Pandolfini's Ultimate Guide to Chess

by Bruce Pandolfini

Student: Long before a chess game is over, no matter which phase they’re in, players seem to know who has the advantage and who’s in trouble. How do they determine which side has the upper hand? Teacher: By considering the elements, and this doesn’t mean checking the weather outside. There are five main elements that interact and overlap throughout a chess game. They are time, space, material, pawn structure, and king safety. Each component affects the others. Each is related. Their relationships are dynamic, and they can change on virtually every move.

Teacher: Time is not limited to the minutes on a chess clock. Generally, it refers to this chessic rule of thumb: Try to gain time, and try to avoid losing it. If you make your opponent move a piece to a poor square, or back to where it came from, without making any concessions yourself, you gain time. If you force your opponent to stop his plans and start responding to yours, you gain time. If your pieces are better developed than your opponent’s, you’re probably ahead in time. If you have freedom and can do whatever you want, you most likely have the edge in time. But if you must wait to see what your opponent is going to do before doing what you’d like, and then can’t do what you’d like anyway, you’re probably behind in time.

Teacher: You also have a time advantage if you can attack and your opponent must defend. Having such superiority—being able to attack, not having to defend—is known as having the initiative.

Using the initiative, White should strive to achieve two fundamental aims during the opening stages of the game: to develop friendly forces and to play for the center.

with each move in the opening, you should try to do one or more of the following: (1) develop a new piece or clear lines for future development; (2) fight for the center by occupying, attacking, or influencing it; (3) gain space and increase overall mobility; (4) strengthen your position while avoiding weaknesses; (5) pose at least one threat, if not multiple ones; and (6) meet all enemy threats. If you can more or less follow this program, you should be in good shape.

Rudolph Spielmann, in his Art of Sacrifice in Chess, said: “The beauty of a game of chess is usually appraised, and with good reason, according to the sacrifices it contains…. The glowing power of the sacrifice is irresistible: enthusiasm for sacrifice lies in man’s nature.”

A gambit is a voluntary offer, usually of a pawn in the opening, in an attempt to gain another kind of advantage, especially in time. The gambiteer hopes to garner several tempi for the pawn and build a winning attack. Give any opponent three extra moves and see what happens. Time advantages in the opening can affect the whole game.

it’s a good approach to seek out at least two possible solutions to a problem, so that you can compare them to see which you prefer. Much of chess thinking is exactly this: comparing possibilities to see which one works best in the given circumstances.

Besides having good visualization skills, experienced players realize that most moves are not really relevant, and don’t have to be considered too thoroughly or even at all. Good players don’t try to look at everything. Rather, they focus their attention on only a few logical moves. These players can do more because they’re focusing on less. On the other hand, the beginner doesn’t know what to look for. So he tries to look at everything and sees nothing. To some extent, the fine art of analysis consists in eliminating the irrelevant so that one can spotlight only the most logical and likely possibilities.

Student: I think it’s time for another summary. Some of the opening do’s are becoming clear, but what are some of the important don’ts in the opening? Teacher: Try these on for size. Don’t: make unnecessary pawn moves; bring out the queen too early; move a piece twice in the opening; trade a developed piece for an undeveloped one; exchange without good reason; develop just to bring a piece out and not with a specific purpose; block your center pawns; or impede the development of other friendly pieces.

Don’t: weaken your king’s position or move your uncastled king; move knights to the edge of the board; waste time or moves; indulge in pawn-grabbing; sacrifice without good reason; refuse a sacrifice because your opponent made it quickly and confidently—analyze it, then decide; play without a plan; develop in an uncoordinated way; or change plans from move to move.

Don’t: remain uncastled too long; advance pawns too far too soon; ignore your opponent’s moves; give pointless checks; capriciously avoid making natural captures or recaptures; take your opponent too lightly or too seriously; play a set order of moves without regard to your opponent’s responses; or open the center with your king still uncastled.

