Assuming this is related to my comment on your latest game. The reason your bishop was so good in that position was just mobility relative to your other pieces. You only had one other piece developed and it was a standard knight with no real future. Your b8 knight was going to be quite poor for a long time, and your dark bishop was still entombed. So your light bishop, even if just by the process of elimination, is by far your best piece.

It had alot of potential diagonals to pressurize and you could do a variety of things with it as white has alot of potentially vulnerable light squares, such as c2/e4/etc. If you compare white's light bishop, which you ended up trading it for, it has no future at all. Black has no light square weaknesses at all, and the bishop has no future anywhere anytime soon.

I like the nimzo indian paired with the QID in the case of d4 Nf6 c4 e6 Nf3. The positions are alot more idea based than theory based, and it gives a ton of ways for white to go wrong. I've probably had more miniatures against 2100+ players in the nimzo/QID than I've had in any other opening (including as white!). Even Spassky fell to a beautiful miniature against the QID against Tal in their famous game.

I'm not fond of the KID since I think it's one of the few openings where I think it's quite difficult to just play by ideas as opposed to theory. And I haven't been following contemporary chess theory in a long time, but in the past Kramnik had basically buried the KID at top level play with his improvements in the bayonet attack. Is it really the most common opening played at the top once again?

The ideas behind the KID are quite simple. Develop your pieces, get the center closed, push all your pawns onto white's kingside, sacrifice your light squared bishop, mate white. Do all this while preventing black from creating lots of little queens on the queenside.

Upon further review it's possible that 1. ... Nf6 isn't necessarily the KID, like I thought it was. As I said it's an opening sequence that I know nothing about

What I should have said is that Nf6 is more common than d5, but I suppose you're not locked into one specific defense yet at that point. I'll take a look at this nimzo/QID you speak of

Yeah, the indians just refer to the fianchetto'd bishops. Not exactly PC is that, eh?

So KID is 'defined' by the setup with g6/Bg7/Nf6/d6. Although white's setup is certainly relevant. It's not a system, but I think any noncastrated white player is going to happily play against the KID.

Nimzo is just d4 Nf6 c4 e6 Nc3 Bb4. QID is d4 Nf6 c4 e6 Nf3 b6, both with the broad general idea of fighting for e4.

[Event "18th Amber Rapid"]
[Site "Nice FRA"]
[Date "2009.03.21"]
[Round "7"]
[White "Aronian, L."]
[Black "Kramnik, V."]
[Result "0-1"]
[ECO "A13"]
[WhiteElo "2750"]
[BlackElo "2759"]
[PlyCount "82"]
[EventDate "2009.03.14"]

1. c4 e6 2. Nf3 d5 3. cxd5 exd5 4. g3 Nf6 5. Bg2 Bd6 6. O-O O-O 7. Nc3 Re8 8.
d3 h6 9. Qc2 c5 10. e4 Nc6 11. Nxd5 Nxd5 12. exd5 Nb4 13. Qb3 Bf5 14. Ne1 Qc7
15. Qc4 Rab8 16. a3 b5 17. Qc3 Na6 18. Nc2 c4 19.
dxc4 bxc4 20. Nd4 Bd3 21. Re1 Be5 22. Rxe5 Qxe5 23. Bf4 Qf6 24. Bxb8 Rxb8 25.
b4 Nc7 26. Rc1 Re8 27. h3 Qe5 28. Qa1 Nxd5 29. Nb5 Nxb4 30. axb4 Qxb5 31. Qxa7
Qxb4 32. Bd5 Re7 33. Qd4 Qd2 34. Rxc4 Qe1+ 35. Kg2 Bf1+ 36. Kh2 Bxc4 37. Bxc4
Re4 38. Qd8+ Kh7 39. Bd3 Qxf2+ 40. Kh1 Qe1+ 41. Kg2 Qd2+ 0-1

I was just looking over this game from the recent amber. I think it's seriously instructive. It's incredible how Kramnik with sharp play turns a seemingly innocuous position into a wild initiative with an unclear pawn sac against another super gm. Although I think his 21st move was surely just a blunder.

