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
PART 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.