Student: What is the winning technique with an extra piece? Teacher: The same as it is in most instances when you’re ahead in material: exchange pieces and avoid complications. This emphasizes your advantage because if you trade efficiently unit for unit, your extra piece is likely to be the only meaningful survivor. Your extra thing will then be able to steal the other guy’s remaining things, and you’ll be ahead by more and more things until your juggernauting things can force checkmate.

If you’re in the opening stages of a game, you should play opportunistically by avoiding the endgame and constantly searching for creative counterplay, hoping to harass your opponent into rash actions. Furthermore, the more threats you issue, especially ones generating multiple attacks, the better chance you have of pulling off a swindle.

If you’ve reached the endgame, and you’re still losing, you should drum up moves that swap pawns skillfully. You might be able to convert to a position with no pawns in which your lone minor piece confronts the enemy rook, when no further progress can be made. Even though the side with the rook could still win, there are reasonable chances to reach a positional draw. But the draw isn’t automatic. Being up the exchange is still a definite advantage.

By exchanging knights on c6, White doesn’t lose time. But he does make it easier to defend his center, for now the knight that used to be at d4 no longer has to be guarded. Such a decision illustrates two sides of an important chess principle: You can gain time by exchanging pieces, or you can lose it.

You can gain time by exchanging if you stop the opponent in his tracks, leaving him no choice but to take back without positional improvement. You can lose time by exchanging if your opponent can use the take-back move to strengthen his game. If you can exchange a threatened piece without losing time, you’ve lightened your burdens. You needn’t worry anymore about the menaced piece, since once off the board it ceases to exist. You don’t have to protect what isn’t there. And by virtue of the exchange, you’ve truly gotten equal value for it, so you’ve lost nothing. After the exchange, you can go on with your game as if time had stopped for one move. It hadn’t, but the beauty of the exchange is that you can act as if it had.

You have to have a reason for everything in this game. Otherwise, it’s not chess. A trade ought to have a purpose, like anything else. If you decide on an exchange that allows your opponent to develop his pieces or improve his position, you have helped build his game at the expense of yours. Then you’ve I gained no time at all, but actually lost it. Here are some standard rules of thumb: • Don’t trade a developed piece for an undeveloped one without a good reason. • Avoid trades that develop enemy pieces in the transaction, unless you have a reason for doing otherwise. • Trade to gain time, not to lose it. Remember that a bad trade can lose time and a good one can gain time.

A zwischenzug is usually played in between a series of other moves without necessarily affecting them. It can be an unpleasant surprise, particularly if your zwischenzug poses an additional and unexpected threat to your opponent’s game—for example, if it raises the specter of an uncomfortable check, which would stop the action in its tracks.

A bishop is usually better when: (1) the position is open and diagonal attacks from far away are possible; (2) there are potential targets or operations on both sides of the board; (3) facing a knight, which the bishop can corral on the side of the board, so that the knight can’t move safely (see diagram 203); and (4) time-gaining or time-losing moves must be played, when the same key squares remain guarded by the bishop after it moves. One drawback with a knight is that it can’t move and still keep an eye on the same squares.

Knights get the nod over bishops when: (1) the position is blocked and the knight can jump over obstructions that impede a bishop; (2) the knight is anchored deep in the enemy position and can’t be dislodged; and (3) squares of both colors must be guarded. The last condition obviously can’t be satisfied by a bishop, which can guard only the color it travels on.

Time, or more specifically initiative, is a key factor, especially in the opening, when the game can sometimes be decided in ten or fifteen moves. White tries to convert his first-move advantage into something concrete by maintaining the initiative, and Black attempts to equalize by taking the initiative away.

This is where Steinitz’s strategy of positional chess comes in. Steinitz advocated playing for small advantages—apparently so small and insignificant that your opponent either doesn’t see the threats or irreverently deems them irrelevant. None of these atom-sized advantages might mean very much at the time.

