SPRING & SUMMER 2011:
a Change in Concepts, a Change in Strategy

 

This June 14, 2011

Today again, the rules were broken at the Chess & Checkers' House and I had to intervene to tell Peter a good chessmate what are the rules really. He was playing against an African American who is the friend of a chessmate, Elton, and who began to make big moves. Suddenly, Peter, at his time to play puts his rook in a case without dropping it and claims that he did not drop the piece while his opponent was asking him to leave the piece where it puts, having said at the beginning that they were playing "Touch-Move", something not even necessary since every chessgame should be played this way. The rule is Put-stay: the player who move a piece in a case shall leave it there whether or not he drops it and it is only last year that I acknowledge it. The black chessmate who semmed to know Chess very well said that there is another rule that most players do not know either and that applies to the promotion of a pawn. If the chessmate who promotes a pawn at the last rank and does not say what it is - queen, rook, knight or bishop - it is still a pawn and I will add it to my page on the rules (https://roro267.tripod.com/Journal_dir/Set_Rules.html) as rule 7.

Yesterday, June 13, I Met an usual chessmate at the Chess & Checkers' House, in Central Park. What was astounding this time is that he has not been able to win any of the four games I played with him, and he is not a bad player. Very often I have lost against him in the past. What is new is my change in concepts and in strategy which is reflected in my insistence on the domination of the center rather than on a particular opening. The mates who attacked me early with a small amount of pieces fell on a strong defense. After the game I went to the library, in the Time Warner building, to consult some books on Chess. In one book Masterimg Chess Strategy, from Johan Hellsten, I have read the following lines:

"Basically any action undertaken in the game can be abstracted to tactical and strategical operations. The tactical ones are easy to grasp: direct threats, pins, forks, deflection, etc.. As for the strategical ones, we can distinguish between:

  1. improving our pieces
  2. pawn play
  3. exchanges
  4. prophylaxis with restriction and provocation"

In a precedent text - SUMMER & FALL 2010: strategy - tactis - logic - intuition - I have defined tactics and strategy: strategy is defined as " ... the overall planning and conduct of large-scale ... operations ," and tactic is the ways of " ... securing" the "objectives set by strategy". Consequently, I do not think that those given in the books are good strategies or are strategies at all, because the overall planning is missing or too vaguely defined1. I also think that all openings are strategies, or better, part of of a strategy that should fulfill the goal of the chessmate and lead him, victoriously or without trouble, to the middle game and even to the endgame, with their variations being described by tactical moves:

  1. Improving our pieces is the result that any chess player is looking for.
  2. Pawn play and exchanges can only be applied to tactics.
  3. Prophylaxis with restriction and provocation can only be part of the strategy.

Two big strategies are the Open Game and the Closed Game and their variations, such as the Bishop's Opening (1. e4 e5 2. Bc4) and the Vienna Game (1. e4 e5 2. Nc3). Others are among others and their variations the Semi-Open Game, the Semi-Closed Game and the Flank Opening.
The Giuco Piano or Italian opening is one of the variations of the Bishop's Opening. There are also subvariations introduced by chessmasters: in my Giuco-Piano database I put some of them, such as some classical ones:

  1. C55: Holzhausen attack and Rosentreter variation where the first three moves are the same
  2. C53: Anderssen variation,
  3. C54: Bernstein variation, (C54) Aitken variation, (C54) Krause variation, (C54) Steinitz variation and (C54) Cracow variation where the first five moves are the same
  4. and C50: Jerome gambit (a Giuco Piano opening in which a minor piece, or pieces, usually a pawn, is offered in exchange for a favorable position).

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1 Nevertheless, they can also be described as general strategies* while the terms particular, adapted or specific strategies can be more applied to the openings and their results in the middle-game and in the end-game.

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* I came to reconsider my opinion on this book after having red in the Giuoco Piano Encyclopedia at About.com the following: " White plans to dominate the center with d2-d4 and to attack the Black king. Black aims to free his game by exchanging pieces and playing the pawn break ...d5, or to hold his center pawn at e5", what puts "exchanges" in the line of a strategy here. " White aims for a slow buildup deferring d4 until it can be prepared. By avoiding an immediate confrontation in the center White prevents the early release of tension through exchanges and enters a positional maneuvering game; what is the same than "restriction."