Five ways to get rid of the French bishop
Of the past 26 years I spent 23 years on how to learn chess. Only the last 3 years I have begun to think about the game itself.
I happen to play the French defense these 3 years. The French revolves around two main ideas:
- get rid of the French bishop on c8
- nibble on the pawns of the opponent's center until it dissolves
White has usually a lot of space behind his pawns. He must use this to attack the black king. Without his light squared bishop it is close to impossible to make this attack work.
Once the white center dissolves, the white position is vulnerable for invasion because the pieces cannot protect so much space. Furthermore, when black has two center pawns and white has not, you can use your center pawns as a mobile steamroller to invade white's territory.
Instead of telling you this simple story, chess authors have a tendency to flood you with 600 variations. Because they themselves are addicted to concrete calculation. They use writing a book as an excuse to indulge their addiction.
There are five ways to get rid of your French bishop. The blocking piece is the black pawn on d5.
- f5 Develop your bishop outside of the chain. Which is technically not the French defense anymore but the Caro Kann, for instance.
- a6. When whites bishop on d3 is pinned against the rook on f1, you can force the trade. Your bishop must be protected by a knight.
- b5. When whites bishop on d3 is pinned against the rook on f1, you can force the trade. You must make sure you don't clog up the route with a knight on d7 or c6. Your bishop must be protected by a Queen.
- b7. This works only when you find a way to get rid of your d5 pawn. The Rubinstein variation will take care of that (trading d5 when a white pawn on e4 arrives).
- c6. This works only when you find a way to get rid of your d5 pawn. The Rubinstein variation will take care of that (trading d5 when a white pawn on e4 arrives). You must make sure you don't clog up the route with a knight on d7 or c6.
Understanding is connected to scenarios. Variations are a poor way to convey scenarios. Because you must reconstruct the scenarios yourself from the variations. And it is easy to get lost along the way.
ReplyDeleteIt is like interviewing an expert. You cannot guess what he doesn't tell you. So you have know way to ask the right questions. And he cannot imagine what you don't know. Especially if he has become an expert at a young age. Which is usually the case in chess.
know way should read as no way.
DeleteThe "expert" expounding on chess reminds me of this story:
DeleteA mathematics professor is giving a lecture and has made an assertion as part of his presentation. A student, not understanding the basis for the assertion, asks why it is true. The professor responds that "It is obvious." Then the professor steps back, stares at the board and ponders for several minutes. Then he turns and walks out of the lecture hall. He is absent for a fairly long time and finally one of the students goes to look for him. He sees the professor in his office working on the blackboard which he has covered with mathematics. The student returns and reports to the class. Finally, just before the class is scheduled to end the professor reappears, and announces "Yes, it IS obvious."
Haha.
DeleteI just discovered that the clear stem of trees in an urban environment are the result of pruning (crown raising) and not an original property of the tree. Somebody forgot to tell me that the past 67 years.
DeleteA chess author usually hides only one or two scenarios in his variations. This means that he made a few choices for you that he didn't tell you. When you want to learn to decide for yourself, you need different authors with different philosophies.
ReplyDeleteMost of the time of chess study is consumed by discovering the obvious. Before you can even start, you need to have gathered the training material. The things that are obvious but nobody told you.
ReplyDeleteThis is a crucial aspect of adult chess training. I have had several ideas for how to train myself more effectively. In all cases, I end up NOT trying to do any of them because the effort to collect and then present the training material in an effective way is overwhelming relative to the expected result.
DeleteINFORMATION FOR ANOTHER TIME:
Serendipitously, I found the GM Naroditsky K+B+N vs K endgame video previously mentioned. Since the scope of that material is severely limited, I decided to copy the auto-generated transcript, correct it for the obvious mistakes, and then to add diagrams for every single move—I currently have everything diagrammed in 162 pages. I am in the process of adding red squares identifying the “box” around the lone king in each diagram.
GM Naroditsky rightly acknowledges that phase one (getting the lone king out of the center and [hopefully] into the WRONG corner is NOT easily done. He emphasizes the Philidor-derived W pattern as the basis of his method. He gives some “hints” as to what to remember to do while executing the W maneuver.
As I noted in a previous comment, there are at least two places where he obviously goes into “concrete calculation” mode; the general “rule” does not seem to apply to his example position because the pieces are in the “wrong” relationship.
Already, I have a “feel” for a different way of viewing this ending. It is a combination of maintaining and systematically reducing the “box” until the checkmate becomes obvious. There are standard maneuvers during each phase that can or must be repeated.
For example, the W maneuver simply describes the movement of the knight as the lone king is forced from the “WRONG” corner to the “right” corner. It describes NOTHING about the required movements of the bishop and king. There is a standard coordination between the three pieces that occurs multiple times.
In the Philidor method, the knight and the bishop alternate taking away squares from the lone king, forcing it toward the “right” corner. The bishop takes away the squares of its color, and the knight takes away the squares of the other color. In between the legs of the W, there is always a waiting move required by the bishop. This process repeats 2-3 times, depending on the lone king movement (whether continually striving to get back to the “wrong” corner or, alternately, trying to escape with an “end around” maneuver).
The ratio of scenarios to variations is about 1:20. On variation has an average move depth of 12. Meaning that if you follow an author who presents you 20 variations, you will end up with one scenario. After working your way through 240 moves.
ReplyDeleteThat is ridiculously inefficient. It is a way to feed our grandmasters of course, but nonetheless.