Temposchlucker

Terminology. The Leningrad Dutch with reversed colors = a variation of Birds opening = Polar Bear The Bird has a terrible reputation. According to GM Henrik Danielsen that is caused by the fact that there is no reliable theory about the Bird available. He has found new lines, which make it a strong system. This system, which he plays with both black and white, he has called the Polar Bear . Possibly because the opening is slow and strong. From now on I use the term Polar Bear for both black and white. Beyond this specific opening. The research of this opening will yield results that can be used outside this opening in two ways. First the pawn structure bears resemblance with both the KID and the closed Sicilian. A good understanding of the Polar Bear will be of great value of understanding those openings. Second it is a positional opening pur sang. Study of this opening will help me to grasp positional ideas in general. Before the main position. I fired up about 20 cc-games with the Po...

At the moment I'm working my way through the blitz (3 min) games of GM Henrik Danielsen for the second time. It gives a good insight how a grandmaster thinks when he has no time to think:) I can follow the tactics quite good. Sometimes he has looked one or two moves further, but most of the times it concerns relative easy to spot tactics. He is quite accurate and fast. But the gap between him an me doesn't seem totally unabridgable in this area. As I said earlier. What is miraculous though is that he instantly knows what to do with his pawns. Partly this can be attributed to the fact that he is very well versed in his openings. But in the middlegame he is very fast too. Here I notice a very wide gap between him and me. It is quite obvious that his pawnplay makes his life much easier. How to improve in this area? The general idea of the LeningradDutch and the Polar Bear is that you develop your pieces behind your pawns and that you shoot through the holes in your pawnshield. In...

. . . Diagram 6 . . . White to move. Here I took back with the king, consciously stepping into a pin. I completely overlooked that white can take with his rook first. I calculated that when he took with the pawn, I had a discovered attack. Diagram 5 . . . Black to move. Here I played h6. I had seen the pin along the c-file before, but I forgot to check it in a new situation. Diagram 4 . . White to move. Here I designed a combination based on the discovered attack against Bb7. I thought queentrade and a wining endgame was unavoidable. What I missed is that after the pawnpush d6 black can take back with c7, thus covering the bishop with the queen. Diagram 3 . . . White to move However I actually was looking at a move like Nxg6, I didn't see I could just play it. The strange thing is, my 1925-rated opponent didn't see it either. A typical case of problems with visualising a chain of attack alternating with a chain of counterattack . Cost: 0.5 point. Diagram 2 . . . Black to move A...

Right now I'm studying the blitz games of GM Danielsen for the second time. In this position he played Na3 à tempo with the following intrigueing comment: "if he takes on a3, he becomes weak on the black squares around his king." White to move This is all the more intrigueing, since usually he is the first to inflict his opponent with a double pawn with the words "I have won many, many games because of that double pawn" Rybka would have played Na3 either. This raises the question "how do you learn to get such positional ideas a tempo?". You can do tactical exercises till the cows come home, but this kind of ideas you will not learn. I have studied my own games, without ever getting the idea. I have studied master games without ever getting this idea. This means that such ideas must be told by a grandmaster. There can't be no other way. Via a video, a book or a coach. Or maybe by solving positional problems with solutions checked by a GM.

May I invite you to a guided tour in the Museum of Deviant Art? Here you find all futile efforts from white to avoid the main line Leningrad Dutch and deviations in the Polar Bear by black. The Polar Bear is an invention of the Icelandic grandmaster Henrik Danielsen . It is based on the Leningrad Dutch with reversed colors. In a later stadium I intend to add the correct way of playing. If you can help me with that I would appreciate it. The source is my internet games. Cat.no.1 "Pre-Trompovsky" Oil on canvas 1.d4 f5 2.Bg5 Black to move 2. ... Nf6 would be wrong because Bxf6 would clog up your kingside pawns. Cat.no.2 "Trompovsky" 1.d4 f5 2.c4 Nf6 3.Bg5 Black to move 3. ... g6 is wrong because Bxf6 clogs up your kingside pawns Cat.no.3 "Post-Trompovsky" 1.d4 f5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.Nc3 g6 4.Bg5 Bg7 5.Bxf6 Bxf6 6.e4 Black to move I played here 6. ... d6, but I didn't like the position after 7.e5 dxe5 Cat.no.4 "Hindrance of castling #1" 1.d4 f5 2.Bg5...

