I recently completed American Grandmaster: Four Decades of Chess Adventures by GM Joel Benjamin. I had picked it up as a bargain used book from a dealer at chess tournament a while back, and finally decided to read it during lunchtime at work, my interest primarily being for daily annotated games review. It was not particularly well suited for this, however, as the majority of the actual chess content consisted of individual positions, game fragments, or complete scores but with only a couple comments included. There were enough games at a sufficient level of annotation to be wort ..read more

This last-round tournament game is yet another example of the main lesson from Annotated Game #267: How openings are really learned. Here it's a Slow Slav that I had little depth on previously, but studying this game and looking at a couple database examples now have armed me much better for future clashes in the opening. [Event "?"] [Site "?"] [Date "????.??.??"] [Round "?"] [White "Class A"] [Black "ChessAdmin"] [Result "1-0"] [ECO "D12"] [Annotator "ChessAdmin/Dragon 3.2"] [PlyCount "55"] 1. d4 d5 2. c4 c6 3. Nf3 Nf6 4. e3 Bf5 5. Nc3 e6 6. Nh4 Bg6 7. Nxg6 hxg6 8. Bd3 Qc7 {targeting h2 and ..read more

Due to having a bye round in the tournament (and having quickly lost my first game as Black), I surprisingly ended up having two Whites in a row. This one, despite being a Symmetrical English, turned into one of the wildest games I have played in at least the past few years.  Similar to Annotated Game #265 and others, I often get the sense from my opponent's initial hesitation to respond to 1. c4 that they have decided to simply mimic moves, rather than actually follow a prepared repertoire. The problem from White's perspective is that in this opening, that works reasonable well for ..read more

3 Steps To Think Like a Grandmaster by GM Igor Smirnov (in his "Remote Chess Academy" series) is a 20-minute video that offers what I consider as another useful and practical contribution to a chess improver's thinking process. It outlines three broad steps, which I'll paraphrase: 1) Identify reasonable candidate moves 2) Remove ones from consideration that do not advance your plan 3) Calculate the ones left for safety (in other words, blunder check), then select the most aggressive of the valid moves remaining Any chessplayer who has looked at constructing or analyzing their own thinking proc ..read more

In my next "comeback" tournament, I blundered early (move 8) in my first round game after having a distracting morning, which was not worth analyzing beyond remembering the obvious lesson of avoiding that particular blunder again. We'll therefore start with the second round game, which helped highlight the previous theme of Annotated Game #267: How openings are really learned, as it featured a dubious variation from Black in an English Four Knights. I had faced it before twice in my tournament career, but did not recall the previous games at the time. After looking at this one, I should rememb ..read more

  I recently completed the FritzTrainer The 4...Nf6 Caro-Kann by GM Nigel Davies, which was published in 2016. It covers lines in both the Bronstein-Larsen (5...gxf6) and Tartakower (5...exf6) variations for Black, which is unusual, since Caro-Kann opening resources normally focus on one or the other, because of their major structural differences. The content description is copied below; there are also 16 quiz positions at the end, mostly from the Bronstein-Larsen side. In each of the lines, a full game is presented as the baseline, although certain sub-variations or ideas are demonstrat ..read more

In Annotated Game #267 ("How openings are really learned") I highlighted the cycle for acquiring deeper understanding of openings and their early middlegame plans: play consistently, analyze your games, and you will inevitably expand your understanding of them step by step. Separate but closely related to that, I recently ran across what I thought was a well-articulated (and simple) version of the broader learning cycle at Chessmood: https://chessmood.com/blog/how-to-get-better-at-chess The full article addresses other things like the importance of mindset, but below is how they present the cy ..read more

This final-round game illustrates several useful themes, including recent ones highlighted like the importance of playing an idea at the right time and the power (and necessity) of simple development. The mutual "??" moment on move 32 shows how time trouble was affecting my game, as I had a chance to turn things around, and played the correct move one tempo too late.  This game is also a perfect example of a broader theme of how openings really get learned - namely, the hard way. During the game it was clear that my opponent as White was out of his personal experience in the opening ..read more

I happened to get two Whites in a row and I was not unhappy, given the previous result, that this game paralleled Annotated Game #265's Symmetrical English until move 8. Black's asymmetric reaction in the center with ...e5 created an imbalance in the position which I could have reacted to with the idea of Bg5, looking to trade the now "bad" bishop off. However, I pass up several early opportunities, only to play it at a much worse time later in the game, which nearly gets the bishop trapped. A similar theme applies to my light-square bishop's back-and-forth maneuvers. The game overall was mor ..read more

This second game from the tournament featured a Symmetrical English, which had a great deal of symmetry indeed, only varying on move 9. If one chooses to play as White in this way, then patience is the key to success, rather than an ability (or desire) to pursue an attacking, imbalanced game. It can be annoying when Black clearly has no experience with the opening, but can still get a good position simply by mimicking moves. However, sometimes the patient approach pays off, as in this game after Black gets impatient and presses too hard with his queen, at a time when a sense of danger was nece ..read more