this article, I am focusing on one of my favorite under-rated pieces of chess software Lucas Chess.  Within Lucas Chess, if you go to Tools, Openings, Personal Opening Guide, you will find an excellent tool for organizing your opening repertoire.  

First create a new opening with the "New" button on the top toolbar.  For this, I named mine "Black - Hyper-Accelerated Dragon (CO4BE)."  Next, go through your resource slowly, taking notes as you go.  Make a tree of variations by making moves on the board.  Make comments, annotate moves, mark positional evaluations, etc.  

You can draw on the board by using the "Director" feature (right click on the chessboard's border and choose Director).  This visual annotation really helps me, but I also include a text explanation.

Now, I have gone through an entire chapter of the book, inputting a tree of opening choices along with lots of notes and evaluations.  I see many people recommending that that is all that you do, if that.  "Don't memorize lines!" they say.  Nonsense.  Even after I did all of that, if someone sat down and played the white side against me, I would be clueless.  You have to study something to truly learn it.  Imagine yourself in a tournament 3 months from now needing to recall the information in this chapter.  Not happening without study and practice.  Luckily, Lucas Chess makes this pretty painless.

Click the "Training" button near the top right.  There are lots of options here which you can explore, but here is what I do, and it works great.  First, click "black" for the "Play with" option, because this is an opening you are learning for black.  Next, we are going to limit the depth we start with for practice.  I recommend a value of 19 (odd numbers work best for black, even numbers work best for white).  So, change depth to 19.  For name, I also just call it 19.  Click accept, and we are ready to start practicing.

Exit the Personal Opening Guide feature of Lucas Chess and go to Training, Learn Tactics by Repetition.  From here, find the opening you are studying, and select it.  Each different training depth (you just created one for depth 19, next you can move it up to 21, etc.) will appear here.  Select the one you want (here, we just have 19 to choose from).   Click "New" to create a new training session.  Select manual configuration and ignore all the options except "Blocks" near the middle left.  Change the "Order" from original to random and click Accept.  Now, try to recall the correct moves from the chapter for black.  If you make a mistake, you can finish the line, but you will have to do it again immediately afterwards.  It will work its way through all the possible lines you have entered.  Once you are done, you can see how you did.  The important stats are "Working Time" and "Errors."  Just keep creating new training sessions (New, Copy configuration from current register) and practicing until you get your "Errors" down to 0 and your time down to whatever threshhold you want to set for yourself.  Here's an example:

You have completed the first stage of learning your repertoire.  What I do next is go back to the Personal Opening Guide and create another training module at depth 21.  It will appear right under your 19 depth module under Training, Learn Tactics by Repetition.  Practice that one until you get your errors down and your time down and move on to a deeper level.  Eventually, you will be able to do it in your sleep.

The final step before implementing the system in actual games is to go back and re-read the chapter.  You should feel much more comfortable with the positions and moves since you have commited the whole thing to memeory.  During this and subsequent read-throughs, concentrate on the hows and whys the book is presenting.  My experience is I understand so much more at this point than the first read-through.

Don't forget to come back to this opening and run-through the variations periodically to keep them fresh in your mind!

Blitz at the Fayetteville Chess Club

Note: This article was originally published on March 29, 2015 on chess.com

Today I visited the local chess club in Fayetteville, Arkansas.  The club meets at 1 p.m. every Sunday afternoon at the Atlanta Bread Company.  I played three blitz games with a gentleman named Richard (pictured in the cover photo on the left, but that's not me on the right).  Richard described himself as "about 1400" in strength before we played.

I tried to reconstruct the three games from memory when I got home.  I got two of them, but my recollection of the middle one was not complete enough.  I had a look at the first of the three games and included some comments below.  The third game is basically a miniature (and an example of what can happen if you try to make up a way to play against the Scotch Gambit on the fly if you aren't super careful), and it's included without comment below.

After the three games with Richard, I asked the resident master, (NM Bill Orton, kind of a local legend) if he would be up to looking over a couple of games from last weekend's tournament with me.  I showed him the two games I drew and learned a lot.  After we looked over these games, I decided to call it a day.  It was a fun experience, and I will definitely be going back.

2015 Arkansas Open Trip Report

Note: this article was originally published on March 25, 2015 on chess.com

This past weekend I played in the Arkansas Open in Fayetteville, Arkansas.  The location for the tournament was atop Mt. Sequoyah, basically a large hill located on the east side of town.  The venue for the tournament was changed a few weeks before the start date, so it was questionable how big the turnout would be.  It turned out to be one of the bigger player lists in recent memory for this particular event, and the tournament started with 38 players.

