Chess
This page is intended as a story-board for
younger chess
players, mostly.
Chess and
why I like it
The conclusion I've reached about the game of chess is:
Chess
is a good way to learn that
one can
solve problems.
It can be tricky to make 'Active
Problem Solver' a personal skill. At
the same time, being an Active Problem Solver
is probably a good idea. Is it a big jump from Chess
Player to Active Probem Solver?
I would say yes. But Chess Player
is a big
jump in
itself.
Four chess-type activities the author is interested in:
- kids learning the game, usually at school.
- blitz chess one plays very very fast like a video game.
- proper chess games that take a long time to play, like an hour at
least.
- studying chess to get better.
There are other varieties as well of course: Fairy chess,
correspondence chess, computer chess, Humphrey
Bogart chess, puzzle chess and more. There is also the
world of
professional chess but it's kind of goofy. Fortunately the really good
players give us some great games to study.
Below entirely for fun is a narrated game with many comments (also
known as
annotations). In fact I include all the board positions along with the
play-by-play remarks. This assumes a player who knows the rules and is
interested motives
for making
moves, with examples.
Notation review for this game
In order to talk about a chess game we right down the moves
using some sort of notation or shorthand. To start with, each square on
the board has a two-dimensional address: A letter
followed by a number. From right to
left the
vertical
columns are files labeled
a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h. From
top to
bottom the rows are ranks labeled
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.
Hence white's re queen rook
is on square a1 and the black
queen is on
square d8. Here is the board:
-----------------------
|a8|b8|c8|d8|e8|f8|g8|h8|
|-----------------------|
|a7|b7|c7|d7|e7|f7|g7|h7|
|-----------------------|
|a6|b6|c6|d6|e6|f6|g6|h6|
|-----------------------|
|a5|b5|c5|d5|e5|f5|g5|h5|
|-----------------------|
|a4|b4|c4|d4|e4|f4|g4|h4|
|-----------------------|
|a3|b3|c3|d3|e3|f3|g3|h3|
|-----------------------|
|a2|b2|c2|d2|e2|f2|g2|h2|
|-----------------------|
|a1|b1|c1|d1|e1|f1|g1|h1|
-----------------------
The move N-c3 or Nc3 means a knight moves to square c3. Q means queen, K means king, N is a knight, R is a rook, and B is a bishop. If there is no letter
indicating one of these pieces then it assumed that the piece that
moves is a pawn. So the move e2e4
means
a
pawn goes to the e4 square
(without capturing) from the e2 square.
You could also write P-e2 but this is very rare notation now.
The letter x is used when a
move is a capture. The
move axb5 means a pawn on the a-file captures somebody on
the b5 square. The
move
Bxe4 means a bishop captures
whoever is standing on square e4.
(This is
also written B:e4 elsewhere.)
The move Qxg7+ means the
queen
captures a piece
on g7 and puts the other king
in check (the + sign). Finally
o-o means
kingside
castling and o-o-o is
queenside castling. For white the
king goes from e1 to g1
and the rook goes from h1 to f1. For
black
it's the same but on the black home rank, rank 8.
The
Strange Game of W versus B
You'll observe that the diagram above is how the game looks at the
start from
Black's point of view. Almost always chess diagrams have white
at the
bottom of the page and black at the top. Each chess game is a kind of
story and this one
is told from black's perspective so I flipped the board around from the
usual way. The square at the lower left is h8 and at the upper right is a1. This is spun around 180 degrees
from the diagram up above. It will still be easy in what follows to
figure out the moves because I included little arrows.
Before beginning I should say one more thing about why this page has been created.
When I started playing chess I was always mystified by why a given
player would make a certain move. But I was reading about games that
had happened elsewhere so I couldn't very well ask the person. In this
game I have the opportunity to provide some information on motives for making these
particular moves because I know the players (on average) fairly well.
The player with the black pieces
we'll call Mr.B to keep in
mind
he is playing
black. Of course B is a real
person with real concerns. For
example on
the
morning when this game took place he had already received a speeding
ticket on his motorcycle. Now he is in a bad
mood and he is seated across
the table from a certain Mr.W.
Mr.W is a
pleasant fellow who works very hard at chess.
