Andrew Latham's Chess Advice/Trivia

Most irregular openings have their fair share of opening tricks but are unpopular simply because they are not good aside from the tricks. If you keep an eye out for any sacrifices or lose pieces then you should be fine and come out with a solid advantage. Against the Polish or the Grob, be extra careful about taking the pawn and DON'T SPEND YOUR TIME TRYING TO CAPTURE IT. Against a4/h4 your opponent is probably a loser but don't just assume that. Also, openings where white pushes e3 or d3 tend to lead to a lot of pawn forks for black so look for that.

When playing the middle-game, always think of the endgame! I can not stress how important this is. If you shatter your pawn structure to try to get an attack going in the middle-game, your opponent could trade off all the pieces and even be down a pawn and you will notice that your pawn structure sucks and you're going to lose. This happened to me when I played a 1250 player named Ran Vanvalkenburg at The Missouri K-12 Championship in 2008. I played a strong attack and wiped him out, but in doing so I allowed my pawn structure to get broken up and for him to get a bishop vs. a knight when there were two pawns on opposite sides of the board. This is bad because the knight and king can't work on both sides but the bishop can. Fortunately, there were still rooks left on the board and when he offered a trade I declined and managed to force a minor piece trade, after which I went on to win. But it just goes to show, be careful that you don't march into a losing endgame!

When the kings are castled on opposite sides, attack your opponent's king! One way to do this is to put your rooks behind your pawns on that side of the board and push them to crack open the king's shield. You wouldn't be able to do this if you were castled on the same side of the board. Remember your opponent can also do this to you.

If your opponent sends his queen on a lone ranger mission to gain material, block her exits and try to find a trap.

If your opponent fianchettos his bishop, make sure your g2/b2/g7/b7 pawn can not be taken so that he wins a rook.  This happens a lot in beginner games.

KEEP YOUR PAWN STRUCTURE SOLID. At cost of development or even a favorable knight vs. bishop trade.  This doesn't mean play defensively. This means, if a bishop is pinning your knight, defend the knight. Don't put a knight on an outpost and allow a trade so that the pawns are doubled. If you are going into an endgame then having a solid pawn structure is THE advantage! If you must isolate a pawn, then use it as a weapon! Make sure you can defend a pawn in the endgame if it becomes weak.


If you notice that pawns are interlocking together then start trading off your bishops for knights! In the endgame, interlocked pawns are targets for knights but problems for bishops.


When a pawn gets pushed to the 5th rank, usually a pawn trade on the 6th will be good for the defender and bad for the impudent fellow who pushed his pawn so far forward.

When you have a space advantage, pick a target and terminate it. Your opponent will have a hard time defending or getting counter-play because he is unable to coordinate his pieces as well as you.

Keep an eye on those passed pawns! In my game with Colby Lyons at William Chrisman 2008, I demolished him in the opening and got up two pawns. Then in the middle-game I developed all my pieces to active squares, traded down and advanced my pawns towards the end. I had a clear win but I blew it because in moving too far forward I allowed him to get two connected passed pawns and had to pull all my forces back to defend and he went on to win.

You've always been told that pushing the rook pawn up one to make space for your castled king is good. Now I am going to tell you to be careful. When the queen and bishop line up attacking that pawn, then it is quite alright for the bishop to take the pawn and sacrifice itself for two pawns because the queen will get a strong attack.

Don't let your bishops get blocked in. Block your opponent's bishops in. Fianchettoed bishops especially can find themselves in trouble if they are blocked off by center pawns on their diagonals.

If you fianchettoed your bishop, don't be scared to take it out of it's cozy little home. Like, for example, taking a bishop from b7 and putting it on a6, where it will often control squares deep in the enemy camp.

Don't let your king get out in the open. If he does, you're going to get killed. If this happens to you, you have to waste moves getting him to a safe spot. If your king's castle is being torn down then feel free to lift him to the center or other side of the board.

TACTICS:

You already know the basic tactics. Fork, Pin, Skewer, Revealed Check, Removing the Guard, Discovery, Deflection, Decoy, Interference, mate threat, and how to use pawn promotion as a threat to win material.  You should also know by now that before you do anything, ANYTHING, you should do a quick search of the position and find if there's any immediate instances where you can use these techniques from your tactical inventory.  If you don't know these tactics my advice would be to go look them up on the internet or in a chess book and then study positions where they occur.

