Temposchlucker

The following picture emerges. Thinking backwards from a tactical shot, you need to create lines of attack . For lines of attack you need holes in the pawn structure. You need invasion squares in the camp of the enemy. That are squares where you outnumber your enemy through the holes in his fortress walls. The center is paramount. Putting a piece on a central square is the equivalent of a duplo move. From the center, a piece radiates to two flanks at the same time. The ideal is the open center. With no pawns on both sides in the center. In this situation, the dynamism of the pieces is biggest. At the same time, these positions are hardest to assess. Due to that very dynamism. One tempo can change the hole picture. Putting your pieces in the open center, provokes pawn moves from the enemy to chase them away. The defending party should withstand the defying pieces by keeping the pawns where they are. Forward movement create holes, invasion squares and weaknesses. We have to find...

"Pawns are the soul of chess." In my head I tend to add something like "yadayadayada. . ." to it. The body of positional knowledge has always been an incoherent set of rules to me. I know about open lines, the center, piece activity, outposts, weak pawns, strong squares, mobility, king safety et cetera. But I never have been able to apply that knowledge properly. I just fiddled around with the pieces, until, out of the blue, some tactical shot appeared. Good or bad. That way of playing made no sense to me, even to that extend that I abandoned playing chess for five years. I solely have been working on a proper study method for tactics, those years. Together we unearthed the PoPLoAFun system. Nowadays I train daily with the system. For the first time there is room for something else. So I decided to think about positional play. For tactical shots, you need lines of attack . That's the LoA of PoPLoAFun. This means that positional play revolves around crea...

I can imagine that the PoPLoAFun system may sound somewhat posh or highbrowed. Especially for them who didn't follow all the details exactly. For me it is just a handy framework for reasoning. The exercises that I derive from it are really simple though. Black to move After solving a problem, I copy it to paint, and I add some squares to the picture. Green squares mean plain targets, and red squares mean pieces with a function . The Fun from PoPLoAFun, so to speak. I don't use lines anymore, since they tend to mess up the picture. Pawn e3 is under stress since it must defend both the queen and the knight. The same applies to bishop b2. Rook d1 is simply overloaded. The result is that knight d4 is actually undefended, since the defenders have more important tasks to do. I hope that adding the colored squares by system II inspires system I to take over. Invasion While reasoning about positional play with the PLF (PoPLoAFun) system as a base, I found that it was...

OK, let's see if we can flick in some thoughts of our own. Talking about positional play has a tendency to sound rather vague. Possessing the center, piece activity, mobility, king safety, space, are all pretty abstract. Can we make matters less vague? First, a few thoughts and observations. For now, let's assume that my method for learning tactics is going to work. If that is the case, then we should find the relationship between positional play and the PLF (PoPLoAFun) system. The essence of the PLF system is the duplo move. Accomplishing two things in one go. Positional moves must abide by the same rule. Once, I had all my pieces fully activated. But what to do next? Once, I noticed that it was stronger to put a knight on a square where it could reach two attacking squares. I found that to be stronger than the actual placement of the knight on one of the good squares. Now my opponent had to keep an eye on two potential threats in stead of one manifested threat. I ...

Now the weather becomes worse, I feel less the urge to go out and ride my recumbent trike. Time behind the computer doesn't feel so wasted when the weather is cold and rainy. So I have been able to flick in a few training sessions. Where am I standing now? I feel that I have found the right method for tactical training now. I focus solely on the four duplo attacks. Double attack, discovered attack, pin and skewer. They form the base of all tactics. Two moves deep, rating between 1600 and 2000. Every problem solved is copied to paint with the aid of a macro. There I evaluate the position by drawing the critical PLF (PoPLoAFun) elements. It took me 19 years to develop the method, now it is time to practice it for at least a year or so. Since I don't need to spend time on developing the method anymore, it is time to broaden the scope. The approach of Munich which he describes in the comment of the previous post has drawn my attention. In January I adopted the London system, an...