Me and someone who knows how to play the Leningrad The main line of the Leningrad Dutch runs as follows: 1.d4 f5 2.g3 Nf6 3.Bg2 g6 4.Nf3 Bg7 5.O-O O-O 6.c4 d6 7.Nc3 c6 White to move. The main idea for black is to force e5, for instance by playing Qc7 first. When black arives at this position unscathed he is fine. All the nice things you can do from here are fine of course, but the bane of a patzer like me is 99% of the time: how to punish uncoöperating opponents who are not willing to understand that resistance before this position by is useless? So I intent to post about opponents who commit the heresy to deviate from this main line early. First I treat two irritating gambits. Irritating wing gambit at move 2. 1.d4 f5 2.g4 Black to move This can't be good of course, yet I have encountered it once long ago and lost. It looks a bit like a wing gambit on the kingside. I would choose for the simplest positional continuation: 2. . . . fxg4 3.h3 g3!? 4.fxg3 Nf6 5.Nc3 d5 6.Bge e6 and ...

I just finished a crazy Albin Counter gambit. I already thought I was lost, but I could schwindle my way out. My opponent obviously wasn't used to such crazy tactics. You can find the game here . Clearly not susceptible for repetition. Today I won all six 10-minute games on FICS with the Leningrad. Which is very promising with a quite unknown system. It is definitely an interesting system. Your pawnstructure is full of holes, and your pieces are garding those holes. This combined effort makes that you gain a lot of space. Which is unique with black against d4. Your starting point is to prepare e5 followed by a central thrust. When the center is blockaded, you can switch to a kingside attack. I think it is a unique method to learn to play positionally. I expect a few ugly losses too. The moment you are not able to protect a hole, an enemy piece will appear there and you will be in trouble. I played the system with white too, which is called the Polar Bear by GM Henrik Danielsen. His...

This weekend I processed an enormous amount of data. One the conclusions is is that 1.d4 is a slow opening. The only way to speed things up seems to be that black manages to play e5 and/or f5 at some time. So I decided to quit on the QID, Nimzo- and Bogo-Indian, the Benko, the Benoni and the 2.c5 idea's. Of all these idea's I have either trouble to motivate my opponents to play the bookline, or to punish white when he plays passive. I found 4 openings that manage to flick in an early e5: My beloved Fajarowitsch, which has two problems: it provides no answer for Nf3, and I can't imagine that I will still play it when I reach 2200. In contrast with more solid gambits like the KG. The Albin Counter Gambit. I fired up 6 cc- games with it. The first results don't look promising. The gambit seems to do nothing else than to stir up things, but it has no solid positional basis, in my opinion. Confusion for the sake of confusion simply doesn't work by everybody. The KID. Yo...

I'm in doubt. You probably have noticed that the games I show you are always very sharp. At our club however, there is a great contingent of players who consider me to be a very passive and careful player. That are the ones who play 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 with white against me. In the past I have tried the following against this: The classical Dutch. This opening is very slow, with a lot of pawn moves (f5, e6, d6, b6) leading to an awful lot of manoeuvring. Tried it for years because Euwe recommended it. So boring that I quit chessplaying for 20 years. The Leningrad Dutch. I couldn't handle all the holes in my position like g5, f6, e6 and the vulnerable diagonal a2-g8 The Kings Indian. Although I had actually considerable success with it, I never felt at home in the crampy positions that I reached. After a few years of trying, I abandoned it. The Pirc. Even crampier than the KID and a whole bunch of theory to learn. The Benko gambit. I would really love to play this, but 98% of my oppo...

At the moment I'm investigating duplo-moves. There are 3 of them: Double attack. Discovered attack. Pin/skewer. I'm focussing on double attacks and haven't thought about the other two yet. So far I haven't reached conclusions worth mentioning. A discussion at Blue Devil's site caused me to write a little attribution about pins. Everybody seems to use his own definition of tactics. That is not very handy. Definitions are meant to make communication easier, not more difficult. A definition in itself is not true or false. It is a consent between people and a matter of preference. I use the following definition: A tactic gains wood in a forced way. I consider the king as wood and mate as a trap. According to this definition, not every duplo-attack is a tactic. Take for instance the following double attack: Black to move. White has just made the duplo-attack Qg4. It attacks the two targets knight g6 and bishop b4. We don't call this a tactic. We even don't call ...

