In chess, the sacrifice converts material (the “matter” of the chessboard) into energy, which is then released on your opponent’s position. But what’s the equation it follows?

Vukovic suggests (and Purdy agrees) that the conversion formula between material and energy in chess is 3 moves per pawn.

This would mean that if it takes your opponent more than three moves to capture a pawn (and by this I mean moves that do not enhance either his development or his position) then it’s probably not worth you worrying about it, and instead you should direct your attention towards using those three moves he would be giving you to finish your development or (if already complete) launch an attack. And, likewise, you should count all the moves you spend chasing after pawns to be sure you’re not giving away vital time your opponent can use to defeat you.

This equation can help you determine if the proposed sacrifice you are calculating can possibly work out. Even if you can’t calculate it completely to the end, if you can count the important tempos you will gain with the sacrifice, you can gain some comfort that even if you don’t clearly see your way, a count of four moves gained in the attack should be worth the pawn you’re spending to launch it.

This is the guiding principle behind many of the opening gambits, that your opponent will spend at least three moves defending the extra pawn, which would mean that even if the gambit pawn itself proves unrecoverable, there will a pawn elsewhere in the position falling to your accelerated attack.

It’s only when he goes on to make an exception for all but a very few masters before Botvinnik I have the timerity to disagree with the famous chess trainer.

First, let me say I don’t doubt either his ability as a trainer or his sincerity in making the statement. What I doubt is that the not entirely unspoken premise of his, that games not informed by current technique are useles for teaching, is itself entirely valid.

The games of Rudolf Spielmann, Harry Nelson Pillsbury, Charousek can teach us volumes about conducting attacks, enterprising play, and sacrificial combinations. The theory of none of these has changed in the last century. And if their opposition isn’t always top drawer, well that is what your silicon-based analysis partner is for.

More importantly, and I’m speaking to class players especially with this, you’re not going to be seeing top-level opposition at this point. And meanwhile you’re going to expose yourself to ideas that you’ll be able to use as your skill grows.

Another good reason to study them is that their games, unlike games of today, aren’t encumbered with reams of opening analysis. In fact, in most of the games from the first half of the 20th century, you’ll find opening play is indifferent, at best. The real game is in the middlegame.

That puts their games in stark relief to games from today, where two GM’s regurgitate home analysis for 20 moves, decide they didn’t get the advantage they wanted, so they shake hands and call it a day. In the older games, they fought coming out of the opening, and they fought hard (have a look at almost any Rubinstein-Spielmann game for an example of that). And they fought long. (Technique not being as well-known in those days, you will often get treated to examples of how to convert a particular advantage into a win, instead of having one player resign just when you were curious about how the other was going to convert the point.)

Also in those games, you’ll be treated to a different attitude. These players tried to win. Unlike today where a more common approach is to keep the draw near at hand they would take calculated risks (most often in the shape of attacks launched through intuition, without a full, deep calculus). And in those games you will see the wins, but just as importantly, you will see how attacks can go wrong. Both positive and negative examples await you there in the past.

Once again speaking to class players, how many times have you seen what you were sure was a mistake by your opponent, but were unable to see how to properly punish it? Again in the games from 50+ years ago, you will see those sort of mistakes being made, and see the retribution that follows on their heels.

The chess of 50 years and more ago was more widely varied than today. Visit the games of Frank Marshall, for example, not to find perfect examples of strategic chess, but to expose your mind to a wide variety of tactical ideas and attacking techniques. Look them over, try them out. Some you will like, some will seem natural to you. Others will seem weak and unsound.

And that’s the point; you need to be able to recognize these ideas when they present themselves to you in your own games. If you have already seen through a particular pattern, when your opponent tries it on you, there will be no need to panic, no need for deep reflection; you’ll recognize it and deal with it. And when it shows up and offers to assist your side, you will be able to pick up or discard quickly the idea, because you’ve already met it before, in a game of Rubinstein’s.

How does one know there’s nothing to fear in the dark, until one has studied the dark often enough to pull its fangs? The ideas are there, in the games, right now. Just waiting for you. Turn on your brain, pick up a few, and try them out.

Please, don’t thank me. If you’re about to savor Pillsbury or Charousek for the first time, it’s I who envy you.

Kaissa, playing Black, ignored the obvious 1. … Kg7, and instead played the seeming blunder, 1. … Re8.

This puzzled most of the audience; how could such a strong computer make such an elementary mistake? Look at the position yourself for a few minutes (no more than five) and see if you see the answer. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Did you see it? If not, here’s a clue: look for a standard R+N checkmate pattern in the position.

