Endgame preparation
One of the three areas where I suck is the endgame. Since I manage to screw up positions where I'm a piece ahead, I suppose that this is the area where I can gain the most with a little effort.
This position came from round 5 in the tournament:
 |
| Black to move |
8/8/p7/PpKnk3/1P6/6P1/8/8 b - b3 0 37
I'm black, a piece ahead, and totally clueless. I was lucky to draw this position. After the game, my 14 year old opponent showed me an easy way to win for black: 37. ... Nxb4.
I felt pretty silly. Since the resulting position is familiar to me. But we already noted long ago that being familiar is not enough, we need absorption.
I have the feeling that the endgame is about a finite amount of scenarios, which are in general not rocket science, but can be hard to SEE when you haven't ABSORBED them. And since we are talking about LONG lines, you can't visualize them by just being familiar with the scenarios. You can't SEE them without having them absorbed before.
This position invites to have a closer look. Stockfish says:
As you can see, there are 8 ways to win this position and 4 ways to lose it. Drawing is not even an option. The proposed Nxb4 is not the fastest way to win the game.
37. ... Nxb4 is a clear scenario. By creating a protected passed pawn, black can take his time to pick up the pawn on g3. Whether he does that in 10 moves or in 45 is up to him, as long as he stays under 50.
This means that the endgame is about plans. About scenarios. The exact moves are less important, as long as you don't compromise your plan.
The only means to lose this game, is to lose the knight with no compensation.
Other scenarios?
Let me see whether 37. ... Ne3, which Stockfish proposes as the fastest way, makes use of other mechanisms than 37. ... Nxb4
- 37. ... Ne3
- 38. Kb6 Kd6
- 39. Kxa6 Kc6
- 40. Ka7 Nc2
 |
| White to move |
Here we see another scenario. Black has given up the protection of his passer, and has given white a passer instead. But:
- black can now create his own passer with Nxb4
- sacrifice his knight against whites a-pawn
- promote his own passer b5
- Arrest the g-pawn with his knight
- Stop the g pawn by keeping his king in the square
- Promote with his b pawn first
From the three areas where I suck (opening, kingside attack, endgame), It seems logical to start with the endgame. Since I cannot work out the opening with insufficient knowledge of the endgame. Furthermore, I consider the kingside attack as an extension of the way I train tactics. Since I continue to train tactics on a daily basis, I expect that I look at the kingside attack from this perspective in a natural way. What is more, the past tournament showed 2.5 points that I missed due to insufficient endgame proficiency. That are 5 games where I could have done better.
ReplyDeletePART I:
ReplyDeleteHow to Play Chess Endgames: A comprehensive guide to endgame strategy, Chapter 5, Thinking in Schemes by Karsten Müller and Wolfgang Pajekan.
“I know at sight what a position contains. What could happen? What is going to happen? YOU figure it out. I KNOW it!” - Jose Raul Capablanca
On the one hand, chess is a very concrete game, in which even the smallest alteration to a position can have important repercussions; on the other hand, it would be hardly possible for humans to master the game if they could not make use of certain schemes and rules of thumb. In the endgame, a schematic way of thinking is particularly appropriate. By this, we mean the ability to recognize desirable positions and piece set-ups, and then work out a plan to reach them. If you ask a grandmaster about the assessment of an endgame position, you won’t generally hear any concrete variations at first, but rather phrases such as “If White succeeds in exchanging the rooks he should win” or “If Black manages to put his bishop on the long diagonal, he has a certain draw”.
Typical themes and issues that lend themselves to schematic thinking are, for example [NOT an exhaustive list!]:
- how to match the pieces with the pawn-structure
- optimal deployment of the pieces or improving the piece set-up
- consideration of the right exchange
- fortresses
- weak squares
- knight outposts
- pure opposite-coloured bishop endings
Of course, when applying this way of thinking, it is absolutely essential NOT to think about the position in too static a manner—on no account should you neglect the dynamic factors.
In the given endgame position (from game 5), when you reached this position, what were you thinking and concentrating on?
I was clueless. I didn't want his king to go to b6 and eat a6. Since a knight is a clumsy beast when it comes to stopping a rook pawn. But if I want to win, I cannot keep my knight for eternity on d5. I was indecisive about what my knight should do and what my king should do.
DeleteI lack the schematic thinking that is needed for the endgame. Without that, I'm clueless. But I feel that fiddling around with just a few endgame positions already would clarify a lot.
DeletePART II:
ReplyDeleteFrom your comments, it is evident that you have the requisite KNOWLEDGE to play this endgame for a win.
One of the “rules of thumb” given in the referenced book is: “38) Knight endings are like pawn endings (Botvinnik’s Rule).”
In isolation, that’s a useless piece of KNOWLEDGE. But, embedded into System 1 as a PATTERN, it could prove to be valuable, provided there is a “trigger” associated with it.
Another “rule of thumb” is: “57) The important thing is to win, not to win prettily.”
As you point out, the “solution” suggested by your 14-year old opponent is not the fastest way to win BUT it does WORK.
This suggest something important (I think): it is more important to have ONE way that WORKS than to determine every possible alternative with the goal of finding the most efficient (shortest) solution. Obviously, this runs counter to Lasker’s advice: “When you see a good move, look for a better one.”
I’m sure you KNOW the rule of “the square of the pawn”, the value of a protected passed pawn, the possibility of trading a piece for a pawn (with a winning endgame) and the method of counting rather than calculating when the potential endgame solution involves a lot of moves.
Given the position, you should have been thinking about two results instead of three results: White should NOT be allowed to win!
There are two local areas of attention: the kingside and the outside passed pawn. Black’s king is in the square of the pawn, so the king (NOT the knight!) can be used to eliminate it.
By process of elimination, the knight will have to combat the White king. Too bad Black doesn’t have a PROTECTED passed pawn. Is that a “trigger”? It should be. The “trigger” should be what is MISSING, not what is actually there.
One of the strange things about pattern recognition is that individual concrete positions must be absorbed in order to create the mental abstraction of a pattern. The pattern (and associated “triggers”) is created behind the scenes automagically by association of common elements (concepts, categories, analogies, whatever).