Dogfight. . . Today I signed up for the tactical trainingsite Chess Tempo . That is a site which is inspired by CTS , but with a somewhat different solution for the time constraints. They have an option standard rating , which calculates your rating based on if you find the correct solution or not. No matter how much time you use for it. Today I did a relaxing 225 problems. Much to my amazement I found my rating stablizing around 1880. That is strange. Why would my rating stop to grow when I have infinite time per problem? The answer is that after a few minutes you feel the urge to move on and make a move. Sometimes that move is wrong. I have a correctness of 79%. Weird. I never expected that.

Today an important win against 1781 with little or no errors according to Rybka. The Scandy rocks! You can find the game here .

Precondition: No tactical niches like traps or promotion. Positional moves. A move that doesn't attack a target and is based purely on positional considerations I wil call a positional move. Mono-moves. When one target is attacked with a move the move is called a mono-move. The defender can always do something about it. But that will cost him a move. A move that defenses against only one attack I will call a mono-move too. Duplo-moves. When two targets are attacked simultaneously with one move, there is a great chance that there is no move that meet both attacks. Since mono-moves are much more common than duplo-moves. A move that attacks two targets simultaneously is called a duplo-move. The only way to gain wood in a forced way is by a duplo-move. A move that defenses against two attacks I will call a duplo-move too. In stead of counting your beans you should count attacks. Difference between tactical problemsets and games. Tactical students, like we all are, have a distorted pict...

Glenn commented on my previous post (in blue): (Tempo said:) what point are you making with the quiz-questions? My point is that to evaluate the tactics in a given position one must evaluate the tactics in the given position. Shortcuts must be used with extreme caution. That subtle differences in the position make a significant impact on the usefulness of counting for the position. Beancounting is valid when there are no duplo-moves around. That equals the statement above. My last example illustrates that in the original position the (accidental) fact that the Q was at f2 instead of g4 was an important characteristic of the position to make Nxd4 playable. Start with the Q at g4 instead and the "counting" aspects of the position stay the same (same number of attackers and defenders of d4) but the evaluation of Nxd4 changes quite a bit but for subtle reasons. When you create positions where duplo-moves do play a role you stress that beancounting isn't valid when t...

The whole beancounting stuff started with this position below. I wanted to know what the effect is of bishop b5. While I investigated this position I noticed that my mind was filled with visualising the move sequence while bookkeeping for both sides. The invention of the beancounting method was meant to relief the load of the short term memory. I obviously succeeded in that. The next question is of course, what is the effect of the bisshop on b5? Can I simply say that due to the duplo-attack Nc6 is pinned so black has one defender less for d4 hence white can simply take on d4? If so, I have found a way to judge this position without visualising one single move and without any burden of the short term memory. That's the holy grail I'm after. I got a bit carried away by the beancounting stuff. But it's only a little part of the equation. White to move. Let's see if black can save his victim. If white plays 1.Nxd4, black must answer 1. ... Nxd4. That is is only chance to...

Duplo-moves are the technique par excellence to gain wood. There are 3 duplo-moves: double attack discovered attack pin/skewer If these duplo-moves are not around (and there is no trap), you cannot gain wood. Ask yourself these questions: Are there duplo-moves around? Are the targets in place? If not, put them in place. Are there defenders of the attacking square(s)? Remove the defenders. Let's have a look at another problem of Glenn: White to move. Are there duplo-moves around? Yes, B or Q d5 double attack on R and K Are the targets in place? Yes Are there defenders of the attacking square(s)? Remove the defenders. Nxc6 followed by Nxd5 undermines the d5 square If after 1.Nxc6 bxc6 2.Nxd5 the black king moves to h8: Are there duplo-moves around? Yes, pin with Qa3 the black knight on d6. Are the targets in place? No, play Nxe7 Are there defenders of the attacking square(s)? No. I guess it's just a matter of doing a lot of problems, identifying the duplo-moves and creating narra...

continued from part I , part II , part III , part IV and the Intermezzo . . . The problem with investigating while blogging is that you don't know beforehand where your investigation is going to lead you. After a little detour along the beanfields we are back at duplo-moves again. Beancounting works fine as long as there are no duplo-moves around. The beancounting method reliefs the short term memory when both players pile up on one piece. So that is a little success. But it is a small area, yet it works well within the given constraints. Since one of the constraints is "as long as there are no duplo-moves around", the question arises "how do you know if there are duplo-moves around?". In the past we have done a lot of work on the recognition of duplo-moves, for instance by the identification of the potential targets of a duplo move. See attempts like my rake-scanning and Christian's Target Feature Count . So to me it is an old question. I have partly foun...

