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Quote of the Month: One key to getting better is not making the same
mistakes over and over.
Novice Nook
Dan Heisman
A Parents Guide
to Chess
by Dan Heisman
All other errors are purposeful not on purpose, but where you know
you shouldnt do something and still do it, or fail to do something you
know you should, or make the same mistakes over and over, even though
you know they are errors. In most of these cases the perpetrator assesses
the superficial safety issues correctly and thinks the move is clever or
even OK when in fact it is bad. This may be due to misanalysis,
misevaluation, a misconception, or incorrectly believing there is an
exception to a principle, or anything similar.
Examples will make this clear; lets begin with an accidental mistake:
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After 1.Qg2+??, Black picks up the queen free with 1Bxg2 and wins.
It can quickly be deduced that White almost undoubtedly did not see the
bishop on a8, or he would not have made this move. The overwhelming
likelihood is that when someone makes a move like 1.Qg2+??, White
either lacks board vision or plays too quickly, and fails to see that he is
making a big mistake. Although White made the move on purpose, he did
not mean to leave the queen en prise, so the mistake is accidental.
Now lets consider a mistake that cant be an accident, one we recently
witnessed in The Fun of Pros and Cons.
Back to Basics:
Fundamentals
by Branislav Francuski
But even the 900 player did not do it on purpose, so it was an accident
(which occurs too frequently).
Now suppose you tell a student that to put up maximum resistance one of
the most important principles to follow is when losing (behind in
material) dont trade pieces and the student acknowledges this fact. Then
you might expect that the student would, indeed, conscientiously avoid
trading pieces when losing, unless absolutely forced. Unlike leaving your
queen en prise, picking up a piece and capturing another piece thus
affecting the unwanted trade cannot be an accident. It can be a giant
mistake and done without enough thought, but it cant be the kind of
accident that playing 1.Qg2+?? in Example 1 was. Take the following
example:
Example 5: Black to play
However, one thing is clear: White is better and Black is the one that
might be losing. Therefore, unless Black is completely certain he can
draw the king and pawn endgame, he should follow the strong principle
and not trade rooks.
There is another applicable principle that would bolster Blacks decision:
the easiest endgames to lose when behind by a pawn are king and pawn
endgames and one of the hardest endgames to lose when behind by a
pawn are rook and pawn endgames (only bishop of opposite color are
more drawish than rook endgames). Therefore, when in doubt, the player
behind by a pawn should not trade rooks.
Lets assume Black has been informed by stronger players that trading
pieces when behind is inadvisable and understood what that meant. Then,
hopefully, he would apply that information to this situation and not trade
rooks. If Black does trade rooks with 1Rxf2?, he could hardly claim
that instigating the trade was an accident. If so, it might sound humorous:
I did not see the rook on f2 I was intending to play 1.Rf2 and it
just so happened his rook was there so it got captured.
I was trying to win the rook on f2 I captured it on purpose but
did not see the white king could recapture my rook.
Black has 18:41 left with an additional 45 second increment each move.
Despite this adequate time, he very quickly reasoned that moving his rook
allows the undesirable 28.Rd7, while trading gives him chances because
of the proximity of his king to the center. Therefore, after only six
seconds of thought (with the increment his clock thus gained 39 seconds!)
he played 27Rxd1+??.
I have to admit that when I see such moves from my students it is hard on
my heart. Primal scream time. When the one I am rooting for makes a
mistake like this, I feel worse than the player does! Between these two
types of mistakes, I think Blacks horrible move was more forgivable than
the fact that he played it in six seconds!
As was stated in The Two Move Triggers, Never play a bad move fast.
If you are going to break basic principles Dont trade pieces when
behind and Never trade down into a king and pawn endgame when you
are behind in material, unless you calculate that you are not losing then
you should break them very carefully and slowly (see The Most Important
Strategic Decisions and Strong Principles vs. Important Principles.
When I saw this move, I thought of Silman! I would rather have my
student put his queen en prise than play 27Rxd1+ (much less quickly)
since leaving the queen en prise is clearly an accident we all do this
occasionally, but hopefully not often but you cant accidentally trade
rooks here. My students erroneous logic was I cant allow 28.Rd7 I
am probably losing, so I have to trade rooks. The correct logic would
have been Both allowing 28.Rd7 and avoiding this by trading rooks are
bad, so I am between a rock and a hard place (or perhaps between a rook
and a hard place!). Therefore, I have to choose the lesser of evils That
may have led to some intense analysis of the dangers of 27Rxd1+, and
then to the realization that the lesser evil was to keep the rooks on the
board. In the game, White, although lower rated than my student, won the
king and pawn endgame rather easily.
Tip: When two principles conflict (Dont trade when behind or you will
likely lose and Dont allow an opponents rook onto the seventh rank)
it is almost always correct to heed the one that is more about winning the
game than the one that addresses another issue, such as piece activity. In
descending order, the priority would usually be winning, material/safety,
activity, and pawn structure.
From a standpoint of a player trying to improve, the problem is that if you
repeatedly do the things that you know are wrong, it is much harder to
advance, than if you try your best to heed good advice. In other words,
there are many things one can do incorrectly on a chess board, so the
fewer times you can make a specific mistake, the faster your
improvement. Since everyone makes all the mistakes at least once and it
takes years to get better, think about how your improvement stalls if you
make the same mistakes over and over! Thus, those who seek to improve
and consistently heed advice are better off in the long run, than those who
look for exceptions and purposely make mistakes when they should
know better.
Learn to walk before you try to run. Dont look for exceptions to
principles before you can consistently follow those principles. Once you
how to help them break the 800 barrier. Theyre making a lot of counting
mistakes (including en prise), playing hope chess, and not using all their
time.
Do you have any exercises or recommendations that could help us? Right
now theyre playing lots of G/30 games on Chessmaster, going to
tournaments (rated and not), and using the Fritz & Chesster CD series.
Do you think that more of the same will be sufficient, or is there
something else we should be doing at this level?
Answer It sounds like your students are on the right track. Of course, if
young players do not want to take time to look to see what their
opponents last move threatens or whether they have a better move, then
there is a certain limit on how good they will become until they do.
When youngsters play in tournaments where they have more than thirty
minutes and they play opponents that take all their time, the peer pressure
to not play fast helps them learn what is possible if they stop and think
about each move. Otherwise youngsters are prone to playing fast when
their opponent does, no matter how detrimental it may be to their play.
Certainly having them do basic puzzles like the ones in Jeff Coakleys
Winning Chess Puzzles for Kids or Lev Alburts Comprehensive Chess
Course Vol. 1 and 2 are great. So is recording their games and going over
it with coaches, who can ask Did you look at what else was possible? or
Did you see all the things your opponents last move does? are very
helpful. There are many exercises they can do outside of play to increase
board vision and analysis skills. See the most basic exercises on my
websites Exercise page, or a subset in Chess Exercises.
Finally, be as encouraging as you can. While serious adult students might
prefer knowing what they did wrong, emphasizing and rewarding things
the student did right (like taking their time) works better with most
youngsters.