Working on tactics but in games I have no plan

Originally posted by toeternitoe
Pawn structure!?pawn breaks?!typical endings?the dragon exchange sac??

Bloody hell Paul!Have you seen Grit's games?The level he's currently at?

You mean well and what you say might make sense to him in a year or 2.But it won't do much good to anyone still in the 'drop pieces by the bucketload' stage.

toet.

I think the plan will give him the necessary foundation to make sense of a crazy game and minimize some of that. In my mind, dropping pieces by the bucketload is a sympton of a lack of planning. What were the pieces doing before they were dropped? When you play planlessy, stuff starts to fall off.

You have to start somewhere, and the tactics you are most likely to encounter based on what you play is a great place to begin.

If you're playing on here, correspondence style, make use of a good database. Go into each game with the general plan, "I'm going to play the Dragon/Ruy/Italian/French/KID/QGA/Whatever," and follow master games as far as your opponent will allow. Try to play the same openings every time, so you develop a general feel for where the pieces are best positioned.

And there you have it: a pre-bottled plan. Now, once your opponent goes out of book, THEN start looking for tactics. If you can't find anything, use the most elementary strategy possible. Put a rook on an open file...or push a pawn toward the opponent's king...move a knight up to a nice, safe square...turn an undefended piece into a defended piece...that sort of thing. But always look for tactics first. You have the chance to use the analysis board, so do it, until you're comfortable visualizing. Look for your forks and skewers, sure, but go beyond that, since you can do so in perfect safety in analysis. Sacrifice your queen in the general direction of the king, and see if anything comes of it. Then a rook. Then a bishop. Then a knight. Try to sacrifice something every move once you're out of book, and you'll be amazed how many opportunities suddenly appear to you that never would have had you just stuck with common sense moves.

Originally posted by Maxacre42
Another common strategy below 2000 is to build a very solid position, play safe moves and wait until the opponent makes a mistake![/b]

This is working well for me.

Here's an example of my game and my plan, I have the white pieces:



My first three moves, book.

3.a6 messes with my mind because I want to play Bb5 which is supposed to pin the knight because he was supposed to move his d pawn, I was hoping for d5. Now that those hopes are dashed what do I do? I play a move I very seldom play, d4 hoping to deal with d5 that way. I want to have my diagonal open form my bishop which is why I don't like playing d5, but in this case I don't think the middle will get clogged.

4.e4 My opponent hopes to clog up the middle with the advance. I can't attack the pawn right away and if I don't do something he'll support that e pawn by playing d5, so I stop him with by putting my pawn on d5, and threaten his knight at the same time.

5.Ne7 My pawn looks like it is under attack, but the queen supports it nicely, now I have time to deal with the pawn on e4, which really is a pain in my side, so I play f3, it opens my king to the queen check, but his knight blocks his queen, so I'm not really concerned with it.

6. f5 expected that, opens up his king to my queen check and my queen isn't blocked in. I go for the pawn exchange.

7.fxe4 I know I'm going to want to put pressure on the e4 square, so I decide to free up my queen and open the c2 square for my queen if need be, so I play c4. It isn't good to leave pieces hanging, even pawns. c4 gives me for freedom with my queen. It is no longer the only support for the pawn on d5.

8.d6 opens the diagonal for his bishop. I decide to put pressure on the e4 pawn and develop the queen side. I have the thought that I might need to castle queenside, my kingside isn't very well developed and I have issues. f3 isn't safe and my kingside bishop doesn't have very many options. I play Nd2.

9. Bf5 supports the e4 pawn. In this kind of situation I like to play Qh5+, but that is really bad. All he has to do is play Bg6 and I'm forced to retreat. Sure, if he played g6 I could have retreated and his rook would have been mine, but you shouldn't make moves hoping for you opponent to screw up. Instead I decided to develop with Ne2, which will allow me to play Ng3, attacking the e4 pawn.

10.Ne7 frees up the queen and bishop. But allows me to attack the e4 pawn with Ng3.