As I thought about the position, I realized that I was considering promotion of the g-pawn, while White was getting rid of the h-pawn and then trying to advance it to promotion. A drawing pattern came to mind: queen versus king and rook pawn. As I counted the respective moves for both players, I was aware of something else: Black can always force a draw by capturing White’s last pawn, while also trying to win by getting his king back close enough to checkmate White. In short, Black is playing for two results (win or draw).
An alternative is to get the newly minted Black queen in front of the White king and rook pawn (on a8, b8, or c8), preventing the White king from reaching the drawing position.
It doesn’t take that many scenarios to play endgames better, and absorption is fairly quick; it does NOT take 30-50 examples.
I have no idea how to suggest setting up appropriate “triggers” except perhaps to train to SEE the contours of the position as suggesting certain patterns OR that a position is MISSING something important.
As for “fiddling around,” I suggest that’s also an appropriate thing to do WHILE PLAYING. All of it occurs in your mind—which is allowable under the rules.
The role of the knight changes from the middlegame to the endgame. Saccing the knight for a passer is quite logical. What else can you do with the beast? The knight can't promote nor mate the king.
DeleteI have a loose bunch of knowledge without triggers. I need to build a framework of logical thinking to get the triggers in place. Right now, the dots are not connected.
DeletePART I:
ReplyDeleteIn How to Study Chess on your own: Creating a Plan that Works.. and Sticking to it!, Chapter 2 Fifteen study methods, GM Davorin Kuljasevic provides an overview in Table 2.1: Study methods and quality criteria with a brief description of each method, followed by a numerical assessment (on a scale of 1-5, 5 being the highest) the practical relevance, the required study intensity, and the long-term earning potential of each method. For this comment (or comments), I’ll limit myself to just one method. Hopefully, it will be clear why this particular method is important by the end of the comment(s).
Reviewing - deliberately committing variations, positions, or games to memory
- Practical relevance = 4
- Study intensity = 4* (Intensity level may vary from person to person)
- Long-term learning potential = 4
This is obviously one of the most important study methods in chess. Reviewing an important opening line or a theoretical endgame cane make a big difference in the outcome of the game, so every chess player needs to devote a fair amount of study time to this, sometimes rather uninspiring, but necessary activity. However, once you have reviewed important material, you have done only part of your homework. The second part—memorizing what you have reviewed—is just as important and often trickier. First of all, the passage of time doesn’t help our odds of remembering the details. Secondly, if you have reviewed something superficially or your memory is not all that great to begin with, the chances that you will be able to reproduce it in an actual game become quite slim. There are many memorization techniques that can be used to improve these odds: spaced repetition, making associations, visualization, muscle memory, etc. I believe that the key to retaining the reviewed material for a long time is to MEMORIZE IDEAS rather than only the moves. When you memorize variations in terms of ‘I play this, he plays that’, your brain stores them as temporary data in your short-term memory. On the other hand, when you try to give variations that you are reviewing a deeper meaning and connect them to your previous knowledge, your brain stores them as ideas—meaningful information—in your long-term memory.
Minor correction:
Delete"and the long-term earning potential of each method."
should read:
"and the long-term learning potential of each method."
Since I'm retired, I no longer worry about my "earning" potential, but I am still concerned about my "learning" potential.
Mistakes were made...
PART II:
ReplyDeletePsychologists Jahnke and Nowaczyk compared similar concepts, called maintenance rehearsal and elaborative rehearsal, and argued that the latter works better as a memorization method. ‘Although maintenance rehearsal (a method of learning through repetition, similar to rote learning) can be useful for memorizing information for a short period of time, studies have shown that elaborative rehearsal, which is a means of relating new material with old information in order to obtain a deeper understanding of the content, is a more efficient means of improving memory.’ Older scientific research by Craik and Lockhart confirmed that ‘… the more in-depth encoding a person undergoes … the more likely they are to remember the information later.’
So, your primary goal when reviewing chess material should be to develop a method of ‘encoding’ the information in such a way that it becomes something that you understand deeply in terms of ideas, rather than something that you need to be recalling consciously, move by move. This way, you CREATE MENTAL SHORTCUTS that allow you to retrieve the necessary information more quickly and reliably. This comes back to our discussion about basic and deep learning methods from the previous chapter. To illustrate one such method, I would like to show you how to memorize what is probably the ultimate test of a chess player’s memory—the Philidor position in the rook and bishop vs rook endgame. Even though the theoretical win was found by the great Frenchman many centuries ago, to this day it remains one of the most difficult theoretical endgames to remember. The reason for that is that maneuvers that are necessary to checkmate the opponent’s king are quite sophisticated and there are some important subvariations to remember as well. Moreover, memorization of concrete moves, as in ‘Rf1, Bd6, Ke8, etc.’ does not work here because you can get the Philidor position on any of the four sides of the board and on almost every file or rank. Thus, it is obvious that the study and review of this theoretical endgame should be based primarily on the understanding of ideas, such as good and bad defensive positions of rook and king, short and long side, rook and bishop coordination, etc.
[My emphasis added]
No, I am NOT going to give the example game and all the variations provided. Aren’t you glad?!?’
However, I AM going to give the summary of the stages and steps within each stage to illustrate a pitfall in this approach that I think is fairly common among adult chess improvers.
More to come as I get time...
PART III:
ReplyDeleteFEN: 8/8/8/8/K1kb4/6R1/8/1r6 b - - 0 92
It’s “interesting” that the “rook and bishop vs rook with no pawns” endgame occurred in several games in the Chess Tempo database. ASIDE: In looking for similar positions, I found that Chess Tempo apparently relies on the types and quantity of specific pieces (not the exact position of pieces-on-squares) when using the “Search for Current Position.”
[EXCERPT]
At the end, summarizing the stages and steps of the main winning line should help you create the mental shortcuts that we talked abut in the theoretical part of this section.
Stage 1: Worsen the position of the opponent’s rook.
Intermediate steps: long side — waiting move — short side — bishop to the short side.
Transition: Diagram 1
FEN: 8/8/8/8/K1k5/7R/1r3b2/8 w - - 0 96
Stage 2: Worsen the position of the opponent’s king.
Intermediate steps: bishop wins a tempo with a checkmate threat — rook gives the first check on the seventh rank.
Transition: Diagram 2
FEN: 8/8/8/8/Krkb4/5R2/8/8 w - - 0 99
Stage 3: Mating attack.
