Perhaps, but against a strong opponent I'm not sure 12 perfect opening moves gives you that much of an edge. Against a weaker opponent, though, it would probably be relatively more beneficial. Actually, thinking more about it, the openings would probably be FAR more useful to a low-level class player like myself. I guess though, my point is that regardless of which is more useful I'd still rather know the openings, just because it's useful.

I'd rather gain the perfect opening ability even if it was only four moves deep. I doubt that would have much, if any, meaningful benefit to my game. I suspect that the first four moves of a "perfect" opening probably won't take very many players outside of lines they already know and have studied, so from a practical perspective it would be nearly useless. I would still prefer it to the endgames, though, because it would be awesome to enter line X of the Sicilian, or whatever the hell turns out to be "perfect", KNOWING that my choice of opening was objectively "right". Even if I end up in a line that my opponent still knows better than me because of it.

It's possible to be diligent and memorize (if you have a good memory..) the sharp and important opening lines you play.

Just takes some investigation, hard work, and routine practice.

Some 6 piece endgames are particularly tricky. Playing all of these PERFECTLY would allow for great opportunities for scoring an extra half-point, like I mentioned above.

Really sharp Open Sicilian lines don't end at move 12 as well, so it's not like you'll be scoring KO's directly with your knowledge.

Part of it depends, also, on what it turns out that "perfect openings" actually are. If the ability to play "perfect openings" for 12 moves results in you following lines that have already been analyzed that deeply, because those lines really are best, then it will give you a far smaller advantage then if some obscure third move that nobody today plays is, in fact, objectively best.

Without knowing what the "perfect" 12-move opening is, we have absolutely no way to know how differently someone would play chess if they had the ability to follow it, and therefore we can't evaluate how valuable it would be. On the other hand, we have tablebases to *show* us what the perfect six-man endgame is, and so it's really easy to compare our actual play to "perfection", and see exactly how many points we lost with those mistakes.

Also, you could be provided with an advantage after a perfect 12 move opening sequence and afterwards squander it and/or blunder.

Meanwhile, 6-piece endgame perfect play secures the half-point/point.

My answer would be easy. I want to be a strong endgame player more than any other part of the game. I love them for their subtle, unforgiving precision.

But when I play them, there's always a moment where my eyes gloss over and I stop calculating and start thinking in too broad of terms. I start thinking "okay, this pawn is superior to those pawns and that's settled" instead of calculating the consequences of each move. Oh look, here's an example from tonight:

http://www.chessvideos.tv/chess-game...r.php?id=43811

Out of 1718 games in my personal database, exactly 158 reached a 6 piece ending. And just going through them quickly, I see the vast majority of those had the expected result anyway, since they were already hopelessly won, lost, or drawn. Maybe one or two in every ten could have their result changed with perfect knowledge, so that averages to something like 1 game in 60 per year since I've been playing would have been affected.

I'm not sure having the openings down perfectly to 12 moves would be as useful as it may sound. If you play some sort of super sharp opening like the botvinnik semi slav, marshal gambit in the spanish, etc then 12 moves means nothing. And if you're not playing the super sharp openings then..?

And not only does theory change and evolve, but it can often be the case that the theoretically best move may not be the best move in practice. I think a good example of that is:

1. d4 d5 2. c4 c6 3. cxd5 cxd5 4. Nc3

When many opponents play this line they are just looking for a draw or a super safe position where its unlikely they will lose. The funny thing is:

4. .. e5!?

Going into the winawer counter gambit. Black scores incredibly well here, 38.1% meaning he is substantially outperforming white, but I think it almost certainly has to be largely for psychological and stylistic reasons rather than the objective theoretic quality of the line. You instantly go from balanced and boring into chaotic and imbalanced.

It very well may be that Nf6 is a theoretically superior move, but in many cases e5 can be a better performing move. I think Kasparov's annotations in the charity odds match he played against Chapman in 2001 are really enlightening in this regard. Though there he was obviously playing against a handicap, the point comes down to the fact that he certainly acknowledged the reality that in practical matches the best move is not necessarily always the move that is objectively best.

I am a total beginner at chess, know the basics, not much more. I want to get better but not sure where / how to start. Recommendations on books and/or trainingsites for me? Other approaches?

I've heard very good things about "How to Beat your Dad at Chess" for players of that level, regardless of age.