In fact he is a strong Expert, a rating given to people who
are nearly chess Masters, which means they are quite good at the
game.
In contrast, Mr.B is only a
C-class player
which means that among chess players who take the game seriously he
isn't very strong. Mr.B (who
is
already in a bad mood)
expects that he will lose this game.
They begin.
1. d2-d4 f7-f5
W is playing his queen pawn out
two squares to claim
territory in the middle of the board. B
responds by moving the
most vulnerable piece he has, the king's bishop pawn, creating a huge
and immediate weakness in his position. Notice the big hole right near
his king now. B is off to
a dubious
start, even though a friend of his told him this move was a good idea.
2. g2-g3 N-f6
W moves his king-knight
pawn so that his bishop can go to
g2. From there it will push on the center of the board, a
good idea. B moves his
king-knight to f6, partly repairing the
damage he did on the first move. Now white's queen can't easily slide
over to h5 and attack the black king.
3.B-g2 g7-g6
W now completes his
first plan by putting his bishop on g2. B
does some more repair work by moving his pawn from g7 to g6 where
it supports his other pawn on f5. This also allows his king-bishop to
go to g7 where it will push on the center of the board. He has also
prevented W from pushing a
pawn to e4 in the center. So things are a
little better for B.
4.N-f3 B-g7
W now puts his knight on f3 where it pushes on the center of the
board. Chess teachers like to say that the start of every game is
a struggle for control of the center of the board. I'm not sure
what this means but apparently W
and B both think so too; B
as predicted puts his bishop on g7 where it looks at the back of the
knight's head. But if that knight moves, the bishop will be pushing on
the center of the board, particularly at
the white pawn on d4. Neither W
nor B have a very obvious
strategy since they seem to move each piece only once. This is also on
purpose.
5. o-o o-o
W sends his king into the castle for
the sake of safety. Plus he has moved his rook towards the center of
the board. Again notice that the center keeps coming up in this
description of the opening of the game. B not to be out-done also puts
his king in the castle. Of course with his
first pawn move from f7 to f5 the black king doesn't look quite so safe
as the white king.
6. c2-c4 d7-d6
W advances his c-pawn to the center of the board. B can't
really do the same--he's running behind schedule and it's a
little bit too late--so he only pushes his d-pawn one square. In
the sense of "who is pushing on the center hardest" we can conclude
that W
is winning the opening part of the game!
7. N-c3 Q-e8
W continues to move each piece only once. Here his other
knight has entered the game, as usual to push on the center of the
board. This "pushing" simply means that the knight could hop
there or capture a black piece that wandered in there itself, and it
naturally leads to the idea of "pressure". B scoots his
queen sideways... I'm not really sure why but perhaps he is thinking
about moving his king pawn to the e5 square, where finally he would
have a pawn in the center of the board of his own. If so the queen on
e8 would protect it.
8. b2-b3 c7-c6
W reasons as follows: My dark-square bishop on c1 is not
going to do much by moving past the queen to d2, e3, f4, g5, or h6. In
fact it would just get in the way or get attacked and stranded.
So instead I will move it to b2 or c3 where it will be more
effective. So first I will move my pawn to b3 to create a gap for
the bishop. This is called retrograde thinking, or thinking backwards
from a goal to an immediate move. B
meanwhile adds a
little more fortification to his pawn
center by
advancing his c-pawn one square.
9. Q-c2 N-a6
W does some more retrograde preparation. He thinks a rook would
do a good job sitting at d1 because
then he could push his d-pawn down the board further ("push it down B's
throat"). The rook behind
would support the pawn by posing a recapture threat. So W gets his
queen out of the way, onto c2. Here it can operate on the diagonal from
b1 to h7. B
meanwhile makes a dubious move: He moves his knight from its starting
location over to a6 at
the side of the board. Here the knight may have
nothing to contribute to the game, which is progressing in the center
of the
board.
10. B-a3 h7-h6
Here at move ten we have W
putting his bishop into the game
on a3, per the earlier plan. Since it is a long-range piece it does a
good job attacking the
black d6 and e7 pawn and even indirectly threatening the rook on
f8. For example, if the e-pawn jumps to e5 and is captured and
the d6 pawn recaptures the capturer, then W's bishop on a3 is free
to go down and gobble up the black rook on f8, which is to his
advantage
since rooks are worth more than bishops. B now pushes his h-pawn
forward one square. B
seems convinced that the game is going
on around the edges of the board and not in the center. Boy is he
wrong, and he's going to pay for this misunderstanding.
