I Lost Interest, But It's OK
So I've been playing poorly (I lost last Thursday) and I really think I needed a break from chess. Good thing my coach is playing in the European Individual Chess Championship right now. I was in the wrong state of mind for chess. I was more in love with my recent accomplishments than with the game. And that's bad. I wanted to improve my chess, I didn't want to learn chess. So to reinstill a love of the game I dusted off Great Predecessors Part 2 and looked through the first two games...
And it worked! I like chess again. A lot. I forgot what it was about. I forgot why I was good in the first place.
The last three games I've played I've been playing carelessly. I haven't been focused on making the best move. I've just been making moves and hoping that I get to a position where I can just win. I joked with my friend who I've been playing poker with lately that poker has been ruining my chess. We're playing these $50 buy-in tournaments at a local casino on Monday evenings and they're intense. It's 2 hours of decision making and it's a different form of decision making than in chess. In poker you cannot possibly have all the information, not so in chess.
The best part of the Predecessors series is Kasparov's analysis. It's deep. If I get lazy and read just the moves I get bored easily, but once I play through the variations I see why all of them are included. Also they usually bring to light themes that are not pursued in the game.
Euwe-Bogoljubow 1921 is the second game. I must note that the first comment to this game is by 'drukenknight', this is not me. I have never made a comment on chessgames.com. I spent a full hour looking at this game last night. It wasn't really only this game since there are several games embedded in the text, but still. It's a line that I play for white and it's a very interesting one.
After 21.Qf6! the endgame is lost for Bogo, but even this move is fascinating. It seems white has an attack and would want to keep the queens on, but Euwe just simplifies and quickly decides the game. Anyways if you scroll through the game quickly it looks like Black gets crushed. And he did. But.... THERE IS SO MUCH PLAY FOR BLACK. I couldn't believe how much. Even after 13.Bg6, Nd4! keeps the game level. I want to talk a little bit about how there is so much play, and then about how this heightened my perception of chess.
OK, so looking at move 12.Rh3, this is the crucial moment. Euwe has just completely committed to a kingside attack. Kasparov gives two other games in the notes where Euwe uses this Rh3 and Bg6 idea to beat this variation, it's a nice attack. So Black must mobilize his pieces or he is done. One of the things that was always unattractive to me about these positions for Black is that he is so underdeveloped it seems as though White will have no trouble executing any plan he wishes. It turns out that this is not the case. Instead of 12...Qa5 Black must play 12...cd which forces White to recapture. So after 13.cd Black plays just Bd7 (or Qa5 and then Bd7, no real difference). White's threat after Bg6 is that if fxg6 Qg6 and then after the king moves Qf6 winning the h8 rook. So Bd7 defends this rook with the a8 rook and takes away the threat. For instance 12...cd 13.cd Bd7 14.Bg6? Qa5 15.Kd1 fxg6 16.Qg6 Kd8 17.Qf6 now accomplishes nothing because of 17...Kc7 which holds everything. Just realizing this was absolutely amazing to me. The inclusion of the simple pawn exchange completely nullifies the attack.
So that's definitely not all the analysis in the book, but it is enough for the scope of this discussion. I am not looking at enough themes when I play. I want to get the game down to one line and just play that one line but there's so much more to every move. So many themes that I am just ignoring. I'm not giving chess enough credit. It is much deeper than the little traps I set and the checkmates I see. I am increasingly defaulting to moves that look good rather than moves that are good. I know how to find good moves. I really do. But so much of the time I am just waiting to find a knockout. I don't even know if I'm capable at this point of just building on an advantage. The thought sounds foreign. Going back through my games this is what I'm missing. I just want to win right away.
What I really needed to get from last night was that BLACK HAS PLAY. My opponent has play. There's always play in a position. ALWAYS. Kasparov in his book is able to insert complications that have been found in the 80 years since this game has been played but in reality he just sheds light on modern chess. In a recent post chessloser was saying that he wants to speed up his process of learning by looking at modern games. The problem with that is that modern games break the rules. They play positions that are 'unplayable'. Positions we naturally reject because we cannot possibly comprehend the depth of their thought. Games at the top level traditionally followed a set of rules, and these rules were steadily broken (new rules were introduced - double isolated pawns, exchange sacs, positional pawn sacs, etc.) until we got where we are today.
The game is about constantly fighting. Not only making the best move (as this is subjective a lot of the time) but presenting your opponent with unsolvable problems. To do this sometimes you have to accept unsolvable problems as well, and this is what annotators mean by positions that are unclear or have chances for both sides. Then you just fight. Minimax style. Limit their chances and maximize your own. That's what it's about. Sometimes I forget and I think I see a win, but all I really have to do is shut my opponent down. In order to do that I have to remember that there is ALWAYS PLAY FOR BOTH SIDES.
And it worked! I like chess again. A lot. I forgot what it was about. I forgot why I was good in the first place.
The last three games I've played I've been playing carelessly. I haven't been focused on making the best move. I've just been making moves and hoping that I get to a position where I can just win. I joked with my friend who I've been playing poker with lately that poker has been ruining my chess. We're playing these $50 buy-in tournaments at a local casino on Monday evenings and they're intense. It's 2 hours of decision making and it's a different form of decision making than in chess. In poker you cannot possibly have all the information, not so in chess.
