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 center, you will find no additional goals that can be pursued there. This means that you have to change your focus to the flank where your pieces are the most active.
Closed center: since you can't make any progress in the center, because it is blocked, you are obliged to change your focus to the side where your piece are most active. Usually, the pawn chain is the salient that points into the direction of your attack. You don't have to worry about creating weaknesses, since your opponent can't punish you for that with a blocked center. So use your pawns for an assault on the base of the hostile pawn chain in the center.
I have about hundred booklets with my game scores. I never look in them, because I just fiddle around with the pieces. Last Friday, I played for the first time with a plan: "thou shall attack in the center!". For the first time it makes sense to analyze where I went astray. Without a goal, you cannot find out why you missed it.
What I intend to do, is to express the dynamism of the center in terms of lines of attack.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Unfortunately you can have the centre, and even something like an attack - and still, there is nothing to attack. "The Modern" scores pretty well against white.
ReplyDeleteHypermodern style works, and there are lots of openings we all know how hard they are to crack:
Aljechin, the modern, KID, St Georges, Hippo, Gruenfeld.
If you dont have a weakness as black, white has a hard time to make anything with his center.
The best way I found to play against hypermodern-style is: Do nothing!
Keep your center, and try to gain a time advantage on the clock. Shuffle your pieces from the left to the right, and from right to the left. Of course you can try to provoke a weakness of his, and if he weakens his positoin, you shall go for it. But if he doesnt - be patient, gain time, and just be happy to enjoy more space and a somewhat easier game to play.
Thus: Thou shall attack not, but wait for an opportunity to smite and smother thy foe with great vengeance.
(unless you have a real advantage: if you are ahead of development, rip open the position, maybe with the help of a pawn sac in the center. Or if he has a weakness you can attack.)
In one of the papers I read lately, an IGM said: When you occupy the center, and you can't get any further in the center, you should attack on the flank where your pieces are most active. You must use your pawns to rip the flank open. But ONLY when you are SURE that the opponent can't strike back in the center.
ReplyDeleteAmateurs will have problems to judge whether it is save to attack on the flank, of course.
Well, I guess I can hardly ever be sure in 99% of the cases. Imagine: when I have the center because black voluntarily gave it to me (Grunfeld defense, KID, Benoni) - He will always have counterplay.
ReplyDeleteIt is a different story if we both aimed for the center, and I won the center - usually then I am simply in a good position with the initiative, and usually I can get further (so there is no: "and you can't get any further in the center").
I just want to give this practical advice: if you opponent plays 1...b6 2...Bb7 3...g6 4...Bg7 5...e6 6...d6 7...Nd7 8...Ne7 9...h6 10...a6 (move order can be different): how to crack this?
You don't! That is the secret I found for me. I simply occupy the center and then I do nothing and wait. Where does he castle to? I slowly shift my pieces then in the direction of his king. He does some defending then at his kings position - then I surprisingly retreat back. Then I slowly test the other wing of his. But truth is: I dont intend anything other than accumulating time, while keeping everything like it it. Most of the time he gets impatient and opens the position himself. So I do not try to break him, but I let him break himself!
He doesnt have to, but my opponent almost always do at some point. He will come, and my pieces are prepared.
This approach is actually the opposite of what black expects: he actually wanted me to attack him, and then dont capture my pawn, but moves and blocks the center.
But if he moves a pawn first, I simply capture it and then something opened - I have the center, I am quicker in exploiting the file. At worst the rooks get swapped on the opened file, but I can not lose this. And dont forget - for me as white it is always easier to play once black got all his 10 moves in (like notated above). So at first black can play fast, but he usually needs much longer from move 12 on.
Dont waste time and try to crack his position open - you wont be successful. Play it slow and save and enjoy that it is so easy to do nothing. You can still try something at move 40 if he still refuses to open up somewhere.