Steps: long side — return to the short side to give the second check on the seventh rank — slide to the 4th rank — bishop slides next to the rook on the 4th rank cutting off the opponent’s rook on the 3rd rank.
Stage 3a (main alternative 96. Ka3):
Steps: slide to the 4th rank — the quiet bishop move — backward rook maneuver.
If you memorize the winning method this way, it will not only be easier to review this endgame move-by-move when you get back to it every 3-6 months, but you will also have an easier time recalling the right winning plan if it happens in a game.
You can use the memorizing technique on logical sequences, like the one above, for anything else you would like to memorize: opening variations, chess games, etc. I have found that creating ‘stories’ [NARRATIVES; logical sequences] with multiple stages, intermediate steps, and key positions (images) has helped me absorb and retain chess content quite efficiently over the years. If you have some issues with memorizing and reviewing, you do not have to use this exact method, but at least try to develop your own based on the general advice provided in this section.
In the quality criteria table, I have marked the intensity of reviewing with ‘4*’. This asterisk indicates that there can be some variance in the intensity level due to individual memory strength. For example, I have noticed that club players sometimes struggle to memorize opening variations. For them, this method’s intensity might be closer to 5 because it requires them to put in more mental effort than someone who has a stronger memory (for whom the score would be closer to 3 or even lower). The good news is that reviewing is one of the methods in which the compounding effect of the previous study kicks in; in other words, regular practice tends to strengthen one’s memory, as more efficient memorization techniques are adopted and new material shortcuts are created.
[END EXCERPT]
BTW: this endgame is one of the approximately eighty “blue” (must know) endgames in Dvoretsky’s Dvoretsky’s Endgame Manual, 2nd Edition. He provides Philidor’s 1749 problem position as the example and the following advice (with examples):
“Not all positions with the king on the edge are, of course, lost. But the line between a draw and a loss is quite narrow; it can be easily crossed.”
“In a practical game one can usually avoid danger by means of orientation at the “Cochrane position” or by using “a defense along the 7th rank.””
Note that GM Kuljasevic focused on how to win, rather than how to draw.
PART IV:
ReplyDeleteSo, it’s easy, peasey: just memorize the stages and steps using the recommended method and you too can play (at least) this specific endgame like a grandmaster. Or, just consult a 7-man endgame tablebase and find the strongest moves to win in the shortest number of moves.
THAT is the pitfall for adult chess improvers. I am absolutely certain that memorization of those stages and steps IN ISOLATION will NOT result in long-term improvement; In fact, it is more likely to result in lower SKILL when faced with most situations for the first time.
WHY???
Because there is no “fiddling around” with various alternatives within the given example and no exploration of alternative positions and possibilities. Worst of all, taking a grandmaster’s (well-intentioned) recommendation as “gospel truth” is most likely to end in a false sense of “I’ve got this nailed down.” Trust me: if that’s all you’ve got, YOU DON’T GOT THIS!
As Temposchlucker has noted many times, at the end of the day, YOU still have to do the work yourself to embed the SKILL into long-term memory. Copying and memorizing what someone else has distilled as the essence of a method or process will NOT make it your own. You MUST develop your own methods, processes, stages and intermediate steps through hard analytical work and intensity. If you can find such recommendations, study them and try to find “holes” where the solution goes off the rails. The most obvious clue as to the impossibility of successfully using someone else’s complicated “solution” is GM Larsen’s axiom: “Long variation, wrong variation.” You will either forget some critical aspect, or mix up the order of stages, steps and moves, or be faced with a deviation by the opponent that throws you on your own resources (the grandmaster won‘;’t be sitting beside you, telling you how to deal with an entirely new situation THAT YOU HAVE NEVER CONSIDERED.
On a personal note: In the last classical time-limit game I played, I deliberately chose to go into the rook and bishop vs rook endgame with just a rook. My opponent and I were both rated almost the same (around 1800+ USCF). I had NO knowledge of methods, processes, stages or steps required to provide maximum resistance and yet I managed to draw this very difficult ending. I assumed (correctly) that my opponent also did not have any training in this specific endgame. So how did I manage to draw it? I focused intently for many, many moves, watchful for what seemed obvious to me: an opportunity to pin the opponent’s rook against his king without losing my rook to the bishop. I KNEW that if the rooks could be safely exchanged, I automatically had the draw. That’s exactly what happened. That game dragged on for several hours. It was a major factor in my decision to stop playing classical time-limit tournament chess.
I looked at quite a few videos where (top)grandmasters looked surprised by an unexpected move. And I timed the speed how fast they recognized WHAT the unexpected move was about.
ReplyDeleteApparently, storing triggers and absorbing patterns are different things. My conclusion is that they usually know the patterns, but that some trigger didn't went off.
Exactly like in this post. I knew the winning patterns once they were pointed out to me. It are absorbed patterns.
Hence, the problem is about trigger building, not about absorbing patterns. Maybe that explains why a logical narrative, a logical framework is necessary.
Practical and theoretical endgames lead to absorption of the patterns. But you need to build the trigger framework yourself.
PART I:
ReplyDeleteI intuit that “triggers” are just another kind of pattern, which we often either absorb automagically (System 1) or miss altogether. Perhaps it might be an abbreviated pattern in itself or the salient portion of a larger (more complex) pattern—or some crucial piece that is MISSING. As I’ve noted before, there is a distinct difference between what we SEE as the active pattern (activity; foreground; positive image) and what we take for granted that is associated with the pattern but in actuality is the surrounding context for that pattern (the structural “bones” of the overall pattern; the background; negative image).
Here’s a simple example from a familiar (at least, it SHOULD be familiar by now!) endgame, without giving the actual pattern first.
[From Silman’s Complete Endgame Course: From BEGINNER to MASTER, Diagram 97, pg. 98.]
FEN: 8/8/7p/4p2K/4P/1kP5/8/8 w - - 0 1
IM Silman writes:
This is the kind of position that sends many players into a panic. Who is better? What in the world is going on? Is there anything to grasp onto that will enable us to make a quick and easy assessment? The idea of something definable [“TRIGGER!”] which can help us understand the right path in seemingly tough positions is an important one, and we’ll be searching for such “crutches” all through this book.
