Chess

[novice]

I think the general wisdom is to look for weaknesses in the opponent's position and attack them?

I don't know how to do that either though.

How am I holding up in our game, Cyneheard? Is trash talking allowed? Your pawn structure is so fractured it requires orthopaedic surgery.

[Jkaen]

Just wanted to put my suggested line to see if I would have carried on correctly.

Be interesting to see what Gustaran has to say, but my thought on that game (for what its worth given you are a better player than me) is that you just drove down the middle regardless rather than either look to switch direction of attack and / or shore up defense.

What I have found paying off recently is setting up big log jams of most pieces defending the others in a big attack, then shifting it around such that if you take in a certain order you end up a piece up. Seems at my level people are focussing on is a piece protected, but not looking enough at what happens if that protection is traded

[Gustaran]

Just to be clear, I'm not necessarily looking for specific advice on any of these particular games. I'm at a spot where I more am looking for general advice about what to do in the mid-game.

A) That may sound harsh, but at the moment your tactical skills are so low (1188 according to your profile) that I don't think teaching you advanced positional plans is going to bring you much success. You missed two simple 1-move tactics in the game you posted (27.Ra6? and 28. Nxe6??).

After 28.cxd4 Qxf4 29. Qxf4 Rxf4 30.c3 at least you would have had good chances of holding the endgame thanks to your active rook and the drawing tendencies of rook endgames.

Of course, we could talk all day long about positional play against weak pawns, but it is useless if you play a sophisticated positional 10 move plan against a weak pawn only to blunder a piece/walk into a mate shortly thereafter. I don't know if you use the chess.com tactics trainer, but I highly suggest getting your tactics rating up to around ~1600 and only then focus on advanced positional play.

B) Just to show you that tactics are always a part even of seemingly quiet positions, let's look at Jkaen's suggestion:
His general plan of blockading/attacking Black's a-pawn looks good as far as I can tell, however 23. Ra6 allows 23...Qb7 and if now 24. Rxe6 Qb1 is mate. That means your positional goals always must be supported by concrete tactical lines.

So an alternative would be something like:

23.g4 Nh6
24.Ra6 Qf7 (now Qb7 doesn't work because there is no back rank mate threat anymore)
25.Qg3 (supporting the knight) g5
26.Nh5 Qb7
27.Ra1 Ra8
28.Qe3 Nf7 (defending g5)
29. Qc1 and White has managed to move his Queen over to the queenside in order to help stop the potentially dangerous a-pawn.

I am not saying this is the perfect plan, but at least it's a possible way of playing with a certain goal in mind and obviously Black's passed a-pawn must be taken into account.

[spellman]

I think the general wisdom is to look for weaknesses in the opponent's position and attack them?

I don't know how to do that either though.

How am I holding up in our game, Cyneheard? Is trash talking allowed? Your pawn structure is so fractured it requires orthopaedic surgery.

Right, the hardest part of learning midgame is understanding what is a "weakness" and if no weakness is around then building up your own position. Often as White I end up looking at a Black defense and go "huh, that looks solid." But starting to understand tempo and how quickly you can mount an attack versus how quickly they can defend/mount their own attack was helpful for my learning. This is why classic advice is "control the center" so that you can move your pieces around quicker.

But, as Gustaran said, that only helps if you can keep your 2 to 3-move lookahead working properly for tactics.

Lots of people have suggested chesstempo.com and chesstactics.com for providing lessons on tactics and intro strategy. Also watching good commentary for what the moves were and WHY is very helpful.

Recent Hacker News thread on learning chess. I also recommend reading the source article.

[pindicator]

I remember it took me a long time to understand positional chess as well as I do now. Concepts of weak pawns, dominating pieces, light or dark square weaknesses, and piece activity are easy to say but not at all easy to fully grasp. And I am nowhere near a master at it either

[Jkaen]

Right. The team I just cancelled on said when we are ready they will play us at whatever rating is suitable.

I intend to open the match for sign up 06:00 GMT 27th November, then start the match 06:00 28th November.

Please can people reaffirm their interest here.

[Jkaen]

In other news I am playign against a player ranked 500 lower than me and just got my queen trapped on turn 12. Will be interesting to see if I am good enough to fight back now

[BRickAstley]

Here's a really well done summary of the championship matches for anyone who missed any of the games.

[regoarrarr]

I am still interested

[sunrise089]

Thanks for the video.