King Hunts! - Part II

Last week's post was about White chasing the Black King, this week the White King is the runner!
Take the time to solve those puzzles and especially work out the side lines, it is easy to miss Black's unexpected defence or miss a King's narrow escape.

Enjoy!

King Hunts! - Part I

Alexander Kotov lists, in his highly recommended book "How to play like a Grandmaster", 3 different kinds of calculation trees depending on the complexity of the variations:

King Hunts often belongs to the "Bare Trunk" family: this is especially useful to be able to calculate those straightforward lines accurately.

Below are 11 positions for you to practice your calculation skills on exciting King hunts where White wins!
Keep ready, Steady...Go!

The Tactical Endgame series: The 2 Jans against 2 Knights

Another episode of the on-going serie about interesting Endgame studies aimed at improving your tactical imagination and calculation skills (if you need to be convinced, just read here!).

No need to present the famous bishop pair which is extremely powerful is open positions. It is even more true when the position is open AND they are facing 2 knights. The 2 knights have usually a hard time to cope with the bishops' long range firepower.
One world championship game illustrates that very well:  the well-known 22nd Botvinnik vs Bronstein World Championship game.

Below is a list of studies that will hone your skills and will demonstrate how nasty the bishop pair can be!


In case you are wondering, why the "2 Jans"? It's the bishop pair's nickname! It comes from David Janowski who "was known as a sharp tactician who was devastating with the bishop pair."

Enjoy below a neat piece of his handy work!

A remarkable position {2}: Kavalek - Huebner (1979)

While reading an old tournament book about the prestigious Montreal 1979 tournament, I came across an incredible sacrifice by L. Kavalek against R. Hubner: Kavalek sacrifies a whole rook on move 15 for some initiative...This sacrifice just looks crazy, a cheap blitz swindle and yet, as we will see below, this is far from clear (courtesy of our silicon friend Stockfish)


A few takeaways:

• When attacking, 
• Always try to involve all your pieces (cf. 21.Re1!!)
• Try not to exchange your attacking pieces unless there is a clear gain in sight (True that 21.Nxh8+ grabs the exchange but White still remains a piece down with a dying initiative)
• Even if the attack is not going your way, keep trying to find resources and counter chances; even after Nxh8+, Kavalek probably misses a draw at some point in the game (28. Ba5!? instead of 28.Qf3)  
• When defending,
• Sit tight and calculate variations!
• Don't be afraid to make "ugly" moves (24...Qh7; 28...Qh8) as long as they are backed up by your calculations
• Be patient and your time will come! (30...Qxc4+)

We have to credit L. Kavalek for his inventiveness and courage to play such a bold move, what a pity that he was not able to follow up with the right idea!

The Tactical Endgame series: The crazy rodeo: 2 Knights against a Rook!

Another episode of the on-going serie about interesting Endgame studies aimed at improving your tactical imagination (if you need to be convinced, just read here).

This 2 Knights against a Rook is an interesting fight...and quite painful for the weaker side!

Even though the bishop pair can be extremely powerful in open positions, the 2 knights duo are monsters in blocked or "messy" situations!

Also you certainly don't want to face them at the end of a Blitz game or in Zeitnot!

Below is a list of studies that will hone your skills and should demonstrate how powerful and difficult to face this duo can be.

A special mention of Alexey Troitsky (composer of two studies below) who is considered the father of the modern endgame study. If you are interested to know more about him, here is an interesting article about his work and legacy.

Enjoy!

The Tactical Endgame series: The deadly Triumvirate, 2 Bishops an Knight, against Queen

Another episode of the on-going serie about interesting Endgame studies aimed at improving your tactical imagination.

2 Bishops and Knight against Queen is an interesting fight: where the queen is unsually viewed as supremely powerful (and from a purely math standpoint, the material balance is there), the 3 minor pieces are most of the time superior to the Queen.

Below is a list of studies that will excerce your skills and uncover some interesting abilities of my favorite trio. Most of those patterns used in these studies are omnipresent in regular games.

A special mention of Henri Rinck (composer of three studies below) who was one of the greatest composer of all time

Enjoy!

The black art of calculation - Blindfold Chess is easy!

It is easier than you think!

For some reason, I was always, right from the start, interested, if not fascinated by blindfold chess, probably because it seemed to me like a amazing "tour de force"!

So very early in my Chess journey, I tried and eventually succeeded in playing reasonably good blindfold chess.

In fact, I was able to play my first blindfold game as a 1500 elo player... and then 2 games simultaneously...and up to 4 games simultaneously! That was pretty cool!

Of course, the games' quality was not super high (even thought good enough to win more than several games against late 80's computers) but this was not the point: I was playing BLINDFOLD CHESS! ...and I was reasonably good at it!

More importantly, I was having fun and my Chess skills were improving in the process.

So...just try it!

You can play with the help of family and friends or against a club mate if you belong to a real-life Chess club. :-)
But probably, the easiest way to start is to play against a computer.

First off, you will need to weaken it a bit as you don't to get demoralized right of the bat!

