Connecting the rules

Connecting the rules in a framework 

I have asked Claude (AI) lately to collect all chess rules he could find. He found about 150 rules. Often these rules are hanging somewhere in mid-air. Because the rules tend to be provided with too little context. Now the task is to hang them on the LoA (line of attack) framework. Take for instance the rule "improve your worst piece". That only applies when an attacker is not on its LoA yet. Otherwise it makes no sense. The LoA system provides structure and hierarchy to the rules. It provides the context so you can judge how to value the rules whenever you have conflicting rules.

The LoA framework is especially important to get feedback from your games. Without a framework, you make the same positional mistakes over and over again without noticing it.

A framework makes you life easier and helps you to make faster positional judgements, but it is not going to win you many games.

Tactical chess language

In order to win games, you have to become more proficient in the tactical chess language. Positional rules are blunt, in a way. Most people can decide "this a position where I can force an endgame with opposite colored bishops, let me try to draw". But getting the most out of a position by milking all tactical opportunities is a totally different animal.

You can only do so once you have absorbed a broad vocabulary of tactical words. So that is the main job. Let me give an example.

1r3rk1/pp1R2p1/4p3/3p3p/3P2nP/2PB2Q1/PP1q4/5RK1 w - - 0 27

Ivanchuk, Vassily vs. Almasi, Zoltan, Varadero 2016

The LoA framework gives you the invasion routes of the white Queen. The queen can invade via c7 or e5. e5 is at this moment defended, and the immediate Qc7 consumes a tempo.

The LoA framework gives me a clue what I want: invade on c7. Now I have to work out the tactics. In an ideal world, the needed tactical words are already absorbed. If not, calculating the lines will become a tedious task.

Bd3, Rf1 and pawn h4 form the outer boundaries of the killbox. Rd7 is the crowbar. The white Queen is the invader that must chase the black king into a corner of the killbox.

You must absorb from this position: 

• the LoA related stuff
• the killbox related stuff
• the tactical "words" that are involved in the specific lines

That will be my main approach the next years.

On another note

I'm experimenting with using my learning method for score keeping. I'm a terrible writer during a game, and I suffer from changing attention back and forth to the brain part that writes done the score. I hate it, and it takes a lot of energy and attention. I will let you know if it works.