If Black plays the “obvious” 1. … Kg7, checkmate arrives quickly: 2. Qf8! Kf8 3. Bh6 Bg7 (3. … Kg8 will make no difference at all) 4. Rc8 Qd8 5. Rd8 Re8 6. Re8.

It’s obvious, once you see the queen sacrifice, and the queen sacrifice becomes obvious if you realize the Black king needs to be decoyed to f8, to allow Bh6 and the back rank checkmate. But Bh6 would only occur to someone very familiar with R+B checkmate patterns.

Go back and look again at the starting position. The clues are all there: the hole at h6, White’s dark-squared bishop able to fill it, and two White major pieces able to reach the back rank. To someone familiar with the checkmate pattern, those are signal flares, telling them to look closely.

Once you start to look for the checkmate, the only real question is move order. If White leads with Bh6, it gives Black time to defend the back rank, so that’s not the strongest approach. But White has two major pieces that can hit the back rank; it will be possible to sacrifice one so that the other will give checkmate (remember the Attacker’s Trinity: Launch your attack with three pieces, that way you can sacrifice one to set up checkmate with the remaining two). In this case, the Attacker’s Trinity is the queen, rook and dark-squared bishop; all three set to swoop in on the enemy king. So which one should we lead with? In order for the bishop to give check from h6, the Black king needs to be drawn to f8. The only piece that can force that to happen is the Queen; that’s why the computer led with that piece. The last hurdle to clear is the square e8: if Black doesn’t retreat the king, but instead moves to e8, Black will escape the checkmate pattern. But White controls that square with the bishop on b5 so the net closes on the king, and Black’s fate is sealed.

Yes, 1. … Re8 still loses. It just doges the immediate checkmate by tossing away a rook, allowing Black to keep playing. But if White hadn’t seen the checkmate pattern, White would not have led the attack with the Queen, forcing the win.

“Don’t believe it if someone tries to convince you that they know the only correct method of improvement. Such a method does not exist, and such claims are at best self-deception and at worst a deliberate attempt to delude pupils or readers.” Mark Dvoretsky, 2009 in “Controversial Thoughts”

Strong words, but if any chess instructor has the “street cred” to back them up, it’s him.

What does he mean? That a specific study recipe that improves everyone as efficiently as possible, whether it’s “all tactics, all the time” or “endgames above all” or anything else, flat-out doesn’t exist. Everyone’s different, more importantly, everyone learns differently.

So does that mean we’re all doomed to fail, or worse, to pay high fees for personal instructors in the game? No. (That is, unless you’re intending to pay me those high fees, then of course it’s true! Um, that’s a joke, son.)

It also means that generic, off-the-shelf, one size fits all classes are no match for dedicated individual work, with or without a trainer.

I don’t like to recommend books without knowing the person I’m recommending them for, because there are several choices and every person is different, so what works best for one might not work for another. But there are a few titles that keep recurring. I’ll reproduce the list here, along with some notes.

Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess. Yes, as a human being the man was pond scum. So was Ty Cobb, when it comes to that, but he was still a great baseball player and one of the best hitters who ever lived. Like wise, Bobby Fischer was one of the greatest chessplayers ever.

But that’s not why I recommend this book. The book was designed from the ground up by professionals to be a teaching manual. Fischer contributed the chess expertise, but the text and the manner of presentation have nothing to do with him, and they’re pure gold.

It’s a “programmed instruction” format, meaning each page asks a question that is answered on the following page, and it builds up chess knowledge by a gradual question and answer cycle. It works well even as a teaching tool used by a parent for a child, but not so well in a classroom environment. It builds from one concept to another perhaps a little fast for young children, but middle school on should find it quite useful.

Comprehensive Chess Course. Two volume set from Lev Alburt and Sam Palatnik. This is much better suited for a classroom, formalized environment than the last book, and also much better for younger children. Don’t confuse this with the follow-on volumes Lev Alburt issued later, I’m talking just about the two-volume set.

Progress here is slow, you’re halfway through the first volume before you learn how all the pieces move. That pacing makes it good for the younger children, but can lose older kids through boredom. Take the program the way it’s written for primary-age children. Let the older children race through the book at a faster pace, or better yet, get them into a different set of books.

Guide To Good Chess. Cecil Purdy was an Australian, a world champion correspondence chess player, and one of the best chess writers ever, probably the best who ever had english as his native language. Mix those last two attributes into a beginner’s chess book, and you have something special.