Just made me realize how mentally lazy and weak/passive I am when playing positions. Moves like 7. .. c6 have become way too automatic. I even want to give 7. .. c6 a ?! since it's not really an immediately necessary move and it seriously restricts black's options while giving white an easier game than he deserves. In fact, in my database every single time a 2500+ has gotten into that position he has chosen 7. .. Re8. Not really an ah-hah moment, but that's pretty amazing.

Nothing resembling a brag here, but I think the end of this game qualifies as some positive variance: http://www.chessvideos.tv/chess-game...r.php?id=13991

Yikes! Some good tactical work would help you a ton. Nice suck out though As Dire mentioned above, the king's indian is kind of strategically simple, but you frequently suffer from cramped positions and, at least for amateurs, it's much easier to play white. Nimzo/QID is a perfect opening system to play. Generally speaking you're trying to use your pieces to control the squares e4 and d5 and prevent white from playing e4. This is the "light square blockade" that you may read about or see in a video. You also frequently will give up one of your bishops in order to double white's c & b pawns on the c file. This gives you something concrete to attack and sometimes will give you an outpost or two for your knights.

I'm working on it. I've been doing a ton of chesstempo problems, and I'm finally starting to feel a lot more comfortable with those, so now I just recently started playing more actual games. I'm still not applying the tactical concepts to real games as well as I'd like to (duh) but I'm seeing noticeable progress. Most of my games lately have seen me successfully hit my opponent with a devastating tactic at some point... but I'm not good enough at seeing potential tactics against me yet

What time limits do you play?
I still hang pieces and fall to elementary tactics in 5-minute all the time. But I never do that at longer time controls. I think blitz might be harmful to low-rated players

I'm playing blitz (mostly 5/5). I do have a specific reason too. I'm just now getting back into chess, I hadn't played basically at all for a long time (like five years), but I used to be rather serious about it and while I wasn't "good" per se, I was a lot better than I am now. My number one goal at this point is to restore my pattern recognition abilities. I want to work on that first, and then get my calculation back up to par next, so my plan was first to do a ton of chesstempo problems, and then once those started to feel legitimately comfortable, to play a bunch of blitz. I want to force myself to just play whatever feels most natural and if it's bad accept the consequences. Once I get some solid improvement there and start to feel that my pattern recognition is coming back up to par, then I'll move to longer time controls and start working on adding in calculation as well.

Keep in mind, the "play a bunch of blitz" phase started like a couple days ago. I've already seen a lot of improvement, though there's clearly a ton more to be made before I feel like I'm playing at the level I used to. I realize why blitz can be harmful, but it seems like the most natural way to restore skills I used to have and now lack. I don't know if it's the best improvement plan or not, but we'll see how it works out.

Tonight I played a game in a tournament where you play one game per week. I sacrificed a pawn for open files, eventually got it back and went up a pawn, and traded into a pawn-up rook ending. I sacrificed a pawn to get another one down the board. My opponent played what was probably the best defense, which I hadn't fully considered, so a move or two later I grabbed a pawn (doubling and isolating my center pawns) instead of pushing (which would have given me another passed pawn, this one protected, and with some more good play would have gotten me the win.) Now the game should have been a draw. But in mutual time pressure (we eventually got to 0:01 (him) and 0:02 (me) plus 5-second delay) he blundered in a basic rook + pawn vs. rook (I had the pawn) endgame and gave me the win.

Brag: I won; most of the game was pretty well played.
Beat: I misplayed the endgame; it doesn't feel good to beat a friend on a blunder like that.
Variance: I had trouble calculating all night long; this might get him to actually study basic endgames now?

This is a question I'm torn on. Is blitz bad for new players? On the plus side you get lots of fast exposure to tactics, openings and occasionally endgames. Plus the tactics they lose to are quite simple (i.e. 1 or 2 ply). These don't necessarily require a lot of thinking time.

