Critical Errors

In the Eastern Washington Open last month, I profited from errors my opponents made while attempting to maintain an advantage. In the first round, it appeared that Black had seized the initiative.

Black to move

Black got caught up in his attack and missed a fork.

16...Nc4?? lost to 17.Qd3.

In round two, I was worse for most of the game against an old friend, but he fell short on time. With less than a minute left, he wagered all on promoting a pawn that had no chance.

White to move

67.Rxh7+??

67.Nd4 Rc1 68.Ne2 Rc2=

67...Kxh7 68.b7 Na5 69.Kb6 Nxb7 70.Kxb7

Black to move

Here, I went for the elementary pawn ending, which we played out until it was mate in four.

70...Rxc6

In the last round, I played the Benko Gambit and struggled for equality for most of the game. Things shifted my way when my opponent tried to retain the extra pawn.

White to move

36.Qb5??

36.Qd1 or 36.Qf1 gives up the a-pawn, but continues in an equal position.

36...Rc1+ 37.Kh2

Black to move

I spent a few minutes looking for the checkmate that I suspected was there on the board, but opted for exchanges that gave me overwhelming material superiority and required no effort.

My one loss stemmed from a risky and aggressive move that led to complications. My opponent played well and built up his advantage systematically.

White to move

I played 14.Ng5??

14.Nd4 was close to equal, but even here Black is better.

 

Knight Award

As noted in “Pawn Award”, I created my awards based youth chess curriculum twenty years ago. It provides structure to lessons in after school clubs and with individual students. It assures that those who stick with the program acquire certain skills that provide a foundation for lifelong chess improvement.

Many students skip the Pawn Award because they have been playing and even competing before I start working with them. For some of them, the Knight Award is earned in the first or second session. For others, some work is necessary.

1. Previously earned Pawn, or achieve a NWSRS rating over 500.

In Washington state, unlike many parts of the United States, casual players are not required to join the US Chess Federation* in order to compete in tournaments. More than likely, this difference partly accounts for the level of youth chess activity activity in our state—our annual state elementary is among the largest chess events in the US and certainly represents the highest per capita activity level in the 50 states.

Our rating system is the Northwest Scholastic Rating System. It employs the same formula as the US Chess Federation, but is free to organizers and participants. A student who has a NWSRS rating above 500 has scored enough tournament wins that familiarity with basic rules can be assumed. Even so, some of these students may yet have some confusion with rules for castling and en passant.

2. Demonstrate understanding of checkmate of lone king with heavy pieces:

* queen and rook,
* queen and king, and
* rook and king (each from two random positions selected by the coach).

Checkmate ends a game of chess. Everyone knows this and yet not every chess player begins by learning basic checkmate skills thoroughly.

When testing understanding of checkmate with queen and rook, I generally look for understanding of the first two endings in Bruce Pandolfini, Pandolfini’s Endgame Course (1988). Most students have learned the “rolling barrier” by the time I test them. This elementary checkmate is also called the ladder mate. It was the first checkmate that I learned nearly sixty years ago.

However, Pandolfini’s first mate, the “queen and rook roll”, is not one beginners have generally mastered in my experience, although it should be learned first. Learning it assures the student can coordinate two heavy pieces well both to control the opponent’s king and to assure that both are safe from capture.

Pandolfini presents this position with White to move.

Black is threatening to capture White’s rook. Students who need work on this elementary mate will often withdraw the rook to a safer square. Others will lose the rook, which still allows them to complete a different checkmate test (see below).

The correct move, however, is to bring the queen up where it checks the king and protects the rook from capture. Doing so leaves Black’s king with a single legal move. A post in 2011 explains the technique with some useful diagrams (see “Lesson of the Week: Elementary Checkmates”).

Checkmate with queen and rook should be understood so well that exhaustion and time pressure will not interfere with success. When Ryan Ackerman** was Mead High School’s top player, he and I practiced performing this at the Spokane Chess Club one Thursday with only ten seconds on the clock. We consistently played ten perfect moves in six seconds. Our starting position was a version of the “hardest position” (the longest distance to mate with such material).

