Chess Strategies - Elements of Chess

Chess Strategies III continues to explain various chess ideas to enable you to find the right move in difficult chess positions that can occur in your games. It makes sense if you memorize those ideas to be able to apply them in your real games.

When you see a good move, wait... look for a better one.
Emanuel Lasker, 2nd World Chess Champion

There are countless little chess motifs and it makes sense to study them.

Boy, you do ask questions! Just kidding!


Disturb the coordination of your opponents pieces if you can!
Have you ever asked yourself why you lost. Little things accumulate and lead to disaster. The opponent has to see it, of course, or your mistakes will not get punished.
If you recapture the wrong way this can be enough reason to lose.
Don't attack before you are fully developed or you run into disaster.
Blacks straightforward setup leads to an unstoppable attack. Memorize this game.
If your bishop has a different color as your opponents bishop then organize an Attack running foremost on the same colors of your bishop!

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The Chess Board

Hi, you can start right here to learn the chess rules. But first I explain to you how the chess board is organized. This is necessary because you have to write down your moves when you play a serious game in a chess club.

And when you know the description of the squares you can quite easily replay games you find in chess magazines or chess books.

So, here we go...

Above you see the lines of the chess board. They go up and down. The c-line is marked. Open lines are usually controlled by the rocks and the queen. But don't worry about that now, we come to this later.

Above you see the rows or ranks. They go from left to right or vice versa.
Just understand the difference between rows (ranks) and lines. That is enough.
Above you can see the diagonals. Bishops like to use them. Place a bishop on to an open diagonal if you can.

Above you can see that every square on a chess board has a description. I just put the description on some squares.
Look at the square g7. If the black king would move to g7 then you would write on your notation sheet: Kg7
Get it? Pretty easy, isn't it?
Or if the white king moves to f4, then you write down Kf4.
A chess-board has sixty-four squares.

Learn the following Shortcuts for the pieces:
Rook = R Knight = N Bishop = B Queen = Q King = K Pawn = nothing

When a pawn moves you just write down the square name: d7 means, a pawn has moved to d7!

And now: Castling. Why do you castle? You should castle as fast as possible to protect the king.
short castling: 0-0 long castling: 0-0-0

The notation of the upper position is: 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Nf6 4.d3 Be7 and now White will castle short. The King moves t w o squares to the right and the Rook is placed directly beside the King. Look down at the next diagramm! Did you understand it? More about chess castle.

Just play like White or Black has played here:
1. Get your pieces out as fast as possible!
2. Do castle as fast as possible, if you don't castle your king will be caught in the middle and gets attacked from all sides and you lose badly.

When we talk about pieces we talk about Bishops, Nights, Rooks and Queens, but not pawns. A pawn is a pawn, right?

Note: Don't put up the chess-board the wrong way. At the right corner there must be a white square.
The white Queen must be on a white square! The black Queen must be on a black square.

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Paul Morphy - Chess Genius

"The Pride and Sorrow of Chess"

Paul Morphy grew up in a wealthy family. His father, Alonzo Michael Morphy was a lawyer and his mother, Louise Th?r?se F?licit? Thelcide Le Carpentier, was musically-talented so Morphy grew up in a cultural atmosphere where chess and music were typical highlights of social gatherings.

Morphy was a chess genius because he reached a remarkable playing strength at the age of twelve and could play a game blindfold that means without looking at the board. He learned the chess rules from his father and his uncle, just by watching their games.

One day General Winfield Scott, who played chess occasionally, came for a visit and wished to play with a strong local player. After dinner young Morphy (9 years old) played him and has beaten him twice. General Scott never played Morphy again.

In 1850 he was twelve and the Hungarian chess master Johann L?wenthal visited New Orleans to play a match against Morphy. He patted young Morphy on the head and he didn't take him seriously but just wanted to be polite and played him. He lost all three games in a row. (see image below)

In the year 1855 he began to study law in Louisiana and received his degree on April 1857, but was not allowed to work in his field as he had not reached the legal age to practice law.

For that reason he had plenty of time to play chess and has beaten the american masters at the time. In 1857 he won the chess tournament of New York.

A year later he toured Europe to beat the german master Adolf Anderssen and all players who challenged him in London and Paris. Only the english master Howard Staunton (inofficial worldchampion) refused to play him after he has watched him beating the best players around.

Frederick Milnes Edge, a journalist of the New York Herald accompanied Paul Morphy as his privat secretary who published later on a book about Morphy.

After Morphy returned to America he could not practice as a lawyer later on as the general public knew him only as a chess genius and was unable to perceive him as a lawyer. 1867 Morphy bitterly retreated from chess completely.

