Introduce myself - beginner looking to learn

depending on your strenght which is hard to determine from the one move 1... f5 I've seen Eirik play)

Thanks for the book tip. I will definitely check it out.

My strength is fairly limited... beginner level.

I got some very good pointers from "Big Orange County" about openings and what he plays and he recommended me to look for defenses against it. So my move was from a strategy for black against the london system (nothing I have thought out myself)...

Originally posted by peacedog
But..... that books major flaw is that almost all of the games are QGD. Apart from that, I cant fault it.

no they're not. only 9 out of 33 are QGD.

"The master induces or compels by various threats the advance of the h-pawn or g-pawn"

Here, you see, I always like voluntarily playing h3 a.s.a.p. after castling kingside 😛

Originally posted by wormwood
no they're not. only 9 out of 33 are QGD.

Oh, sorry. Long time since i seen the book. In my mind I remember it as a few colle systems and the rest Queen's Gambit.

Welcome Eirikk - I've been playing here a few years.... purely for fun. RHP is great and the forums are very active. I've just joined my local chess club and I must say, I would recommend this for any beginner (myself included). Good luck!

Thanks for your welcomes, and for the players who have challenged me and with whom I have begun to play. I guess I have enough on my hands now with 3-4 games. Great! : )

nawadaP, great tip about the chess club. there is a cafe in town where they have monday evening chess, when I find time amongst my baby girl, wife, studies and full-time job, I will go there and check it out. Oh, and one of my fellow commuters today caught me reading chess literature (Understanding Chess Move by Move - John Nunn), and it turns out that he plays as well, so he invited me to play as well.

Originally posted by EirikK
Thanks for your welcomes, and for the players who have challenged me and with whom I have begun to play. I guess I have enough on my hands now with 3-4 games. Great! : )

nawadaP, great tip about the chess club. there is a cafe in town where they have monday evening chess, when I find time amongst my baby girl, wife, studies and full-time job, I will go the ...[text shortened]... by Move - John Nunn), and it turns out that he plays as well, so he invited me to play as well.

One thing that will help beginners is doing the exercise called 'space points'. That is defined as what you attack on the opponents side of the board, like if you are white and go E4, you get 5 space points, two from the pawn (where the pawn has power, it has no power directly in front of itself, only to the diagonal one move away, so if an opponent piece was placed on the diagonal away from the pawn, the pawn has the option of taking, so that is one of the two space points for any given pawn if it is on A4, B4, C4, etc. So the pawn, first move of the game to E4 gets 2 space points by itself, F4 and D4. D4 in this case is the one you are after, F4 is just a bonus.

The other three are there because moving the E pawn up to E3 or E4 opens a little floodgate for the bishop to the right of the king on F1, 2 spacepoints there, at B5 and A6, places where, if the opponent moved there, the bishop could take on whichever space was available to take on.

The Queen gets one, the E3 or E4 opened a gate for queenie to attack on H5. Notice, for the tally of space points, you don't count where the queen can go on your side of the board, only where your pieces attack on the other side of the board. BTW, in all this tally stuff, for space point purposes, you don't worry about what defends what, only what attacks what, it doesn't matter if something is defended 8 times, if you have 3 space points on one square, it counts as 3 space points. It's just a tally.

Why this is important is if you don't get used to at least subconsciously making that tally and consciously if you are a beginner, is you may and probably will, miss attacks on your side that you didn't notice or maybe you only noticed one half of a double attack, two enemy pieces poised to take one of your pieces only defended once. It is that kind of thing, missing the one movers, that gets most if not all beginners in trouble and they wonder why the game was over so fast.

So the exercise is to track and tally space points on both sides before and after each move so you at least get a heads up on the immediate threats on your side and your threats you may not have even noticed if you had not done the space point exercise.

After a few weeks of that exercise you probably would have that part down sub-consciously and may not need to do it on a conscious level.