White to move

Performing this checkmate in the optimal ten moves requires understanding of how to coordinate both pieces well and requires some calculation. If a student can do it in fifteen moves, they pass the test. If they move the queen systematically until the defending king is cornered with only two squares, and then bring up the king, it will require more than fifteen moves, but I still award a pass.

I encourage all students to learn optimal technique. Here’s my play against Stockfish this morning These moves and some variations can be viewed at my Lichess study, "Simply Perfect". Note that Black’s king was never put in check until checkmate. Control by restriction is a vital skill, and one that young chess players do not easily learn.

My post, “Teaching Elementary Checkmates” has some instructive positions for learning this technique. Some of these positions are from a book published in 1822 that I find more useful than more recent books: William Lewis, Elements of the Game of Chess. The author was England’s strongest player for a few years at the time and is most remembered as one of those who hid inside the famous chess playing “machine” sometimes called “the Turk”.

Checkmate with a rook and king against a lone king takes sixteen moves with perfect play from the hardest position. If the student demonstrates technique sufficient to accomplish the task in 25-30 moves, I consider it a passing performance. The second game in "Simply Perfect" on Lichess shows one example of perfect play.

3. Demonstrate understanding of “fox in the chicken coop” pawn promotion technique.

The tactical advantages of an outside passed pawn in the endgame is one of the aspects of fundamental endgame knowledge upon which it is possible to build advanced skills. Jeremy Silman calls a winning technique with such material the “fox in the chicken coop” in Silman’s Complete Endgame Course (2007). One of the early posts a few months after I started Chess Skills (this blog) in 2007 shows a position from which I played a somewhat forcing ten move sequence to reach such a pawn ending in a tournament game. Calculating that deeply occurs rarely (see "Kings and Pawns"). Moves 31-34, I exchanges two rooks and a knight for two rooks and a pawn. Moves 35-39, both kings raced to capture the opponent's weakest pawn. At that point, I had the move in this position.

White to move

40.b3 struck me as the simplest way to assure that my queenside pawn majority would assure the creation of a passed pawn.

A few moves later, we reached another critical position that was easy to play because of understanding the core idea of how to use an outside passed pawn.

White to move

The only winning move is 47.c5, leading to exchanging two queenside pawns for Black's remaining pawn on that side of the board. The point (as I understood at move 31) was to lure Black's king far from the action on the kingside, where my king mowed down Black's last two pawns. My opponent resigned one move before checkmate on move 65.

In testing this skill, the student will be presented with a made-up position or perhaps one from a game that requires demonstration of understanding how a pawn majority on one wing of the board leads to certain victory with a dominating king on the other wing. For instance, this position, which arose while playing the position from my game against the computer instead of my human opponent.

White to move

4. Complete “Knight Award: checkmates and tactics” worksheet.

The Checkmates and Tactics worksheets consist of a series of exercises of increasing difficulty: Pawn Award, 6 mates in one; Knight Award, 8 checkmate puzzles with mate in 2-5 moves, and 4 exercises where material gain is forced; Bishop Award, 24 exercises, half leading to checkmate; Rook Award, 48 exercises, less than half lead to checkmate; and Queen Award, 60 exercises. These have been published with solutions as Checkmates and Tactics (2019). The book version also has a useful glossary of tactics. Naturally, I prefer that students working the awards do not look at the answers in the book while completing the worksheets.

5. Demonstrates ability to read chess notation.

Chess notation is the language of chess. Today, the system known as algebraic has become standard all over the world. When I was young, the US, England, and other English speaking countries used English descriptive. For the Knight Award, I present the student with a game score and have them show me the game.

