On Feb 26, 7:16 pm, "Chess One" wrote:

dear aftermath

Switch to 1. d4

any exchange black offers, take it. othewise develop each of your pieces by
just moving them once each until all are developed. you do this you are no
longer 1400, but 1600

Egads! What rubbish. The thing to do is look
at the position, and make useful moves, not play
like a mindless automaton. Playing mindlessly
will likely cause your rating to *drop* well below
1400.


don't get fancy with tactics until you play enough to do so confidently,
which is 1700 level... any other advice is likely not from 1700+ level
opposition

Moron. Mindless by-rote "one-movement" of the
pieces will get you nowhere. You simply cannot
avoid *thinking* about the position, and yes,
calculating tactics, no matter what your level.


forget openings, do opening principals - very hard to confuse yourself
thereby - and what I describe is a general Torre set-up, and it hardly
matters what the other guy does

Let this moron, nearly-IMnes, serve as your
guide in what *not* to do. How *not* to play
chess. His advice is a classic case of the
beginner's mistakes to *avoid* making.


- try to win the middle-game and don't study
endings either

At the lower levels, a deep study of the
endgame is almost useless, because so many
of your games will be decided earlier by tactics.

However, you still need to know how to force
checkmate with K & Q vs. K, with K & R vs. K,
and so forth. And it is helpful if you know the
basics like "opposition" in simple King and
pawn endings. If you already know all that,
then gradually add more; remember that many
games are won by a player transposing into
what they know to be a winnable ending, by
making exchanges in the middle game. If you
don't know a win from a loss from a draw, you
are playing with a serious handicap.

One more piece of advice: suppose that you
knew absolutely nothing in terms of by-rote
opening moves; I mean *nothing*. You could
still get decent results if you were a strong
tactician. Take a chess program like Fritz,
and turn off the openings book: it will still win
most of the time, on tactics alone. And while
a human cannot be that good (and fast) at
tactics, it is very possible to be better than
most other humans (which is all it takes).

If you are limited, and cannot devote much
time to study, then study *tactics*. (But if
you do, please don't enter any tournaments
in which I'm playing! I only want to play
mindless dregs who aimlessly shift wood.)

Generally speaking, you will learn tactics
more rapidly if you play open games, and
thus you will improve more quickly-- even if
you do so by losing. Do you wonder why
your opponent sacrificed a pawn-- left it
where you could simply capture it? then
take it and find the answer. Next time, you
won't *still* be in the dark (like you would
be if you just chickened out).

Until you reach the 2000 level, your first
name is Tactics, your middle name is
Tactics, and your last name is Tactics.
You don't need to have a memorized
openings repertoire unless you are trying
to save time on the clock; just pretend
that you are already in mid-game, and
use your noggin!


-- help bot