Maintaining the tension and the initiative

What is "maintaining the tension"? Is it only a psycological aspect of chess, or making idle moves to wait for a blunder?

What is "the initiative"? As white, how do you not lose the initiative? As black, can you force your opponent to give up his initiative?

tension is pressure. You wanna keep building pressure on a square untill its yours and stuff. and the other one is like you need to keep attacking and don't lose the tempo of the game.

A move should always do something - whether it be maintaining tempo, gaining material or a positional improvement. That's what it means to me.

the way I see it, it's about threats. loading the position full of threats, so that once the trigger move is pulled, the position explodes into a violent unstoppable storm. it's like building up tension or potential into the position, like a spring.

'Tension' occurs whenever one sides pieces or pawns are in contact with the opposing sides pieces or pawns and can be exchanged. 'Maintaining the tension' is about continually refusing to make an exchange, usually because of strategic reasons.

I found the following game betwen Nunn and Smeets on the Chessgames site. http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1427166

(1545) J Nunn (2617) - J Smeets (2532) [C65]
Youth vs Experience Amsterdam NED (4), 22.08.2006
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 Nf6 4.d3 Bc5 5.0–0 d6 6.c3 0–0 7.Nbd2 Bd7 8.h3 a6 9.Ba4 Ba7 10.Re1 Ne7 11.Bb3 Ng6 12.Nf1 h6 13.Ng3 c6 14.d4



Qc7 Black chose to maintain the tension. He could have exchanged pawns with 14..exd4, but didn't because that would have been to White's advantage, as it would have left him with 2 pawns in the centre (e4 and d4) versus one (d6) and increased his control of the centre.

15.Be3 White also wished to maintain the tension. Taking on e5 or playing d5 would have been to Black's advantage, giving him an easier game.

Rfe8

16.Qd2

exd4 Finally, Black made the exchange and 'releases the tension'. I presume he did this in order to exchange bishops in the hope that this would give him an easier game. But it was probably a mistake.

17.Bxd4 Bxd4 18.cxd4 c5 Challenging White's centre. New tension is created. Black wanted White to exchange on c5 because that would remove one of his pawns from the centre and reduce his influence there.

19.Rac1 So White naturally refused to take and made a useful move whilst maintaining the tension.

b6 20.Qc3 Qb7

21.dxc5 Finally White chose to release the tension, in order to start an attack.

dxc5

22.e5 The rest of the game is all about White attacking and Black defending. White has the 'initiative' because every move has a threat or does something useful such as bringing a piece forward or winning an important pawn. He is prepared to sacrifice pieces in order to maintain the initiative. Basically having the initiative is having an attack.

Nd5 23.Qd2 Ndf4 24.Rc4 Ne6 25.Ne4 Qc7 26.Nf6+ gxf6 27.Qxh6 f5 28.Nh4 Bb5 29.Nxf5 Rad8 30.Rg4 c4 31.Bc2 Rd5 32.Rh4 1–0

Originally posted by anthias
What is "maintaining the tension"? Is it only a psycological aspect of chess, or making idle moves to wait for a blunder?

What is "the initiative"? As white, how do you not lose the initiative? As black, can you force your opponent to give up his initiative?

Originally posted by David Tebb
'Tension' occurs whenever one sides pieces or pawns are in contact with the opposing sides pieces or pawns and can be exchanged. 'Maintaining the tension' is about continually refusing to make an exchange, usually because of strategic reasons.

I found the following game betwen Nunn and Smeets on the Chessgames site. http://www.chessgames.com/perl/ches ...[text shortened]... 26.Nf6+ gxf6 27.Qxh6 f5 28.Nh4 Bb5 29.Nxf5 Rad8 30.Rg4 c4 31.Bc2 Rd5 32.Rh4 1–0[/b]