Here is an example:

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. Bc4 Nxe4 5. Nxe4 d5 6. Bxd5 Qxd5 7. d3 Bg4 8. O-O Nd4 9. Be3 Nxf3+ 10. gxf3 Bh3 11. Re1 Be7 12. f4 O-O-O 13. Qf3 Be6 14. f5 Bd7 15. c4 Qxd3 16. b3 Bc6 17. Red1 Qxe4 18. Rxd8+ Rxd8 19. Qxe4 Bxe4 20. Rc1 Bxf5 21. Kg2 f6 22. f4 exf4 23. Bxf4 Bd6 24. Be3 Be4+ 25. Kf1 Bxh2 26. Bc5 f5 27. Be7 Rd2 28. a4 f4 29. Bg5 f3 30. Bxd2 Bg3 31. Be3 h5 32. Rd1 h4 33. Rd4 Bf5 34. Bg5 Bh3+ 35. Kg1 f2+ 36. Kh1 f1=R# {Eric Rosen won by checkmate} 0-1

The game comes from IM Eric Rosen's speedrun.

My YouTube video, Reading Chess Notation, explains what students need to learn (and also features a game that will help with the mate in five in the Checkmates and Tactics exercises).



*Nonetheless, we are pushing strong players to join the USCF so that Washington state will be well-represented when the USCF Grade Level Nationals come to Spokane in December 2025.
**Ryan is now a professional chess coach. He won the Spokane City Championship in 2022 and again in 2023.

Pawn Award

Twenty years ago, I created a series of scholastic chess awards for young chess players. The awards are named for the pieces in order of value: pawn, knight, bishop, rook, queen, and king. Each is progressively more difficult than the previous one. 

At the time, I had after school programs in a couple of schools and my first one-on-one student. The awards created some structure both for individual students and group lessons. A student who meets the criteria for an award receives an award certificate.

The Pawn Award concerns basic rules. Lichess, founded in 2010, offers interactive lessons on these rules and many other elementary skills.

I recommend that young players, as well as beginners of all ages, take advantage of these free and accessible lessons (the hyperlink takes you there). Of course, many hundreds of hours of my time has been invested teaching these skills to more than a thousand children.

There are better ways to teach basic chess skills than starting with the movement of all the pieces.  Alas, children are eager to play before mastering essential concepts, so the old and most common method of teaching still prevails. For some discussion of alternatives, see "Lesson One". In an ideal world, young players might know how to force checkmate with two rooks against a lone king before learning how the bishop moves. More often, they learn the movement of all the pieces, but spend a lot of extra time struggling the learn the purpose of the game and the critical relationships: "contacts" that lead to success.

In my awards curriculum, elementary checkmates with heavy pieces (rooks and the queen) are required for the Knight Award.

The Pawn Award criteria:

1) Sets up board (light on right) and pieces correctly. Light on right means that both players will have a white or light square on the right in the row of squares (rank) closest to them. On the board below, these squares are marked in orange.

Of course, it is possible to play a game of chess with the board oriented incorrectly. It happens often. But, when the board is wrong, often the king and queen start on the wrong squares as well. Such errors change the game slightly for the beginner and substantially for players with experience.

Sometimes students rely on the numbers on the side and letters along the bottom while orienting the board. but many chess boards do not have these printed. I have also seen manufactured boards that have the letters and numbers incorrectly placed.

The letters and numbers are for reading and writing chess notation, skills that are part of the next two awards.

When setting up the pieces, the students must learn to place the queens on their own color: the White queen starts on a light square and the Black queen starts on a dark. No matter what colors the chess pieces are, chess players refer to the lighter colored as White and the darker as Black.

2) Demonstrates basic movement of each piece. There are six different pieces. When testing student understanding of how each moves. I often place each one alone in the center of the board and ask the student to show where it can move. The screenshot below from Lichess.org shows a minigame that is used to teach beginners how the queen moves.

The queen moves along ranks, files, and diagonals always in a straight line with no limit on distance. The queen moves to capture the first star (green arrow) and then, on the next move, follows the second arrow to the second star.

3) Demonstrate and explain castling. Castling can be difficult for young students to learn. Normally in a chess game, one side moves a single piece, then the other side move one piece. With castling, and only castling, the king and one of the rooks both move.