The best part of the Predecessors series is Kasparov's analysis. It's deep. If I get lazy and read just the moves I get bored easily, but once I play through the variations I see why all of them are included. Also they usually bring to light themes that are not pursued in the game.
Euwe-Bogoljubow 1921 is the second game. I must note that the first comment to this game is by 'drukenknight', this is not me. I have never made a comment on chessgames.com. I spent a full hour looking at this game last night. It wasn't really only this game since there are several games embedded in the text, but still. It's a line that I play for white and it's a very interesting one.
After 21.Qf6! the endgame is lost for Bogo, but even this move is fascinating. It seems white has an attack and would want to keep the queens on, but Euwe just simplifies and quickly decides the game. Anyways if you scroll through the game quickly it looks like Black gets crushed. And he did. But.... THERE IS SO MUCH PLAY FOR BLACK. I couldn't believe how much. Even after 13.Bg6, Nd4! keeps the game level. I want to talk a little bit about how there is so much play, and then about how this heightened my perception of chess.
OK, so looking at move 12.Rh3, this is the crucial moment. Euwe has just completely committed to a kingside attack. Kasparov gives two other games in the notes where Euwe uses this Rh3 and Bg6 idea to beat this variation, it's a nice attack. So Black must mobilize his pieces or he is done. One of the things that was always unattractive to me about these positions for Black is that he is so underdeveloped it seems as though White will have no trouble executing any plan he wishes. It turns out that this is not the case. Instead of 12...Qa5 Black must play 12...cd which forces White to recapture. So after 13.cd Black plays just Bd7 (or Qa5 and then Bd7, no real difference). White's threat after Bg6 is that if fxg6 Qg6 and then after the king moves Qf6 winning the h8 rook. So Bd7 defends this rook with the a8 rook and takes away the threat. For instance 12...cd 13.cd Bd7 14.Bg6? Qa5 15.Kd1 fxg6 16.Qg6 Kd8 17.Qf6 now accomplishes nothing because of 17...Kc7 which holds everything. Just realizing this was absolutely amazing to me. The inclusion of the simple pawn exchange completely nullifies the attack.
So that's definitely not all the analysis in the book, but it is enough for the scope of this discussion. I am not looking at enough themes when I play. I want to get the game down to one line and just play that one line but there's so much more to every move. So many themes that I am just ignoring. I'm not giving chess enough credit. It is much deeper than the little traps I set and the checkmates I see. I am increasingly defaulting to moves that look good rather than moves that are good. I know how to find good moves. I really do. But so much of the time I am just waiting to find a knockout. I don't even know if I'm capable at this point of just building on an advantage. The thought sounds foreign. Going back through my games this is what I'm missing. I just want to win right away.
What I really needed to get from last night was that BLACK HAS PLAY. My opponent has play. There's always play in a position. ALWAYS. Kasparov in his book is able to insert complications that have been found in the 80 years since this game has been played but in reality he just sheds light on modern chess. In a recent post chessloser was saying that he wants to speed up his process of learning by looking at modern games. The problem with that is that modern games break the rules. They play positions that are 'unplayable'. Positions we naturally reject because we cannot possibly comprehend the depth of their thought. Games at the top level traditionally followed a set of rules, and these rules were steadily broken (new rules were introduced - double isolated pawns, exchange sacs, positional pawn sacs, etc.) until we got where we are today.
The game is about constantly fighting. Not only making the best move (as this is subjective a lot of the time) but presenting your opponent with unsolvable problems. To do this sometimes you have to accept unsolvable problems as well, and this is what annotators mean by positions that are unclear or have chances for both sides. Then you just fight. Minimax style. Limit their chances and maximize your own. That's what it's about. Sometimes I forget and I think I see a win, but all I really have to do is shut my opponent down. In order to do that I have to remember that there is ALWAYS PLAY FOR BOTH SIDES.
i too find i'm "impatient" and just want to win RIGHT NOW, LET'S GET THIS OVER WITH and when i don't, i crumble. i'm kinda a bit like you, but at a much much much lower and crappier level.
i didn't necessarily want to "speed up" my process of learning, i was just wondering if i should learn modern chess and stand on the shoulders of giants, instead of starting at the beginning.
this is such a cool post, lots to learn from it....
chessaholic - Botvinnik is like a bulldozer. It is tedious but absolutely worth it. I usually do not need a second board to get through the analysis, if it is in the first 10 moves I usually set the board back up and try to play to the position in the game from memory, after that I can usually remember the position anyways. Good for visualization to try in any case.
chessloser - Glad you got something out of my frustrated rant. Modern chess is hard, and probably detrimental to players under 1800, that's my take on it. There's just too much rule breaking going on, and if you teach rulebreaking to players that don't really understand the rules than they will use it ineffectively. First you gotta learn the rules.
It's natural, when going full-time with something to get worn out. The question, which you already asked yourself, is why do you want to play?
Maybe a temporary switch to poker, or rugby, or checkers (and find out why anyone who opens 9-13 -- the most popular in casual games -- is a n00b) for a while. I don't know for you. I left chess for 5 years and still play only sporadically--even though I'm not improving much, I get great enjoyment and don't feel pressure to break my current plateau.