11.Qd7 supports the bishop and clears for castling, but doesn't support the pawn, so I take it. Nxe4 Don't take the bishop here because that brings the queen up to replace it. The pawn is still supported.

12.Bxe4 so I recapture Nxe4. That kind of stuff basically plays itself.

13. Castle queenside. Hey look, the queen and king are on the same diagonal. If he's not careful the queen can be pinned. Be2

14.Qe7 darn it, can't take the queen. But I also noticed that my knight was now under attack. Do I retreat it? certainly not, that would be a waste when the queen can support it and would be better if moved to d4. Qd4.

15.Kb8 he sees that my queen would like nothing more than to be played to a7. Now what can I do? My king is checkable, so I decide to go for some king safety, castle kingside.

16.Ne5 Not sure what my opponents is going here. Nothing is threatened, so I can do what I want. I want to attack his king so I look for ways to bring my pieces to the queenside. The queen's diagagonal isn't very good anymore. I play one move that makes both my queen and e2 bishop much stronger for. Sure, I'm going to give the pawn away, but it opens the board rather nicely. I think it was the winning move of the game. c5 Yes, the pawn move was the move of the game.


17.Nf6 Wow I think that was the losing move. Once again I'm free to do what I want. I want to open the queenside for me and close it off to him. c6

18.b6 king is still protected on the b file, but what did my opponent leave hanging with that one? Bxa6. Remember that move that was supposed to prevent my bishop from being played to c5 early on in the game? Now it becomes a target because my opponent forgot that even pawns need to be supported.

19Ka7 attacks the bishop, but the bishop can be supported with Qa4. Qa4 and Bxa6 were both possible because of the pawn push c5. I now threaten a very powerful discovered check.

20.Ra8 That would counter the discovered check nicely if it wasn't for the fact that I have a pawn on c6. Bb7+ which threatens force mate, forced move Kb8 followed by Qxa8#.



You can see that at the very beginning it was just book, I then had to make a move that fit with my opening ideas. I then had to take advantage of what my opponent was giving me, while trying to not offer anything to him. Pawns can get in the way and pawn pushes can be very good freeing moves. Pawns on the other side of the board can become either targets or powerful outboasts which can attack very important squares.

Plenty of good advice here. Mine is - play through some of the games of Paul Morphy. See how he develops quickly and overwhelms his opponent.

Also plenty of conflicting advice on here.

toet. - I thought that was a good post.

Grit.

The lads posting on here have all put some effort in their game all you
are going to get is confused and lost to the game if you keep seeking
the solution on the forum, Nobody has the answers, it's down to you.

When you had this postion in front of you.



Were the words Check all Checks not wringing in your ears?

You get told this everytime you post.

When you have a Bishop on c4/c5 then you must look at Bxf2/f7+ at every move.

Instead you played the totally useless 6...Bb4+ what did you expect him to do 7.Qd2?

It would have taken 30 seconds to flick to the RHP database and you will
find this position has been reached before in a very well played and instructive game.

It would have given you guindance and ideas and it would have meant you
were doing the research, the work. You were putting the effort in.

Toet is not a super duper GM. He's a lad who can spot a trick in a position.
He did not wake up one morning and found the gift of spotting tricks.
Sometime in his past he has opened a book and studied games where this
theme occurred. He put in the effort.

You will only get out of the game what you put in.
There is no quick fix, no way around it.
Everyone is telling you how to swim but until you jumop into the water
you will never know how to.

Here is the game that was a few mouse clicks away.
Notice how he never let White off the hook.
It was threat-threat-threat-threat.

And it was not played by a GM it was played by a 1700 player on here.
By someone who has put some work in.

Look and learn. Write it down and play it over on a large board twice!
Put some work in. Read that book that makes your head swim
and....Check All Checks

The point that I was trying to make is that a 'plan' really isn't a 'plan' at all. At least not in the way most people would believe that a plan should work. I remember trying to figure out how to have a plan. Some great plan that I could use in every game that would lead me to victroy.