Some time later on Wilhelm Steinitz became world champion and he wanted to visit Morphy who met him under the condition that they will not talk about chess. Morphy became mentally sick and died lonely in Juli 1884 aged 47 in his hometown.

His style of play consisted of fast piece development, building up pressure consistently and retaining the initiative of the game.

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Women's World Championship Underway in Turkey

The Women's World Chess Championship is underway in Hatay, Turkey, with 64 players attempting to become the next champion. The tournament is being held in a knockout format, using two-game "mini-matches" to determine who will move on to the next round. Essentially, it's like the NCAA Basketball Tournament, only without everyone in your office wanting to you join a pool to predict the outcome of every game! In the case of ties -- and when you're dealing with two game matches, there will be plenty of ties -- a rapid tiebreak will commence, followed by (if necessary) blitz tiebreaks, and finally, the dreaded Armageddon game.

There are no overwhelming favorites in this competition, but there are definitely a few names that deserve notice. First, of course, is defending champion Alexandra Kosteniuk, who enters the event as just the 12th-highest rated player, but takes the top seed on virtue of holding the World Championship at present. The top rating belongs to India's Humpy Korenu, who is the only player in the field rated 2600 or higher (she is currently rated exactly 2600).

Most of the top seeds easily held serve through the first round, but there was one very notable upset. Swedish grandmaster Pia Cramling, long a top contender in any women's tournament, was dispatched 1.5-0.5 by unheralded Betul Cemre Yildiz, a Turkish Women's International Master rated 300 points lower than Cramling. Even with the home field advantage, Yildiz's victory is still a major upset. Other than that, there were no surprises to speak of, though some of the lower boards are headed into tiebreaks after splitting their first two games. We'll have more coverage of the Women's World Chess Championship as the tournament progresses!

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Carlsen on Top Halfway Through Nanjing

Well, I guess we all knew the slump wouldn't last for long. Halfway through the Nanjing Pearl Spring Chess Tournament, Magnus Carlsen leads the field, having three wins and a 4/5 score. Just behind him is Etienne Bacrot; the Frenchman has played surprisingly well to get to 3.5/5, despite a loss to Carlsen. Viswanathan Anand, Vugar Gashimov, Veselin Topalov and Wang Yue round out the field, with Topalov's 1.5/5 performance standing out as particularly disappointing.

The Pearl Spring event might be one of the newer super-tournaments on the circuit, but there's no doubt that they draw great fields, and are becoming known for great performances. The tournament debuted in 2008, when it was won by Topalov, 1.5 points ahead of Levon Aronian. Carlsen did him one better last year, scoring 8/10 to finish 2.5 points ahead of Topalov!

As always, the tournament is a double round-robin, with the second time around the order beginning on Tuesday. The tournament wraps up next weekend -- I'll have a complete wrap-up once all the action concludes.

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Carlsen Wins Big in Nanjing

Well, I guess Magnus will be okay after all. Magnus Carlsen -- once against the world's #1-rated player -- scored an impressive victory in the Nanjing Pearl Spring Tournament, finishing at 7/10 to take first place by a full point over World Champion Viswanathan Anand. Carlsen won four games without losing any, including two victories over the struggling Veselin Topalov.

Topalov has struggled mightily lately, and has seen his rating fall to "only" 2774 in the live rating list, putting him in 5th position -- which I believe is his lowest world ranking in several years. In the final round, he lost to Carlsen with the White pieces after falling for a fairly simple trap. According to a report by ChessBase, Carlsen said after the game that he actually suspected Topalov might fall into it, which might be a sign that Topalov's peers recognize that he's in poor form at the moment.

For those who love to follow along with elite chess events, the next one on the horizon appears to be the London Chess Classic, which will take place in early December. The 2nd annual Classic has another great field; Anand and Carlsen will both be there, as will Vladmir Kramnik, Hikaru Nakamura, and four top English grandmasters: Michael Adams, Nigel Short, Luke McShane and David Howell.

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Thanks for the Chess!