Students must commit to memory and explain or show:
a) Both the king and the rook must be on their starting squares and have not moved.
b) No piece can stand between them.
c) The king cannot be in check, move into check, or move through check.
d) The king always moves two squares toward the rook, and then the rook moves to the square that the king moved over.

Check is the situation when a king in threatened with capture. Here, White's knight is able to move to the square occupied by Black's king. Hence, it must be Black turn and the king must get out of check either by moving the king or capturing the knight (imagine there are other pieces on the board, too).

In the next diagram, White may castle long (toward the queenside, i.e., the left). Castling short--to the right, or kingside) is not allowed because Black's bishop could move to the square that the king must cross (hence, "through check").

4) Demonstrate en passant. En passant (French for "in passing") is more difficult than castling and young students often learn it, forget it, and learn it anew. Again, the explanation and exercises at Lichess.org are useful.

This position arose in a game I played online in 2012 (the end of the game is depicted in this site's banner using a Mexican conquest themed chess set sold to tourists along the Central American coast).

Black has just played the f-pawn two squares forward, placing the White king in check (blue arrow). The only move that gets the king out of check is an en passant capture (orange arrow). White's pawn is able to capture the pawn that just moved on the square that Black's pawn moved over. White places the pawn on that square and removes the Black pawn from the board.

5) Demonstrate ability to recognize checkmate. Checkmate is the object of the game of chess. The game ends when one player's king is in check and has no escape. The most difficult aspect of checkmate for young players is learning to control empty squares. I usually test this skill with a worksheet that contains six positions. In each position, White can checkmate Black's king in one move. For one of these positions, there are several correct answers. These exercises ate the first six in my book, Checkmate and Tactics (2019).

Here is another illustration.

Each White piece controls one or more squares beside the Black king (indicated by green arrows). All of the pieces control other squares not indicate by these arrows. For the rook, two of these are next Black's king--one is also controlled by a knight and the other by a bishop. The knight next to White's king also checks the king. Black is in checkmate.

In the next position, White controls all of the squares next to the Black king. However, the square on which the king stands is not controlled. If it is Black's turn, the game ends in stalemate (Black has no legal moves and is not in check). Stalemate is a draw.

After successful completion of the Pawn Award, students move on the Knight Award.

Active Rook

Black's position is not comfortable. Neither rook is well-placed. The rook on a5 could become trapped, while the one on f8 is passively defending a pawn that currently has only one attacker.

Black to move

30...Rd8

Black chose the only reasonable move.

31.Ree7

Opting for two pigs seems reasonable, but the engines are concerned about White's king.

31...Rf5

Postgame analysis with chessdotcom's system identified this move as good, but not best. The engine prefers 31...Rd1+ 32.Kf2 Rf5+, which I considered. But, I decided the checkmate threat led to a clearer sequence that did not activate White's king. Black's king is going nowhere. 

On my computer, Stockfish 16 sees a 0.08 difference between the two moves.

32.h3

An alternative would be moving one of the rooks to d7.

32...a5 33.Rab7 Rf6

Black anticipated this position when he played 30...Rd8. White's targets are secure, making progress difficult.

White to move

34.Re5?!

It appears that this move, played after 40 seconds thought in a ten minute game, is aimed at hitting Black's b-pawn with both rooks in order to create a passed pawn on the c-file.

34...Rd1+

Meanwhile, Black has intentions to hit the g-pawn and make his opponent's king sweat a bit. Stockfish favors Rd2, which is rooted in the same plan. My move was played instantly without much thought, but as it forces Kh2, which can be followed with Rd2.

35.Kh2 Rd2 36.Re4 h5!

Keeping White's rook off g4.

37.Re8+ Kh7

White to move

38.Rbb8??

After this blunder, Black has an advantage. The magnitude of the advantage is greater the stronger the engine. Chessdotcom's analysis feature puts Black's advantage at 1.8 pawns, but Stockfish 16 running on my computer has it at 3.38.

