Frustrating!

After all this time, I thought I would have improved. But at the end of month nine there are four positional problems to solve.

I failed miserably on each one

Very frustrating. I get the feeling that I am just not meant to understand positional chess!

This course is hard. I think they made it very hard for normal players because they worry about making it too easy

You can write here your solutions, and we try to find out why you choose these moves instead of the ones proposed by ICS.

For me it's the opposite, i manage positionnal knowledge a bit more, but still very bad at applying it in games... It's like knowing that you could cross a heavy traffic road only by running and wearing a fluo jacket, yet too lazy to do something else than walking with grey coat, and get crushed.

Here are my analysis (for 2 games), i give it in the order of my thought process.

game 1:
Pawns count: black is better with 3 pawns vs 2 on queenside, which gives him good chances of making a passed one even with pieces on the board. On kingside white has 4 pawns versus 3 but black king to protect, this is more difficult to create a passed pawn unless all material is gone.

Pawn structure: black has apparent weak pawns b7 and g7 but hardly subject of an attack in given position, thus he has no real weakness. White has no special pawn structure.

Pieces quality: white king is safe, black king is in the center but can castle, Nb6 is not ideally placed and can only retreat, so as Bc1 which has no life for the moment. White queen is easily disturbed by Rd8.

TODO: My first though went to black king in the center, moreover with an easy to see x-ray attack along e file, so i considered knight sacrifice Nd5 but this does not work, and main reason is that after all Re1 is not protected.
I then gave a thought to Rd1 that wins again Rd8 but this let black time to castle.
I also considered Qg3 but forced queen exchange is not good (doubling my pawns on the side i need my pawn majority in endgame).
Finally only f2-f4 and a4-a5 gives some prospects.

So my response was a5 followed by f4, i did not calculated more, since i do not see what else to do.

ICS solution has a lot of calculation, i admit i don't even gave a shot to Rd8 in response to a5 (for me black was to move his N).

game 2:
This one seems less obvious than the first one at first glance.

Pawn structure: clearly all pawns are still there, and center is blocked, so all is about space. Black has space advantage on kingside (so kingside attack) and white has huge space advantage on queenside (so queenside attack).
It is likely that black will castle long sooner or later (so b2 is not that weak).

Bishops: easy to spot also, the black's bad bishop, and in addition no light square bishop to cover light squares.

Holes: f5 for black knight and c5 for white knight.

TODO: So here my primary idea is that Nc5 really annoys me (e4 is hanging), thus Nc3 and b4 are moves to be considered in priority.

But g4 annoys me even more! My plan here was g2-g3 with a double purpose, preventing the queen to invade on f4 and allow manoeuver Nh4, Nf5 in case of g4.

Thus moves on my todolist where in order g4, Nc3, b4 unless black push pawns on g and h file, in which case i would decide what to do with my knight.

Here my line differs completely from ICS solution, which propose to go straight to Nf5 with long knight manoeuver.

Although i don't think my idea is flawed, because if g4 first then Nh4 followed by Nf5 as i said, and if h5 first then i play a4 and i think i have tempo to attack on queenside with these 3 pawns advanced far in black's territory (i analysed later to Rybka and it has same evaluation as line proposed by ICS).

Are there supposed to be diagrams?

These are the exercises of month 09.
I would not copy them here since they are part of the course.

Thanks for the responses everyone

Blue Devil Knight wrote:This course is hard. I think they made it very hard for normal players because they worry about making it too easy

Perhaps. But I really don't like failing every test! Just frustrating is all.

HangingKing wrote:You can write here your solutions, and we try to find out why you choose these moves instead of the ones proposed by ICS.

For me it's the opposite, i manage positionnal knowledge a bit more, but still very bad at applying it in games... It's like knowing that you could cross a heavy traffic road only by running and wearing a fluo jacket, yet too lazy to do something else than walking with grey coat, and get crushed.

I'd be happy with that... even if I could get the tests right and still not be able to put it into practice because that surely is easier to accomplish than not even being able to pass the tests?!!

