stop blunders

The tactics and calculation training is the most important type of training a chess player can undertake if he or she is serious of his or her chess improvement.

The reason for this is that all chess games are decided by tactics. You cannot win if the opponent does not make a mistake – hence you have to take advantage of that mistake. While the mistake can be of various types, from the one-move blunders to a “small” positional detail 4 moves into a line, the mistake is always tactical in its essence. Something was missed and the opponent can take advantage of that miss.

Being on the defensive side during a game is probably the most difficult tasks a chess player has to complete successfully. Everybody likes chess for a reason – some like to attack, others prefer strategy instead, but I’m sure that most of you will agree that defending is not one of them.

There is no chess player who has not asked himself that question. And it is not about ratings or titles, because, let us be honest about this, we all think we are better than what those two parameters suggest.

The question is a serious one because it does not only determine our current strength but it should also give some idea of our own potential, how good we can be.

So how to answer that question?

Sometimes you win, sometimes you learn.

This is a very popular saying that’s even more popular among chess players. As good as you get, you can’t help but lose a game from time to time or draw a completely winning position which, to be honest, sometimes feels just as bad as a loss. Defeat is part of the game and in my opinion, one of the most notable characteristics of a sports person is knowing how to deal with it and accepting it with grace.

How to obtain your best form in order to perform well at your next tournament?

We all know miracles and shortcut solutions do not really work in chess progress; as in any other activity, consistency is the key. However, for one reason or another, not everyone can keep up with regular training and very often, we are at a stage where our next tournament is approaching and the time we have to prepare for it is limited.

What should we do then?

Most of chess training routines are oriented to develop and a player’s skills at typical scenarios that can appear on the chess board during tournaments.

That includes tactical training which develops intuition and combinative vision, calculation, positional play, endgame play etc., the list is large. In addition to this common training system, we add a player’s homework towards learning the opening phase.

In today’s lesson, we are going to show you how to convert a slight advantage and slowly improve your position using the principle of two weaknesses.

First of all, what do we call a weakness?

In this post, I would like to show a very simple, yet a very effective principle that is present in every game of chess.

While our opponent’s moves are providing vital information about their intentions, still we often fail to understand them in their entirety. By entirety, I mean not only understanding their intention, but also their drawbacks.

Playing in chess tournaments is a completely different thing from studying chess or playing friendly casual games at the club with your pals. While we can do pretty well during our lessons, training sessions with friends or coach, an official competition forces you to make your best effort and put to work your best competitive skills and character. Of course, usually there are hundreds of other colleagues doing exactly the same and as if this didn’t sound hard enough there is the time pressure.

“I can’t play this move because my opponent can capture it” – How many times have you heard a chess player say this? How many times have you said it yourself? There are many positions where we believe a move is not possible by default though. Our subconscious tells us that it is not possible to move to a specific square because our opponent is defending it with more than one piece or more than one pawn.