Chess

• “Piece value” - perform a task with the piece of least value. E.g. when guarding a piece, and all other things are equal, choose the guard of least value¹.
• When two queens are hanging, look for the move that allows your queen to move to safety and check the opponent².

Pawn Cube

The pawn cube is particularly strong because it allows pushing of the front pawns while leaving defense (back pawns) behind³.

Openings

• Studying Chess openings

English

1. c4

Queen’s Gambit

• Albin gambit is a tricky response: 1. e4 e5 2. c4 d5 3. exd5 e6
  • a3 as a response is solid and can be met with f6

Caro

Tartakower variation

• White knight takes e4, attack with Nf6, white takes, e pawn takes

• Develop DSB, castle, rotate the knight (d7xf8xg6)³
• Assuming white plays h3, Can stack LSB on e6, Queen on d7, Sac bishop to blown open king side

London

Anti-London

• Strength of the London hinges on the strength of the d5 pawn. There is the idea of preventing reinforcement via c3, by forcing Kc3 with Qa5 when White’s LSB is on b5¹.

Smith Morra

• D4 is a critical weakness Black wants to put a knight there, look to defend with DSB
• The open C file is a strength for white with the accessibility of the rook
• When in doubt hunt the black queen

Methods of improving

Marcus Buffet wrote a nice overview of ways to improve your skill between 1200-1800⁴. He suggests getting an opening repo repertoire, then doing puzzle storm and streak. After that mix in blunder preventer exercises. He also outlines other things he tried:

• Tactical puzzles
  • Some argue that puzzles are counter productive because people do not need calculation practice, but instead pattern recognition⁴
• Speed puzzles (puzzle rush / puzzle storm)
  • May make you quicker at assessing a position and spotting what’s happening (e.g. hanging piece)⁴
• Woodpecker Method
• Guess the Move - Try to guess the next move in a grand master game
• Annotated games - Review annotated games with explanations
  • Chess: The Art of Logical Thinking: From the First Move to the Last
  • Logical Chess: Move By Move
• Memorizing master games - Memorize a master game by understanding it rather than the move order by rote
• Visualization practice on Chessable. Alternatively there is Blind Tactic On listudy. Goal here is tactic puzzle, but you have to go from a given position to a the new tactical position via notation and then solve the puzzle
• Coaching
• YouTube
  • e.g. Gotham Chess
• Openings
• End Games
• Blunder prevention, on AimChess, this is a lesson for finding the move that isn’t a blunder.

References

San Diego Chess

San Diego Chess Club offers tournaments on Wednesday nights and Saturday.