To get better at tactics, practice as much as you can. Wtharvey is my favorite website. Look in every situation to see if there is any way to win material. Look for any piece that's either hanging or defended by just one pawn or piece. Look for a way to weaken the piece and try to take it. Even if it's not possible, the threat of this attack should be enough to make your opponent worry about defending it. DO NOT JUST MINDLESSLY ATTACK PIECES JUST TO MAKE YOUR OPPONENT DEFEND THEM, however. Only attack a piece if defending it would cause your opponent to waste time to defend it (as opposed to attacking pieces where your opponent's defense of the piece would be advantageous for him).

As for king attacks, a good general rule is that if you have two or more pieces attacking your opponent's king than he has defending it, then there is an immediate checkmate threat. Another general rule that I made up is that if there is no clear escape route, the pawns around the king are worth 1.5 regular pawns. This justifies sacrificing a minor piece for two pawns and also helps explain the idea of the pawn wedge, which is where you advance one pawn deep into the castled position to try to get a pawn trade or to get it stuck there where it will bother the enemy king to no end. If the king is open, always look for checkmates! To go along with this rule, if your king is castled and your opponent's is still hanging around the center, open up the position, put rooks on the center files and push your pieces up and you will win material, I guarantee it.

Everybody hates it when a long strategical plan gets blown apart just because they miss one simple tactic. In a game I played online the other day the center was completely closed and I had two knights while my opponent had the two bishops. I had doubled rooks against the castled king's position and my queen was just about ready to get involved in the action. I thought I had a clear win and then my opponent moved his bishop to pin a rook against my king. I couldn't believe it: I had spent the whole game working my way into this won position and it had all been lost simply because I had overlooked one move.

BEFORE you make a move, look for any way your opponent can check you, then figure out if this would help him in any way. If your opponent has a check that would force your king into the open it may be worth wasting a move to protect against this. Almost 90% of tactics involve some sort of check. Next, look at any hanging pieces. Can they be attacked in one move? Look at any piece which is defended but can be attack by a piece or pawn worth less than it, for example a knight which can be attacked by a pawn. What would you do if your opponent did this? Next, look at all possible captures for your opponent. If he captures any of these pieces, do you have an adequate response? Look at your pieces to make sure they are not in any setup that provokes a tactic, for example, a king and rook on the same diagonal or a queen and king with 3 empty squares between them that are just begging for a knight fork, or two pieces placed so that a pin or skewer may be possible. Does your opponent have a tactic coming up? Fix your problems before you go asking for new ones.

DON'T GET FANCY!!!!!!! I've lost many a game because I tried this. You read books and you look at tactics databases and you go to websites with tactics problems and you see endless examples of beautiful queen sacrifices, knight sacrifices, etc. etc. If the lines are too complicated, just ignore it. I bet you a million dollars that if you are Under 1800 there's a line you missed, and you're going to regret it. For example, I was examining the game Shabalov - Karpov, Tillburg 1994 and on move 23 I saw a tactic in pushing a pawn to e5 to attack a knight. I looked at it for over twenty minutes because I didn't believe that Shabalov could miss such a thing. I finally decided that it must be the best move, but Karpov didn't do it. When I analyzed the move in Fritz, I discovered that in my calculation I had missed one continuation in which Shabalov moves his knight to create a mate threat, while at the same time winning one of my minor pieces. Trust me, if it's a really complicated combination, just let it go.

If you do not know endgames, you are crippled from the start. You might say that not knowing endgames is like having a broken leg.  If you feel like you are not as good at endgames as your opponent, then you will be scared to reach an endgame with an equal position. On the contrary, if you are better at endgames than your opponent and you know it, then you can confidently trade down pieces and walk into an endgame knowing you've got a win. One thing you may find is that most of the good players we know are very bad at endgames. Knowing how to destroy your opponent in an endgames follows Theodore Roosevelt's concept of "Speak softly and carry a big stick". Another noticeable thing is that many players, when they reach an endgame with, say, 1 rook and 5 pawns for each side, will decide that it is a dead draw and stop taking the game seriously. But you're better than that.

If the extra pawn is a pawn on the a or h file then once your opponent gets his king in front of the pawn it is a draw. Period. There is no way you can control the queening square without stalemating. Even if you have an extra bishop, if it is the opposite color of the queen square then you're stuck with a draw. However, if you have a knight and rook pawn then you win. The goal is to control the queen square.

