Chess Tips

[Chessleader]

This is a very unique, useful article written by auother Les Zsoldos.
It contains the extream chess tactics thought by top chess players.

Part1:

Chess experts often tell beginners that they should not spend too much time worrying about their opening repertoire. They advise them to work on their middlegames and their endgames because they claim that they are more important. At the same time, though, top chess players often spend most of their time working on their opening. They often work hard to find a variation that their opponent is unlikely to be familiar with or may even look for a novelty, a move that few players know about.

Though it is true that everyone needs to work on tactics, positional concepts such as controlling space and preventing threats, middlegames and endgames (many players play a great middlegame only to see their game fall apart in the endgame), if you lose in the opening, extensive knowledge about the rest of the game is insufficient. Solid knowledge of the openings in chess is a vital part of success.

For me, improving at chess requires great patience. I sometimes feel that I've made progress but later play a game where I don't make use of my newly-acquired knowledge. Or sometimes I feel that I've learned certain strategies and tricks which I'm never able to use in an actual game. That may be because my opponent also knows them or because many situations that we read about in books rarely seem to come up in match play. Even so, knowing about these strategies and tricks keeps me alert and prepares me for a similar situation which may occur in a game.
The key to mastering the game of chess is to become familiar with as many different types of positions as possible.

Once you've done this, your pattern recognition will improve to the point that you'll instinctively feel what to do once you achieve similar patterns on the chessboard. One excellent way to develop recognition for different patterns is to analyze the games of great players. For example, the Cuban grandmaster Capablanca wasn't known for complex openings, but they were very effective.

It's important to choose an opening that you're comfortable and reflects your style. If you're an aggressive player, you'll probably prefer the King Pawn Opening e4 over the Queen Pawn Opening d4.
Grandmasters are so familiar with different kinds of chess openings that they can often look at the middlegame of a chess game and say what opening was used. The reason is that they know what kinds of middlegames develop from different openings.

Grandmasters and their trainers study the games of their opponents very carefully and then prepare openings for specific opponents. They analyze the openings of their own games looking for surprises that a well-prepared opponent might try to use on them. In other words, they not only work on their opening repertoires but also study the repertoires of their opponents. A good chess player tries to disrupt your games as much as possible, so you must be aware of this when you build up your opening repertoire.

Once in a tournament I told a player which opening he could expect to face from his next opponent in the tournament. The reason is that I had played a game against him and also seen a few of his games, so I had an idea of his style. The player prepared for the opening which both of us expected his opponent would use. To our surprise, however, his opponent used a different opening. This shows that no matter how extensively we may prepare for a particular opening, there is no guarantee that our opponent will use it. For this reason, it's a good idea to be flexible and accept that our opponent may surprise us. Fortunately for the player who faced an unexpected opening, he still managed to win.

An opening repertoire is necessary to become a great player. The moves that grandmasters make aim to obtain the maximum benefit out of their opening repertoires. They're the result of their extensive preparation and their moves are often so subtle that they're difficult for lower-level players to understand. A grandmaster make may a move in the opening whose relevance is only clear several moves later. For that reason, it's better to use an own opening repertoire which is your own and you understand well rather than a complex opening of a grandmaster.

Do not try to build a repertoire by learning openings where your main objective is to have a won game after only a few moves. This is playing for tricks and might lead to a few won games, but will not increase your overall knowledge much. Your objective in the opening should be to develop a game which makes you comfortable. It should also be to get games where you are exposed to the largest number of possible types of positions. Then you'll be on the road to mastery.

If you play tournaments, a good idea is to note your win and loss percentages with different openings. You can then see which openings are the most successful for you and develop those. Analyzing the openings of top players and developing a keen ability to recognize patterns in your openings are also vital for building up your opening repertoire.

End of part 1

[Chessleader]

Part 2:

Chess tips: How to build up your opening repertoire

Chess is a game of strategy, and if you take opening moves to a logical conclusion, given the layout of the board and the ability of movement that your pieces have, then there will only be so many opening moves to a game of chess. From that very humble opening, each movement that a chess player makes can determine success or failure of a player to beat his opponent. Games can be lost in a matter of moves, and it is therefore important that player learn how to build up their knowledge and opening repertoire.

There are several ways of achieving this, and though many argue that practical playing of the game is a good way to go, this is questionable. Yes, you will learn which moves work and which don't though unless you hone these skills, your playing will always be mediocre.

Adding to the repertoire from experience.

If new to playing, a player will very soon learn those opening moves that are erroneous, and many players that play on a casual basis are unaware of how they can use this learning process to improve their skill. It's a hit and miss affair, though with the age of technology it doesn't have to be. If you are earnest to improve, then one of the ways of building up a repertoire from experience of games with others is to open up notepad or a word document, and to document the moves that were made throughout the game. Once the game is finished, run these through a chess program and take a look at the ways you opened and the consequences of those openings, and you will learn to eliminate those openings that are ineffective, and keep a record of those that work well for you.

From books and learning sites.

There are many sources on the Internet and in software and book form that give details of classic openings. Instead of just reading them and trying to digest the information in number form which is hard to picture, again playing a simulation against the computer or on a chess game console will help you understand how the tactics work, and expand your repertoire.

The sources that list classic openings are many, and what made these classic openings was constant use and recognition that they work. If you were to think of the chessboard as a battlefield, which indeed it is, how good a battle would be fought in real life if soldiers were sent in to war with no thought of consequence or pertaining conditions ? The battle would be ineffective, and in chess it really doesn't have to be that way, since the options that you are faced with as a player are limited by mathematics, and in learning them, you not only increase your chances of success, but can also make your game play much stronger.

Chess simulation.

There are devoted chess games available to download, and amongst them are those which allow a player to get hints of which moves to play.

Here, let the computer teach you. Jot down the different openings, and be aware that some work for black pieces and others are more effective for white. Since white always starts a game, knowing which initial white moves work well will strengthen the game from the very beginning, and by learning to increase the repertoire, the amount of times you win will also increase, as your understanding of the logic of chess, and the consequence of moves that you make will be honed by the knowledge gained. Chess simulation software is ideal for helping you to discover opening moves, though it's use is twofold. If you research the common opening moves on a chess site or in a book, the chess simulation helps you even further to see beyond the move to the logical conclusion, and help you anticipate the opponent's moves better.

What this does is give you strengths and after a while with the development and skills you learn, you will even be able to gage moves in advance, to plan attack rather than moving pieces in the hope that you can get out of any sticky situations that arise. Logic doesn't work like luck, and the more you learn about opening moves, and the larger your repertoire, the better you will understand and play the game of chess.

End of part 2