Techniques for the Beginner: Strategy

Greetings chess players and fans of chess! I have decided to start teaching some basic concepts and ideas regarding chess here on The Art Of Chess blog page. These mini lessons will be included in my book "Punk Rock Chess" which I hope to have completed within the next three months.

We'll start our lessons with some basic strategies and tactics for the novice player. This serves as an introduction to the concepts needed to improve your game and certainly enjoy it more. We'll start with some basic concepts:

To play chess successfully requires careful planning and the consideration of each move you make. Think of it this way: If you want to get in your car and drive to a place you've never been to before, you have a couple of options. You can get in your car, start driving, and hope you arrive at your destination eventually. There's no planning involved in that decision. However, you're probably not going to get there and you'll waste a whole lot of gas in the process. The second option is to look at a map, make a plan or use some strategy in your efforts to get to the place you're going. This idea of mapping out a plan is what we call a strategy in chess.

You'll hear the word tactic a lot when reading chess literature. Tactics may seem like a foreign concept to some of you but the truth is, you use tactics every day of your lives. You start by using a map to guide you. This is your strategy. However, the map shows construction zones all over the place. Let's say there is construction on the road to the above mentioned place you're going. You use the map you downloaded from the internet, but when you get to the construction zone, you have a choice; you can go to the left of the construction zone or to the right. One way requires a small car to get through the narrow road, the other requires a car with all terrain tires. You think about the car your driving, realize it's small and without all terrain tires, so you take the narrow road. You have just made a tactical decision.

So in a general sense, a strategy is a game plan for the bigger picture. In chess your strategy is, for example, to control the central squares of the chess board and eventually checkmate the opponent's King. The way you achieve this goal is through the use of tactics. Tactics are solutions to the immediate problem, such as how to I capture the my opponent's pieces or how do I keep my opponent from capturing my pieces.

Therefore, when you sit down to play chess, you need to think about your strategy or your goal and have some knowledge of basic tactics. We'll start our examination of tactics in the next blog. For now I am going to give you so basic strategies to help you start your game successfully.

You'll hear a lot spoken about the opening. What is the opening or opening game? In it's simplest terms, it's the beginning moves of any chess game. This is where you apply your first strategies. There are countless books dedicated to the opening moves of chess and numerous names for these openings. We'll get into those much later on, but for now let's take a look at some basic opening principles that will help you in your most basic strategy: To successfully win a game of chess.

You here a lot about controlling the central squares of the chess board and how central control leads you along the road to victory. Why should you control the central four squares? Why not any other four squares on the board? As it turns out, many of the pieces you'll need to win the game do best when in the center of the board. The reason they do well at the center of the board is because the center of the board allows for the greatest amount of freedom or movement for these pieces. When we study basic tactics using the Knight we'll see that the old saying "a Knight on the rim is grim" holds true. The Knight especially needs to be in the center of the action to work his magic. The target squares in the center of the board are d4,d5,e4, and e5. The first pieces to reach these central squares are usually the pawns.

This brings us to piece development. There is an order in which you want to deploy your pieces. For beginners, the smartest (until you learn a bit more about the many types of openings) opening move is to bring out a King or Queen pawn (the pawn in front of the King or Queen). Why? Because it allows you to develop or bring out pieces such as your Knights and Bishops. As you can see in the example at the top of this page, White has moved the King's pawn to e4. This not only controls a central square but it allows the White Bishop and Queen to move out of the back or 1st rank.

The next pieces, after the central pawns, to be developed are the Knights. The Knight has the ability to jump over the pawns in from of them and go directly into the game. They also have the advantage of being able to position themselves after one move to either defend or attack the central squares. After that comes the Bishops. Many people feel the need to bring the Queen out early but this is a mistake. The reason? Because she is worth 9 points and if your opponent can capture your Queen early, you'll loose a valuable piece that could save you in the middle game and end games (more on them later).

Another strategy is to always move and capture towards the center. That's where most of the action takes place. You also want to move each piece only one time during the opening. Otherwise, you loose tempo or your timing. When trying to control the center of the board, you're in a race against time with your opponent and you want to keep the tempo up and not lose it! There are other rules to keep in mind as well, such as castling early. This makes sense because you want to protect your King early on so you don't have to worry about him while your fighting it out in the center of the board. We'll go over the concepts of the opening again when we concentrate on the opening game. For now keep these ideas in the back of your mind when you play chess.

One last thought: Each time your about to make a move, ask yourself, what does this move accomplish and what do I get out of this move. If your move looses a piece and you gain nothing from it, you've wasted a move. You don't want to waste moves in chess, unless it's a quiet move meant to buy time, but more on that later on. We'll pick up next time on the opening and some tactics for gaining control of the central squares. Until then, enjoy the game!

