1. A chess tactic
is an unstoppable threat. Often you can Avoid, Block, Capture or Defend your way out of a
threat, but if you can't, you're probably on the receiving
end of a tactic.
There are useful opening
'rules'
(really, guidelines) which should be known and adopted at
least until
you know better. Sadly, even strict obedience to the
rules can
lead to trouble, so you have to learn some specific opening
lines. You don't have to know every opening, but you
need at
least one system for White and a couple as Black.
Which ones you
choose depends on your style and your appetite for study.
Opening principles
It's useful to review and rehearse the reasons for the
The secret of Grandmaster play is to make use of the hidden 65th square on the chess board. I'm sure you've all had the experience of having a piece come at you, apparently out of nowhere, to take one of your army. That piece came from the 65th square.
I can't show you the square, because it's not on the usual 8x8 grid system, but I can show you that it is there. Watch...
Take a 8x8 chessboard (64 squares, right?), and divide it up in a special way:
We had a 4-board
match
this
week where
eight Division One chessplayers weren't clear enough about the rules to
give much
confidence in the knowledge of the rest of you...
Stewart Reuben
says in the latest Organiser's Handbook that this rule "...continues to
give arbiters problems. ... When I was in South Africa and held a
seminar, the local arbiters wanted to spend the whole time discussing
nothing else."
Tim came to the club buzzing with these a few weeks ago.
[Skip intro]
A Zugzwang (German: forced move) is a chess position where, if it's your turn to move, you lose, and if your opponent has the move, you might be OK.
Here's an example from one of my own games: anything White does loses. We say, White is in Zugzwang.
I have been looking at French repertoires recently, and thought it was
useful for my own amusement at least to see what various authors
writing for the Black audience recommended.
Repertoire books these days often give you a choice, which is excellent.
"Happy is the man who can make a living by his hobby!", said GBS, but typically there's not a lot of overlap between my day job in health and education and my pastime of chess.