Mind you, his word selection can be a bit archaic (he wrote this in the middle of the last century, after all) so the person reading it should be able to handle that, but even if it’s a bit difficult at times, it’s more than worth it. Contains exercises, advances from concept to concept very quickly until it gets to some pretty advanced territory for a beginner’s book.

For those reasons, I definitely wouldn’t select this book for anyone below middle school level, and really, it’s more for the high school and older crowd.

Secrets of the Russian Chess Masters. OK, so the title is a bit pretentious, but this series of two volumes from Lev Alburt and Larry Parr is sort of an adult version of Comprehensive Chess Course. It contains exercises and information, and builds from one concept to another, but doesn’t take as long, so it covers more territory, and thus has space to give deeper concepts a more detailed approach.

This series is definitely for the older player; advanced middle school or higher because of the vocabulary and the speed of progression. It can also be followed as a classroom manual, though it will take a little more ingenuity for this set over Alburt’s previous set.

Conclusion

Well, there it is. These are the best books I’ve found for starting someone out from the very beginning. Once a person has the basic concepts from these books and has started playing the game, there are other questions, other learning opportunities, and other books. The order of presentation here doesn’t mean anything special, so don’t read anything into that. Take what I’ve said about the books, and look them over. One will probably appeal to you more than the others; pick it. You can’t really go wrong with any of the selections I’ve listed here.

Good luck, and let me know how it goes.

Then why the title? Because you can’t begin to identify what you don’t know, until you have identified what you do know.

So here’s your challenge: over the next few weeks, re-create this notebook, but about chess. Document what you know.

For openings, write out the moves you remember, at the end of that, write down the typical plans for each side. What are the typical tactics each side has to be aware of (e. g., shots against the g5 Bishop in the Cambridge Springs) and how do you exploit or secure against them? How should each side handle the transition to middlegame?

For middlegames, what basic tactical methods (pin fork, etc.) do you know well enough to see them in your mind? What cues may you find in a position for their existence? (e. g. two pieces one square apart horizontally cues possible pawn fork, rook fork, etc.)

For endgames, what rules do you remember for pawn endgames, rook endgames? Which positions do you have memorized? What’s the winning procedure? Basic checkmates? Typical maneuvers and traps?

And now that you’ve finished with the easy part: Set up any chess position (can be just a random piece arrangement or a position from a game you’ve never seen before — doesn’t matter, so long as it’s not one you’ve thought about) on your board. What thoughts cross your mind about it? Speak out loud into a recorder, have someone else write what you say, or write it yourself. Be honest. Don’t do it the way you think you should; do it the way you do it in a tournament (have your clock running, just to help with the atmosphere).

The first part of the exercise will hopefully show you what you know, and from that you can start to see the shape of what you don’t know. Can’t remember many opening moves? Either memorize more or switch to openings that are governed more by principles than specific moves (King’s Indian Attack, Paulsen Sicillian are two that come to mind quickly, but there are more). Don’t have a large store of middlegame or endgame techniques? Game collections like Informant give them to you in raw form; databases can help you find mammoth amounts of material pertaining to similar positions. Play them over and get a feel for more positions. Endgame books like Silman’s or Flear’s or Muller’s, or Shereshevsky’s trilogy, or Averbakh’s even larger set give you many more sources for patterns for your mind.

But the most important work will probably be on the last part of your book. Examine the copy of your thinking process. Look it over closely; you’re looking for cracks where good moves, either for yourself or your opponent, can escape your notice. You’re looking for what you use to form your plan (and if you don’t plan, mark that down as a major flaw right now) and what you may be missing. Take longer than just the few minutes you spent the first time, use a computer to help you. Compare your move selection process with Purdy’s, or Silman’s, or Kotov’s, or Tisdal’s, or any other documented process you can find. Where do you differ from them? Is the difference significant? Can you change your approach slightly to include it, or do you have to unlearn and start over?

Yes, this is sketchy. It has to be; to treat this subject in detail would take more than one book, and even then it wouldn’t be sufficient, because every individual case is different. I can (and probably will, before I’ve finished with this topic) tell you how I learn, but that won’t necessarily apply to you. I’ll return to this topic with more details several times, and still won’t cover it in depth.

The point of this is: now that you’ve done all this heavy lifting (and if it takes less than a month, you’re either a beginner at this game, a liar, or have an awful lot of spare time) you’ve got the raw material in hand to begin a serious improvement program.