11. Ra1-d1 N-c7
Recall that W moved his queen
to c2 so that the rook on a1 could get
into the game by moving to d1, in turn supporting the d4 pawn. Now
here's the rook
doing just that. Notice every single white piece is doing something in
the
game. B meanwhile tries to get
his knight on a6 back into the game
by moving it to c7. Notice that B
still has a bishop and a rook
that aren't doing anything and that he controls considerably less
territory than white.
12. N-h4 B-e6
Now W points his knight at
black's g6-pawn and simultaneously
reveals the bishop on g2 so it can also support the advance of the
d-pawn. This is the first time in the game that W has moved a piece
twice (the knight). His thinking has been: If my entire army is ready
to attack and my opponent is not ready then... I will have a bigger
army and a better attack. Meanwhile B
slides his bishop
up to e6 where it tries to joing the fight. Here it prevents his e-pawn
from moving forward but he probably plans to move that bishop back a
little bit to f7
where it will also guard the pawn on g6. The problem is
that his plans require W to
sit quietly and not do very
much. So far W shows no
inclination to wait around for something to happen to him.
13. e2-e4 fxe4
Now finally W pushes his
remaining center pawn--the e-pawn--into
the middle of the board. B is
very worried that he is about to be
overwhelmed by this attack so he captures the e-pawn with his f-pawn,
knowing it will be captured in turn.
14. Bxe4 Nxe4
As expected W recaptures the
e-pawn on e4. But not with the expected
piece. B thought W would capture with his knight but
instead W uses his
bishop. B now captures W's bishop
with his knight to take the attacking pressure off of the pawn on the
g6 square.
15. Qxe4 R-f6
W recaptures the knight on e4
with his queen (also unexpected by B).
The white queen
and the knight on h4 are both attacking the black pawn on g6 which is
only
defended once. Therefore B
must defend it a second time, move it, or
come up with a counter-threat. He
moves his rook to f6 to guard the g6 pawn (although perhaps it was
wiser to move his light-squared bishop to f7 to accomplish the same
thing).
Now here is a curious thing: At this moment B is
not in any real trouble but he is convinced that he has lost this game;
the reason for this is that he is afraid of W who is rated "Expert".
This often happens in chess: We worry about the person we are playing
rather than how the pieces look on the board.
This sudden attitude that B
has, convinced that he is losing badly,
causes him to change his strategy. Suddenly he decides he has to
play desperately, and that he must attack at all costs. His only ray of
hope is that white's light-square bishop (the one captured
on e4) is gone from the board and black's light-square bishop is still
in play... now white's castled king is not shielded very well with
the
bishop gone from g2; so B
decides to
gamble everything on attacking W's
king.
16. d4-d5 B-h3
W pushes his attack in the
center; the d-pawn as promised comes
charging
into B's territory attacking
the bishop on e6. The d-pawn is also
attacking black's c6-pawn. White plans to win a pawn or two or perhaps
even a piece after the smoke from this attack has cleared. He will
further his attack by
moving his rook on f1 to e1 so that both it and the queen are attacking
the weak black pawn on e7 (after the bishop on e6 has moved away). B
begins his desperate counter-attack; he sends his bishop to h3
attacking the rook on f1 but W
doesn't mind because his rook on f1
wants to
scoot over to e1 anyway.
17. Rf1-e1 e7-e5
So there, W has moved his rook
out of harm's way and into an attacking position. In reply B has desperately thrown
his
e-pawn forward two squares to avoid losing it. Now W can capture
the e-pawn en passant with
his pawn on d5 or he can pursue his attack in a better way, which he
does: Capturing B's pawn on c6.
18. d5xc6 Q-f7?!
A lot happens on this move. W
captures the c6 pawn
with his d-pawn and will follow this up with more captures, eventually
getting ahead in material. B
realizes this and doesn't even try to fight back on his own
territory. Instead he keeps up his counter-attack by moving his
queen to f7 behind the
rook on f6. This is a common theme in chess: Ignore an attack in order
to launch a counterattack.