46.Bd6 should hold the draw at least, if not be winning as it kills off black's pawn advances. As a general comment, you seem to underutilise/underestimate the importance of the king in endgames & often push pawns/trade pieces when simply improving the position of the king would be much better.

http://gorkachc.blogspot.com/2011/04...p-2042011.html might also be useful in regards to the earlier position with the rook/bishop v bishop & pawns.

The book winning chess tactics is good. It took me from a 1200 player to a 1500 player when i was young. Also if you're willing to put in time, Chess: 5334 Problems, Combinations, and Games is good. The author used this method to teach his daughters at a young age, whom all became grandmasters.

The 5334 book... is it good for me? I'm about 1400/1500 on playchess, and about 17/1800 on chesscube. I bought the winning chess tactics book but it was really really easy.

I also think saying "my rating is 1500" or something isn't accurate because different sites have different standards of rating. I really do think that chesscube is 300 points easier than playchess...perhaps even more...

Maurice Ashley on the US Champs commentary:

"I tell my students that if a trade isn't forced or fantastic, don't do it."

Is this a useful guideline for developing players?

Doesn't that pretty easily equate to "do all you can to avoid trades" to a developing player (not sure what that is the PC form of ). My first instinct is that it's not a good guideline

But I have heard something similar in this forum somewhere. Basically, it warns against the natural tendency to resolve all points of tension immediately. Wait to make the trade until you get something out of it. For instance, after playing ...Nf6 Bg5, there's no reason to play Bxf6 right away. I think that this also works well with pawns, which often find themselves able to be traded in the center, but such a trade should often be waited upon until it proves to be advantageous.

"Fantastic" is a bit extreme. Avoiding trades without a plan is as bad as making them without a plan.

I kind of took it out of context. He didn't mean avoid the trade, he just meant don't initiate it. He was saying something about losing a tempo by initiating a trade you don't have to.

True, but I imagine that most beginners have a problem with initiating trades for no reason, so being told to hold back probably helps out. That is, I haven't seen many lower-level games where someone gets into trouble by avoiding trades unnecessarily.

I agree that making moves with a plan in mind is always best, but if we are to try to make easy to remember general advice, this isn't so bad right? So I guess you're right, "fantastic is a bit extreme."

Oh man, I didn't even consider positions like this when we were having the 'is chess a win' conversation which slowly diverged into examples of the complexity present even in very 'simple' endings.

Taken from that article you linked to:



White to move and...?

The article is kind of humorous. The game was a 2400 vs a 2600. There follows something like 15 game-eval changing blunders in 25 moves. Not that that's a critique of the players, I'm sure the same general trend would be true if it were two 2700 players. Chess be hard.

I think its a super useful guideline. I've helped a number of people with chess and one thing that came up in all their games was they'd waste tempi doing unforced trades; that includes some reasonably strong players as well. There would just be some sort of standard tension - the opponent has a knight attacking their rook and that knight is pinned by a bishop to the opponent's queen/king or whatever. And they'd just exchange it off for no apparent reason.

When playing against decent opponents I think its always best to view your opponent's position as a balloon. The goal is to make that balloon pop. Each time you apply a bit of pressure you fill that balloon up a bit more. But by engaging in unforced trades that were maintaining a critical tension you let air of the balloon for no real reason.

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what should i do here ? i played b3 with the reasoning that after c6 my rook is not going to get moved and that I can use my two passed pawns to win, crafty says g3.

IM(weak player)Opinion, You probably shouldn't be letting the pawn get to a square where it's guarded by the bishop, especially when it's vacating a square attacked by the knight, and super especially when it's a weak square.

Short answer: Yes I think 5334 is good

Long answer: I can't say that from a point of authority, as I'm only a couple hundred points above you. Plus I don't know your points of weaknesses.

Also, I haven't gone through 5334 book because I'm not seriously persuing getting better at chess. If I were to though, the books I would go through are 5334, Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual, and game collections (alekhine's my best games, tal's life and games, Zurich 1954 etc).

PM me if you want to play a few games sometime.

Cool. Yeah my weaknesses are not seeing things quick enough/ not being focused/ spending too much time on a move/ sometimes not having a plan etc.

I think my tactics are ok, but of course they can be sharpened...

I would look at the position another way. In the initial position both Black's rooks are tied to the defense of c4, whereas after 1.b3 c3, your own rook is tied down to blocking the c-pawn, while Black's rooks are now freed. Your advance on the Queenside will not be successful when you have only one rook for support and both Black's rooks are active. So 1.b3 is not a very good idea, imo.

The most obvious move in the position is 1.Rbc1, but pretty much any move is okay. The position is approximately equal.