Don’t give up material unnecessarily. While a well-planned sacrifice can sometimes put you well ahead in the game, losing pieces due to poor planning can do exactly the opposite. Defend your pieces well and plan sacrifices wisely. It is not advantageous to trade a bishop (worth 3) and a knight (worth 3) for a rook (worth 5) and a pawn (worth 1) because the knight and bishop are more powerful than a rook and the pawn will not come into play until the very end of the game. These values are relative. In some positions, a bishop or knight is stronger than a rook. An exchange (a knight or bishop for a rook) is not worth 2 points despite its apparent value. It is generally worth 1 to 1. 5 points. Therefore 1 to 2 (sometimes 3) pawns is enough compensation for being down an exchange.
Moving too many pawns weakens the castled kingside and opens you up to attack. Moving too many pawns usually will weaken your endgame pawn structure.
“The Mammoth book of Chess” “Logical Chess move by move” by Irving Chernev. It teaches you how to attack the king in the king pawn openings and how to play positional chess with the queen pawn openings. “My System” by Aaron Nimzovitch. “Think Like a Grandmaster” by Alexander Kotov. This book explains how to analyze variations so that you can play the middle game at a much higher level. “Judgement and Planning in Chess” by Max Euwe. A classic book that explains how to judge a position based on space advantage, combinations, endgame advantages, king attack, and pawn structures. “Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess” by Bobby Fischer. A classic book that teaches chess tactics for the beginner. “Chess Master vs. Chess Amateur” by Max Euwe and Walter Meiden. This book explains how a master beats an amateur by making the right move based on a position’s needs. “Practical Chess Endings” by Irving Chernev. 300 endgames that start simple but end difficult. “1001 Checkmates” by Fred Reinfeld. A classic book that will help you to see checkmates and calculate the variations. “Ideas behind the Chess Openings” by Reuben Fine. This book explains the strategies behind the openings so that you can remember and play them better. “100 selected games” by Botvinnik. “Basic Chess Endings” by Reuben Fine. This is a thick book that is a classic and explains all types of endings. “Point Count Chess” by I. A. Horowitz. It’s a classic book that rates 32 positional features and teaches how to convert these 32 advantages into a win. “How to win in the chess endings” by I. A. Horowitz. This book explains endgame strategies without complex variations. “Chess Fundamentals” by Jose Raul Capablanca. This book teaches the opening, middlegame, and endgame strategies.
Without pawns, you must be at least a rook up to force mate. The only exception to this is that two knights and a king cannot force mate against a lone king. The king is a powerful piece, so use it to block and attack pawns. Bishops of opposite colors draw most of the time because neither side can advance pawns without losing them. A rook pawn and a bishop only draw against a black king if the bishop is the opposite color as the queening square. Bishops are worth more than knights in all but locked pawn positions. Pawns, rooks, and bishops become more valuable as the game proceeds so play to keep them. Many games with all the pawns on one side of the board end in a draw. 90% of master games end in a draw where all the pawns are on one side of the board because the master with the fewer pawns will exchange pawns and then sacrifice a knight or bishop for the last of the pawns. If you are left with just a bishop or knight you cannot force mate. Rook and knight or rook and bishop many times can only draw against a rook. In queen endings, the player who moves the queen to the center first dominates play typically.
An “outside pawn” lures the opponent’s king to the other side, enabling you to gobble the rest of his pawns or advance your pawns on the other side of the board. A “passed pawn” is not obstructed by another pawn and should be pushed. Nimzovitch said, “Passed pawns must be pushed. " A “protected passed pawn” is a passed pawn that is protected by another pawn. A protected passed pawn forces the opponent to constantly defend against an advance.
Doubled pawns cannot defend each other and are subject to attack. Isolated pawns are weak and must be defended by a piece. Backward pawns on open files are extremely weak and subject to attack by rooks. A king with the opposition can draw against a king with a pawn. A rook on the seventh rank is worth sacrificing a pawn. Zugzwang is where if your opponent moves his position becomes weaker (he would rather give up his turn), and is common in chess. Rook and pawn endings are the most complicated so avoid them.
Try not to get too fixated on the exact number. While frequent practice is certainly helpful, especially for disciplines that have fixed rules (like chess), some studies suggest that the impact might be less significant than Gladwell’s initial hypothesis. [9] X Research source Nevertheless, practice is useful, so make a habit of playing puzzles on your favorite website as frequently as you reasonably can.
Again, try not to get too fixated on the exact number. Just keep in mind that playing chess as frequently as you can against real opponents will ultimately help you improve your skills.