If you want, I could challenge you or vice versa and we could do that exercise before and after each move till you can get the number right. Like if I have 12 space points (I am attacking 12 squares on your side of the board, some maybe doubled or not) and you have 4 on your side attacking me, you can be pretty sure something is rotten in Denmark🙂 So you would strive to get your space point count up if it wouldn't already be too late! Also, as you go deeper into the game, you will notice some moves block space points you previously owned. If you don't notice that, you may think you have power on a square you don't have now, just had it in the past, so some moves make your space point count go DOWN and it is good to be aware of that. You may base an attack on the assumption you have more attacks on a square than you thought and end up with egg on your face when he takes your queen when you thought it was mate🙂

The thing to remember is you can't win if you stay on your side of the board, all you can do there is fend off the opponents attacks and a good attack is the best defense usually.

The other thing to remember is the 4 center squares are the important ones to occupy in the opening, that is why E4, D4, C4 and F4 are the most common openers, they all put force on one of those center pawns. Then moves to the center with the knights puts more power in the magic 4 center squares. So that is a quick 50 cent tour of beginner chess.

Originally posted by sonhouse
One thing that will help beginners is doing the exercise called 'space points'. That is defined as what you attack on the opponents side of the board, like if you are white and go E4, you get 5 space points, two from the pawn (where the pawn has power, it has no power directly in front of itself, only to the diagonal one move away, so if an opponent piece w ...[text shortened]... er in the magic 4 center squares. So that is a quick 50 cent tour of beginner chess.

I think I lost at least 500 rating points just by reading that.

Originally posted by wormwood
I think I lost at least 500 rating points just by reading that.

I got lucky.I lost track during the 2nd sentence so I didn't lose too many points 😀

I never heard of space points before.Where did you get it,son?

Originally posted by wormwood
I think I lost at least 500 rating points just by reading that.

I saved a few by reading you, before looking at him.
yay!

Rec'd for the alert

Originally posted by Ajuin
I got lucky.I lost track during the 2nd sentence so I didn't lose too many points 😀

I never heard of space points before.Where did you get it,son?

I think this is proof that Hans Kmoch has reincarnated.

Power to the Pawns.

Paul

Originally posted by Ajuin
I got lucky.I lost track during the 2nd sentence so I didn't lose too many points 😀

I never heard of space points before.Where did you get it,son?

Space camp.

Originally posted by wormwood
I think I lost at least 500 rating points just by reading that.

You never heard of space points? I was a bit verbose🙂 I know, it is a lot easier to show OTB to a beginner. It does help beginners, they don't put all the moves available even one movers, in their heads and miss what to us are obvious attacks and making the space point tally is one way to get them to at least see all the one move or two move things going on right in front of his eyes.

Originally posted by sonhouse
You never heard of space points? I was a bit verbose🙂 I know, it is a lot easier to show OTB to a beginner. It does help beginners, they don't put all the moves available even one movers, in their heads and miss what to us are obvious attacks and making the space point tally is one way to get them to at least see all the one move or two move things going on right in front of his eyes.

I've heard of it, althought I've never seen it described in detail before. anyway, it seems to me like a perfect way to AVOID learning even the basics of chess.

Originally posted by wormwood
I've heard of it, althought I've never seen it described in detail before. anyway, it seems to me like a perfect way to AVOID learning even the basics of chess.

It seems to me to be a good way to at least see all the immediate moves on the board. You have to put yourself in the mind of a beginner, they don't automatically see where the pieces move like we do, we glance at the board and at least see where all the pieces can move to, attack and defense, we see as a matter of course when a piece is under attack. You can't count on beginners to see the same things. Space points are just a tally to get you to see all the moves available on the board. After they get the idea they don't need to spend much time on space points, but go to more advanced opening moves/strategy, middlegame, endgame stuff. You have to crawl before you can walk and you have to walk before you can run. It's not meant to be used for 5 years running for krikey sake🙂