Strategy for Gaining Rating on Internet Chess Club

Internet Chess is mostly for entertainment, but most players today play more games online than over the board. So it is something we need to treat rather seriously if we want to improve from online games. Well, I am not a very good blitz player, and I am not in very good chess shape, but I noticed recently that I played quite a few blitz games on ICC without losing or drawing any. In fact my winning streak lasted so many games that there is not a single loss or draw in my ICC history, which spans 20 last games. Bobby Fischer’s winning streak in 1971 was 19 straight wins, but I had a couple of aborted games here, so his streak probably is still more significant. In the process my Blitz rating went up from 2052 to 2192.

Not to over-celebrate, I wanted to make a few observations to explain how this could possibly happen:

1. I had lower rated opponents than myself in all of those games. This is not too helpful for gaining rating, but surely helps to make the streak longer
2. I only played 1-2 game each day. I tend to lose focus/motivation if I play many blitz games at once.
3. I used a convenient mouse, which helped with concentration
4. I played these games not at my home, but rather at a place where I have very few external distractions
5. I was lucky in a couple of those games
6. I played my regular openings with both colours
7. I played most of those games with the same time control
8. I did not surf the web or listen to music while playing, minimizing self-induced distractions
9. I did not play in tournaments during these 3 months, so again, I got used to the time controls
10. I started to particularly care about the outcome once I set the goal for 20 games without a loss

Now that I got this blog entry out of my system, I can go and lose a game with a clear consciousness!

The Importance of not Giving up In Chess

Here is a blitz game where I was losing, but was able to come back to win. This only goes to illustrate that in online blitz games, having a winning position in no way guarantees a full point, and tables typically turn many times. It is thus important to stay focused till the very end.
DDT3000-ERADICATOR, ICC, 2011
Black to move

Black played 26… Bxe5 which seems to be winning, but since White can’t recapture it because of back rank mate. I was about to resign, when I realized that I can stay in the game a bit longer by playing 27.g4

Black continued with winning two pawns, but because of opposite coloured bishops, the position is not so clear.
27… Bxh2+ 28. Kxh2 Bxg4 29. Re8+ Kg7 30. Bd4+ Kh6 31. Be3+

 Black to move. White has some counter play, but after 31… g5 Black can continue to play for a win

Instead he blundered twice with 31… Kh5? 32. Rh8 Bf3? 33. Kg3!

Black to move. Rxh7 is a mate threat, and he has to give up a piece and went on to lose.
Checkmate in the endgame is rare, so the irony is that on the first diagram White seemed to be forced remain down a piece to avoid back rank mate, and only several moves later – Black was in the same boat, except for this time there was no way to save the piece.

Crushing Attack – Splitting the Chess Board into Two Parts

In his books and videos – Garry Kasparov has often emphasized the skill of splitting the board into two halves. After that - an attack on the side where you have a numerical advantage is very likely to succeed, even if you are temporarily down in terms of overall material on the board. Once I was taught a good lesson in a blitz game, that illustrated this thesis.

aggro-Garryncha, ICC, 2003
  White to move. Black just played 18…Nb4. The White pawn on e5 prevents Black’s Queen knight and Rook from taking any part in the action on the kingside. White quickly took advantage of this situation.

19. Bxh7!! Kxh7 20. Re4 (20. Bf6!! forces mate even faster) 20... Qxc2 21. Bf6!

Black to move. He is completely helpless even though he can grab the second extra piece.
21… g5 22. Rh4+ Black resigns 1-0

It is interesting how White delivers attack on the dark squares, as Black’s bishop and queen are uselessly guarding the light ones.

Online Tactics – Find the combination

Garryncha – slipperyfish, ICC, 2004
White to move. White has a powerful battery on the g file, but Black controls the center. That control however is fragile – the Queen defends the ‘d7’ rook, which defends ‘d5’ pawn, which in its turn defends the ‘e4’ rook, which also defends the ‘e5’ pawn. This sounds like a house of cards – and it is, White just has to find one precise move!

