ways of thinking

Originally posted by Slimeyboy
I am a beginner in chess, or i have never played with any seriousity, mostly for fun. But now im wondering of any tips you can give me in ways of how one should think, what should i try to do?

basicly, tips for how to make my playing more "efficient"

Iv already posted this twice before. Might help you.


So its your turn to move, what do you do first? Most players tend to look at moves they can play, ie he's moved there so I can now move here and so on. I wont go as far to say that this is wrong but from personal experience and talking to most players I do believe it can be improved on.

The first thing you need to do before making any moves is weight up the position, understand it, you need to look for key features. The way you look at the position will determine what you need to do and how, and then you can decide on what moves you need to play. I will talk through my own personal check list

1. Define areas of control.

This is basicly something that iv learned from IM Bangievs square strategy training(although I do it a little different to his recommendation). The first thing I do on each move to to look at the area I control and the area the other player controls. This helps show yours and their general strong and weak points of the board, just to get an over all feel for the game.

2. Define direction of attacks.

So you know the area that you control (where your pieces are coordinated) now you need to find in which direction you want to attack, pieces can normally only work well when working together on one part of the board, so you need to group them and coordinate them there.

3. Square complex/colour weaknesses (maybe the most important)

A lot of the middle game of chess is all about square colour. You can only attack one colour at a time, if you try to play on black and white, then your pieces automaticly become uncoordinated, however once you define which colour you want to play on and get all your pieces controling squares of that colour you will find a flow to the game and the other player will find it very hard to stop you from moving around on the colour you control. Try to limit your colour weaknesses and if you have one, trade off the other players pieces that can control the weak squares.

4. Enemy pieces to be challenged (traded).

I expect everyone knows what the pieces are worth, pawns = 1 knights =3 bishops = 3+ rooks = 5 and queen =9........... well thats a good lie. The piece values are never static, for example at the start of the game the rooks in the corners are basicly pointless and after 1.Nf3 the knight is better than the rooks (at least for that move) since it is doing something and the rooks arent. You have to make pieces work for you in the most effective way, which normally means centralisation, a cental piece will control more squares. If a bishop can control more squares than a rook, or more important squares then the bishop is worth maybe 5 and the limited rook is worth 3.5 etc, its all about your judgement. You have to look at each piece and give it a value, a rating, how good is this piece etc. Once you have worked out how good each piece is you then know which one of your pieces you need to keep on and which of the enemy pieces you need to trade, if you can trade your bad pieces for their good pieces you will find yourself winning effortlessly.

5. Own pieces to use and how.

Pretty much like the last one, you are aiming for max amount of control with your pieces, finding good squares for them or exchanging them for better enemy pieces.

6. Enemy plan

Work it out!

7. Your plan

Get one!! ie, short term improving piece position, controling a colour, challenging the other players good pieces. Maybe move a pawn to take away a good square from an enemy piece (mainly knight), but also have a long term plan, like kingside attack, on central breakthrough.

8. Look for tactical chances.

Weak king
Undefended piece
Weak pawns
Overloaded piece
etc
If they have only one weakness dont attack it, ie if a piece is undefended DONT attack it leave it undefended because the only way tactics or combinations happen is the rule of two weaknesses. You need to hit two weaknesses at once for a tactic to work, so dont help the other player and pointless attack things forcing them to strengthen their position.

9. Positional moves

If theres no tactical tries then its time to use everything you looked at and judged in the position and start to list candidate moves. Once you have the moves, caculate and find the best one for you.
Imrpoving the position of your pieces.
Trading good enemy pieces
Taking away good squares from their pieces
Trying to control a colour complex
Gain space
Controling center
Controling open files
Prophylaxis moves (ie taking care of your own weaknesses, undefended pieces, exposed king etc etc)
etc