Temposchlucker

I have been working hard lately in order to unearth some wisdom from "My System". I managed to flick in an hour or two a day during the passed weeks. I study with Margriet, who feels a bit better lately. Which is quality time. I focus on the center. Part 1 The elements chapter 1 the center and development , part 2 positional play chapter 1 Prophylaxis and the center. What have I found sofar? The most important part of a pawn center seems to be its potential mobility. Its lust to expand. The ability of the pawn mass to set itself, after ample preparation, in motion, thus becoming a steam-roller. All rules Nimzowitch gives about the center, seems to have this idea at the basis. Looking at the center as a potential steam roller, sheds a clarifying light on the rules he gives. The rules are not an end in themselves. They must be seen in the light of the main idea. This way you can judge when a rule is applicable or not. There are rules for preventing your center from col...

I played an 8 year old boy lately. He is clearly a prodigy. I had the chance to observe how he does it. His tactics surpasses the seniors he plays with. But we seniors still can keep him at bay by more experience in practical play. For now. What I noticed, is that his tactical database is crispier than mine. In the opening he plays at lightning speed. But in the middle game he uses more time when there is a possibility to ambush me. He is not much faster in seeing tactics than me, but his database with tactics is less contaminated than mine. And that is the main message from my tactical training, lately. My knowledge of the very basics is too poor, and my database is contaminated. So far, the training seems to work. But it is a time consuming process to cleanse my internal database with tactics. An example to show what I'm talking about. White to move 1r3rk1/1b3p1p/p2qp1p1/2Nn4/1b1P4/1B3Q2/P2B1PPP/2R2RK1 w - - 1 1 [ solution ] It took me 3:30 minutes to find the ...

The past week I have been frantically searching for more information about the center. Aox has put me on the right track, and I had a clear picture in my mind how such information should look like. All of a sudden it dawned on me that I might have already exactly the book that I'm looking for in my library! I never have taken My System of Nimzowitch too serious. It contained an incoherent set of rules, in my not so humble opinion, and I would certainly not think of it as a system . But I might be quite wrong! Suddenly I see the coherence in his ideas. Pawn chains, blockades, the rest and even prophylaxis might very well make sense! The coming weeks I will reread the book. I will keep you posted. . .

Pawns are the background of the battlefield. They form the hills and the valleys. You can place your pieces on the most active positions. But when there are no lines of attack , they are going nowhere. Tactics naturally emerge from good positions. This means, that lines of attack must be created along the line. There can't be tactics without any lines of attack . There is lot of "pawn babble" in chess. Which obscures matters, since it concerns pawn structures in relation to the subsequent end games. But we are talking about the middle game here. Thou shall attack in the center! There are two extremities. The open center and the closed center. If you know everything there is to know about these two extremes, then you can interpolate the rest. In the open center, there are no center pawns, in closed centers, pawn chains are blocking each other. The ensuing strategies are simple. Thou shall attack in the center! Open center: when you reach total control in the...