Beating Your Chess Computer

I've read a lot lately regarding chess players and their chess software, namely attempts to beat their computers. I decided to do a bit of research and present a very basic atricle on some strategies useful for beginners. As always, I remind everyone that I am simply an average player who enjoys the game and also enjoys writing (so don't look for GM level analysis). Therefore, the concepts I present are very simple in structure. I have stayed away from the mathematical complexities of programming stucture because it would require too much writing and, truth be told, probably put half of you into an intense coma for days after reading it. This is some basic theory I have researched in a nutshell. Enjoy this or complain about it, your choice (for those of you choosing to send semi-angry notes to me, try to use clever analogies and metaphors rather than statements such as "you suck." It doesnt bode well in demonstrating your maturity level!

Because my schedule as a musician ties up a lot of my time, chess computer programs have become a good friends. I approach chess and most things in life the only way I know how: the way one would study music theory or a scientific problem (because of my science background, although applying scientific reasoning to love usually fails). Advances in technology have allowed us to purchase a number of sophisticated programs at a very reasonable price. While the chess software program offers a great training partner, it is no substitute for human interaction. Programs such as Fritz, Rybka and Chessmaster offer a broad range of levels suited for most players. One of the things I've noticed via comments on various chess forums is an alarming lack of common sense from novice players. That's what I'll be covering here.

The most obvious piece of advice is don't play your software program on it's highest setting. Even if you're the luckiest person on the face of the earth, your luck will run out here! Sofware programs come with a number of different playing levels designed to level the playing field. Use those levels. You should probably set the levels a bit lower that your rating. The reason is simple: The computer doesn't get tired and doesn't have a mind apt to wander. Also, getting beat by your computer 26 games in a row can often deflate and numb one's ego a bit. Of course don't set the computer's level on the "I was dropped on my head as a small child" setting because you'll learn nothing (even though you might feel like a minor chess god for perpetual wins!

This is the point where you want to consider your style. It's never too early to start developing a style of play. This style will become important in your later games against the computer. These types of programs are not "knowledge based systems." In other words, computers do not learn from their mistakes. Chess programs have improved over the last 25 or so years but these improvements have more to do with advances in hardware issues such as CPU speeds, system architecture, etc. The improvement is in the computer's ability to analyze large fields of possibilities (running 25,000 possible replies, for example, to your single move). If the computer can analyze your single move in nano seconds and analyze a huge number of responses, what hope do we have of beating the all powerful PC or MAC? To answer this question, keep in mind that I am using relatively average playing levels rather than the highest setting your software has.

The first concept to consider when trying to beat your computer is tactics. This is so simple that it is often overlooked. The computer's ability to calculate positions and possible outcomes of those positions at such a high speed give it a huge advantage from the onset of the game. Therefore, you want to avoid complicated tactics. You need to use tactics that you have a grasp of and tactics in which the outcome is more limited. It's easier for you to play a move with 16 possible outcomes that a move with 1600.

Of course, I am presenting an overview that is extremely simplified. You can further you studies through a number of articles and books related to the subject. With the above thought in mind, is it possible to battle your software in a tactical game? There is hope! Most chess software is not absolutely brilliant when it comes to seeing far into the game. This is called the "horizon effect." Therefore, you want to try to develop a long range strategy. The strength of most basic chess programs is in their ability to analyze the next few moves in your game in great detail. If a program were to analyze your move, say 20 moves in advance, you'd grow old waiting for the computer to move. Here's where you want to capitalize on things like pattern recognition and experience based on human game play. Being human can work to your advantage when playing the computer. However, don't try the rookie mistake of throwing the computer an "off the wall" move in an attempt to throw it's game. Most programmers have worked their design around this trick.

This brings us the the age old rule, keep it simple! Your want to make moves that require you not having to calculate more that three or four moves in advance. It's tough when your past the opening and into the beginning of the middle game where combinations can seem to have endless possibilities. However, you want to stick to this concept until you approach the end game. Most chess programs tend to play their worst in the endgame. The reason for this endgame deficiency has to do with the program's "tablebase." When the computer gets to the point in the game where material has been reduced to three or four men, it goes into it's "tablebase" mode. This is where reduced material positions have been completely pre-analyzed by the computer program when it was first designed and the best moves programmed into it's data base. In other words, you make your move in the end game and the computer replies with a preprogrammed response. If the computer finds your move in it's database, it stops calculating it's move in the normal fashion ( a huge number of moves calculated per second), checks the database response, and makes it's counter move. This means the odds start to adjust more toward you.

While none of this gives you sure fire ways to always beat your computer. It should provide some intellectual food for thought regarding beginner's strategies. I am going to do another blog with game illustrations from a GM and Fritz. I will try to post it at the end of this weekend. I have a big show this weekend and have to go into my studio and practice some guitar solo changes I want to try. Like chess, it's all a matter of practice. If our next CD hits and I get more money, I am retiring, staying home and doing nothing by playing chess, using my new microscope and telescopes, and reading. Yeah, there's misspellings in the above but I'm not an English Major and I hate giving things over to the editor for changes.