What is the “crutch” in the position above?
In this specific case, the “trigger” is embedded within the overall position.
The absence of the moves leading up to the position can have the “trigger” hidden within those preceding moves. Where the book “solution” terminates, no further moves are given. In the example given, IM Silman terminates the solution after 7 moves and BEFORE a pawn is promoted. This is a standard assumption: that the student has the requisite SKILL to successfully conclude the game, whatever technique is required. Sadly, too many club players don’t have all those techniques in their SKILL set.
GM Rowson tells an interesting story in Chess for Zebras: Thinking Differently about Black and White.
CHESS NARRATIVES
I think of chess narratives as the background ‘noise’ that permeate our thoughts during play and this ‘noise’ is often sufficiently loud that it operates as the context of our thoughts. For instance, if you probe the advice ‘counter an attack on the wing with play in the centre’ for a few seconds, you can imagine someone telling a story about the game, with that as the basis of the plot. Narratives are the guiding stories that give us a sense of what we are trying to do and WHY. They come in various forms, as we shall see below. While nobody is immune to these narratives, VERY FEW USE THEM TO GUIDE THEMSELVES TOWARDS THE CORRECT MOVES. Many players get lost in these stories, trapped by their own narrative, and completely lose track of the objective state of affairs on the board.
The FEN is not correct.
DeleteSorry, I have a sticky "#/3" key.
DeleteFEN: 8/8/7p/4p2K/4P3/1kP5/8/8 w - - 0 1
Ah, le trebuchet. I should have known.
DeletePART II:
ReplyDeleteWhen I came to appreciate the ubiquity of stories, it occurred to me that becoming a better player might be a matter of learning to tell better stories. That may sound obscure, but think carefully about the different elements that make a story good. These vary somewhat, but usually a good story is one that gives us the firm feeling that we understand most of what is happening and WHY. [The presence of this “feeling” is an indication that we have recognized the appropriate trigger(s).] There may be some unresolved issues and surprises in store [the exact position in front of us may NOT match all elements exactly; that’s why we have to calculate!], but we are not confused or bewildered as we consider it. Analogously, I think a good chess narrative is one where your assessments and your variations make sense of each other. Moreover, a good story usually has events that make sense of the story up to that point. So trading queens to try to exploit a positional advantage in the ending retains narrative coherence, but blundering your queen for no good reason does not. Finally, a good story is always somewhat uncertain. The story should be open to variant readings, with some space left over for the reader to imagine things differently.[FIDDLE AROUND WITH THE PIECES AND THE IDEAS!] In a chess context, this means you need to leave space for your opponent’s version of events, and also think of the story the position is trying to tell you, before letting your own story dominate your thoughts. If you manage to do this, your assessments should become a little more tentative, and this usually helps you make better decisions. (Of course this is very much in line with what I was arguing in the previous chapter about the importance of trying to falsify your ideas, rather than trying to verify them.)
Opening Narratives
As I suggested in Chapter 2, we tend to be rather attached to our openings, and part of the reason for this is that each opening is a kind of story in itself. When I was about 15, and rated around 2300, I remember playing a rapid game against a 1900 player who played the Accelerated Dragon. I remember it was the line 1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 g6 5. c4 Bg7 6. Be3 Nf6 7. Nc3 Ng4 8. Qxg4 Nxd4 9. Qd1 Ne6 and that Black later played ...Qa5 and ...g5. I particularly remember that at some moment my opponent played ...Kf8 and I suggested after the game (which I won) that this might have been a mistake because it is useful to have the option of castling. My opponent looked at me as if I was a complete idiot and said, “No, no, Black doesn’t castle in this line.”I tried not to take it personally and suggested that even if he doesn’t normally castle, it’s still useful to have the option because you never know when you might suddenly want to connect your rooks. “No, no,” he said, “you don’t connect your rooks in this line.”
I decided not to challenge him on turf that was clearly close to his heart. In this case, he had no doubt learned that Black doesn’t have to castle in this particular line of the Accelerated Dragon, which is true and makes sense, but he had become rather too attached to the idea of not castling and had rigidly associated that idea with the opening, thus limiting his legitimate options considerably. This is an extreme example of how narrative influences our play in the opening, again in the sense that the whole (the Accelerated Dragon) influenced his judgment of a part (castling) but in a way that wasn’t fully justified.
The geometrical patterns are the dots, while the triggers connect the dots. Of course the triggers are combobulated in some sort of pattern too. But they are on a higher level of abstraction. Closer to system 2 so to speak. Maybe there are more levels.
ReplyDeleteLike word, sentence, story and meaning.
PART I:
ReplyDeleteHere’s an “interesting” endgame position that can be used to train the logical development of schemes (triggers, stages, steps and logical narratives) for certain types of endgames. The process of developing a schema for one endgame quite likely leads to higher skill in similar endgames.
FEN: 8/4p3/p6k/6pP/6K1/4P3/P7/8 w - - 1 42
This position is one example in GM Neil McDonald’s COACH YOURSELF: A Complete Guide to Self Improvement at Chess, Chapter 12: Understanding the Essentials of the Endgame, A Classic King and Pawn Endgame, pg. 281. The position is taken from this game (in the Chess Tempo database):
Taimanov, Mark E (2590) vs Botvinnik, Mikhail (2640)
Date: 1967
Event: URS-chT, Olympiad URS, Moscow (Russia)
Round: 1
Result: 0-1
Opening: Slav Defense, Breyer Variation (D11)
1. d4 d5 2. c4 c6 3. Nf3 Nf6 4. Nbd2 g6 5. e3 Bg7 6. Be2 O-O 7. O-O b6 8. b4 Bb7 9. Bb2 Ne4 10. Nxe4 dxe4 11. Nd2 f5 12. c5 Nd7 13. Qb3+ Kh8 14. d5 cxd5 15. Bxg7+ Kxg7 16. Bb5 bxc5 17. bxc5 Rc8 18. Qc3+ Rf6 19. Nb3 Kg8 20. Rac1 a6 21. Bxd7 Qxd7 22. Rfd1 Bc6 23. Na5 f4 24. exf4 Rxf4 25. Nxc6 Rxc6 26. Qe5 Rf5 27. Qxe4 dxe4 28. Rxd7 Rfxc5 29. Re1 Rc1 30. Kf1 Kf7 31. Rd4 Rxe1+ 32. Kxe1 Rc2 33. Ra4 e3 34. fxe3 Rxg2 35. h4 h5 36. Kf1 Rg4 37. Rxg4 hxg4 38. Kg2 g5 39. h5 Kg7 40. Kg3 Kh7 41. Kxg4 Kh6 42. e4 White resigns
GM McDonald provides this commentary:
{EXTRACT}
It is White to move.