On the other hand, planning takes time. I sure as hell can't play a brand new opening even halfway well in 3 0 games. Trying to find simple plans makes it easy to get lazy and use unsound strategy.

I have to admit I normally encourage new adult players to play as much 5 0 and 10 0 blitz as they can. I think the super fast exposure is worth the risks, but I try to explain the problems blitz can cause. With kids, NEVER do this. It's nearly impossible to get them to ever slow down at all

Anyone else have thoughts on this?

I think blitz is very good, but whatever lots of differing opinions.

I think blitz is good as long as you play it 'properly'. eg - more than just playing solidly looking for blunders or a flag. The problem is just blunder/flag hunting and playing solid is enough to easily take somebody to 2000 5-min or higher, while I think playing 'proper' will result in a slower initial growth so there's alot of poker-style reinforcement of bad play.

Here is a blitz game I played.

http://www.ficsgames.com/cgi-bin/sho...45;action=show

I deliberately made an unsound rook sacrifice for not much compensation because it would give white a lot of chances to go wrong. I would never make such a move in a longer time control.

Is this adapting to blitz play or creating bad habits?!

Edit: It seems like in blitz, getting the initiative (having the opponent react to your threats) is much more important than in standard games.

You know you missed mate in one, right? I wouldn't usually harp on it except that it seems that you were playing fairly directly for mate on h2, and then you didn't take it.

Yeah I was going for mate then I'm like "ooh I missed a fork for several moves! pretty material" then I'm like "wtf I won already " and I didn't really pay attention except to make sure I didn't fall for some trick

http://www.ficsgames.com/cgi-bin/sho...21;action=show

Example #259298 in "Why you shouldn't play a hypermodern opening like Pirc if you are bad at tactics"

I make some pretty serious strategic blunders in this game (letting him trade off my dark-squared bishop, opening the a1-h8 diagonal for him, etc) but I still win because I mate him

Free pawn on b5.

oops

Heh, I thought you ignored it cause you were skeeered.

Well, in theory I should be going like "Hmm, if I take that pawn, I will be ahead in material. But he will be able to do ...Rb8, gaining a tempo, and opening a file on my king. Is this trade-off worth it?"

But tbh I was more like "GRAARGH KILL KING"

See, I would have been like, "munch, thanks"

[img]http://www.*********************/uploads/87f7b8123a.png[/img]

Black has just captured my e-pawn. Basically this game I am totally owning because of my space, strong center, and his crappy minor pieces. He is thinking 1. fxe5 exd5 2. cxd5 Nxd5 when his pieces are free and he's won a pawn.

Instead, I kick his ass with a nice in-between Zug, which gives me a great outpost, monstrous amounts of space, and a clear kingside attack!

The initiative is one of the most critical tools in standard games, especially at high levels of play!! Often times players sacrifice vast amounts of material just to obtain it without an explicitly clear path to immediately mate or regain the material.

One of the biggest benefits of playing blitz is to work on your intuition. Your rook sacrifice here is not really great because you have Nd5 instead, which also keeps pressurizing white without giving him time to get organized and does it for free. BUT, the idea of your rook sacrifice is great and it's also something you should certainly be more than willing to do in a slow game.

I mean you are sacrificing material to pose a ton of problems to your opponent. This is not an unsound idea. It often turns out that he simply cannot meet all the problems you can pose, even if he plays absolutely perfectly! This is not unique to blitz. Give me black's side even after your premature Rxh3 (I say premature since I think after Nd5 it becomes a critical idea after like Nd5 Ba3 and I think Rxh3 is probably decisive) in a 2 hour game and I'm pretty sure I still win it the vast majority of the time - although I haven't deeply analyzed it, but it seems very like black's initiative isn't going anywhere and white has a long and extremely difficult, if possible, defense ahead of him.

So good play, bad mindset.