Each week I will be looking at a player from our Chess @ 4 series. This will be the player of the week and it is possible to be Player of the Week more than once! To be considered for this position, all you need to do is score 15 points during the week in the Chess @ 4 series on Tornelo. Chess @ 4 is a series of 5 round events that run Monday to Friday, starting at 4:00pm. Between the rounds there are interviews with players, analysis of games and positions, and chat about other chess related things. Our Chess @ 4 events have 2 divisions, a Premier event and a Challengers event. These are both based on the ratings of the players. Anyone rated 800 or below plays in the Challengers while those above 800 play in the Premier. We have seen players improve through both events. For example, the Challengers used to be for players rated below 700, but because our players improved, their ratings went up and we didn't have many players below 700! In the past week the Challengers tournament has been very competitive but the outstanding player has been Michael Harding who has won two tournaments, finished second once, and finished sixth in the other. Michael is our player of the week! Michael's rating was around the 500 mark for quite a while until he started playing Chess @ 4 events towards the end of May. Since then he has shot up to 769 and another winning performance might see him jump over 800! Michael likes to play risky attacking chess. He sometimes gets into bad positions in the opening, but his active style lets him fight his way back into the game. Michael is White and in a tricky position. Black wants to do a Checkmate in 2 moves. Can you see what Black is planning? Michael played 1.Nb3 attacking Black's d4 bishop and discovering a queen trade and making the game even more complicated. The game continued until Michael was able to try the same trick again later, and this time it worked. White to play and hit a discovered attack. Black didn't see the threat and Michael went on to win the game after being in a difficult position. See the finish here. Michael fights hard to the end of the game. I have seem him finish off technical endings like king and rook vs king easily, and I also saw this nice endgame this week. Michael is White. See if you can find a winning plan for White. Funnily enough, in the game Michael didn't play the winning idea here, but did a bit later, although his opponent missed chances. See how the game went here.
I wonder how long before Michael is playing in the Premier section of Chess @ 4?
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Endgames are the least studied part of the game by most players, and that makes playing them very difficult as we usually have little time left on the clock when we get to an endgame. So it's important to learn as much about endgames as possible so we can play the right plan almost automatically. Here are some good endgame ideas to follow: - bring your king to the centre - use your king to help your pawns promote OR to stop enemy pawns - DON'T give up material - pawns become more valuable in the endgame - passed pawns need to advance as they become more dangerous the closer they get to promotion Look at the following endgame that happened in Chess @ 4 last week. Who should be trying to win this position? What would be your plan to play this as White, or Black? It is White to play. Try to work out some ideas before looking at what happened. The game can be seen here.
Each week I will be looking at a player from our Chess @ 4 series. This will be the player of the week and it is possible to be Player of the Week more than once! To be considered for this position, all you need to do is score 15 points during the week in the Chess @ 4 series on Tornelo. Chess @ 4 is a series of 5 round events that run Monday to Friday, starting at 4:00pm. Between the rounds there are interviews with players, analysis of games and positions, and chat about other chess related things. Our first Chess @ 4 winner is Michael Ooi who has been one of the regular players of Tornelo tournaments since they started in April. At the very first event, Chess @ Noon on 9th April 2020 Michael had a rating of 971. Since then he has played hundreds of games, and worked hard on his game. As a result, his rating has risen steadily up to 1352! Michael plays different openings to most young players, preferring to push his c-pawn. As White he has been playing 1.c4, the English Opening, and as Black he likes 1.e4 c5, the Sicilian Defence. Both of these are strategic openings with less tricks and traps then the more popular 1.e4 e5 openings that a lot of kids play. Although Michael prefers strategic chess, he is very good at tactics too Here Michael was White and he found a tactical way to create a checkmate. See if you can find what Michael played! Michael has been one of the biggest improvers from our Tornelo tournaments. He still needs to work on parts of his game that will hopefully take him up to the next level. These are things that all players need to think about, and each week I'll be picking one game from our Player of the Week to highlight areas for improvement. As well as being the star player from our Chess @ 4 series, Michael also won last week's Chess @ Noon tournament on Saturday. This is a free tournament that any junior can join and is divided into 3 sections based on ratings. Michael won the top rated section that had 32 players and the lowest rated player had to be over 800. Michael scored 6/7 winning 5 and drawing 2 games, a great unbeaten effort. On the whole he played excellent chess, but his most difficult game was one of the draws, and that is the game I've analysed. Here are some key points in this game: Michael as White won some material, first a pawn and then a knight for rook. It is White to move here and Michael followed the rule that when ahead, trade pieces by playing 19.Bxf6. But this wasn't the best move because White's dark squared bishop is a really good piece. We shouldn't trade if it leaves our position worse than it was before the trade! Black has just played 33..a6 attacking White's knight. So White wants to move the knight, but Michael saw that if he moves his knight, then Black traps his queen with 34..Bd4. There was a way to move the knight and stay material ahead! Endings are difficult, but there are some general guidelines that can help us. One of these is to bring the king to the centre. Michael played 49.Rb1 here to defend against Black's pawns, but the rook is a good defender from behind the pawns, so it's already in the right place. The best move was 49.Kd3 when White's king defends against the central pawns which means Black's rook only really needs to worry about the h-pawn. Michael finds himself a bishop for pawn down, but he doesn't panic and with hardly anytime left on his clock saves the game. What is the best move for White here?
