Addenda

Friend and long-time follower of this blog, Mike Splane, sent in excellent comments on my two most recent posts, which I think both warrant some more discussion.

First, commenting on my Transition post, he says: “I totally agree that you got much stronger strategically during the time that I’ve known you. Is there anything you can point to about the chess parties that was particularly helpful?” (I had written that his chess parties helped improve my strategic understanding. If I had had this resource 20 years earlier, perhaps I would have been able to get to FIDE Master or Senior Master.)

I sort of hinted at the answer already, but let me make it more explicit. For the first forty years of my chess career, 90 percent of my analysis was, “If he does this I do that, and then if he does this I do that,” etc. That is, it was highly focused on calculation. But in quiet positions, or positions where there weren’t clear variations to calculate, I would often feel at sea. This was especially true in the opening-to-early-middlegame transition, say moves 15 to 25, when the pieces have been brought out but usually the battle has not yet reached a critical point.

As I wrote in my post, “What do you do, or what do you think about, when you don’t appear to be doing much at all?”

What Mike’s parties showed me was that there are lots of things you can think about. Some of them came up in my last post: What side of the board should I be playing on? Does this trade that I’m considering improve the position of my pieces or the opponent’s pieces? When is the right time for me to relieve the pawn tension — or should I perhaps induce my opponent to relieve it? There are some other good ones we’ve talked about in his parties, such as “What is my worst piece and how can I make it better?” And one that I have mentioned over and over in this blog is the Mike Splane Question: “How am I going to win this game?” Although sometimes that question seems like wishful thinking, it’s amazing how useful it is.

I don’t want to claim originality for any of these questions, except maybe the Mike Splane Question. You can find them in other places. In fact, for readers who are wondering where to get started with strategic thinking, a very good place is Jeremy Silman’s How to Reassess Your Chess, and his theory of imbalances. That book showed me that there can be a lot going on in a position that is supposedly “equal.” A nice example was my game with Belle (Year 12), where in an “equal” position I allowed an unfavorable imbalance in pawn structure to create favorable imbalances in open lines and piece play. That was very Silman-esque thinking, 25 years before I read Silman. Alas, it’s not something I did very consistently.

As I discussed in one of my Chess Life articles, you can remember Silman’s imbalances by the acronym “IMPLODeS + K”:

I = Initiative. (Who is attacking?) M = Material. P = Pawn structure. (Perhaps I should add to this: Pawn breaks, because that is the first thing that GM Robert Hess says that he looks at. Who controls more pawn breaks?) L = Lines and squares. (Who has access to better lines and squares for their pieces? Which of my pieces have good lines and squares, and which don’t?) O = Officers. (This is a synonym for minor pieces. Who has the two bishops? Who has the better minor pieces?) De = Development. S = Space. Finally, Silman unaccountably omitted an important imbalance: K = King safety. (Whose king is more exposed to attack?)

Although Silman’s imbalances are primarily a tool for evaluating a position, they can also be used as a tool for strategic planning, because you can make a plan that tries to “steer the conversation” toward the imbalances that are favorable to you. Again, some of this is well known. If you have the two bishops, you’d like to open the board and play on both wings. But what I like about Silman’s imbalances is that they give you a framework for thinking about all sorts of positions.

Anyway, thanks to Mike’s questions and Silman’s imbalances, maybe the amount of time I spend calculating variations is down to 75 percent instead of 90 percent. Especially in those early middlegame positions where it seems as if there is nothing to calculate.

Now let’s switch gears and talk about something much more concrete: the game against Matt Noble that I analyzed in Year 13. Here is the position on Black’s move 25.

FEN: 1r6/4npk1/3p2p1/qppP3r/4P2P/1PN5/P1K1Q3/6RR b – – 0 25

Here Mike writes: “Take a look at 25. … Re5 and tell me how White stops the dual threats of b4 and Nd5. If 26. Rg5 Nd5! 27. Nd5 Qa2+ 28. Kd3 (or Kd1) Qb3+ gives you three pawns for the piece and a raging attack, or an ending with 4 passed pawns for a knight.” By comparison, he gives the move I actually played (25. … b4) two question marks.

This is an extraordinarily difficult position to annotate, because the move that makes the most sense from the strategic point of view is not actually the objectively best move, as determined (almost surely correctly) by the computer.

I love Mike’s suggestion of 25. … Re5. It answers two questions. What is my worst piece, and how can I make it better? The answer: my knight on e7, which is not contributing at all to the attack. By moving my rook to e5, I immediately threaten … Nxd5. Second question: How can I make my own threats stronger? Obviously the move … b4 is in the air, but if I play it immediately White might just play 26. Na4, and it’s not clear that I have gained much. But after 25. … Re5, … b4 is now a killer threat.

The computer does not love Mike’s suggestion. Fritz gives White a whopping 1.6-pawn advantage after 25. … Re5 26. Qf3! This compares unfavorably to the 0.4-pawn advantage for Black after 25. … b4 26. Na4, and to the 3.0-pawn advantage for Black (!!) after 25. … b4 26. Qxh5?, which is what happened in the game.