Opposite colored bishops are drawish in the endgame, because your bishop can't protect the pawns the other bishop attacks and you can't win with just one bishop. So, avoid a trade into an opposite colored bishop endgame if you are winning and try to facilitate such a trade if you are losing.

You can't win with two knights and a king vs. a king. It's incredibly difficult to win with a knight and a bishop vs. a king. However, it is pretty easy to win with two bishops and a king vs. a king. Just make a wall the king can't go through and use your king to force the opponent away so that you can keep pushing your bishops up and closing the opponent into a corner until you find checkmate. The mate is with the king in a corner, not pressed up against a wall.

Queen and Rook endgames are hard to win. Queen and pawn vs. Rook and pawn endgames are easy to win.

Say your opponent is black and he has a pawn on c2 or f2 and a king on b2 and your king is a million miles away but you have a queen. It's a draw. The same goes for pawns on h2 or a2. Don't let your opponent push his pawns this far to begin with.

The following endgames are easily won:

Queen vs. Rook
Queen vs. King
Queen vs. one minor piece
Rook vs. King
Two Bishops vs. King

The following endgames are drawn:
Two Knights vs. King
Knight vs. King
Bishop vs. King
Rook vs. Rook
Rook vs. Two Minor Pieces

The following endgames are very very hard to win:
Knight and Bishop vs. King
Queen vs. two minor pieces
Queen vs. three minor pieces (takes 138 moves or something like that)
Rook vs. one minor piece (Actually drawn but it's very difficult for your opponent to draw)
What am I trying to say? Take an easy endgame. Win, don't draw.

When you come close to an endgame, start moving your king towards the middle ranks. Your king is useless when he's away from the action. In the endgame the king is a powerful piece, not as good as a rook but probably better than a bishop or a knight.

You can use outflanking to force the king away from his pawns so you can eat up his pawn cities.  Outflanking is where your opponent's king is in zugzwang and has to give up defense of a pawn.

If you reach an endgame where you are up either an exchange (rook vs knight for example) or you have a queen and your opponent doesn't, priority one is to wipe out the opponent's pawns. You have more firepower so now you can. Once you do that, either win or promote one of your own pawns.

CREATE PASSED PAWNS. This is THE KEY to winning endgames. Once you create a passed pawn, ESPECIALLY when there are no other pieces on the board besides the king and pawns, the opponent must use either a piece or his king to baby-sit the pawn and make sure it never advances to become a queen. If you have connected passed pawns, that's like an automatic win because his king can not take either one but he has to stay near them to make sure they don't promote. So you might say that, since I mentioned earlier that the king is worth about 4 pawns, once you have connected passed pawns the king is out of the action and you are up a whole king! Also, when you have a passed pawn, you can keep pushing it and when your opponent wastes time taking it you can go attack his undefended pawns. Also, your opponent's king may have to give up control of crucial squares to go chase after the passed pawn.

When there are very few pawns on the board, none of them are passed and they are all in the same area with no pieces on the board, there are two ways to create clear wins. First, find pawn breaks to create a passed pawn. Second, use your king outflank the opponent's king away from his pawns so you can devour them.

If there is a pawn race, if one person's pawn queens with check that person will usually win. If one pawn will queen and control the other pawn's queening square before the other pawn has queened, that's usually a win. Again, this seems obvious but people forget. Also, look for ways when after both pawns queen that you can win the other queen by a tactic, such as a skewer of the king and queen (most common because people will have to leave their king where it is when one side initiates a pawn race.)

In minor piece endgames, your king protects your pawn while your minor piece goes on the hunt for enemy pawns. If your pawns can protect each other (say, by getting them off the color of the opponent's bishop so he can't take them) then your king can join in the fight. This is often decisive. So that's one strategy. In bishop endgames, you want to get your pawns off the color of any bishop on the board. This is even better if you can interlock with your opponent's pawns, so that they are stuck on the same color as his bishop. This limits the bishop's activity. This is especially good if you have bishops of the same color (if it was bishops of opposite colors you would both be in trouble and you might as well take the bishops off the board and go try to win the base pawn with your king) because now your king and bishop can go cause trouble and try to trade your bishop for his bishop and base pawn (the pawn at the base of the chain of interlocking pawns), after which it's a clear win.

