2. Become proficient at finding offensive and defensive tactics.

3. Stop playing “hope chess”. Analyze at least 4 ply deep, and make sure that your move improves your position and does not lead to #1 & 2 above.

4. Be aware of your opponents tactical and positional threats.

5. Become proficient in basic endgames (king and pawn and rook endgames in particular).

6. Learn the basic positional themes.

7. Work on improving your thought process.

8. Create a basic opening repertoire that fits your style of play, and does not rely on too much theory.

9. Play stronger opponents and review your games afterwards.

10. Play over annotated master games.

You see a tactical combination on the board and you have the opportunity to play it…you become excited, after all this is your moment to play like Tal, but chances are that you do not play  like Tal. While you have spotted a tactical opportunity,  it may not be the best move, it might even be a bad move.  Chances are that your opponent has a refutation for the tactic you have spotted that may either weaken your position or cause you to lose the game.

When you see a tactic, there is no better moment to stop, and thoroughly analyze your combination. If you have found a winning move, then spending the time to properly analyze the combination is a good investment since you will have a winning position, and time should not be a factor. If the move is not winning, then the time spent on analysis will at least maintain the status quo.

Most of the time when I rush to play a tactical move, one of the following negative things occur:

1. The opponent has a killer in-between move that causes me to lose material or the game.

2. The combination or sacrifice is flawed, and the opponent can easily refute it,usually at a material cost to me.

3. The move is easily parried, and all it has a achieved is a positional weakening of my position, which my opponent if they are stronger will exploit for a win.

So when you see a tactic, don’t rush to play it. Stop for a moment, and analyze the position as you would any critical moment .

According to Dan Heisman in his great article Bootstrapping Analysis Skills

The following are what make you a good analyst:

• Will to analyze the position correctly, move after move.
• Patience to analyze the position thoroughly (but keep in mind the
  clock – see “g”).
• Analytical thought process to know what steps to take.
• Board vision to see what is happening (statically) across the entire
  board quickly and accurately.
• Tactical pattern recognition – the ability to quickly and accurately
  recognize and assess basic safety issues.
• Visualization to keep the imagined patterns correctly in the mind’s
  eye when looking ahead.
• Micro time management determines the length of thinking time to
  take before one settles for a “best so far” move, assuming the
  “best” move is not found by then.
• Deductive logic to see which moves are candidates, and what is
  forced and what is not.
• Quiescence recognition to know when to stop analyzing lines and
  evaluate.
• Awareness of danger/criticality assessment, plus the recognition of
  The Seeds of Tactical Destruction.

2. Look for immediate opponent threats.

3. Narrate tactical themes (Hanging bishop, skewerable or forkable pieces, etc.).

4. Look at more than one candidate (when you find a good move look for a better one).

5. Calculate at least 6 ply (3 moves) deep.

6. Look for in-between moves.

7. Examine forcing moves first in the order of checks, captures and threats.

8. When all seems lost, look for stalemate possibilities.

9. If you feel you are on the right track, but your are not finding the winning move, then try to reverse the move order.

10. Blundercheck.

In the diagram White has an outpost on e5, but Ne5 can always be met by …Nxe5 and after recapturing with the pawn, White’s outpost is gone. White needs to bring another piece to bear on e5, so White to move would play 1.Bg5 and follow it up with Bh4 and Bg3. If on the other hand Black is on the move, he would seek to prevent this with 1…h6, or a more active solution 2…Qe8( so as to meet Bg5 with 2…Qh5! threatening Rxf3) or 1…Qb6. Either move gives Black a fine position.

If you are unable to cover your opponent’s outpost, then extremely active harassing tactics are needed.

The diagram is from Unzicker – Fischer, Varna 1962.  If you are unable to cover your opponent’s outpost, then extremely active harassing tactics are needed. In this position the White knight is at least four moves away from reaching d5, this gives Black some breathing room to prevent it, since after the White knight reaches d5 White is lost.

1… Ra4 Immobilizing the knight. 2. c3 Qa6 3. h3?  Rc8 4. Rfe1 h6 5. Kh2 Bg5 6. g3 Qa7 7. Kg2 Ra2 8. Kf1 Rxc3! White resigns, as after 9.Rxa2 (9.bxc3 Qf2#) Rf3+ 10.Ke2 Rf2+ 11.Kd1 Qxa2 his position is wrecked.

The lessons to be learned here is that structure alone is not quite everything. The pieces must be able to coordinate with the pawn structure.

From Stean’s Simple Chess

Assumptions

My FICS standard rating has gone from 1607 to 1699 during this time and my blitz rating has gone from 1234 to 1310. I promise to write more when I have more time, but in the meantime here are a few thoughts and resource:

1. Check out GM Nigel Davies The Chess Improver Blog.

2. Being more aware of my opponent’s threats has been a major improvement milestone.

3. A sure way to quickly improve is to practice basic chess tactics and to try to eliminate blunders from your play.

4. Blitz is fun, but it is counterproductive when trying to improve your overall chess.

5. Chess Secrets: The Giants of Chess Strategy by Neil McDonald is a phenomenal book and a great positional textbook.

1. I played over 3 random games from each of the masters on the list.

2. I gave myself a 0 for needs work, 1 for average, 2 for good, 3 for very good and 4 for outstanding.

3. I averaged the scores for the three games, and gave myself an overall score.

4. I will now begin reviewing  in detail, the games of the master with which I have the most affinity.

In my case I scored an average of 2.67 when playing over Tarrasch’s games, and the second runner up was Karpov with a score of 2.0. I observed that I did better with the more positional / classical style players than with the more modern / dynamic styles.

I will continue to go over master games strictly focusing on Tarrasch’s games using Guess the Move, and then compare my annotations with his annotated games collection( Three Hundred Chess Games ).