PrezAcc – Garryncha, ICC, 2004
Black to move. The goal of the rather unexpected combination is to lure Black king into a mating net. I am glad that I was able to find this trick in the blitz game, and not sure if it would have occurred to me today.

Tactics – Attack with Opposite Coloured Bishops

BONO-Garryncha, ICC, 2004
Black to move. White has weak spots on light squares on d3 and b3, so the tactics shots are in the air

garcikrespo - Garryncha, ICC, 2004
Black to move. Again - the powerful bishop on the long diagonal is aiming at the exposed White king, and it is the matter of destroying the pawn protection…

Blitz Tactics – Find the Combination – Black to Move

Dirk – Garryncha, ICC, 2004
Black to move. Black has a positional advantage, as White has a weak pawn on d4 and his king is exposed

Garryncha – Styxon, ICC, 2004
  Black to move. White had just protected the pawn with Re1-g1, missing a powerful shot

ghost-buster – Garryncha, ICC, 2004
 Black to move. Black has a positional advantage, and White’s pieces are a bit uncoordinated. How to take advantage of it?

All 3 positions are examples from my online games that played a few years back. Players rarely find deep strategic plans in their blitz games, but simple tactical shots take a second or two to spot, so players found the best move in all 3 of these games.

Watching World Chess Blitz Championship

The world blitz championship 2010 was won by Levon Aronian, and for a chess fan – the greatest attraction of this event was the amount of video materials available with the coverage of the games. I’d like to point out three sources that I was following:

1. The official site, which also includes the coverage of the Tal memorial itself – in Russian, but some post-mortem with Nakamura was in English - http://video.russiachess.org/ – in Russian
2. Multiple YouTube video channels – bumblebee1607, SergeySorokhtin, EugenePotemkin and probably a few more. Chessbase has posted pgn games next to some of the videos – to make it more convenient to replay:
1. http://www.chessbase.com/news/2010/games/sorokhtin01.htm
2. http://www.chessbase.com/news/2010/games/sorokhtin02.htm
   
3. Sergei Shipov’s analysis – on http://www.crestbook.com/ – in Russian. The synchronization suffers a bit, but I like the way Shipov explains the essence of every position within 5 seconds.

Blitz sacrifice - exploiting the long diagonal

Here is a quick snapshot from my blitz game today. After my opponent and myself exchanged a few blunders, I found a neat shot in this position:

DDT3000 – pmg, 3 minutes per game, ICC, 2010
White to move, Black just played Qb6-d8.

How to learn the most from your online blitz games

1. play with slower time controls. You won’t learn much from 1 minute games, and on ICC it does not take too long to find an opponent for a decent 15 minute game
2. focus, focus, focus, don’t get distracted on other windows open on your computer while opponent is thinking (or even worse – during your move!). I already wrote a whole other post about that.
3. don’t play online chess when you are tired. That kind of makes sense, since it’s hard to focus when you’re tired.
4. make sure all your games are automatically stored into a pgn file
5. review each game soon after it’s played
6. don’t feed it immediately to an engine, analyse by yourself for a bit
7. check the opening against a Reference DB to see where you and your opponent deviated from previously played games
8. if your opponent played something you completely did not expect - update your opening repertoire afterwards
9. don’t play too many games in a row
10. don’t take online chess too seriously, remember that over the board tournaments is a completely different game from online blitz

To the last point, when I played in my first British Columbia Junior championship a few years ago, the highest rated player had been a bit rusty. He had not played tournament chess for about a year, and he did not do so well (finishing outside of the top 3 from what I could recall) in our little competition. After the tournament he told me with a smile that he had played a lot of 1 minute games right before the tournament. He was doing really well in those, and assumed he was in excellent shape for the event. Switching time controls is never easy, I am sure we have all discovered that!

Spoiled Sacrifice in a Blitz Game

DDT3000 – pirulo, 2010, ICC, 3 minutes per game

 White to move 

This is a typical IQP position, with one pair of minor pieces gone off the board, but White (myself) still having enough resources for the attack. Books have been written about this structure, Winning Pawn Structures by Baburin being my favourite one. Black has pressure on b2, and White does not want to play b2-b4 as that would weaken the c3 square. Running down to the last minute on the clock, I realized that my main idea is to exploit the pressure on the a2-g8 diagonal, and that this was as good moment as it would ever be. So …

23. Bxf6 Bxf6 24. Nxe6! A typical idea, all of White’s pieces have lined up for this sacrifice, so if it does not work now, it is not likely to work later either. I already once blogged about a similar sacrifice on e6, where the placement of the White pieces was quite alike.