Question: The kings are locked in a mutual Zugzwang position. What is the result?
White is going to run out of pawn moves first, which you would imagine is bad news for him as he will have to concede the h5-pawn. However, one of the moves that Black is obliged to play (otherwise g5 drops) will be to put a pawn on e5. It then becomes a target of the white king. It seems the game will be a draw as both players will queen, but Botvinnik has spotted a sting on the tail. As usual in those days, the game was adjourned at the end of the first playing session and Taimanov sealed a secret move in an envelope. It was 42. E4. However, the game was never resumed as Taimanov tore up the envelope after Botvinnik showed him his winning plan.
Answer:
After 42...a5 43 a4 e5 44 Kf5 Kxh5 45 Kxe5 g4 46 Kf4 (he has to slow down the advance of the g-pawn, as 46 Kd4 g3 47 Ke3 Kh4 48 e5 Kh3 49 e6 g2 50 Kf2 Kh2 wins) 46...Kh4 47 e5 g3 48 e6 g2 49 e7 g1(Q) 50 e8(Q), both sides have promoted, but now 50...Qf2+ 51 Ke5 Qe1+ wins the white queen with a skewer.
How did Botvinnik KNOW that the endgame was going to be good for him? Was it simply his positional genius? Perhaps. But after the game he told Taimanov: I lost a similar endgame thirty years ago(!!) in my match with Levenfish. Now I have mastered the way to play such endings.” Studying the classic games was of value to Botvinnik, even when they were his old games!
{END EXTRACT}
I note with interest the setup of the Trébuchet with moves 40-41. The interesting thing is figuring out what moves to play as Black so that the remaining pawn moves are exhausted in his favor, forcing White to move his king.
The question is, what did Botvinnik mean with "such endings"? According to Stockfish, Taimanov lost this game at move 33 with Ra4
DeleteBut probably he referred to the sting in the tail, which is the skewer. A common tactic with pawn races. Promoting with check or skewering the queen.
In the Steps Method, there was a chapter dedicated to pawn races. It elaborated on the tactics immediately after promotion.
DeletePART II:
ReplyDeleteGM Stockfish provides this analysis of the position given after 3 hours running time:
D103 Mate -22 42.e4 a5 43.e5 a4 44.e6 a3 45.Kh3 Kxh5 46.Kg3 g4 47.Kg2 Kg5 48.Kh2 Kf6 49.Kg3 Kf5 50.Kg2 Kxe6 51.Kh2 Kf5 52.Kg3 e5 53.Kg2 e4 54.Kf2 Kf4 55.Ke2 e3 56.Kd3 g3 57.Kc2 g2 58.Kb3 g1=Q 59.Kxa3 Qb1 60.Ka4 Ke4 61.Ka5 Kd5 62.Ka6 Kc6 63.a3 Qb6#
D103 Mate -22 42.a3 a5 43.a4 e6 44.e4 e5 45.Kf5 Kxh5 46.Kxe5 g4 47.Kf4 Kh4 48.e5 g3 49.Ke3 Kh3 50.e6 g2 51.Kf2 Kh2 52.e7 g1=Q+ 53.Ke2 Qg6 54.Ke3 Kg3 55.Kd4 Qd6+ 56.Kc4 Qxe7 57.Kd5 Kf4 58.Kc6 Ke5 59.Kb5 Qc7 60.Ka6 Kd5 61.Kb5 Qb8+ 62.Kxa5 Kc6 63.Ka6 Qb6#
D103 Mate -21 42.a4 a5 43.e4 e5 44.Kf5 Kxh5 45.Kxe5 g4 46.Kf4 Kh4 47.e5 g3 48.Ke3 Kh3 49.e6 g2 50.Kf2 Kh2 51.e7 g1=Q+ 52.Ke2 Qg6 53.Ke3 Kg3 54.Kd4 Qd6+ 55.Kc4 Qxe7 56.Kd5 Kf4 57.Kc6 Ke5 58.Kb5 Qc7 59.Ka6 Kd5 60.Kb5 Qb8+ 61.Kxa5 Kc6 62.Ka6 Qb6#
D102 Mate -21 42.Kg3 Kxh5 43.Kh3 g4+ 44.Kg3 a5 45.Kf2 Kh4 46.Kg2 g3 47.e4 e5 48.Kg1 Kg4 49.Kg2 a4 50.Kf1 Kf3 51.Kg1 Kxe4 52.Kg2 Kf4 53.Kh3 Kf3 54.Kh4 g2 55.Kg5 Ke4 56.Kg6 g1=Q+ 57.Kf6 Qb6+ 58.Ke7 Qc6 59.Kf7 Kf5 60.Kg7 Qc7+ 61.Kh6 a3 62.Kh5 Qh7#
D102 Mate -21 42.Kh3 Kxh5 43.Kg3 g4 44.Kf2 Kh4 45.Kg2 g3 46.Kg1 Kg4 47.Kg2 e5 48.e4 a5 49.a3 a4 50.Kg1 Kf3 51.Kf1 Kxe4 52.Kg2 Kf4 53.Kh3 Kf3 54.Kh4 g2 55.Kg5 Ke4 56.Kf6 g1=Q 57.Ke7 Qb6 58.Kd7 Kf5 59.Kc8 Qa7 60.Kd8 Qb7 61.Ke8 Ke6 62.Kf8 Qf7#
D102 Mate -21 42.Kf3 Kxh5 43.Kg3 g4 44.Kf2 Kh4 45.Kg2 g3 46.Kg1 Kg4 47.Kg2 e5 48.e4 a5 49.a3 a4 50.Kg1 Kf3 51.Kf1 Kxe4 52.Kg2 Kf4 53.Kh3 Kf3 54.Kh4 g2 55.Kg5 Ke4 56.Kf6 g1=Q 57.Ke7 Qb6 58.Kd7 Kf5 59.Kc8 Qa7 60.Kd8 Qb7 61.Ke8 Ke6 62.Kf8 Qf7#
D102 Mate -18 42.Kf5 Kxh5 43.Ke5 g4 44.Ke4 a5 45.Kf4 Kh4 46.Ke4 Kg3 47.Kd5 Kf3 48.Kc5 g3 49.Kb5 g2 50.Kxa5 g1=Q 51.Kb5 Qxe3 52.Kc6 Ke4 53.a4 Qc3+ 54.Kd7 Kf5 55.a5 Qxa5 56.Kc6 Ke6 57.Kb7 Kd6 58.Kb8 Kc6 59.Kc8 Qc7#
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ReplyDeletePART III:
ReplyDeleteINTERMEZZO
The idea of learning something useful that can be used to solve similar FUTURE problems was expounded on in Gerald Weinberg's book, The Psychology of Computer Programming. He distinguishes between the amateur and professional programmer based on what they do to solve problems, not by whether they are paid to design and write programs. The amateur tries to solve the immediate problem, with no thought given to future (similar) problems. The professional, on the other hand, tries to learn as much as possible from the current problem, with an eye toward learning the ESSENCE of the problem and an appropriate approach to the solution [a scheme or logical SEEnario] so that (potentially) it can be applied to many future problems.
