Let us begin with a mistake – what we might call
positional mistake:
“Positional sense should free you from the slavery
of `variations’.” – Nimzovitch
Statements like this, and one or two other factors, led me to
neglect the analysis of variations – instead preferring to develop
positional assessments – for many years. It is possible to consider
positional judgement and planning as somehow a higher calling,
which avoids the need for grubby heavy analysis. This, however, was
a mistake on my part.
Here is some treatment for people suffering from the same
condition:
“What is the essence of the chess master’s art?
Fundamentally it consists of the ability to analyse chess
positions.“Home analysis has specific features of its own: you are
not restricted by time, and you can move the men freely. Despite
this difference between home analysis and practical play, there is
much in common between them. It is a well-known fact that almost
all the outstanding chess-players have been first-class analysts.
(…)“It is useful to publish your individual analytical work.
Then you are subject to objective criticism.” – Botvinnik, 100
SELECTED GAMES.
“So I began to analyse games…” – Timman, THE ART OF
CHESS ANALYSIS
“I got to know Mark (Dvoretsky) at the very beginning of my chess
career, at one of the sessions of Botvinnik’s chess school in 1974;
in those days, Dvoretsky was Botvinnik’s assistant. (…)“We are adherents of the same, analytical, way, and we
believe in the triumph of analytical penetration into the secrets
of a position” – Kasparov, Preface to Dvoretsky’s SECRETS OF CHESS
TRAINING (FIRST PUBLISHED IN RUSSIA AS “THE ART OF ANALYSIS”).
“I selected from tournament books those games in which the greatest
complications had arisen. (Then) set myself the task of thinking
long and hard so as to analyse all the possible variations. I would
sometimes … write down the variations I had examined and then I
would compare them with those of the annotator. (…)“Great help can be got from solving studies from a
diagram without setting up the position on the board.” – Kotov,
THINK LIKE A GRANDMASTER
“Analysis, if it is really carried out with a complete
concentration of his powers, forms and completes a chess
player.” – Polugayevsky
“Many players, even of a high calibre, will assert,
half jokingly and half seriously, that a difficult labour of
analysis can be replaced by intuition. ‘I played this move in a
flash – it was obvious it couldn’t be bad‘ is the sort of
thing we often hear in a post-mortem.
“Criticising such a policy is not simple – not after it has just
been successful! <…> Instead of appraising the state of struggle
on the basis of precise calculation, Black makes a move, which on
general considerations, is wholly in the spirit of the position – a
flank attack is countered by a break in the centre. Yet in chess
there are no axioms.”
— ZAK, Improve your chess results.
Two sorts of games should hold a special place in your own study:
(a) Analysis of master games, and (b) analysis of your own games
(especially losses). So, I have an exercise which involves
neither…
I have been privileged to obtain a copy of the six games
from the first match of the Exeter `A’ team this season. I propose
to analyse each game with the coaching group during a session in
the New Year, but I would like you to have a go at analysing them
first. Then we can compare notes…
How do you analyse a chess game?
If it’s someone else’s:
(1) Play through the whole game fairly quickly, seeing what ebb and
flow the game had.
(2) Divide the game up into episodes, even if they are only opening
middlegame and endgame, and try to describe what happened and who
if anyone had the advantage.
(3) Try and find the critical steps, where one or other side made
an important choice (even if it was only to overlook
something!).
(4) Put your account aside for a few days and have a fresh look
later. What other ideas now occur to you? Did you make a too-smooth
moral fable out of a more fluctuating scrap?
If it’s your own:
(1) write down as much as you can remember about what you thought
about at the time, and
(2) any thought your opponent shared during a Post Mortem.
(3) Leave it for a few days and come back fresh, then analyse it as
you would somebody else’s. Be particularly wary of self-serving
interpretations, especially of the “I was winning all the way
through” variety. What did you miss?
Below, Round numbers are board numbers. The Exeter players
(White on even boards) hold BCF grades this year between 171 and
156; Teignmouth between 180 and 130. These are roughly between 2000
and 1600 ELO.
N.B. Games 2 and 5 feature an early loss of material; to
analyse past this point, in Game 5 at least, may not be very
profitable.