Black to move. Black’s rook on f8 and knight on d5 are hanging, so he has to accept the ‘gift’.

24 ... fxe6 25. Rxe6 Qd8?!

White to move.

Here I messed up my little ‘creation’, and according to my previous idea (from 5 seconds ago), I continued to build up the pressure on the a2-g8 diagonal with 26. Qf3? That allowed Black to escape and the game later ended in a draw. However, there was a much better and simpler idea, that would have left White up two pawns, with a winning position. What was it? Hint – White uses the fact that Qh3 may later attack Rc8.

PS. I find that these IQP structures are really hard to hold for Black without allowing White his moment glory with a d4-d5 breakthrough or piece sacrifice around the weakened kingside structure like in this example. It is quite rare to see a game (at least in my experience) where a favourable opportunity would never present itself and Black would just exploit the weakness of the d4 pawn.

Video of Mamedyarov – Morozevich

Another wonderful video posted by Sergei Sorokhtin on youtube. This time the database had incorrect moves, so I reconstructed them from the video so that you can replay through the moves!

Now, little puzzle for you,
Black to move
Does 26… Nd2 work in this position? Ok, does it work in blitz? What if you are Alexander Morozevich?

Kramnik – Grachev – rook endgame in a blitz game

I enjoyed watching the video while following the moves from the database in a separate window, you can do that too!

If you are curious how Grachev lost the endgame that was drawn all along, here is the culprit move/position:

Black to move.
Grachev blundered with 51… Kc8? and later the pawn advanced with a decisive tempo.
As pointed out by computer - correct was 51... Kd8! 52. Kb6 Rh2 53. Rg8+ Ke7 54. c6 Rb2+ 55. Kxa5 Rc2 56. Kb6 f3 =
When you are playing against Kramnik – any position is full of tricks!

Typical mistakes in IQP positions – YouTube video

Here is an older video I actually recorded a while ago (but only now had time to go to and do some minimal editing). I go through my blitz games and look at different ways Black can go wrong while trying to complete his development.

Moral of the story:
Memorize an opening variation – you may be lucky to win a single game.
Understand typical tactical ideas in a common pawn structure – you will win multiple games while your opponents play what they think “common sense moves”.
 

PS. Yes, unfortunately the audio is not very loud, my video editing skills are still non-existent.

Bishop Sacrifice in Panov Attack (Caro-Kann)

One of the main points of playing blitz on the internet is to go over finished games, and draw certain conclusions from them. I learned a fair bit from the game I played online today – something that can be useful in tournament games I play later, because the pawn structure and combination ideas are typical for the opening that I play.
This position occurred in this game
White to move
Black just played 11… Nde7, instead of the more standard 11… Nce7. I continued with 12. Be3 and got a position with isolated Queen’s Pawn (IQP) that I like, but putting the bishop on e3 did feel a bit passive.
After the game, I looked up this position in Karpov and Podgaets’ book on the Panov attack since the move Black played took me a bit by surprise. Turns out White has a nice way to exploit the fact that Black reduced his control over g5 square, and play 12.Bg5!? The key point is that if 12…Bxg5, then White can strike with a typical sacrifice on h7 with 13. Bxh7+!?:
White does not win on a spot, but the book shows that his position is better. This is the kind of guidance I would expect from an opening book, so I recommend it for its thoroughness! I took a longer way around, but in the end did create pressure against Black king and won (who said that analysing blitz games is a waste of time?!)
Replay the game in the viewer:

Trapped Rook

White to move

Here is a chance I missed in one of my blitz games. The position is fairly typical for Accelerated Dragon and Maroczy Bind. Surprisingly White could win by simply attacking the rook:

25. Bb5! Ra8 26. Qc6 Qe3+ 27. Kh1 Rd828. Qc7 Qb3 29. Rg1 Ra8 30. Bc6 and amazingly the rook is trapped!!.

Black could pin the bishop with by playing Qc2, but then White just picks up Black pawns one by one.