In this case it's a hopeless gamble but it is all that B can think of
to do at
this point. He did not scream "GERONIMO!!!" but he probably wanted to.
19. Bxd6 Rxf2
W captures the free pawn on d6
with his bishop. It would have gone
better for him to capture the pawn on b7 in turn threatening to capture
the rook on a8 and get a queen. This would have been a very scary move from B's point of
view.
Anyway after W's pawn capture
on d6 with his bishop B has no
choice but to continue his all-or-nothing counterattack. He captures
the
pawn
on
f2 with his rook. W was
expecting this and thinks that his
attack is much stronger (and he is absolutely
right). Right now W is
in position to win the game. In fact there are about seven
different ways
that W can win. They
involve lots of captures and
piece trades until most everybody is gone from the board, leaving W
with some
additional pawns. He would then queen one of these
pawns and win with overwhelming force.
Unfortunately at this point W
makes a bit of a mistake...
20. Qxg6?? R-g2+
W captures yet another
pawn, this time with his queen on g6. The white queen is guarded by the
knight on h4 so if B plays
Qxg6 it will just be a queen trade, exactly what W would like
because his is ahead.
W also does not worry about B playing R-g2+ (even though this is
what happened). Perhaps he noticed that the g2 square was covered by
the knight on h4.
Here is the problem with the above two ideas: Both rely on the white
knight on h4. Hence that knight is simultaneously doing two jobs... but
there is only one such knight. It is over-tasked.
B realized
that if the knight on h4 is busy
guarding the white queen, it can not do anything else. And that
means that it can not guard the g2 square. So B moves his rook to
g2 and says "check". Normally W
would simply capture the rook with
his knight on h4 and be way ahead... but if he did this now it would
leave the white queen
unguarded so that black would capture the white queen with his queen. And the knight would no
longer be there to make it a trade.
In fact giving up his queen is now W's
only way to save the game. You
can try and figure out what would happen if W plays 21.Nxg2 and B plays
21...Qxg6 and then W plays ...
what? But instead of this sequence of moves,
W plays K-h1 and suddenly he
finds himself on the verge of
losing. (What is B's
best reply to this mistake?)
21. K-h1?
So W moves his king out of
check.
Again here is a puzzle: What is B's
best move?
Here it is...
21... black plays Q-f2!
B now threatens to capture the pawn
on h2 with his rook on the next move, checkmate. If the
white knight on h4 captures the rook on g2 now the queen will recapture on
g2, also checkmate. The game has turned
competely around in the last two moves. Instead of having a
winning attack, W is only
moments away from losing the game.
He finds a clever way of avoiding checkmate, but at great cost.
From here on in B is thinking
"If I play correctly from here on I will
win this game... against and Expert... good gravy!!!"
Let's first
look at how W saves himself
from immediate checkmate in the only
way possible. If you would like to treat this as a puzzle, see if you
can find the
only way W can avoid losing
the game on the next move.
22. Qxg7+ Kxg7
First W has to sacrifice his
queen to get the black king on the
dark square g7. B obliges by
capturing the queen, which makes him
happy.
23. Bxe5+ K-g8
Now W captures the pawn on e5
with his bishop, again with
check. B has to move his
king. Notice that every time a king
is in check, that player has to do something about it and therefore can
not do other things. This is one of the most powerful principles
in chess and W is using it
here to avoid losing the game.
B
puts his king back on g8, which is a light square. This means
that W's dark-square bishop
can no longer put the king in check.
The rook on d1 could give check on the d8 square but it would
immediately be captured by the rook on a8. B is still threatening
checkmate by Rxh2++. (Two plusses ++ means checkmate.) Now W makes
the third necessary move; do you see it?
24. g3-g4 R-e8
W moves his g-pawn forward so
that his dark-square bishop on e5
guards the pawn at h2, preventing the dreaded checkmate Rxh2++. W has
avoided checkmate but he is still way behind in material.
B has to figure out how to
continue his attack to win the game. He
realizes that his rook
on a8 is not participating so he moves it to e8, attacking
the bishop on e5. If the bishop moves somewhere, for example capturing
the black knight on c7, then the black rook will capture the white rook
on e1 with check and things will go very badly for W
from there.