As previously noted by GM Davies, it’s NOT WHAT you study, but HOW you study that makes the difference in SKILL.
Looking at the Taimanov-Botvinnik game above, it is “obvious” (right?) that GM Taimanov did NOT have mastery of this TYPE of endgame, because he sealed his move (indicating his intention to continue playing), and then, upon learning Botvinnik’s plan, resigned on the spot. On the other hand, GM Botvinnik did have mastery of it because supposedly he had intensely studied a game he lost to GM Levenfish (a great endgame expert). (This loss supposedly occurred in 1937 during a match, but there is no indication in the 13 match games of an endgame of this type.) Did Botvinnik acquire his mastery from the study of one specific endgame of his own? That is unknown, but he did claim that, and GM McDonald certainly seems to indicate that he believed he did. It is obvious from his 40-41 moves that he KNEW exactly what and how to play in this TYPE of endgame. In short, he KNEW the logical scenario to apply because he recognized the parts making up the whole position.
[Note: By “this type of endgame” I am NOT referring solely to endgames with a Trébuchetembedded in the position. The generalization is associated with Zugzwang, which is a very common theme in endgames.]
My further comments will detail what I did to gain my own understanding as a club player of this specific endgame, generalizing what I learned to other endgames of this type.
PART IV:
ReplyDeleteI started by looking up the two chapters on the endgame in GM McDonald’s book, looking for something that would help in providing instructions for how to conduct my own endgame training. The Trébuchet in the position did “pop out” at me, but I already knew how to take advantage of it both as attacker and as defender.
My first step was to find the game in the Chess Tempo database and play through the entire game. I paid close attention to the moves as the game progressed toward move 42 (the diagrammed position). To get a clearer “picture,” I started “fiddling around” using GM Stockfish to explore “interesting” sidelines from the main variation. So what if there’s a Trébuchet embedded in it? Just that fact did not reveal how to play the overall position.
Next, I simply sat and contemplated what was going on in the entire position while giving my second, GM Stockfish, the task of analyzing after Black’s 41st move. GM McDonald did provide grandmaster-level “hints” (the main variation, with one significant subvariation) as to what logical plan to follow based on the concrete position (the ‘essence’ of the position), but apparently these “hints” didn’t trigger appropriate pattern recognition for THIS club player. I simply could not SEE the logical scenario.
Where do we start in order to definitively answer the question that was asked???
Perhaps I had overlooked some significant clue(s) in the descriptive verbiage. I decided to closely examine those verbal “hints.”
Hint 1:
It is White to move.
[You have to start somewhere. One of the first things we learn as club players when solving “problems” is to pay very close attention to who has the move. It usually {BUT NOT ALWAYS!} means that the player to move can either win or draw. However, Hint 3 tends to destroy the assumption that having the move means White is playing to win or draw.]
Hint 2:
Question: The kings are locked in a mutual Zugzwang position. What is the result?
[That mutual Zugzwang is called a Trébuchet. If you KNOW THAT, then you have a recognition “trigger” for it. Recognition of it as an embedded component of the overall position is NOT the goal! Figuring out a logical scenario that will guide all the moves (in this concrete position, as well as in similar types of positions) is the goal. I don’t SEE an answer to that question at this point.]
Hint 3:
White is going to run out of pawn moves first, which you would imagine is bad news for him as he will have to concede the h5-pawn.
[AHA! This is a major clue for planning the first stage of a logical scenario or scheme. Black will have to play with the pawns in such a way as to force White to run out of moves [ZUGZWANG!] so that eventually he will be able to capture the h5-pawn. That means the first stage will be played out by the a-file and e-file pawns with no king moves being made. The goal of the first stage is to advance the pawns in such a way as to be the player who makes the last pawn move. This hint could imply that it will be Black who wins or draws. We can initially ignore the Trébuchet because neither player wants to lose the g-pawn or h-pawn.]
PART V:
ReplyDeleteHint 4:
However, one of the moves that Black is obliged to play (otherwise g5 drops) will be to put a pawn on e5. It then becomes a target of the white king.
[Hmmm; this could mean the position might be a draw. Look at the GM Stockfish analysis of 42. e4 (given above) {which was the move that Taimanov sealed}; best play does not include Black being forced to play his e-pawn to e5, although eventually it does advance to that position after White’s e-pawn is gone. This is a serious deviation from the narrative that makes it hard to concoct a logical scenario from the hints and analysis that may be applicable to more than just this explicit position. My appraisal of the two approaches is that Botvinnik’s analysis gave White better chances than GM Stockfish’s variation, but I’m just a club player, so what do I know?!?]
Hint 5:
It seems the game will be a draw as both players will queen, but Botvinnik has spotted a sting on the tail.