After having eaten plenty for Thanksgiving (and plenty of leftovers during the long weekend), it was easy to fall behind on what was happening in the chess world. Here are a few of the highlights from the last week:

Hikaru Nakamura followed up a solid performance at the World Blitz Championships by winning the BNBank Blitz tournament in Olso, Norway. Last year, Nakamura won this event over Magnus Carlsen; this year, the field wasn't nearly as strong, and Nakamura was a clear favorite. In fact, he was a perfect 13/13 before the final against Simen Agdestein, who stayed even with Nakamura until a final Armageddon game went in the American's favor. One really cool aspect to this tournament was that an amateur player was able to win his way into the tournament through an auction! Sure, the 1428-rated Joshua Schmidt paid about $360 to lose 10 games, but I'm sure he had a great time doing it!According to a report in the New York Times, an audit on the Turkish Chess Federation has found that the federation paid some delegates to vote for their bid to host the 2012 Chess Olympiad. The fallout -- if any -- from this won't be known for a while, but FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov has said that Turkey will host the Olympiad as long as he's still in charge of FIDE.The 30th Open Dutch Computer Chess Championship was held this past week, with Rybka winning another title. Several of the other top programs were not in attendance, but there was a Jonny system running with 800(!) cores that seemed poised to make a challenge. Of course, with Rybka running on 260 cores itself, it seemed unlikely that the extra computing power would make up for the nearly 300-point rating difference between the two programs had on equal hardware. Ultimately, Rybka ended up scoring 8.5/9, dropping only a draw against Spark, one of three programs that shared second place with 6 points.

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Aronian Wins World Blitz Championship

Two stories to share with you today:

1) First, as the title suggests, Levon Aronian topped the World Blitz Championships. It's hard to call his victory an upset; while I mentioned that Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura were picking up most of the hype going into the tournament, Aronian had to be one of the other favorites. He finished with a 24.5/38 score, just a half-point ahead of Teimour Radjabov. Aronian actually had a 2.5 point lead with four rounds remaining, but finished up by scoring just 1/4, barely holding off Radjabov's charge. As for the youngsters we spotlighted earlier, Carlsen took 3rd with 23.5 points, and Nakamura shared 4th with Boris Gelfand on 21.5 points.

2) I caught this story about police breaking up chess games in a public park in the New York media, and then again over at ChessBase. Okay, I suppose the reasoning for not wanting adults hanging around the park on their own makes sense, but doesn't this seem like the kind of thing that would merit a warning rather than court appearances? I especially love the line at the end of the story about the fact that one of the men involved had a prior record; I'm sure it's true, but I'm also confident that few (if any) of those crimes were committed while playing blitz.

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Three Top Tight Tal Table

Try saying that title five times fast! At the end of the Tal Memorial in Moscow, three players shared first with 5.5/9 scores: Levon Aronian, Sergey Karjakin, and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov. Even after applying all the tiebreakers they had available to them, there could be no clear winner; while both Aronian and Karjakin had better tiebreaks than Mamedyarov, they had identical scorelines against all opponents, which seemingly leaves the two of them in a dead heat tie for first.

American fans will be glad to see Hikaru Nakamura finishing this very strong event with a +1 score. In fact, his 5/9 finish includes no losses at all, though he did miss a couple chances to win -- including in the final round against Alexander Grischuk, which could have given Nakamura a share of first. Grischuk, Nakamura and Wang Hao shared fourth place instead, just ahead of Vladmir Kramnik (4.5/9), Boris Gelfand (3.5), Alexei Shirov (3.0), and Pavel Eljanov (2.5).

The players aren't quite ready to leave Moscow yet, as the World Blitz Championship is set to begin on Tuesday. The Tal Memorial's participants will be joined by more of the world's elite, including last year's blitz champion, Magnus Carlsen. Many chess fans have been waiting for a Carlsen-Nakamura blitz matchup at the World Blitz Championship ever since Carlsen dominated the event last year, only to later lose to Nakamura in an Oslo blitz tournament later in the year. I looked for betting odds on the tournament, but couldn't find any, so we'll call those two the favorites for now. I'll be sure to let you know who comes out on top later this week!

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Kramnik Tops Bilbao, Anand Tops the Ratings

Vladimir Kramnik didn't exactly keep up his blazing hot start, but drawing his final four games was enough after winning the first two, and he finished clear first in the Bilbao Masters. Viswanathan Anand finished 2nd, with a win and five draws, which under the 3-1-0 scoring system put him two points back (10 for Kramnik, 8 for Anand). Magnus Carlsen recovered somewhat late in the event to take 3rd with 6 points, while Alexei Shirov failed to find a win during the event, and finished last with 4 points.

Carlsen also struggled at the Olympiad earlier in the month, and the combination of the two poor results has temporarily knocked Carlsen out of first place on the unofficial live ratings list. Anand is currently on top again at 2803, while Carlsen's rating rounds to "only" 2802. It will be interesting to see if this is just a minor speed bump for the young Carlsen, or if these struggles are the beginning of a longer slump. My money is on the former -- everything about his play suggests that he'll be back on track in no time.