B has a better move here,
however. He can get rid of the queening
threat posed by W's pawn on c6
by simply capturing it: b7xc6. He
doesn't do this so he has to keep worrying about that pawn as we will
see.
25. c6xb7 Rxh2+
W decides to capture the black
b-pawn, putting his pawn on b7 which is
one
square away from becoming a queen. If he can move that pawn to b8 and
promote it to a queen it will save the game for him.
So B turns the tables: He
starts
using checks on W's king
to put a halt to this plan. The first check is capturing the pawn on h2
and W has only one possible
reply.
26. Bxh2 Rxe1+
W captures the rook with his
bishop and B proceeds to clear
all
of the rooks off the board. Now it is to his advantage to trade, since
he is the one who is ahead in material. By simplifying the game he
reduces the chances of W
coming up with an effective
counter-counter-attack.
27. Rxe1 Qxe1+
W captures the rook on e1 and B recaptures with his queen, again
with
check. Every time check is given the player in check has to respond. In
this case it prevents W from
moving his pawn to b8 and promoting it
to a queen.
From this new location on e1 the black queen is also
attacking both knights. In fact the black queen is doing all
sorts of good work right now, a demonstration of how it is the most
powerful attacking piece in the game.
28. B-g1 N-a6
W blocks the check with his
bishop and B moves his knight
back
to a6 to guard the queening square on b8. This is the biggest threat by
white: To get a new queen.
Fortunately for B he has a
double
threat of his own: His queen is attacking both of the white knights at
the same time. So far B is
successfully bringing this game to a happy ending (for him).
29. N-g2 Qxc3
W rescues one of his two
knights, the one that was on h4. B
is
still attacking the other knight with his queen and he now gobbles it
up.
30. N-e3 Q-g7
W has a plan to capture B's remaining bishop by first
trapping
it. He does this by moving his knight to e3. B sends his queen
across the board to g7 where it threatens to capture either the pawn on
b7 with check or the pawn on g4 if W
moves his knight somewhere
else.
31. c4-c5 Qxb7+
W is giving up hope. He moves
his c-pawn forward and if B is
foolish enough to capture it with his knight on a3 then W will queen
his pawn on b7. But B
has become used to saying "check" as often as
possible, so he captures the pawn on b7 and says "check".
32. K-h2 Q-f3
W moves his king out of check
and prepares to capture B's
bishop, which is still trapped. However B moves his queen
up to f3 where it guards the bishop. Everyone on B's side is now
safe and he is way way ahead in material. The game will soon be over
and for this
reason W resigns and the
players shake hands.
B has won the game, and he is
so
stunned that he entirely forgets
about the speeding ticket.
======================================
I had two ideas while writing down this game.
1. Show how chess players tend to think about the progress of the
game.
- I have written
these thoughts mostly in terms of strategy
and motives.
2. Show that mistakes can lead to sudden
complete reversals of fortune.
- This is what
makes chess exciting in my opinion.
One more remark: Chess strategy and tactics
Strategy
has to do with plans and principles. Keeping the king safe is
a good strategy. Moving pieces just one time in the opening makes sure
that they all get to participate in the game, and having a large army
is a good strategy. The other side of the coin is simply figuring out
"If I take that pawn and he takes my
knight, can I take his bishop?" and so forth. We have to calculate the
capture-capture-capture consequences of a given move to figure out if
we're going to win or lose material. If we are going to lose material,
we usually avoid this move.
This process of calculation--if I go here and my opponent goes here and
so on...--is called
tactics (in contrast to strategy).
Another way it is commonly put is "Strategy is how we make plans in
chess and tactics is how we carry those plans out." But tactics pure
and simple is also just avoiding getting our pieces taken off the board
before we want them to go. Much of how we think about tactics uses
pattern recognition. There is a saying that chess is 90%
Tactics and 90% Strategy (and then another 90% Tactics). The point is
that Strategy is
important, but it only comes into play after we take care of
Tactics. And then
once we have a Strategy, the Tactics come into play again.
Strategic thinking and
tactical thinking are
two complimentary sets of muscles that a chess player must develop to
improve.
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