Sunday, February 12, 2006

An overview of the remaining part of the game.

In comparison to other people of my level, I'm very good at the opening, taking the initiative and starting a king attack.
Since the Corus tournament I started to study pawn endgames.
That made me realize that the skills as stated above, cover about 30% of the game.
I can play very positional, but in my case that means that I can place my pieces well for a kingside attack and know which lines to open to keep the attack going.
Very often I hear from my opponent that he underestimated the attack.

From the other 70% of the game I have no idea how to play it.
I will try to fix that the coming years.
I decided to begin at the very end of the game.
To learn pawn endings at a reasonable level will take me about 6 month's.
In the mean time I want to get an idea about the rest of the game.
I have not really an idea what sort of endings belong to the different openings.
I guess I have to look at the pawn structure then.
Let me try to formulate possible courses for the whole game.
Idea's are welcome!

The opening.
To my knowledge the following openings are somewhat drawish, en hence maybe a good way to get some endings at the board:

  • The Caro-Kan
  • The Petroff
  • The London system against the KID
Other idea's about drawish openings / a better way to get and endgame?

Trading off pieces.
The next phase is trading pieces to get an endgame.
The most common endgames are:
  • bishop vs bishop
  • bishop vs knight
  • knight vs knight
  • rook endings
Playing the piece ending.
From these the rook endings seem to have the most possibilities to give unexpected results, especially if one side knows how to play them and the other don't.
So I will try to steer my games in the direction of rook endings.

Simplification.
An ending with pieces can be simplified to a pawn ending by trading off the last pieces.

Playing the pawn ending.
Yeah.

Post pawn ending.
After the pawn ending some other endings can emerge by (minor) promotion.
Of course it is important to know how to play these.
The most common are:
  • Queen vs queen
  • Queen vs pawn at 7th rank
  • Queen vs knight

This is only the first time I try to formulate these things.
Idea's and suggestions are welcome!

7 comments:

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  2. http://web.usna.navy.mil/~wdj/epshteyn/lesson1.htm#6thrank

    here is an online endgame course that I plan to study . Perhaps you will find it of interest.

    also I added to my post since you last looked at it I added 2 representative Koltanowski game in the 2 Knights defense

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  3. Tak,
    thx for the link, I will have a look at it.

    Blue,
    The analysis of my games at Corus showed me that 50% of the points I didn't get was by failing tactics and 50% by non existing endgame knowledge.
    So I will divide my time.
    Because I have difficulty in focussing on two subjects, I will divide the subjects in time. That is to say, the 4-5 weeks before a tournament I will concentrate on tactics, the rest I will concentrate on endgames.

    Tactics will consist of repetition of TCT, George Renko and CTS.
    I have a database of missed problems of CTS, so you don't will find me much on the CTServer.
    I will finish my 70,000 problems there later.

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  4. Petroff drawish? Anand lost with it in six moves once. Also, if the Cochrane Gambit is played then a draw is very unlikely. ( For that matter it could even turn into a Four knights and a Halloween Gambit - no draw likely there.) Also, White has 3.Bc4, which is called the Boden Gambit, I think, If memory serves me correctly. Razor-sharp.

    If you played the Caro-Kann against Tal, he would most likely sac a piece against f7 or e6 and you are in for a wild rollercoaster ride.

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  5. Funky,
    So which method do you suggest to reach an endgame?

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  6. The best way to increase your odds of reaching endgames is to play people as close to your own rating as possible.

    Masters will usually achieve a winning position against you in the middlegame.

    Conversely, you will usually defeat weaker players in the middlegame. Even if they fail to resign and keep playing on into what is technically an endgame but you are up a lot of material, this is obviously not what you are looking for.

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