Improve Your Chess!

Most of this I learned from a friend of mine, Pedro Yupari. He is a strong chess expert from Peru with the middlegame strength of a grandmaster. His games are characterized by a unique, but solid, opening repertoire coupled with complicated middlegame positions and fantastic finishing moves. Over the years we have played together, he unveiled his technique for improving middlegame strength.

Lombardy says "all openings are sound below master level".

In short, this means all games are decided during the middlegame. It is here that all players must stand on their own judgment and execution. How well you identify hidden weaknesses in your opponents position and just how precise you are at exploiting those flaws represents the true strength of your play.

The recommended approach is simple in concept but difficult in practice: Know your Openings! You must know more than just a list of good moves. You should be intimately familiar with correct/incorrect play resulting from your openings.

I used my tournament experience and personal preferences to choose an opening repertoire. Exactly which openings you play is much less important than understanding resultant middlegame positions.

Forget about the fads and simply choose openings that 'feel' correct to you. Then choose 50 games where your opening has led to won games. Go through these games over and over again until you understand thematic play. You want to discover how these games were won. Were they won with precise play in pawn endings or do they typically end in a mating net around move 30.

Naturally, these games will diverge from any simple classification scheme. However, that is the point!!

You must have a better understanding of the resulting middlegame positions than does your opponent. By studying how players win in a given opening, you will discover how to exploit weaknesses commonly found in these positions.

Once you demonstrate the ability to win your openings, you must develop the means to defend your openings. As I mentioned in previous articles, as pieces move weaknesses will arise in the position. Since you are making moves, your position will also have imperfections. Studying how great players beat your chosen lines will be much more satisfying than studying your own losses. You should understand where these weaknesses occur and what attacking lines have been successful in their exploitation.

To do this, you simply reverse the previous strategy. Find 50 instructive games where your opening lines were busted. Look first at the areas of the board which proved decisive. Then you should look for specific squares or color complexes that led to those losses. You want to build a mental library of the tactical shots used during these games. Then you will need a defensive strategy. Typically, one simply avoids problematic lines altogether. However, much better is to find key defensive novelties in lines thought to be weak. If you are successful at this, you will certainly see positive results over the board.

Now that you are understand how to win from your opening and you have a pretty good idea of how you are to defend your opening, you come to real heart of tournament chess. You are ready to 'prepare' for tournament play. That is right, the previous two steps simply help you execute your ideas over the board. But do not expect your first master's norm. You must take the next step which is to prepare your opening repertoire.

To understand whether or not your opening repertoire is sound, you must study drawn games. Afterall, drawn games are the result of correct middlegame play on both sides of the board. In these games, you will find the strongest games played from your opening. The true strength of your opening will be found as you study these games.

Your preparation will involve two steps.

Only your studies can answer these questions, so don't look for my help here. In fact, I am still preparing my opening lines. So I have a lot of work to do myself.

From this effort, I have found some novelties which I use during tournament play. The results have been mixed. Sometimes I catch my opponent in an uncomfortable position. However, I often find that I do not understand the intricacies of the position and can be outplayed.

The problem with discovering novelties is that there are no games to study. Consequently, understanding the strength of your novelties can be a burden. In the end, you are left to own devices. So I came up with a little trick. I let strong computers play each other and from their play build a game database. I have found these games to be quite valuable as these silicon masters devise truly surprising novelties of their own.

Written by: Kevin Monte de Ramos