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2010 London Chess Classic Underway

One of the newest highlights on the chess calendar is the London Chess Classic, currently in it's second year of operation. Just like last year, the event is an eight-player round robin featuring four of England's top grandmasters (Nigel Short, Michael Adams, Luke McShane and David Howell) along with four high profile international stars (Viswanathan Anand, Magnus Carlsen, Vladimir Kramnik and Hikaru Nakamura). Also like last year, the football style scoring is in effect, offering three points for a win and one for a draw. If it's good enough for the Premier League, it's good enough for chess, right? The idea, of course, is to encourage more fighting chess, as a player with a win and a loss will hold a lead over one with two draws.

So far, three players hold the lead on a tight table. Carlsen has done the most to take advantage of the scoring system, making up for his two losses with three wins to share the lead at 9 points. Anand and McShane have taken more traditional routes of winning two games and drawing three, a score that would place them a half-point ahead of the Norwegian in most tournaments; here, it's simply good for the same 9 points. Close behind with 8 points are Nakamura and Kramnik; the two have already played each other, with Nakamura giving himself a present by scoring a win with Black on his birthday.

Most of the leaders have played each other already, but a few key matchups remain; McShane and Nakamura will play each other tomorrow, while Kramnik's final two games are against Carlsen and Anand. I'll let you know how it all turns out later in the week!

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Carlsen Drops Out of World Championship Cycle

I'm not sure if this news is shocking, or almost expected, or maybe understandable -- but no matter how you classify it, it's certainly big. Magnus Carlsen has announced that he won't be participating in the upcoming World Championship cycle, meaning that the world's top rated player will not be one of the challengers to Viswanathan Anand's crown.

According to a report at ChessBase, Carlsen cited several reasons for the decision, some of which seem more reasonable than others. For instance, his frustration with the changing rules and regulations is dead on; FIDE needs to pick a schedule and a format and stick with them. Others are a bit more puzzling; allowing the World Champion to advance directly to the final match against a challenger is a gigantic advantage for the sitting champion, but it's also been a part of chess for over a century, and forces a new champion to defeat the previous one in order to earn the crowd. The idea that a tournament might be a better way to determine a championship rather than match play is also one that most chess fans will likely disagree with.

So, what do you think? Is Carlsen right to drop out in protest to FIDE's handling of the World Championship match, or are his "suggestions" for future World Championship suggestions too outlandish? Vote in our poll or leave a comment below!

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Carlsen Comes From Behind to Win London Chess Classic

After starting with two losses in his first three games, Magnus Carlsen rallied back to win his second consecutive London Chess Classic. Using the 3-1-0 scoring system, Carlsen led the table with 13 points, two points ahead of both Viswanathan Anand and the surprising Luke McShane, who had a great result in a tournament where he was rated 7th out of the eight participants.

Carlsen would have tied with Anand and McShane in a standard scoring system (all three would have finished on 4.5/7 points), but the emphasis put on wins at this event gave him a clear victory. A mild controversy was averted by Carlsen winning in the first round; since "wins" is often the first tiebreak used in other top-flight tournaments anyway, Carlsen would have likely won even if the "football" scoring system wasn't in effect. Had Carlsen drawn his last game against Nigel Short, he would have had 11 points, and taken the title on tiebreaks despite being a half-point behind on traditional scoring.

Personally, I don't think there's much of a dilemma there; the players knew what the scoring system was going into the tournament, making the traditional scoring method irrelevant in terms of what happened here. Of course, it's perfectly reasonable to be against the scoring system in general (while I don't care strongly one way or another, I understand the argument that it can lead to sloppy play by enticing players to overextend in an attempt to win unwinnable games), but once the tournament is underway, it's hard to dispute that the only scoring system that matters is the one being used. Other sports have occasional changes to their scoring in specified tournaments; for instance, see the Stableford System which is occasionally used for golf tournaments. Perhaps a more relevant example is the popular Asian board game of Go, which features slight scoring and handicap changes between tournaments (and especially between countries) that can slightly alter play at the professional level. When the concept of komi, a handicap given to the second player as compensation for the disadvantage of playing second, was introduced to professional play, it was controversial to say the least -- but more than 70 years later, Go is still Go.

American fans might be slightly disappointed at Hikaru Nakamura's 4th place finish, but the result was better than it sounds. His +1 score was another excellent showing against world-class competition, and included a win with Black against Vladimir Kramnik, which is always a big victory. Naka is having a great year, and appears poised to both cross the 2750 barrier and break into the top 10 in the world rankings.

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Chess The Easy Not So Easy Game

Chess requires a lot of strategy and thinking ahead.  This game is a popular past time and has been around for generations.  A few rules may have been added and changed, but now the game is taken to competition.  On this page you can find helpful information to aid you in your strategy and also to check out information from other people.  Take a look around.