The playing hall

We got started a little late so that people could find their way to the top of the mountain for the new site.  Once we started, though, everything was normal.  I was above the midline, barely, and was thusly paired down.  I played a player rated about 600 in the USCF for my first game.  This player played very well for his rating and even gave me a couple of scares.  The game is below:

I patted my opponent on the shoulder and told him I thought he played pretty well.  Lunch time!  I had an hour or so before round two began so I hopped in the car and drove to Subway.  I know you are dying to find out, so six inch cold cut combo on9-grain wheat, toasted, with american cheese, lettuce, pickles, light mayo, and mustard.  Yum.  I think I took the photograph above after I finished the sandwich at the tables outside the playing hall.

Second round, I was paired with a 1920 rated player.  Yikes, for me, since I am most decidedly nowhere near that strength in USCF terms.  For me, I feel like I can compete with up to 1800s, but above that, I have real trouble.  Also, black pieces.  I shook my opponent's hand and started the clock.  For some reason, it didn't start right.  I might have thought I hit the button and actually didn't.  My opponent noticed and said something about it.  I fixed it quickly and on the game went.

This game took a little over an hour.  I didn't have to be back until well over two and a half hours, so I headed home (about a 25 minute drive for me).  I was upset at myself for messing up the opening, so I actually made some flashcards to review my repertoire choices for the Sicilian and ran through them several times before my evening game.

I arrived back at the site about 15 minutes before start time.  I hung around chatting with some of the friends I've made that were also there.  The times between rounds just hanging out with chess people are some of my favorite times during these tournaments.

My opponent was the last person to arrive for round 3.  All the games had started.  I made my first move and started his clock and waited.  He did finally come in about 10 minutes late.  I waited until he made his first move and then offered a handshake.  Here we go again.

Well, not a bad first day, but not a great first day.  Only real mis-step was the draw in round 3, but I guess that could be worse.  I headed home hopeful for a solid night's sleep.

When I arrived the next morning, I was feeling pretty good.  I checked the pairings and saw I had another lower rated player (this one in the 1200s).  He's actually a player from a club I play at in Ft. Smith a lot, so I've seen him around.  Before the game I was talking to a friend from that club, and he said he's way stronger than 1200 something.  He guessed he was probably 1600.  Great.  I don't mind playing stronger players, but why do I have to play them when they are 400 points under-rated?!

I set up for the game and waited for my opponent to arrive.  He arrived on time; we shook hands and got started.

I was extremely happy when this game was over.  I was sitting there with 2.5 out of 4 points and one more round to play.  I had already bested last year's terrible performance at this tournament by half a point.  I drove back to Subway and grabbed a sandwich again.  When I got back, after finishing my sandwich from the outside tables, I went back in to check the pairings for the final round.  No such, luck.  There were still two games going as the scheduled final round time approached.  Board one was still going with a knight vs. bishop and three pawns each, painful looking endgame.  I was glad I wasn't playing that one.  It ended maybe 5 minutes before the final round was scheduled to begin.  Most of the games were started on time, but the games involving the players of that game (and one other) were delayed slightly to accomodate lunch for those players.  My game began on time.  I had a final round crack at an 1800 rated player.  Let's do this!

I checked the standings on the wall before I left.  3 points out of 5 might be enough to tie for the class C money prize.  There was one player with 3 out of 4 going into the final round.  He was playing a higher rated player.  If he even draws, I'm pretty sure he would have top prize to himself.  There were a few other players with a shot at 3 out of 5 if they won, and at least a couple that had already achieved 3 out of 5, so if I do win prize money, it will probably be only a small portion of it.

Sadly, since I left immediately after my game, I have no way of knowing, yet.  The tournament hasn't been submitted to USCF for rating, yet, so I can't look it up online.  The results have not been published anywhere that I know of.  I'm waiting for the USCF report or a check in the mail.  I'll update when I know!

Overall, I was pretty pleased with how I played.  I felt a lot stronger at this tournament than at any tournament I've played to this point.  I'm going to keep plugging away and hopefully keep improving.  If you were at this tournament, I'd love to hear your stories, see your pictures, whatever you've got!

The analysis of each of my games here was just the quick "get down what you were thinking at the time as soon as possible" style analysis.  I will be revisiting each of these games over the course of the next week or two.  I might pubish results here, so if you are interested, stay tuned.  If you have any insight into any of the games, please make a comment!

Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed it.

update: USCF finally pubished the event, and I did not win prize money.

PS: please forgive my calling the "Scotch Gambit" the "Scotch defense" in game 5.  I have no idea what happened there.