Glenn put up an interesting question on his blog. To create a grand unified theory of counting for captures in chess it should be either applicable in general, or, if that is not possible, then we need to be able to at least distinguish the cases where it can be relied upon from those cases where it can not. Otherwise, we are left with something that can be applied only in situations where it works but we have no way of knowing which those are. He put a few diagrams on his blog with the question what the exact role of beancounting is in relation to these diagrams. While analysing the positions I noted that there are 5 different area's that together can describe the majority of all tactical positions. That are: Duplo-moves Trap Chains of defenders Extended beancounting Counterattack chains Duplo-moves and traps. Only the first two techniques can yield you wood. Logically the vast majority of problems from tactical problemsets fall within these two categories. From these two, duplo-...

continued from part I , part II and part III . . . Beancounting revisited. Let me try to reformulate my method of beancounting in more understandable english. Goal of the beancounting formula: To evaluate if you should start a sequence of capture and recapture. If you start to capture or in this case you evaluate whether to capture or not, start with your piece with the lowest value and work upwards. Your opponent will do the same. Situation: You have attackers and start to capture. The opponent has a victim and defenders of that victim. Take the sum of the value of your attackers. If there are more attackers than there are defenders, then there is no need to take the value of all your attackers. Since not every attacker will be involved in the trade. Add up the value from as much attackers as there are defenders. Example: 5 attackers, 3 defenders = take the sum of your 3 lowest valued attackers. Take the sum value of all the pieces who take part in the defense.If there are more defen...

continued from part I and part II . . . To illustrate the beancounting method working on multiple squares I designed the following position: White to move. c5 and g5 are two black pieces under attack. Beancounting shows that both pawns are well protected. 1.Ne4 is a duplo-attack which adds an attacker to both c5 and g5, winning one of them. A move that can be evaluated without a single visualisation of move in the mind. Thus keeping the short term memory free for other things. The two theatres of war c5 and g5 can be evaluated seperately. The bean counting of c5 doesn't interfere with the beancounting on g5. Let's see what happens if the two theatres do interfere: White to move. It is still possible to treat the two theatres c5 and e5 separately. The black knight on d7 counts as one defender of c5 and separately as one defender of e5. The duplo-attack with 1.Nd3 will yield white a pawn. This is all very ...

continuation from part I . . . In general: a duplo attack can only be parried by a move with a "duplo-effect". An "ordinary move" with no such duplo effect can only lead to postponement of the execution of the duplo attack. Since moves with a "duplo-effect" are not common, this gives a sort of stability to the material evaluation of a position. If you have two attacks and your opponent can only make "ordinary moves" he can only parry one of the two attacks, or he can use the tempo for a single counterattack, which only postpones the execution. If you have 5 attacks ongoing while your opponent has only 3 attacks ongoing, and he can only make "non duplo effect moves" or "ordinary moves" or "mono-effect moves" or as I will call them from now on " mono-moves ", he can only postpone the execution of the 2 extra attacks. But with mono-moves he will never be able to prevent it. This may look far-fetched, but it is...

This is my first attempt to unite our new formula for beancounting with the law of conservation of threats . My formula in short: Take the sum of the value of the attackers. From as much attackers as there are defenders. Take the sum of the value of the defenders. From as much defenders as there are attackers. If the value of the defenders exceeds the value of the attackers then you will gain wood. But not more than the value of the victim (due to the fact that the opponent stops retaking when you threaten to gain more than the value of the victim) Preconditions: There is no queen involved which is standing in front of her rook(s) or her bishop. The victim is not a pawn defended by a pawn. The most clear definition of my formula is stilll under construction, so please bear with this description, please. The power of this formula is that you get rid of the element of sequence and order. There is no longer need to see the whole sequence before your minds eye. I have the feeling that it m...