The game is fully analysed here, where you can find the answers to the questions I've set and also see more ideas from the game. July 20th is International Chess Day, so a great excuse to play chess, teach chess, study chess, and....everything chess! The reason we celebrate International Chess Day on July 20th is because that was the day in 1924 when the World Chess Federation, FIDE, was founded. What chessy things will you be doing for International Chess Day? Solving puzzles is a great way to improve your game. You have to look for ideas, and play in an exact way. In a puzzle, there will usually be only one way to solve it, so you have to be accurate. Mate in 2 puzzles are one of the best learning tools, as they need us to find the right idea, but also make sure our opponent can't do anything, and looking out for your opponent's moves and ideas is something you should be doing in your games anyway!
The first thing to look for are checks, and if they don't work, then you need to look at moves which threaten an unstoppable Checkmate. Some patterns are easy and might already be known, but there are some patterns that are not easy, or that haven't been seen before. These are harder to solve, but better for you! Here are some mate in 2 puzzles. They start pretty easy, but get harder! I'll give you a hint: look for checks first! A great way to introduce players to tournament chess is through the Interschool system. Kids Unlimited currently run a series of events throughout the year leading up to State Finals. There are different age divisions to ensure that kids are never too out of their depth: Secondary (years 7-12) Middle Years (years 5-9) Primary (years F-6) Junior Primary (years F-3) These tournaments are run in zones across the state and a calendar can be seen on the dedicated Interschool website. The tournaments are organised and mostly run by Tim who has built up great experience in making them a fun and well run day for everyone. Interschool events are an ideal stepping stone for players to move to the next level, and there are often some very strong players. At yesterday's event in Whitehorse, at Kerrimuir Primary School, one of Australia's top 20 under-12's was playing! Last year's Victorian State Champions, Glendal Primary were up against the 2017 Victorian Champions, Doncaster Gardens. It was always going to be close, but Doncaster Gardens just won out. The full standings can be seen on tornelo where all results are updated immediately they are recorded. This means that parents and teachers can follow the results, as they are happening, even if they're not there! While the competition is fierce, the emphasis is on fair play, and kids of all standards have a great time, and a great learning experience! Is your school playing Interschool chess? If not then see if there are tournaments coming up near you, and try to get a team. Perhaps you have a team, but you just can't catch the top teams? Then maybe some coaching could help? With Grand Masters, International Masters and some of the most experienced junior coaches in Australia, Kids Unlimited has a fantastic track record of teaching chess to kids!
It's been a couple of weeks since I left the difficult forks, so let's look at them now!
Seeing a fork is easy, but making them happen can be tricky. The puzzles from 2 weeks ago included 2 from World Championship matches! That was the quality of the players! Anyway, did you manage to make the forks happen? Here's the answers. If you didn't work them out fully, then don't worry. Trying to solve puzzles helps us to understand the idea better in the future. Getting something wrong isn't a failure as long as we learn how to get it right for next time! Last week, I posted about forks that I'm showing in my lessons and I left some puzzles. Here's the answers to the easy puzzles, though there were a couple designed to trick you! The first 2 on the left hand side column are pretty easy, but the puzzles in the right column are a bit tricky. Did you notice that you could use checkmate as a target? And did you notice that it was Black to play in the last puzzle? It always pays to read the question carefully!
I'll leave the harder fork puzzles for another week to give you some more time to solve them! In the meantime, here's another puzzle with a fork, but this time it isn't done by a knight. One skill that we are trying to develop in chess is building knowledge of a lot of different patterns that we can use in our games. There are lots of Checkmate patterns, and lots of tactical tricks that help us win points. Learning new patterns is great, but solving puzzles from patterns we already know is also good, as it reminds us of things that we might have forgotten. Here's a pattern that you might know, and if not, you might be able to work it out! This type of checkmate happens regularly, but it isn't one of the most standard types! I saw exactly the same type of Checkmate happen at a game in my local chess club last week.
This time it is White to play! Have you played tournament chess yet? If not, then you should really start, as it's the best way to test your chess skills. And every time you win a tournament, there will be a bigger tournament for you to move up to:
- junior rapid events - junior long play events - senior rapid events - senior long play events - junior Championships - senior Championships - International events - World Championship events Ok, win the World Championship and you can't get bigger or better than that!! To start with, all juniors should be building their game so that they feel comfortable playing with clocks. To do this, playing in a rapid event is the perfect start. Melbourne has a number of chess clubs, and they all run rapid events, and so do Kids Unlimited. The KU events are called RJ Shields, after International Master and former Australian number 1 player Robert Jamieson. You can find details of the events here: http://www.rjshield.com/ Playing in tournaments helps with your chess skills, builds confidence using a clock, and will get you a rating. You then have to grow you rating, as the higher it is, the better you are. Here's the live ratings for the best players in the World, the goal we all need to aim for! |
AuthorChess coach extraordinaire Carl! Archives
November 2020
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