Black's king will be checked, but so will White's.

38...Rff2 39.Rh8 Kg6 40.Rxb6 f6

White's moves have been aggressive, but not best. When White's checks come to an end, the problem of White's vulnerable king grows.

White to move

41.Rb5?

King safety had to be addressed.

41.Rxg2+ 42.Kh1 Rg3?!

Here I missed a simple 42...Rge2 leading to forced mate after some spite checks. After the next move, however, mate was again on the horizon.

43.Rhxh5 Rc3 White resigned

Smoke and Mirrors

In drawn endings, one could offer a draw. Or, as Levon Aronian showed me in 2013, playing 36 moves in a dead-drawn ending, one can offer your opponent opportunities to err. Such was my guidance in a rapid game this morning.

After 47 moves, I had a slight advantage, but missed my best chance.

White to move

48.Rh6! would have maintained an advantage. For instance, 48...Raxh7 49.Rb5+ Kc7 50.Rxh7+ Rxh7 51.Rxa5+ and the three to one majority with one rook each offers White good prospects of victory.

I played 48.c3 and my advantage slipped away.

Ten moves later, I was certain the game was headed for a draw.

White to move

I played 58.a5+. Later, after my 71.b6, we have reached a technical draw that one finds in all the endgame books.

Black to move

Black played the only move, which is not hard to find, 71...Rh8. I proceeded to shuffle my king about and we reached this position after 79.Ka6.

Black to move

Clocks were running and the game continued with a blunder on each side.

79...Rg6?? (79.Rg8 was required) 80.Rh7?? (instead of 80.Rf8#).

If my opponent erred once, he might do so again.

Black to move

After 90.Rd7

90...Kc8?! 

This move is fine, although it suggests that Black may be experiencing some confusion.

91.Rd4 Re6??

My chance!

White to move

92.Ka7!

There are other winning moves as well.

92...Re7+ 93.Ka8 Re8 94.b7+ Kc7+ 95.Ka7 and Black resigned.

Must've been a Mouseslip

Online play this morning was odd. First I could get no advantage against a 900 rated player and that game was aborted because the Arena time ran out. Then, I was paired against a 1900+ (top .05% on a site that is 90% beginners) whose play left me confused.

Beginning at move five, my opponent's play was mysterious. We had reached a fairly normal position that can arise when White opts for the Catalan.

Black to move

I have had this position at least 283 times previously in online play, usually, but not always with White. In these games, both White and Black have performed within three points of their average rating with 138 White wins, 116 Black wins, and 29 draws. I have played 5...cxd4 and 5...Nc6, the two most popular moves.

5...g6?!

Only on Lichess, where the games database is huge, do I find any prior games with this move.

6.cxd5 exd5 7.O-O Bg7 8.dxc5

Black to move

8...Bf8? 9.b4

9. Nc3 was better. The one Lichess game with 8...Bf8 continued 9.Be3. It was a bullet game.

9...a5 10.Bd2?

10.Qa4+ Bd7 11.b5 Bxc5 and White is much better.

10...axb4 11.Bxb4 Nc6 12.Bc3

Black to move

12...Be7

White's poor play has restored Black to equality, but now White again has an advantage.

12...Bxc5 was the obvious move.

13.Nd4?!

13.Qc1 sets up a tactic to defend the pawn. To wit, 13...Bxc5 14.Bxf6 Qxf6 15.Nc3 Be6 16.Nxd5+

13...Bxc5 14.Nxc6

And after 14...bxc6, the game is interesting and roughly equal.

14...Qd6??

White to move

15.Nd4 Bxd4 16.Bxd4 Ra4 17.Qxa4+ and Black resigned.

I had thought that 14...Qd6 was a mouse slip, or maybe a premove, but the 5.5 seconds Black used rules out premove. It was a strange move in a strange game. 16...Ra4, then, looks like Black trying to lose.

My next game was against a player in the high 1600s and featured some strange maneuvers also, but not such that dramatically altered the evaluation. Here, though, I thought I had trapped White's queen.