Then, we've got 2 options:

• Playing a computer program (like Fritz (Commercial)/Stockfish for iOS or Mac/Windows/Lunix (Open source, Free)) with a Graphical User Interface (GUI) that allows the user to play without showing the pieces: this is usually available in the settings. Then, you can play as usual except that you do not see the piece on the board, only when they move!
• Playing against a Winboard Chess engine (like Delfi) where you need to enter the coordinates (i.e. e2e4, e7e5) of each move via a command line.For some, it might seems a bit hardcore but I found this is a better option for me as it helped me to be comfortable with the algebraic notation and removed the "distraction" of an empty board in front of me...but this is really a matter of taste.

How to play your first game

Now, you are all set up and ready to go for your first game...

Well, I hate to break the news but you'll unlikely play a whole game at your first attempt! It'll take many attempts (but not that many; actually less than 10 for me) before you can complete a full game (i.e. a ~ 40 moves game)

This is how I proceeded:

• Play a certain number of moves depending on your comfort level (5, 10, 15, ...)
• Stop and try to visualize
  • the position of each pieces as clearly as possible and more importantly interactions between them (who is threatening who / what)
  • the pawn structure as clearly as possible
  • the various threats and possible plans
• Try to continue the game as much as possible but stop when you start to make "obvious" tactical mistakes or do not "see" the chessboard anymore
• Repeat the process above until you play your first blindfold game!

Some additional tips:

• For the first few games, start with the white pieces (should be a bit easier)...but, after some time, do not forget to play the black ones too!
• Play an opening you are familiar with.
• Ideally, this opening is rather solid and not too complex from a tactical perspective (forget those wild crazy poisoned pawn sicilian lines!)
• Pace yourself!...as this can be a very tiring experience but...

Benefits are immense

• Improve your calculation and visual representation abilities
• Increase your capacity of concentration
• Boost your self-confidence during over the board play.
• This fun and rewarding! Playing (and winning) a blindfold game against a family casual player will establish your Chess reputation in the family for years to come! :-)

If you want to learn everything (and a little bit more) about blindfold Chess check http://www.blindfoldchess.net out: some of the positions below are taken from the fantastic book "Blindfold Chess: History, Psychology, Techniques, Champions, World Records, and Important Games"

To wrap this post up, you will find below fantastic combinations and great blindfold chess games!

The longest combination ever played during a blindfold game: Blackburne announced mate in 16(!) in the position below:

This is one of A. Alekhine's most famous combination, played during a blindfold game!

Famous, high quality, spectacular blindfold games

So start practising and have fun! 

The Tactical Endgame series: The devilish Bishop duo vs. the clumsy Rook

Here we are: the first hands-on session on endgame studies!

After my lenghty, and hopefully convincing, post about including endgame studies in your Chess training, below is the first serie of endgame studies for you to practice ... and enjoy!

Beware that after working hard on those puzzles, you may experience serious improvements in your tactical abilities! :-)

The Bishop pair

I chose to start those endgame studies series with a special piece duo: the Bishop pair.
Often, the bishop is viewed or considered as a definitive asset in open positions but not that often we see it operating at full force.....now it is time with those great studies!


Should you know other interesting studies of this kind, feel free to share!
To wrap this up, below is a nice game showing the power of the "duo inferno" from a player who is largely overlooked, Rashid Nezhmetdinov, but who was one of the greatest attacking player of all time!
Cheers!

Endgame Studies...Really?

Why on earth would we want to solve endgame studies to improve our chess skills?

Well...this is not exactly a theoretical novelty and I am not exactly the first one to talk about that...
In fact, the famous chess trainer Mark Dvorestsky advocates quite heavily solving endgame studies to improve our Chess skills in his book "Secrets of Chess Training".

So what's the big deal about endgame studies?

There are a number of reasons why those are so useful for your chess development and your over-the-board (OTB) skills:

• Improves your calculation skills: Endgame studies often require accurate and lengthy calculation.
• Enriches your tactical imagination: Endgame studies often feature usual or imaginative ideas or unexpected solutions to common problems. They also favor non straightforward patterns or means to achieve a surprising outcome.
• Get to know each piece better: Solving Endgame studies will show you on a different light the pieces you thought you knew. Knights' forks, Bishops' double attacks and rooks' short moves will keep you awake at night!
• (Re)-Discover how a set of pieces can really work together: The bishop pair or the knights duo will shine differently when you see them in action! Discover how the rook and knight team can be devastating against the (not-so-often) powerless queen.
• Get use to material imbalance: A lot of endgame studies feature unconventional material balances: NNB vs. Q, BB vv. RR, etc: this will help you getting used to unusual material imbalance and also help you wrestle your way out of tricky situations or, on the contrary, baffle your opponents with surprising sacrifices. All in all, you will be more confident in your ability to navigate in muddy waters and find either the decisive move or the saving one!
• Strengthen your intuition: Being exposed to so many unusual and unconventional ideas will broaden your intuition and help you come up with imaginative solutions during your own games

...and, best of all, they are fun!

To wrap this up, below is a well-know, yet amazing, study from Alexey Troitsky who "is considered to have been one of the greatest composers of chess endgame studies. He is widely regarded as the founder of the modern art of composing chess studies" (Wikipedia).

 
More to come on this topic in the following weeks.

Finally, I cannot resist to show you a great and entertaining game demonstrating, once again, the power of the bishop pair: Ravinski - Panov, it should make your day!
Cheers!