[It’s definitely looking like the game should end in a draw. This reference to a “sting in the tail” is really obscure to me. This amounts to saying, “If you can SEE all the way to the end, you’ll find a surprising move that wins/draws.” If we could “SEE” all the way to the end, I have no doubt the conclusion would NOT be surprising. But, given that both players might queen a pawn near the end, the only thing that can happen is that one of them gets captured (or not), leaving a winning king and queen vs. king endgame or a drawing king and queen vs. king and queen endgame. But, that potential outcome is many moves away from the present position. So, maybe the sting in the tail is an interesting tactic somewhere near the end; who knows? What do we do in stages 2 and beyond to reach such a position?]
Hint 6:
How did Botvinnik KNOW that the endgame was going to be good for him? Was it simply his positional genius? Perhaps. But after the game he told Taimanov: “I lost a similar endgame thirty years ago(!!) in my match with Levenfish. Now I have mastered the way to play such endings.” Studying the classic games was of value to Botvinnik, even when they were his old games!
[Knowing of Botvinnik’s iron determination regarding analysis of his games, especially games he lost, I’m fairly certain that he analyzed that loss right after the game, in excruciating detail. As a result, he learned the logical scenario that is applicable to “such endings.” We can only hope to gain that benefit for ourselves! BTW, the advice to study the classic games reminds me of an old martial arts saying: “Don’t study the masters; study what the masters studied!”]
Based on those “hints” and the fact that Taimanov resigned without resuming the adjourned game tells me that Black is playing for a win is the right answer to the question, and White is playing to draw (in case Botvinnik is smoking his own supply). How to do it is the real question of interest. As is often the case, “There’s many a slip twixt the cup and the lip!”
More to come.
PART VI:
ReplyDeleteStage 1 will be the process of exhausting the moves of the a-pawns and the e-pawns. There is a significant “hint” right in the position: simply count the available pawn moves. Uh-oh, there’s a fly in the ointment: both Black and White have pawns (a2 and e7) that can move either one or two moves on the first move; that’s a complication that must be resolved.
Let’s start with 42. e4 (since that’s what Taimanov sealed). That leaves White with his initial 1-2 step pawn. Black has to now play in such a way that he makes the last pawn move, ending with both sets of pawns blockaded. What Black would like to do is avoid moving the e7-pawn until he KNOWS he will get to make the last move.
To retain the e7-pawn’s 1-2 possibility, the only alternative is to advance the a6-pawn with 42… a5. Now White has to choose to employ his 1-2 step move or not. This leads to the two main variations: (1) GM McDonald’s solution or (2) GM Stockfish’s solution. In either case, Black will end up making the last move.
(1) After 42...a5 43 a4 e5, both sets of pawns are blockaded and Black made the last move.
(2) After 42…a5 43 e5 a4 44 e6 a3, both sets of pawns are blockaded and Black made the last move.
“All roads lead to Rome!” Actually, not quite; Black could have screwed up at any point by tossing away his 1-2 step pawn move, giving White the last move and a winning position. “The devil hides in the details!”
We’re now ready for the next stage.
White now loses his h5-pawn. When looking at and comparing the two solutions, I noticed that in GM Stockfish’s variation, he could no longer capture Black’s e7-pawn; whereas GM McDonald’s variation allowed him to capture it on e5. In typical computer fashion, perhaps GM Stockfish preferred that variation because it deferred losing the h5-pawn by one move. From a club player’s perspective, I would prefer to keep the material even and at least have a chance of promoting my own pawn as White. Once White loses his h5-pawn AND loses the chance to capture the e-pawn, my evaluation (without even attempting to calculate it out to the end) is that White is dead lost.
At this point, there are still opportunities for Black to go wrong, but it can’t be wrong to snatch that h5-pawn.
I’ll continue down the GM McDonald variation. If you play out the GM Stockfish variation, you’ll SEE how comparatively little White has in the way of chances. Yes, he can play as if the other pawns don’t exist—up to the point when Black captures the e6-pawn. I already knew how to play out that variation to the end without calculating it.
So, after 42...a5 43 a4 e5 44 Kf5, White loses the h5-pawn to 44… Kxh5. He can now re-establish the material balance with 45 Kxe5.
The next stage is a race to promote the respective e4 and g5 pawns.
White is at a disadvantage because his king currently blocks the e4-pawn. Counting shows that White can promote his e4-pawn in 5 moves. If White can maneuver so that Black cannot check him as he promotes the g5-pawn, then it might be possible to hold the draw.
Black can promote his g5-pawn in 4 moves. Either checking the White king or getting control of the e8-square is sufficient to establish a winning position. With 45… g4, Black kicks off the race to promotion.
PART VII:
ReplyDeleteFor the next phase of this stage, White can choose one of two different plans:
(1) Get the White king off the e-file while simultaneously attacking the g4-pawn with 46 Kf4, threatening it and preventing it from advancing without the assistance of the Black king. The problem is that any move by the White king does not advance the e-pawn, and Black can counter it with a king move, maintaining the disparity in the count by 1 tempo. At some point, White may choose to just promote his e-pawn as fast as possible.
(2) Get the White king off the e-file while stepping into the square of the g4-pawn with 46 Kd4. This particular subvariation has the “feel” of the Réti maneuver about it (accomplishing two goals simultaneously by moving along a diagonal).
In both variations, White attempts to either slow down the advance of the g-pawn toward promotion or attempts to get in front of it to stop promotion.
Black has to be careful to make sure he can advance the g-pawn and prevent White from getting in front of it.
Variation (1): 46 Kf4 Kh4 Kh4 47 e5 g3 48 e6 g2 49 e7 g1(Q) 50 e8(Q), both sides have promoted, but now 50...Qf2+ 51 Ke5 Qe1+ wins the white queen with a skewer, forcing White. Apparently this is the “sting in the tail.”
46 Kd4 g3 47 Ke3 Kh4 48 e5 Kh3 49 e6 g2 50 Kf2 Kh2 wins
Variation (2): 46 Kd4 g3 47 Ke3 Kh4 48 e5 Kh3 49 e6 g2 50 Kf2 Kh2 wins; Black will promote with check: 51 e7 g1(Q)+ 52 Ke2 Qg6 (covering the e8 promotion square).
The final step in developing a useful generalized logical scenario (in other words, developing SKILL) is to summarize the stages and phases, and the appropriate “triggers” that identify them.
Stage 1: The exhaustion of moves that eventually leads to Zugzwang. This is broadly applicable to many endgames.