Black to move

24...Rf6

24...Rxf5, which I considered briefly is the engine's choice.

25.Nxd6?

White should have played 25.Qxd6 Rxd6 26.Bxf4 and White will have a rook, bishop, and pawn for the queen.

I went on to win this game, too, although my opponent proved resourceful without a queen.

Far more satisfying than this morning's games was one that I played yesterday. At move 11, I had the opportunity to win a pawn, but spend a few seconds making sure that I was not missing a zwischenzug. 

Black to move

11...Ncxd4 12.Nbxd4

12.Nfxd4 Nxd4 13.Bd3 might be better.

12...Nxd4 13.Nxd4 Qxd4 14.Bxb4 Qxb4 and I nursed the extra pawn into the endgame, eventually winning.

Place a Rook

In the following diagram, where can White place a rook in order to have a drawn position with Black to move?

I found a game with this position and a White rook on h8 using the report feature of ChessBase 17. I had been playing with a position derived from Ending 57 in 100 Endgames You Must Know by Jesus de la Villa. Aside from the position that he presents, I wanted to understand where else the rook might be placed and still draw.

De la Villa's Ending 57 has this position with White to move.

After 1.Rd8, Black has two moves that hold a draw.

Before looking at de la Villa's solution, I placed Black's rook on a1 and made White's move Rd8. Then, I played Black against Stockfish on my iPad, trying a couple of variations. Then, I checked my ideas with ChessBase.

This was one of the resulting positions.

Black to move

4...Ke6 is the only drawing move.

This was another position in my play against the engine.

Black to move

Here, the side check is Black's only chance. 2...Ra7+

Using the report > similar endgames feature of ChessBase turned up far more games than I have time to look through. I favored those that were decisive, certain that I could find examples of games where a player who could have drawn instead lost.

No doubt both players were in considerable time pressure when Black erred from this winning position.

Black to move

Black played 110...Rf1?? 

110...d2 wins. To wit, 111.Re8+ Kf4 and White soon runs out of checks.

Nonetheless, Black won the game because his young opponent missed the drawing idea.

In the diagram at the top of this post, where must White place the rook?

Shifting Focus

For 34 consecutive days, I spent the first part of my day solving puzzles on chessdotcom. At some point during this time, it became a daily commitment. That commitment ended yesterday when I solved a single exercise from the book Improve Your Chess Tactics (2012) by Yakov Neishtadt. This book has sat idly on my bookcase for a year or more, but recently I started reading it. A few days ago, I solved the first five exercises after my chessdotcom session. Yesterday morning, I opted to start with the book.

Black to move

The position arose in Panno -- Bravo Sedamanos, Fortaleza (1975). It took me a few minutes, but I found the correct moves. The idea was known before solving because Nieshtadt organizes the book by themes. Hence, solving primarily involved calculation to verify the implementation of the deflection idea and the correct sequence. Most of my effort was expended finding the best reply by White.

After writing my answer, I checked my answers to the first six exercises in the back of the book. I failed one.

White to move

The position is presented by Nieshtadt as from Belov -- Ongemakh, Narva 1984. After seeing that I failed, I instantly saw the refutation of the move I had written.

Solving from books differs from solving for rating with online puzzles. Both methods have their benefits. I remain committed to doing both, but a daily commitment to one gets in the way of the other.

During my 34 day run from 18 May to 20 June, I attempted 599 puzzles, correctly solving 356. My rating started at 2993 and ended at 3051. It peaked at 3143 on 15 June and was as low as 2849 on 30 May.

I will return to the website and make a push to get the rating back above 3100 now that I've crossed that mark a couple of times. Also, I like to show my students that I solved more puzzles in the past year than the number of games I've played, although that number is considerable.

My focus has shifted towards books. Neishtadt, Improve Your Chess Tactics is one of the better tactics books available. Someone recommended it to me in a comment on this blog several years ago. It was a good recommendation for which I am grateful.