Knight games are a little easier. Just find the right move. That's all you have to do. Your knights are going to dance around the board and fight for each other's pawns, but just keep finding the right moves and calculating your risks and you should do fine because you read this and your opponent didn't. One piece of advice is to play on the opposite side of the board from your opponent's king so his knight is forced to defend his pawns while you attack them. IN AN ENDGAME, IF YOU ARE THE ATTACKER AND YOUR OPPONENT IS THE DEFENDER, THEN YOU ALREADY HAVE A CLEAR ADVANTAGE.

Use your minor pieces to limit the scope of the enemy's king. You could, for example, block a key square that he really wants to get to. Also you could keep a constant attack against a pawn so that his king is forced to defend it.

After pawn races are over, most people forget about the pawns and start playing with the queens. However, if the pawn race has left you with a superior position (especially if his king left the action to escort the pawn) then you can usually find a way to trade queens and keep an advantage.

In endgames, YOU NEED TO THINK BEFORE YOU MOVE. Every move has huge consequences. This is where you really need to be good at chess and able to calculate deep into the future. It is acceptable to spend ten minutes on one move in an endgame. Just figure out all possible moves and who would get the advantage from the position. If this sounds scary, remember that in endgames there are much less pieces on the board so calculation is much easier than in a middle-game or in the opening.

If you have a pawn that has not moved yet, this can become a valuable commodity because you can use it's option of moving once or twice on the first move to waste a tempo and this can often be decisive.

Connected pawns vs. a king can always protect themselves. If the king takes the backwards pawn, then the other pawn can run ahead and queen and there's no way the king can catch up with it.

TRIANGULATION: This is basically where your opponent must shuffle his king back and forth between two squares to protect a crucial square but you have two or three other squares you can move to with your king. By moving in a triangle you can gain a tempo and, again, gaining a tempo may often force your king to concede the square and let you pass through. This goes along with outflanking.

Always look at what possible squares the king can move to. Usually in endgames there are only one or two squares where a king can legally control a square. This is very helpful in setting up zugzwangs.

ROOK ENDGAMES ARE HARD! But just by knowing some key factors you may be able to grab and advantage and not have to think quite as much as you would before. First, you can use your rook to extremely limit the enemy king's movement in ways that minor pieces can't. By cutting the enemy king away from the sphere of battle you can pretty much play as if your opponent didn't even have a king. Second, rooks belong on the 7th rank. This is because if the enemy king is on the first rank he will be completely cut off, and also because any pawn that hasn't moved yet is a target.

There are tactics hiding all over the board. Look for them and find them. Don't be the guy who loses his game and goes home, analyzes it with Fritz and discovers a bishop pin that would have given him an instant win. Just remember, don't get fancy.

If you are down to a completely lost game, one strategy is to throw away everything except your king and pray for a stalemate. It's worked for me.
 

Recommended Reading:
Josh Waitzkin's Attacking Chess - Josh Waitzkin
Silman's Complete Endgame Course - Jeremy Silman
Reassess your Chess - Jeremy Silman
Mastering the Chess Openings 1&2-John Watson
My System - Aron Nimzowitsch

Don't stop playing the game as soon as you get a material advantage. Don't stop playing the game as soon as you get a material disadvantage. Having the same number of pieces as your opponent does not in any way guarantee a win or a loss.

If the center is completely closed in the middlegame, put your king in the center. It will be safer there than on the kingside or queenside.

If you are playing an opponent who is supposedly way better than you, don't give up, just play harder. If you find yourself with an advantage, it's because they messed up and you earned it, not because they're letting you have it or they gambited or something. No matter what the ratings are, the players have equal positions at the beginning of the game, and one player's higher rating does not automatically confer him an advantage.

If a player sacrifices a piece, look very deep into the sacrifice and see if there's anything wrong with it. If you see something that might be wrong, don't just assume that it's a solid sacrifice and move on, see whether there REALLY IS something wrong with taking the piece. If your opponent had such calculating skills that he could calculate a sacrifice all the way through then he would not be playing you because he would be off in Russia beating grandmasters.

If a loose piece is being defended by another piece (such as rook defended by a knight attacked by a queen) then try pushing a pawn to deflect the defending piece (make it move). People miss this. A lot.

Your opponent is not an idiot. If you attack a piece, have a reason for it. He's not going to leave it hanging, I assure you of that. You can gain a tempo by attacking a piece, however, but make sure that it doesn't move the piece to a better position. HAVE A REASON FOR EVERY MOVE.