1. I played f4 immediately. I saw Qc5+ and Be3 but I didn't see the effect the subsequent Qc4 had.

2. I played Nc3, intending Ne2-►Ng3-►Nf5. I saw that the black DSB was crap and had only one way to get back into the game, but I didn't realise the better path of Ne1-►c2-►e3-►f5 was there or why it was better than the Nc3 way. Black can still play Bh6 after g4 and h5 no matter which knight is coming to f5.

3. I played Qb3, trying to prevent b5 (prophylaxis was the topic I had just read and b5 seems to be what black wants to do. After, I realised that b5 wasn't a real problem since axb5 opens the white rook up. So I was preventing black from playing a BAD move

4. I played Ne3, looking to displace the queen qith Rc4 and to redirect the knight to g4 where it could help start an attack against the black king.

As you can see... WAY OFF.

HangingKing wrote:Here are my analysis (for 2 games), i give it in the order of my thought process.

game 1:
Pawns count: black is better with 3 pawns vs 2 on queenside, which gives him good chances of making a passed one even with pieces on the board. On kingside white has 4 pawns versus 3 but black king to protect, this is more difficult to create a passed pawn unless all material is gone.

Pawn structure: black has apparent weak pawns b7 and g7 but hardly subject of an attack in given position, thus he has no real weakness. White has no special pawn structure.

Pieces quality: white king is safe, black king is in the center but can castle, Nb6 is not ideally placed and can only retreat, so as Bc1 which has no life for the moment. White queen is easily disturbed by Rd8.

TODO: My first though went to black king in the center, moreover with an easy to see x-ray attack along e file, so i considered knight sacrifice Nd5 but this does not work, and main reason is that after all Re1 is not protected.
I then gave a thought to Rd1 that wins again Rd8 but this let black time to castle.
I also considered Qg3 but forced queen exchange is not good (doubling my pawns on the side i need my pawn majority in endgame).
Finally only f2-f4 and a4-a5 gives some prospects.

So my response was a5 followed by f4, i did not calculated more, since i do not see what else to do.

ICS solution has a lot of calculation, i admit i don't even gave a shot to Rd8 in response to a5 (for me black was to move his N).

game 2:
This one seems less obvious than the first one at first glance.

Pawn structure: clearly all pawns are still there, and center is blocked, so all is about space. Black has space advantage on kingside (so kingside attack) and white has huge space advantage on queenside (so queenside attack).
It is likely that black will castle long sooner or later (so b2 is not that weak).

Bishops: easy to spot also, the black's bad bishop, and in addition no light square bishop to cover light squares.

Holes: f5 for black knight and c5 for white knight.

TODO: So here my primary idea is that Nc5 really annoys me (e4 is hanging), thus Nc3 and b4 are moves to be considered in priority.

But g4 annoys me even more! My plan here was g2-g3 with a double purpose, preventing the queen to invade on f4 and allow manoeuver Nh4, Nf5 in case of g4.

Thus moves on my todolist where in order g4, Nc3, b4 unless black push pawns on g and h file, in which case i would decide what to do with my knight.

Here my line differs completely from ICS solution, which propose to go straight to Nf5 with long knight manoeuver.

Although i don't think my idea is flawed, because if g4 first then Nh4 followed by Nf5 as i said, and if h5 first then i play a4 and i think i have tempo to attack on queenside with these 3 pawns advanced far in black's territory (i analysed later to Rybka and it has same evaluation as line proposed by ICS).

1. I saw Rd8 as a response to a5 and so abandoned a5 as a good candidate.
2. I also gave considerable thought to b4 to prevent Nc5 but I wanted a knight on f5 more.

Take the kids out to the park and get some of that soft ice cream before the summer is over. It may or may not help with chess, but everyone will feel a lot better.

Hehe! Sounds like a great idea

HangingKing wrote:These are the exercises of month 09.
I would not copy them here since they are part of the course.

Oh right nevermind I misunderstood what was going on!!! Great idea to post this here.

Frustrating is right!

I finally got here in the course. In the first position using the allowed 20 minutes I was able to identify all of the postional issues in the solution and considered the candidates discussed as well.

Then I chose a move that was not discussed. Pulled out the computer and sure enough, after a couple of minutes my solution just edged out the book move (running critter), and more importantly the pv was the line I chose.

I think the important thing is just to be sure that you are using the postional evaluation factors and applying them in your analysis - the game is just too complicated to have only one solution to any given problem of this type.