Stage 2: Exploitation of the Zugzwang situation to gain either material or winning king position. The Zugzwang situation will always be a local area of tension.
Stage 3: A race to promote the respective passed e4 and g5 pawns, being careful to exploit every opportunity to slow down the opponent’s advance. The technique of “counting” is very useful to avoid needless calculations of the “I go here, he goes there, …, etc.”
Stage 3a: The inferior side attempts to slow down the opponent’s pawn advance and then abandons the attempt when he SEEs that both sides can promote. It is important here to SEE at least one or two moves beyond the final promotion point in order to assure that the newly minted queen can be safely captured or the opponent can be checkmated.
Stage 3b: An alternate method of attempting to remain within the square of the enemy pawn. Again, it is vital to SEE at least a couple of moves beyond the mutual promotion.
Is this type of analysis sufficient to provide “mastery of this type of endgame”?
Yes, but only if YOU do the hard work of working through all of the variations yourself, and describing what is happening at each stage in your own words. That’s how you “make it your own.”
Playing over master games without doing this process of internalizing a logical scenario will NOT lead to SKILL, no more than “solving” tactical puzzles repeatedly will lead to tactical SKILL. There is a lot more than must be done (active involvement with focused attention on every stage until you completely understand everything that happened and WHY) than merely “reading and nodding agreement” based on either GM Stockfish’s analysis or a human grandmaster’s annotations.
Nodding Neddy will never advance beyond club level.
A perfect analysis! With one addition: this is the preparation. Only AFTER this process, you are ready TO BEGIN with absorbing the patterns. We tend to stop too early.
DeleteIn an ideal world, the analysis process would be enough to absorb the material. But due to our geriatric approach, I wouldn't count on it without checking it.
To check the absorption, you must be able to SEE the whole variation before the mind's eye without the need for words. The visualisation doesn't need to be a carbon copy of the board before the mind's eye, but you must KNOW it. Just like how you know in which drawer your socks are in the dark.
Every stage must exhaustively absorbed. Ideally with the right problem set per stage.
Thanks!
Here the difference between SEEing and KNOWing disappears.
DeletePART I:
DeleteThank you for the compliment! However, it is nothing more than an attempt to provide a real example of how one club player applied your method. It may not be ”perfect” analysis (in the sense of what a FIDE 3800+ grandmaster like GM Stockfish would produce) but it makes sense of the entire problem position. Your observation about the difference between SEEing and KNOWing “disappearing” is true; that’s what it felt like to me after I had finished the analysis.
There are a couple of points still remaining to be discussed regarding the training process. The training method is applicable no matter what phase of the game is being studied, and no matter what specific concrete position is being studied.
As you noted, performing the analysis is a vital first step but NOT the end of the process/method. The telltale indicator that you have absorbed the logical scenario is the confident “feeling” that you can play such a position appropriately without the word salads, without knowing in advance the specific moves that will be required within each stage, and regardless of the rating level of the opponent. There IS an opponent, after all, and he will know (or not) how to provide maximum resistance to your logical scenario, or may be playing in accordance with a totally different logical scenario. As a consequence, the game may veer off course (with respect to the exact moves) without changing the logical scenario at all.
“Fiddling around” is an essential component of the training method. It sounds obvious, but it’s not, as to how to go about that process. Here’s how I did it.
PART II:
DeleteWhen I first saw the problem position, I immediately found the entire game in the Chess Tempo database. (If I had not found it there, I would have looked at chessgames.com for the game score.) I then brought it up in the Chess Tempo game analysis window and played through the game to the end to get a “feel” for what was happening throughout the game (and what might happen after the game ended without checkmate). I turn on GM Stockfish (with 10 variations) so that I can “SEE” how the evaluation is changing as the game progresses. That gives clues as to the alternatives that might have been taken through the “dark woods” but weren’t. I specifically look for WHY the position turned in favor of one player or the other. While doing this, I explore alternative variations a little, just enough to feel comfortable that I understand what’s going on. If the game alternative does not show up in the 10 variations, I increase the number of variations until it does. Sometimes I’ve had to go as high as 30 variations before I could see the game continuation. Usually this is an indication of a major screwup, but not always. It’s easy to explore a variation and then wipe it out and look at the next alternative.
After getting the feel of how the problem position arose, I then give it to GM Stockfish to analyze for at least 1 hour, and sometimes (if it appears very complicated) I’ll let it run overnight. Once GM Stockfish is satisfied with his evaluations (the suggested variations and the evaluations are not changing), I go to the next step.
I think this is the critical step in the method. I compare the game continuation to every GM Stockfish variation that has a higher or equal score. I don’t try to compare them move-by-move, instead comparing the logical scenarios that the variations represent. I pay particular attention to the highest scoring variation.
The amazing thing about the human associativity mechanism is that patterns begin to emerge automatically when comparisons are made.
The usual advice (Kotov, Stoyko, etc.) is to play over a game (with annotations) until reaching the point of maximum complexity. At that point, cover up the game continuation and then analyze (not moving the pieces, as if you were actually playing a game that had reached this position and it’s your turn to move) until you reach some sort of “conclusion” regarding the logical scenario to be used. Write down your conclusions (including the moves) so as to not fool yourself that you “KNOW” what’s going on. Compare your analysis to the annotations. If there are differences between the annotator and your notes (and there will be many at first), study WHY your notes are different (but not necessarily deficient in any way) from the (presumed better) annotator’s notes. Translate that logical scenario into your own words and you’re done with that problem. Save your analysis in a notebook for future spaced repetition training and go back over it periodically.
I think it is faster and more insightful to utilize a 3800+ grandmaster to provide hints as to what to investigate in more depth. If you use those variations for comparison to your own idea(s) about what should happen, you will find where you have good and bad ideas. Keep the good ideas and drop the bad ideas.
At the point where you can SEE the entire logical scenario (all stages and steps seen as a forest rather than as a collection of individual trees—NOT the same as the eagle’s view), summarize them in your own words and then generalize to make sure you KNOW what to do in stages. It does not require trying to keep specific memorized moves and variations in mind. If you don’t have the feeling that you could play it out to the end successfully, even against a 3800+ grandmaster, then you haven’t absorbed it sufficiently to have mastered it.