Your opponent, to break this initiative, must in turn surrender something. Usually, this turns out to be material. Possibly, after you capture the material, the game will seem to return to a state of equilibrium, where neither player has an immediate attacking advantage. But there should be one telling difference: You should now have extra material—and, in a sense, you’ve literally stolen it from your opponent because you never had to make legitimate sacrifices for it.

Positional chess—Steinitzs brainchild—often focuses on weaknesses and their exploitation. In chess, however, there are really two kinds of weaknesses. One type involves points or sectors of the board that are tactically vulnerable because of particular and immediate circumstances. As such, they should not be evaluated as part of a long-term plan. Often they are based on temporary piece placement. Usually, you have to capitalize on such frailties at once to prevent your opponent from rectifying the problem by guarding the weak point or removing a threatened piece.

The other type of weakness is structural. Structural weaknesses involve badly placed pawns. In some cases, the pawns can no longer guard certain squares, either because they’ve advanced too far or because they’re unable to exercise their protective ability. They could, for example, be pinned. In other instances, the pawns themselves become nagging targets, difficult to defend. Because structural weaknesses tend to be of a lasting nature, they must be considered when formulating long-range plans.

The isolated pawn is basic to the problem of structural weakness. An isolated pawn is often a disadvantage because it can’t be protected by other pawns and because the square immediately in front of it can be occupied by opposing pieces. Without a friendly pawn to the side to guard the occupied square, there’s no guarantee that an obstructing enemy piece, one stationed in front of the isolated pawn under view, can be driven away. Pieces able to sit in front of isolated pawns are called blockaders, and the concept is usually referred to as the blockade.

So much of exchanging has to do with time, trying to arrange it that the next free move is yours, not your opponent’s.

The middlegame, or second phase of a chess game, is characterized by planning and implementation. The player’s goal is to accumulate advantages that can be converted into something concrete and decisive.

if you’re ahead in material, you’ll want to trade as many pieces as soon as possible, especially the queen. This will tend to make your material advantage more important while diminishing the significance or possibility of opposing counterattacks.

Analysis is the process of determining by careful examination the best moves in a variation or position. The ability to analyze is an essential tool in a chessplayer’s arsenal. The art of problem-solving itself involves two types of reasoning: specific calculation and general judgment. Chessplayers use specific calculation to consider particular moves and variations, evaluating them, weighing their strengths, weaknesses, and consequences. They make general judgments to decide which types of moves or plans, rather than what specific ones, they wish to consider.

In many places you should go with your intuition, but not before you’ve tried to analyze. You should rely on intuition mainly when analysis doesn’t seem to be working. Anyhow, the real purpose of analysis is this: Until you know precisely where you stand, you can’t decide what your best course of action should be. So first you analyze the situation, and then you choose a plan that is consistent with it. In other words, as with any problem-solving situation, you determine what is given, decide what your goal is, and then develop a plan of action that seems to bring you to that goal. And as I’ve said, if analysis doesn’t get you where you want to be, you can always fall back on intuition.

When it’s your turn, try to find the best move, answering the opponent’s threats, maintaining your own, and doing whatever the exigencies of the position require. When it’s your opponent’s turn and he’s doing the thinking, use your time to make general plans, considering the strategy and ideas that might be worth trying if chances should later materialize.

When trying to analyze generally, ask probing questions that help you construct a picture of the position, particularly in terms of strengths and weaknesses, possible attacks, piece placements, and so on. This technique, known as the analytic method or the Socratic method, is the basis of problem-solving and can be traced back thousands of years to the Greek philosophers and thinkers.

To increase your ability to find tactics, and to heighten your awareness of them, you might, for example, nurture the habit of scouring the board for useful connections between pieces and squares. To help you in this quest, you might try asking directive and relevant questions, such as: Are there any enemy pieces on the same lines as my pieces? Are there two or more enemy pieces on the same rank, file, or diagonal? If not, do several of the opponent’s pieces connect to the same square? Can my queen move to a square that connects to several enemy units?