What’s the deal? Well, I looked at 26. Qf3 before consulting the computer, but I thought that 26. … b4 27. Na4 c4 looked very good for Black. Unfortunately, my analysis (and Mike’s) was not concrete enough, because after 28. h5! White’s attack comes first. The computer analysis (best moves for both sides) goes 28. … Qa7 29. hg fg 30. Qh3. But let’s try to free ourselves from the computer and if-this-then-that thinking. In conceptual terms, the big problem is that after 28. h5 Black cannot prevent the opening of the h-file, because 28. … g5 is met by 29. h6+! Kg6 30. Qh5+ and either Qxf7+ or Rf1+, depending on what Black does. Once the h-file comes open, Black is dead meat. The subsidiary problem, which 26. Qf3 pointed out, is that the f-file and f7 pawn in particular are also weak.

So we have to reluctantly concede that 25. … Re5, while strategically well-motivated from the attacking point of view, unfortunately ignores the important role of the rook in stopping White’s h-pawn advance.

One difficult thing about opposite-side-castled positions is that they are so schizophrenic. White is busted on the queenside. Black is busted on the kingside. Everything comes down to who can throw just enough monkey wrenches into the opponent’s plans so that their attack can come first. It’s hard to evaluate such a position on general principles.

Now that brings us back to the move I played, 25. … b4. Should this get an exclam, as I gave it, or a double question mark, as Mike gave it? I have no definitive answer to this question. I’d like to hear what other readers think. But here are my thoughts.

1. There is no question that I was excited, probably too much so, by the idea of sacrificing the exchange. I was still under the spell of the anthologies, which make you think that good chess is sacrificial chess. Remember, in the Silman approach, material is just one of eight imbalances: I, M, P, L, O, De, S, and K. There are lots of ways to win that don’t involve sacrificing M (or winning M, for that matter). If I am chronically biased in favor of moves like … b4 to the point where I’m not even considering moves like … Re5, then I’m not playing good chess.
2. Nevertheless, there are some very good points about the exchange sacrifice. Most important, as I mentioned above, is that it steers the conversation toward the imbalances that favor me. If White takes on h5, the queen is actually in the way of White’s own attack; she has to back out again so that he can play h4-h5. In essence, I am sacrificing the exchange to gain two tempi, and in a position like this, two tempi are huge. Their significance is that now the game will be decided, not by White’s kingside attack, but by Black’s queenside attack and whether it is strong enough to justify an exchange sac. White’s kingside attack is now irrelevant. That’s a heck of an argument in favor of 25. … b4.
3. By the way, if White doesn’t take the bait but plays 26. Na4, then Black can comfortably play 26. … Rbh8, shoring up the kingside. I couldn’t do this on the previous move because 25. … Rbh8 would have been met by 26. Qxb5 Qxb5 27. Nxb5 Rxh4 28. Rxh4 Rxh4 29. Nxd6, winning a pawn and defending e4 just in the nick of time. So from this point of view, 25. … b4 is an “improving” move just like 25. … Re5; it improves … Rbh8, a not quite satisfactory defense, to the point where it becomes satisfactory.
4. Finally, we have to talk about a factor that the books will probably say is unimportant, but I consider to be hugely important: chess psychology. Do you know anything about your opponent that makes it possible to predict their response? In this case, I was pretty sure that Matt would answer 25. … b4 with 26. Qxh5. One of my other favorite opponents in North Carolina, Bernie Schmidt, would never trade queens voluntarily, and perhaps I will show you a game where I used that bias against him.
5. Another chess psychology factor is not specific to the opponent, but general. When my opponent makes a move that he thinks creates a threat that must be defended, I always look for a way to not defend it. This sows doubt and mental anguish in the opponent’s mind. This case is a classic example. White played 25. Qe2 for the specific purpose of threatening my rook so that I would have to move it or defend it. By playing 25. … b4, I tell him that he is wrong. And this puts him in a difficult psychological position. Either he accepts my sacrifice and gives me a dangerous-looking attack, or else he doesn’t accept my sacrifice, and in this case the question is: What the hell did he move his queen to e2 for? If he’s not going to take the rook, the queen is no better on e2 than it was on d2. For many players, it is a bitter pill to find out that their previous move was a waste of time.

My final verdict is that for all these reasons: gaining tempi, steering the conversation, improving my position, psychology of the individual, and psychology of the human species, 25. … b4! was an excellent move. It was only not excellent if I arrived at it through a thought pattern that Mike calls “tunnel vision,” where I make up my mind what I want to do and don’t even give other ideas a chance.

There are still some things about this game that mystify me. It boggles my mind that in the key variation 29. Qa1 (instead of 29. Kxc4?) Qe2 30. bc Qe3+ 31. Kc2 Kg8, even though I’m down an exchange and a pawn and it’s White’s move, the computer says it’s a win for Black.

FEN: 1r4k1/4np2/3p2p1/3P4/2P1P2P/4q3/2K5/Q5RR w – – 0 32

By contrast, this almost identical position, after 29. Qa1 Qe2 30. bc Kg8 (a move I would be more likely to play; prophylaxis), is only a draw for Black.

FEN: 1r4k1/4np2/3p2p1/3P4/2P1P2P/2K5/4q3/Q5RR w – – 0 31

Why?

Alas, I think that a full exploration of the above two positions might leave us disappointed in the end. It would all depend on innumerable intricacies and subtleties and “if-this-then-that” variations. And in the end, we would not actually be able to learn anything of lasting value from it. The only conclusion would be that there are some positions only a computer can play accurately, which is probably true but depressing.

So I’m not going to say anything more about these two positions, but for readers who want to try challenging their analysis skills against the computer, go for it!