| Opening
Chess Strategies
Many comments have been
made about the objectives of the opening play and perhaps
the best advice we’ve heard is the one about being
able to get to the middle game with a playable position.
This ideally means that you have your king safeguarded,
your pieces have decent mobility and scope, you also
have sound pawn structures, and you have opportunities
to create real threats to decisively win material or
even cause a checkmate.
Most chess instructional
books will list the following as important opening concepts
to achieve the above:-
- Controlling the
Centre
- Develop your pieces
- Safeguarding your
king, ideal defence, maintaining the integrity of
the castled king
- Hinder your opponent’s
attempts to do any/all of the above
The player who can get
the job done quicker will usually be rewarded with a
superior middle game position. Tempi is therefore a
very critical factor in the opening. Every move counts
towards securing key positions, getting another piece
orchestrated into the attack and/or keeping the king
out of harm’s way. Many less skilled players tend
to overlook the importance of this. So avoid making
futile moves in the opening or attacking too early without
sufficient attacking pieces or insufficient backup.
TEMPI is basically how
to get there faster.
Some openings are deceptively
passive and “quiet” favouring a slow strategical
battle and gradually building up tactical opportunities
which explodes later into the middle game. Some others
are aggressive and explosive very early in the game
abounding in tactical opportunities for both with lots
of threats and counter threats. And, yet others get
very quickly into the middle and the end game usually
with a race for pawn promotions determining the eventual
winner.
Find an opening that
suits your style of play and let it well. Gambits and
hypermodern openings are usually favoured by strong
tactical players as they often present many exciting
tactical opportunities. Always remember, different openings
to suit different style of play.
Middle
Game Chess Strategies
There
is no clear definition of when the opening ends and
the middle game begins. The end of the opening blurs
in to the beginning of the middle. However it would
be a good approximate to suggest that once the general
development stage is over is when the middle game begins.
If your opening play was good and you should have an advantageous
position, you will then need to assess the position and
decide on the strategy forward to win the game eg;-
- Attack the king and go for checkmate and/or in
the process win substantial material (show example)
- Go quickly to the endgame by exchanging pieces
and win on the endgame based on you having better
pawn structures (show example)
- Attack your opponents weak side of the board (relative
to you) triggering further weaknesses in your opponents
position for you to exploit when the surface(show
example).
- Tactical play to win material even if it’s
a pawn and then go quickly into endgame to secure
a win (show example)
Don’t
worry too much at this point if you don’t fully
understand the examples above. These will be dealt with
over the next 6 days.
However,
if your opening was not well played as a consequence
of having lost tempi or other more obvious mistake,
then you will have to consider the following options
in your planning;
- Consolidate your position and safeguard your king
- Give material to regain tempo (show examples)
- Counter attack
- Remedy the fault eg work on improving your pawn
structure an/or opening up lines to free your pieces
(show examples)
- Remove the threat – through exchange or creating
a defensive obstacle (show examples).
Common
middle game tactics include the following
- Pin
- Fork
- Discovered attack/check
- Double attack/check
- Opening up a line (diagonals, files, ranks)
- Overworked pieces
- Skewers
- Deflection
- Decoys
- Maintaining the Tension
Common Middle Game Positional Strength
- An escape route for your king
- Connected rooks
- Controlling the open file
- Controlling the diagonals (eg fiancé toed
Bishop)
- Opponents weak spots eg f7,c7
At all stages of your planning and its execution, be
alert to your opponent’s threats too. Never attack
with total disregard for your king’s safety. Hence
it would be a good idea at this point to visualise and
recognise some common checkmate positions so that not
only can you visualise checkmate opportunities against
your opponent but that you can also anticipate threats
to your own king.
Common Mating Positions in the Middle Game
- back rank checkmate
- smothered mate
- bishop and queen
- bishop and rook
End Game Chess Strategies
Tempi
are even more crucial here. It’s harder to regain
a move here once it’s lost. A good analogy here
is like the PUTT is to golfers. If you miscount, just
1 move short would result in an outcome you wouldn’t
want eg a draw or worse a lost in an otherwise winning
game. You must therefore be very thorough in your calculations
during the end game. However, in competitive timed games,
time pressure is usually the case experienced during
this stage of the game. Therefore, you are usually required
to make quick and accurate decisions. You can do this
successfully by familiarising, and committing to memory,
as many end game situations as you can muster. It is
like taking a mathematics examination in that you can
usually work out the answers by first principles but
it is quicker and more efficient to use formulae which
you know and have memorised. We will focus deeper into
this in day 2.Nevertheless
here are some basic building blocks for the endgame
- Opposition
- Within the box
- Winning Pawn structures
- Shepherding with the rook, rooks or queen
- Shepherding with the bishops
And
here are some common end game Mating positions
- Rook
- Queen
- Bishop and rook
- Knight and rook
And
importantly, some stalemate positions.
In the endgame, when you are in a losing position, you
may have to consider one or a combination of the following
options:
- Continue to have counter threats and look out for
a swindle
- Play for draw eg perpetual check, repetition of
moves, stalemate,
- Resign if none of the above is possible.
A
good concept to remember is that during the endgame,
you would like to use your king in a more active and
perhaps even aggressive role. This is very much unlike
the opening game where you would want to keep your king
safe and out of harm’s way.
Also
your pawn on the 6th and 7th rank from your side of
the board can create tremendous anxiety to your opponent.
Even with a material disadvantage, having your pawn
or pawns so far advanced on the board makes pawn promotion
opportunities very real indeed. |