Online tactics: Find Sacrifices feature in Chessbase Light

Chessbase Light has an ability to find simple sacrifices in an entire database of games. Since I keep track of all my online blitz games in one database, that’s a very handy feature. In the search dialog box, go to the “Manoeuvres” tab, and make sure that “Sacrifice” box is checked.

Leave crawling through all your games for a while, and out of every 5 positions it finds, 1 is usually a pretty decent tactical shot. Yet another example of extra options computers offer for learning about the game.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that in the same 2+1 bullet game 8 years ago, I played two decent sacrifices. Under the pressure of having to make a move every couple of seconds – a player can intuitively come up with quick shots and just trust himself that they do actually work.

moon-DDT3000, 2001. Black to move

14… Nc5!

The knight goes to e4 or b3, it cannot be taken as then Bc5 would win the queen.

moon-DDT3000, 2001. Black to move

A few moves later in the same game - White’s pieces are quite disorganized.

22… Rxf3! followed by Nxd4 and Bc5 was a good way to wrap up the game.

Endgame: King Vs. Rook

Replay Game

DDT3000 (2130) - Aroeira (2016) [B84]

ICC 4 2/Internet Chess Club 2008

Here is another fragment from a blitz game I played (with white pieces). A key piece of it is the rook on g7 supported by the f6 pawn. Are they a strength or a weakness (since the rook does not get to move at all)?

43... Rb1+ 44. Kxe2

44... R8b2+? Given that Black's king is completely out of play - it is not in Black's interest to trade rooks - the deficit of a piece (a king is a very important piece in the endgame) will become a lot more obvious. 44... Rh1! was a much better try - I cannot find a way for White to win. 45. Kd3 Rxh3+ 46. Kd4 Rf8 47. Ra7 (47. Ra6 Rg3 48. Rxd6 Rxg4+ 49. Kd3= (49. Kc5 Rf4 50. Kc6

50... Rxf6 with 2 pairs of rooks on the board, Black had a better chance of releasing the king from the corner by targeting f6 pawn. 51. Rxf6 Kxg7 52. Rf2 Rc8+ 53. Kb5 Rb8+=) ) 47... Rg3 48. Raxf7 Rxf7 49. Rxf7 Rxg4+ 50. Kc3 Rg3+ 51. Kb4 Rf3 52. Rf8+ Kh7 53. c5 dxc5+ 54. Kxc5 g4 55. d6 Rd3 56. Kc6 g3 57. d7 g2 58. Rf7+ Kg6 59. Rg7+ Kxf6 60. Rxg2

60... h5 TABLE BASE DRAW 61. Rg8 (61. Rg3 Rd4) 61... h4 62. d8=Q+ Rxd8 63. Rxd8 Kf5= 45. Rxb2 Rxb2+ 46. Kd3 Rb7 46... Rb3+ 47. Ke4 Rxh3 48. Rxf7 Kg8 49. Rd7 h5 50. Kf5 Rf3+ 51. Kg6 47. Kd4 47. c5! was winning faster 47... Rc7 48. Kd3 48. c5 Rxc5 49. Rxf7 Kg8 50. Rg7+ Kf8 51. Rd7 Rc2 52. Rxd6 Kf7 53. Re6 Rh2 54. Ke5 Re2+ 55. Kd6 Ra2 56. Re3 Kxf6 57. Rd3 Kf7 was a bit less clear. 48... Rb7

49. c5 on the second repetition - I found the right way. The White king successfully battles the rook and helps the d pawn to promote. 49... dxc5 50. Kc4 Rc7 51. d6 Rc6 52. Kd5 Rc8 52... c4 53. Kxc6 c3 54. d7 c2 55. d8=Q#

53. d7 Rd8 54. Rxf7 c4 55. Kxc4 Kg8 56. Rg7+ Kf8 57. Kd5

57... Ra8 Black resigns 1-0