Since quarantine started, I’ve had a couple of friends ask me to train them in chess. Apart from the usual tactics exercises and ingraining of fundamentals (control the center, develop your pieces, castle your king), they were finding it tough to figure out an actual plan on how to carry the game forward once they took care of the beginning stages of the game. Of course, I could say something straightforward like “go attack the king”, but even this is too specific. There’s nothing wrong with this by the way, as at any level attacking the opponent’s king can help win the game. But this advice is just an example of a much larger principle I try to convey.
Winning a chess game is dependent on two things: how well you play, but also how well the opponent plays. The latter is important to keep in mind, as in today’s world of technology and chess engines, one can forget that chess is not played perfectly by humans. But by definition, your chess strength is based off beating other humans, not machines. As a result, it’s important to pause for a moment and better understand the possible opposition.
Why is Magnus Carlsen the best player in the world? Is it because he’s incredible at opening preparation? Or maybe because he can play endgames almost flawlessly? Or can he find combinations that are double-digit moves deep? All these things may help him win more games, but ultimately he can’t win unless someone else loses. By this I mean that even if he found incredible moves, if his opponent did the same, then the game would teeter into a draw. As a result, Magnus winning games is dependent both on him finding incredible moves, but also his opponent missing ways to counter them.
In the first five games of the recent world chess championship, Nepo was playing great chess and not conceding much to Magnus. But the moment he made some errors, Magnus was able to pounce. Many around the world had the same question as to why Nepo could play brilliant chess for the first leg of the match, but then made silly blunders for the next few games. The answer that everyone seemingly agreed on was that losing the sixth game of the match, one that took a record 136 moves, put so much pressure and mental toll on him that he collapsed quite easily in subsequent games. In fact, Magnus and his team imply that one of their unspoken strategies was to prolong the match as much as they could, because they knew Magnus could deal with pressure and problems better than Nepo.
This is the heart at which I teach my students: chess is about creating problems for your opponent. All the tactics, endgames, openings, strategy you learn mean nothing if your opponent can just sit there and relax during the game because you show no threats against him. Now what constitutes a problem? This is where defining different chess strengths of players is needed. A 2200 player might experience little difficulty with dealing with the problems a 1300 player poses them. However, the same 2200 player may have a tough time dealing with the problems a grandmaster poses them. One way to think about this is in the form of buckets.
Imagine a player’s capability of handling problems on the chess board as a bucket of size relative to their playing strength, where water represents problems. We can also define a player “breaking” under the weight of problems posed when their bucket overfills - in other words, they’ve been posed so many problems or problems that are too challenging to solve. As players solve problems, they can empty out the water in the bucket that is filling up. But harder problems take longer to empty out. And the more problems you faced with, the more effort you’ll need in emptying out the bucket so it doesn’t overflow.
It doesn’t matter if you have the strength of a supercomputer, everyone has a bucket. Of course if you are a super GM your bucket will be massive compared to everyone else. But it still has a finite space. And even if you have the strength of a supercomputer, you’re still human. Which means that some days, your bucket might be smaller if you have external stress from work, family, etc.
Causing problems has a direct connection to exploiting weaknesses in your opponent’s position but that is for a separate discussion. The reason being that our goal here is to just create problems, no matter how small they might be. Developing this habit will help shape our attitude towards one that is more attack-oriented and initiative seeking. Execution is a different skill entirely, but being able to cause meaningful problems will build the foundation upon which execution can be learnt.
To give some concrete ideas of how to create problems, here are some examples below. Pause at each critical position and think about the best move before stepping through the solution. Use the forward/back buttons on the boards to go through the moves at your own pace, and feel free to try out variations on your own as well!
Attacking the enemy king
As mentioned earlier, this is always a good idea if the enemy king is weak enough. But sometimes we can just probe around the opponent’s defenses and keep asking questions until they cannot find an answer. In this position below, Black has just played 13. …h6 in response to white bringing his knight closer to the black king. How can white create some problems for black?
Cramping the opponent for space
Space is important because it defines the activity of our pieces. Many low rated players underestimate how vital space is to maintaining equality at the bare minimum, and we can keep posing problems with our space advantage. Black has chosen to not attack white’s center yet, opting to develop his pieces quickly. How should white continue to build his space advantage?
Attacking an isolated pawn
Isolated pawns may allow a player semi open files to play on but are also a target for their opponent to apply pressure on. The player with the isolated pawn may find themselves using the majority of their pieces for defensive duties, thereby limiting their potential elsewhere. Here, black is down a pawn but white’s doubled d pawns are juicy targets. How should black continue to pose problems for white?
Although we’ve only seen three examples of presenting problems to your opponent, there are plenty of others. A good way to denote if you are asking good questions is if they are making your opponent’s position uncomfortable or annoying to play. Remember, the more unsettled you can make your opponent during the game with their position, the more likely it is they will misstep and you can take advantage of a mistake.