Art of Defense in Chess

As a player improves, his move selection skills develop in a haphazard manner. Let's consider how players of different strengths decide which move to play. In the position given below, the players who just know the basics of the game can choose moves like Ba6 because he likes "long" moves. Another will prefer Nc4 or Ng4 because he thinks knight hopes harder for an opponent to deal with. A third will like pawn moves and try to build elaborate ziggurats by pushing the queenside pawns to c4,b5 and a4. We smile at their choices. But the post-beginners have already made a giant stride-perhaps the biggest they will make in their career even if they become grandmasters: They have developed some criteria for eliminating possibilities- the 39 legal moves for White here- to the small of moves they they trust. Post-beginners trust their criteria too much. Anyone who has seen a tournament room filled with very young juniors will be impressed by their quickness in finding a move the...

The situation is the same in livlier positions. At this moment White has 43 legal possibilities. After he played 20.Na5, Black had 33 possbile replies and chose a natural move Rfc8. Yet because of shortcuts, it is rare that human gives serious thought to more than three or four candidates at any turn. Masters usually consider fewer, not more candidates, than amateurs. The stronger the player, the better he is at avoiding calculation- and the more efficiently he thinks. Today's article was on how a strong chess players thinks and how he is different from the amateurs in calculating candidate moves. Hope you liked my article. I will be continuing my series on this topic. The more we go far the more advanced we study. So get ready for the next articles. Keep reading! Thank you Play Online Chess [Event "?"] [Site "Wijk aan Zee"] [Date "2005.??.??"] [Round "?"] [White "Leko"] [Black "Svidler"] [Result "*...

Today we are going to know what is  Elimination of candidate moves Selecting the most accurate chess move is a very difficult task. While we begin to take chess seriously,by reading books or playing in tournaments, we have forgotten how difficult the process is. We have forgotten because we take for granted various steps to save time. Without those shortcuts, selecting one move out of dozens of possibilities would seem impossible. White has 40 legal moves at his disposal and that's typical for the start of the middlegame. White had an average of 38 possibilities when making his 20th move. Black had an average of 34 possibilities when he replied. But only a chess engine examines 34.38 or 40 moves in a given position. The beginner learns to immediately dismiss some moves. . It takes more experience to realize that other moves  should be rejected  because they make little or no sense. Eventually a player goes beyond these and learns to recognize moves that are not on...

Ok this is the third game on the following topic '180 degree turn' Now this will be the most special game in this series as this game is played between Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov in the 1984/85 World Championship. Play Online Chess [Event "1984/85 World Chess Championship"] [Site "?"] [Date "1984.??.??"] [Round "2"] [White "Garry Kasparov"] [Black "Anatoly Karpov"] [Result "1/2-1/2"] [WhiteELO "?"] [BlackELO "?"] [SetUp "1"] [FEN "r4rk1/p1nb1ppp/1pp3q1/2npP1B1/5PP1/2N4P/PP1Q2B1/2R2RK1 b KQkq - 0 1"] %Created by Caissa's Web PGN Editor 1... f6 2. exf6 gxf6 3. Bh4 f5 4. b4 fxg4 5. hxg4 Nd3 6. Rf3 Nxc1 7. f5 Qg7 8. Qxc1 Rae8 9. Qd2 1/2-1/2 At the cost of the exchange White has created a double edged position in which, after narrowly avoiding defeat , he managed to draw. The counterblow with the h-pawn also occurs , and in the Ruy Lo...

This is the second game in this topic, This game is played by Ex-World Champion Max Euwe who made excellent use of latent counterattacking factors in the game. The white queen/knight battery which is threatening to fire after Bxh7+ the pin on the knight at e5, plus the opponent's weaknesses on the a2-g8 diagonal- all this suggests that White has more than sufficient compensation for the pawn and that his activity is very dangerous. But Assessment of the position was changed by the brilliant 21...g5!! Play Online Chess [Event "?"] [Site "Nottingham"] [Date "1936.??.??"] [Round "?"] [White "Vidmar"] [Black "Euwe"] [Result "*"] [WhiteELO "?"] [BlackELO "?"] [SetUp "1"] [FEN "2br1rk1/1pq3pp/pbp2p2/4n3/R3BB2/3N2P1/1PQ1PP1P/5RK1 b KQkq - 0 1"] %Created by Caissa's Web PGN Editor 1... g5 2. Bxh7+ Qxh7 3. Bxe5 Ba7 4. Bc3 b5 5. Raa1 c5 6. Qc1 c4 ...

Often the defending side succeeds with at tactical pawn counterblow on the very part of the board where the attack is being conducted. This is explained by the fact that, as a rule, the pursuer does not even imagine that he may be transformed into the pursued: after all, the 'pursuit' apperars to be being conducted according to all the rules. Meanwhile, if only on the basis of the following examples, one can- and probably should - cast doubts on the old rule, which states that the attacker has more right to a mistake than the defender. This is correct only in conditions of a positional advantage, when there is a methodical siege, not involving rapidly-developing, concrete variations. But a swift combinational attack(such as can occur in the overwhelming majority of modern openings like the Sicilian Defence) demands equal accuracy of both players. Otherwise a counterblow in the attacked sector may be comparable in strength with the detonation of a bomb. It can be landed either...

This is the second game in this series: We learnt that it is not just the counterattacking side who may go wrong. In the following game between Taimanov and Larsen we will study that without great risk of being wrong we can name the factors by which Larsen was guided. Firstly, after 1.. g5 he slightly assumed that such a turn of events would be extremely unexpected for white. Secondly, from the calm waters of positional pressure in the centre, White has to plunge into deep complications where the probability of mistake increases many times. Play Online Chess [Event "?"] [Site "Vinkovci"] [Date "1970.??.??"] [Round "?"] [White "Taimanov"] [Black "Larsen"] [Result "0-1"] [WhiteELO "?"] [BlackELO "?"] [SetUp "1"] [FEN "r1b2rk1/pp2bppp/2n5/q2p4/5B2/PQN1PN2/1P3PPP/2R1K2R b KQkq - 0 1"] %Created by Caissa's Web PGN Editor 1... g5 2. Bg3 g4 3. Nd4 Nxd4 4. e...