Heisman's "Three Showstoppers"

Last month, Dan Heisman's column at ChessCafe.com ("The Three Show Stoppers") set a lightbulb off for me. Which is odd, because he's discussing issues of time management, piece safety and piece activity that he's written about before. However, these concepts came together to form a "perfect storm" of chess instruction.

A theme of Heisman's is that there are certain basic skills such as time management and playing what Heisman calls "real chess" consistently on every move of the game. The trick, of course, is consistently. If 49 moves out of 50 you play properly, and 1 move out of 50 you launch a stinkbomb of a move because you moved too fast or a piece was hanging, then your chess strength is severely diminished. I think that, for most people, working on improving this aspect of their game will likely produce greater dividends than just about any other chess-related activity.

Easily said, but as the byline of this blog says: "Do as I say, not as I do." It takes gumption to work on this, and if most of your chess is online blitz then you're not going to be able to play "real chess" a la Heisman unless you're pretty gifted. However, in this column Heisman reduces the essentials to three principles:

• Time Management: not moving too fast or too slow, but using the appropriate amount of time for each move
• Safety
• Piece Activity

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Commiserating with BDK

Ah, sweet, sweet internet access. I'm typing this from a hotel room; tomorrow I fly back home (about 10 pounds heavier from all the Christmas goodies). Before I left on my trip, I had read BDK's recent post on chess suckage. I'm sure we can all identify with his lament:

"It makes me wonder, sometimes, why I bother with this game if I'm going to suck so badly at it after more than three years playing. It's one of those games that I felt so bad about that I don't even want to analyze the game it makes me feel like s*** to even think about it."

Heck, yeah.

I strongly identified with his observation:

"I've also noticed that in real over the board games my chess vision is just not as good. I miss tactics I spot immediately when playing over the computer. I learned on the computer, trained on the computer, and almost always play on the computer.

"That has to stop. I've begun playing games on ICC using my actual board, using the computer only to relay my moves. We'll see if it helps. It feels hopeless sometimes, like my brain is permanently locked into a 2-D way of thinking, where all the pieces are always equally distinct and visible."

The last chess club before Christmas was a blitz tournament, and I truly sucked. I'm terrible at blitz, especially 5-minute games with no time increment (I typically play with a 12-second increment for internet games). I was struck by a couple things:

• lack of awareness of the whole board. In one game that I luckily won, my checkmating queen on d5 could have been captured by a bishop on a1 had my opponent not conceded. I would tend to focus on one region of the board and miss long moves or tactics in another region. On a computer 2-D board, it's easier to take in the whole board.
  
• absolute inability to play anything remotely resembling "real chess" a la Heisman at those time controls. My king was captured twice by missing checks while pressing my attack in time trouble.

With regards to the first point: even though I don't seem to have any trouble switching between 2-D and 3-D positions, I know that I retain material better when using a real board...whether it's practicing tactics problems, learning basic endgames, or deciding on opening lines for my repertoire.

As for the second point: I've only skimmed Kotov's Think Like a Grandmaster, but I recall one of his infamous pronouncements is that the thinking method ("think like a tree") doesn't change in time pressure situations...you just do it faster. This seems like a pretty stupid piece of advice on the surface ("gee, thanks!"), but it actually cuts to the heart of the matter. You have to train yourself to consistently play "real chess" so that it's second nature, even in time pressure. It's not enough to know how you're supposed to think: it takes practice to play "real chess" consistently.

I am currently playing a pair of games by email, and I'm trying to play "real chess" in these games. Even with days available per move, I'm not consistent. In one game, I analyzed a promising rook sacrifice but missed a killer response from my opponent. With the luxury of having as much time as I want per move, I still have to force myself to consistently consider my opponent's move, identify candidate moves, select one, and consider all of my opponent's responses.

Training myself to play "real chess" reliably will be like breaking a bone and resetting it. Playing "hope chess", particularly in ICC Blitz, just reinforces the same old bad thinking habits. I'll probably post more on this with a set of New Year's Resolutions.

Spot the Back Rank Weakness

Even though (if you're at all like me) we still fall prey to "simple" back-rank weakness tactics, I think these tactics are sometimes dismissed as obvious, beginner cheapos. However, these motifs can be quite deeply concealed. The following example from Marshall-Alekhine, NY 1924 caught my attention:



20...h6. Alekhine: "It was surely disagreeable to deprive the Rook of the control of h6, and yet there appeared to be no other way of preparing for Rf6 (20... Rf6 21. Qxe4 Qxe4 22. Nxe4 Rxe4:



23. Rxd5." Of course 23...cxd5?? 24. Rc8+ and back-rank mate to follow. It's not hard to calculate this forcing line, but you'd have to look pretty carefully at the first diagram to see that there was a potential back-rank weakness and that making luft with ...h6 was a good idea. Besides being a good example of calculating a forcing variation, this is also a good example of playing "real chess" a la Heisman: "What can my opponent do after I make the move I want to make?"

To add a dose of humility, I'll conclude with a recent blunder of mine from a blitz game:


I had actually made luft with ...g6 seven moves ago, to hopefully thwart back-rank problems. In time trouble I played 29...Rcc7??, hoping for something like 30.Bxc5?? Rxc5 31.Rxc5 a2 -+.

However, to my opponent's credit, he almost immediately whipped out 30.Bh6! Ke8 31.Ra8+ 1-0.