Srokovski Yaroslav. - Chess Training for Post-Beginners

Yaroslav Srokovski

A Basic Course in Positional Understanding

New In Chess 2014

Q 2014 New In Chess

Published by New In Chess, Alkmaar, The Netherlands

www.newinchess.com

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Cover design: Volken Beck

Translation: Ian Adams

Supervisor: Peter Boel

Proofreading: Ren Olthof

Production: Anton Schermer

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ISBN: 978-90-5691-472-1

Explanation of Symbols

The chess board with its coordinates:

How can I improve at chess? How should I train? These questions preoccupy thousands, perhaps even millions, of people every day. A whole host of good books have been written and methods of training have been developed for chess beginners. You can learn the basics of chess with numerous books. And in addition to that there are very good books which have been designed for those at master level. In my opinion, the first and foremost writers of these books are Mark Dvoretsky and Iosif Dorfman.

There have also been attempts to write books for the middle class (club players). However, such books usually fall down when faced with a central problem: the authors may be very good chess players, but they find it difficult to put themselves in the mind of other players and to understand the problems of club players.

In the course of his or her development, a chess player goes through many different phases. At first there are the difficulties of remaining focussed on the whole of the board and pieces or pawns are often simply left en prise. The next stage in development requires some intensive work on improving the skill of combination. Whenever the player has reached an Elo rating of 1400-1500, he should start to take an interest in simple strategic problems. My book is aimed specifically at this Elo 1400-2200 group.

In the book I should like to introduce you to a part of the system which I have tried out in practice with my own students. I am certain that it works.

I know how important it is nowadays to build future development on a solid foundation. Modern man suffers from information overload. This is especially true insofar as the game of chess is concerned. For that reason it is very important to structure your chess knowledge in a reasoned way. I do not wish to simplify things, because that could give the student the totally false impression that chess itself is simple. Chess is enormously complex, it has innumerable different facets on which one could cast some light in a manual. But in this book I would like to concentrate on what I consider to be the central problem: the evaluation of a position.

Whatever decision we take in chess is based on an evaluation of the position. Consciously or unconsciously, we are continually evaluating positions. We can only take a correct decision if we evaluate them correctly. As Magnus Carlsen said in an interview, it does not matter how many moves one can calculate in advance; what matters is whether our evaluation of the final position is correct.

So, how does one achieve a correct evaluation of a position? Our brain must compare the specific position with a pattern. Every chess player must develop a stock of such patterns. In order to develop such patterns, I recommend that every time you evaluate a position, you first of all for training purposes take into account quite schematically the following points: the safety of the king, control of the centre, long-term (static) advantages and short-term (dynamic) advantages. To be able to make use of this framework, you must do some intensive work on each of the individual elements.

In this book we shall deal with the long-term advantages. We shall take a close look at each static element. I have discussed every position in the book with my students and many of those have gone on to become strong players, many even grandmasters. I am convinced that any player who studies this book intensively will improve his or her Elo rating by at least 100 Elo points.

In conclusion, I would like to recommend that you extend the framework provided for you in this book with your own examples, especially with examples taken from your own games. Things to which we keep on returning develop their own dynamic within our consciousness. This has been known for a long time and approximately 100 years ago it was confirmed in experiments by William James, one of the fathers of the science of psychology. I have made successful use of this knowledge in my chess training and, my dear readers, I hope that you will also benefit from it.

Baden-Baden 2013
Yaroslav Srokovski

It is now over a hundred years since the investigations of the first chess world champion, Wilhelm Steinitz, set off a revolution in the world of chess. He introduced his teachings on strategic (positional) play. One element of these teachings was the technique of the evaluation of positions.

In order to evaluate a position, you must first split it up into its components. Those elements which remain significant in the long term are constant (static). The elements which are only of importance in the short term are temporary (dynamic).

The static advantages include:

1. Pieces cut off from the play

2. The king badly positioned in the middle

3. The possession of an open file

4. Pawn weaknesses

5. A weak square

6. A complex of weak squares

7. A pawn majority on one wing

8. A passed pawn

9. The advantage of a bishop compared to a knight (in certain specific circumstances)

10. The advantage of a knight compared to a bishop (in certain specific circumstances)

11. The advantage of the bishop pair

The dynamic advantages include:

1. A lead in development

2. (The opponents) badly placed pieces

3. Bad coordination of the opponents pieces

4. Piece pressure on the centre

I shall now try to clarify Steinitz teachings by means of examples. The fundamental idea consists of collecting small advantages and transforming dynamic advantages into static ones. This can come about in practical terms as it does in the games which follow. Normally a badly placed piece is a dynamic element, but if that piece is excluded from the play for a long time then the dynamic element has become a static one.