No such thing as far as I can tell. A plan is nothing more than knowing why you are making a move and having that reason actually being a good reason.

Read The Middle Game in Chess by Znosko-Borovsky.

He does not read chess books, they make his head swim.

Did you see the game below?
It does appear only two, possibly three of you looked at it.

He plays this dosh and posts. We find his missed shots and he feels better.

The advice about plans and endgames and the in depth games posted
(with no diagrams...😠) was far too advanced for this lad.

His only plan is to obey opening principles and to stop dropping pieces.
His cheif concern about endgmes is actually reaching one.

We all had games like this when we started. He will hopefully look back
on this in one years time and shake his head in disbelief.

But that won't happen until he stops playing the first move that comes
into his head and does some work on opening principles and basic tactics.

Grit apply to join Bates Motel, I have some work for to do.
The ball is in your court.

Good grief. Am I really dropping pieces by the bucketful? Pretty bad.

Thanks guys for your well thought out comments.

And green pawn, what is this Bates Motel I should apply to? Is Anthony Perkins waiting up there for me with his wig on?

Obviously at this point I don't have my chess act together.

Grit

Yes TACTICS!

Usually I just hang back, making quiet developing moves. I'm playing a waiting game, I figure sooner or later they will blunder. It's a matter of spotting the opportunity when it occurs.

I do not feel the need to be ambitious in terms of attacking moves, keep pressure on his pieces, but don't go charging in unless you will gain something. Check his moves for mistakes, did he line his pieces up for a fork, did he remove a guard from an important square?

One thing I do often risk is threatening their queen, people often panic and make poor moves exposing their other pieces.

Never forget the kings, yours as well as his.

Thanks again everybody.

Toet, I played out that game I lost to samandr. And I saw the blunders I made on moves 3,6,11, and 14. Not good. I know I can do better than that. Mindless mistakes.

Grit

I know exactly how you feel grit, when I first started playing I kept getting overwhelmed because I had no plan. The one reason that I got from 1400 to the mid 1500s was I started playing with a plan. You don't have to know what your masterplan is from the outset, just break the game up into mini plans and capitalize on opportunities as they appear:

Plan 1
Get your knights and bishops out and try to move them only once each

Plan 2
Castle

Plan 3
Have a presence in the centre - just keep your pawns, bishops, and knights focusing on the centre

Plan 4
Once you've done that you should be in a nice position. Now you need to pick a target and focus your energies on that. It's good to look for a weak spot in your opponent's army (poorly defended pieces or pawns) but if you can't spot any just focus on a single square and target all your forces there. If you're playing white c7 and f7 are normally juicy targets if nothing else is available. Just starting lining up your pieces on these square or around them and good stuff will happen.

It may sound a bit simple but it worked for me.

Best of luck

Graham

Originally posted by grit
Thanks again everybody.

Toet, I played out that game I lost to samandr. And I saw the blunders I made on moves 3,6,11, and 14. Not good. I know I can do better than that. Mindless mistakes.

Grit

We all make mistakes,grit.The trick is to learn from them.
Good you played out the game again.Did you play out the variations on move 6?A grasp of the mechanics of that theme will score you many points.You had actually set a nice trap there.Unknowingly,but still,nice.

Play the Petroff as a gambit,set trap hoping for a pin on f6 knight.
hmmm....I might try that myself sometime 🙂

Check out the 'patzer specials' in my profile to see some of my howlers.
They're good ones!And I got away with each and every one of 'em 😛

Reminds me I have to check my losses for more specials.

Greenpawn,nice post yourself.What is the rph database?

toet.

Originally posted by toeternitoe
Greenpawn,nice post yourself.What is the rph database?

It looks like Greenpawn is away at the moment.

The rhp database is a database of games played here, broken up into three rating classes.

http://www.redhotpawn.com/gamesexplorer/

There's also a second url, but it looks to be identical to the other one:

http://www.playtheimmortalgame.com/gamesexplorer/