Pick a flaw you’ve identified and fix it. I don’t think it matters a great deal which one you start with, but if for some reason you really need to create a priority list, go over your last dozen or so serious games with this notebook full of identified flaws beside you. Every time you see an instance of one of the deficiencies you’ve listed show up in a game, mark it. When you’re done, the one with the most marks wins — start with it and fix it. Pick the next flaw. Rinse Lather. Repeat.

No it’s not easy. Anybody who told you it would be is either lying or a natural GM. Either way, it doesn’t apply to us. You got your map. Start hiking.

And my answer always disappoints.

Because there is no simple opening, or set of moves, that will win. My advice is best summed up in the title of this post: “Don’t get comfortable.”

As I look back on my early days, I let comfort get in the way of my improvement often, which is probably the main reason I didn’t advance any farther than I have. I got comfortable playing the Colle, playing the Stonewall Attack, and that limited my experience in other positions. I got comfortable playing the Grand Prix, which again limited the kind of positions I knew how to play. I got comfortable playing Bronstein’s Caro-Kann.

And all of these “comfort zones” were little more than prisons. Oh, some were quite comfortable (my lifetime 70% score with the GP, for example) I have to admit. But they denied me other experiences, of equal or greater value to me, and kept my knowledge of chess narrow.

I came to the idea of variety late in life (odd, I know, for a man whose chess idol was David Bronstein, but there it is, nonetheless). I got there when I was enlisted to coach a HS team. There were players of many stripes and temperments, and I began badly, because I couldn’t explain much outside of the narrow chess neighborhood I’d grown up in.

So I expanded my horizons. I went to tournaments with the resolution to play a completely different game every round, to never repeat myself.

And whole new vistas opened to me. More importantly, what I learned from these new positions I found could be brought back into the chessic “ghetto” that I’d grown up in, and enrich it as well (such as when I undertook a winning Queen-side attack from a Stonewall Dutch, something I would never have considered before).

After about a year of pain, I found I was getting better with every game, to the point where I was even able to win club tournaments that I would have finished well down in before.

I could blame it on opening study. Opening study is cheap and easy, and you can get seduced by some early fast wins, and you settle in. But that’s the actual problem, not the study itself. Especially as a developing player, once you get comfortable with an opening, with a set of positions, your growth stops. You simply begin to repeat yourself in game after game.

Far from being a welcome condition, this feeling of comfort should be a danger signal. It means it’s time to switch to a radically different set of openings, to completely unfamiliar positions, and begin to explore them.

That is the real road to improvement.

It’s a lot like the adage “there’s no smoke without fire.” The fire may not always be visible, so looking for it doesn’t help you find the smoke. And just as some fires burn without smoke, sometimes there are positional advantages without a combination available at the moment to exploit them.

This came home to me in a recent game, where I found a little tactical riff that raised my game from horrible to merely discouraging. I didn’t have an advantage; I’d long ago blundered away every expectation of that. In fact, the combination merely took advantage of my opponent’s unfortunate piece configuration (potential skewer) to eliminate one of my weaknesses. There’s no way I could be said to have had any sort of advantage.

It made me stop and consider after the game, and I think I’d actually rephrase it “No combination can exist without a weakness for it to exploit.” In other words, it doesn’t really matter one whit to a combination which side has an advantage, it only matters which side has the weakness.

So, what does that mean for your thinking process at the board? Look for the signs to a combination in every position. Keep on the lookout for pieces that can be forked, skewered, pinned, etc., on every move. And if you find them, then look around for a combination to exploit them. Think of them as the smoke that leads you to a burning weakness in your opponent’s position. If you can fan the flames a little, maybe you can bring the whole house down.

I’ve been working with a lot of younger kids this year, and they’ve been highlighting the need for some sort of methodical instruction in those areas, and all of my usual teaching aids are too advanced for them. The first thing I need to work with them on is simply seeing the pieces they can capture. I’m starting to drill into them that the first question they should ask themselves is, “What can I capture?”

When you’ve advanced, you sometimes forget how hard the early steps were to make. When you start going over the thinking process of a chess player, you don’t always realize what you’ve been doing for so long that it’s almost unconscious. And it’s that part of the instruction that I’m finding most valuable to my own play. The kids are forcing me to examine my own thinking in detail, looking for those simple things I do without being conscious of it, so that I can find a way to communicate it to them.

And of course, as I do so, I find habits, conscious and unconscious, thay I’ve developed over the years, which are inefficient or just plain wrong. And another hole gets plugged.

I might make 1900 yet.