When your happy with your position and don’t want to move

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Kevin O'Rourke
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Re: When your happy with your position and don’t want to move

Post by Kevin O'Rourke » Tue Mar 28, 2017 1:06 pm

NickFaulks wrote:
Roger de Coverly wrote: Rapport came up with the idea of playing b4.
I intend no offence to Kevin, but advising him to play like Rapport probably isn't helpful.
:D Non taken.

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Matt Mackenzie
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Re: When your happy with your position and don’t want to move

Post by Matt Mackenzie » Tue Mar 28, 2017 1:09 pm

NickFaulks wrote:
Roger de Coverly wrote: Rapport came up with the idea of playing b4.
I intend no offence to Kevin, but advising him to play like Rapport probably isn't helpful.
If we are being honest, playing like Rapport isn't *always* that helpful to Rapport :)
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Roger de Coverly
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Re: When your happy with your position and don’t want to move

Post by Roger de Coverly » Tue Mar 28, 2017 1:26 pm

NickFaulks wrote: but advising him to play like Rapport probably isn't helpful.
Why not? The position up to b4 is a main line which can and is reached by many move orders and also with colours reversed as a Kings Indian style defence against the London system.

NickFaulks
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Re: When your happy with your position and don’t want to move

Post by NickFaulks » Tue Mar 28, 2017 1:53 pm

Sorry Roger, you're taking my throwaway line a bit too literally. I was making no comment on the move b4, particularly as we have no idea whether anything resembling this happened in the game in question. I was just saying that asking oneself "what would Rapport do here?" is not a practical approach for most non-geniuses.
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Thomas Rendle
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Re: When your happy with your position and don’t want to move

Post by Thomas Rendle » Tue Mar 28, 2017 2:17 pm

In general if your pieces are well placed and you don't see an obvious plan you should look for a pawn break! Preferably on the side of the board you have an advantage.

Kevin O'Rourke
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Re: When your happy with your position and don’t want to move

Post by Kevin O'Rourke » Tue Mar 28, 2017 2:24 pm

Thomas Rendle wrote:In general if your pieces are well placed and you don't see an obvious plan you should look for a pawn break! Preferably on the side of the board you have an advantage.
good advice. Although I don’t wish to open my king up with pawns on f2, g3 and h2. That only leaves the queenside.

Kevin Thurlow
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Re: When your happy with your position and don’t want to move

Post by Kevin Thurlow » Tue Mar 28, 2017 4:43 pm

"In early middle game when I’ve moved each piece once or twice, happy with everything on the squares they are on, what do you do when you don’t want to move anything? "

That really is the art of chess - first try to find a move that doesn't do any harm to you. I realise that is probably not helpful. I played Nasir Rizvi last night. Normally, I lose to him in 20 moves, so it was a great success to lose in 50 moves. Coming out of the opening, where we had exchanged two pairs of pawns, leaving a typical IQP (Isolated Queen's Pawn) position, we both realised that we didn't want to move any of the minor pieces, so spent some time shuffling rooks and queen, and playing h3, h6, a3, a5 etc. Having got down to the increment by move 30, things got chaotic and I tried to do something, thus losing!

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David Shepherd
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Re: When your happy with your position and don’t want to move

Post by David Shepherd » Tue Mar 28, 2017 6:12 pm

Thomas Rendle wrote:In general if your pieces are well placed and you don't see an obvious plan you should look for a pawn break! Preferably on the side of the board you have an advantage.
This assumes you have an advantage on one side of the board, so not that helpful in most of my games :oops:

Richard Bates
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Re: When your happy with your position and don’t want to move

Post by Richard Bates » Tue Mar 28, 2017 6:45 pm

Kevin O'Rourke wrote:
Thomas Rendle wrote:In general if your pieces are well placed and you don't see an obvious plan you should look for a pawn break! Preferably on the side of the board you have an advantage.
good advice. Although I don’t wish to open my king up with pawns on f2, g3 and h2. That only leaves the queenside.
If giving away the G4 square isn't a problem then go h4. If it is then go h3. Then go Kh2 next move ☺️

John Moore
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Re: When your happy with your position and don’t want to move

Post by John Moore » Tue Mar 28, 2017 6:54 pm

Without seeing the position as Jack said eons ago, none of this is in any sense helpful. Sorry that's a bit unkind to people who are trying to be helpful - but Kevin, give us the position and then all of these guys will have another go, no doubt.

Nick Grey
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Re: When your happy with your position and don’t want to move

Post by Nick Grey » Tue Mar 28, 2017 9:25 pm

It will be nice to see the position you were happy with & it was you to move.

Paul Cooksey
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Re: When your happy with your position and don’t want to move

Post by Paul Cooksey » Tue Mar 28, 2017 9:35 pm

I'm not sure I want to see the position. It would ruin the game of trying to give generally applicable advice if it turns out the pieces are not really on good squares.

I disagree with:
Thomas Rendle wrote:In general if your pieces are well placed and you don't see an obvious plan you should look for a pawn break! Preferably on the side of the board you have an advantage.
Because it is the kind of ambitious approach that people make work using talent, which seems a little unfair.

So I'm going with the positional advice; try to work out what your opponent wants to do and prevent it.

Thomas Rendle
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Re: When your happy with your position and don’t want to move

Post by Thomas Rendle » Wed Mar 29, 2017 6:15 pm

That may be true Paul but it is what you're supposed to do. It helps to know what pawn breaks are usually good in the position (...d5 in Sicilian, b4-b5 in some QGD structures etc.) I only said 'look for a pawn break' which at least gives you something constructive to do, and if you don't see a good pawn break and you don't see a way to improve your pieces then... probably your position isn't so great!

That said your advice is also sound - "work out what the opponent wants to do and prevent it".

Finally you should *try* to put pieces on squares with an idea in mind - again this is an important part (maybe the most important part) of opening knowledge.

Nick Grey
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Re: When your happy with your position and don’t want to move

Post by Nick Grey » Wed Mar 29, 2017 9:18 pm

I find it pointless having the ideas & not seeing the position. Particularly as there is no "pass" in chess. :lol:

in the last 30 days I have 2 games where my opponent was happy with their position. One offered a draw in time trouble. I checked match score & other boards & then analysed the position. There was a forcing win for my opponent so I accepted.

On the second game my opponent repeated a move just before a time control & was not in time trouble. We both assumed his team mate was easily winning. I repeated and offered a draw and he accepted.

The issue in the position was that I was dead lost. A piece out of play & no way to defend the a & b files on the white side of a French. When I looked at the match score in the evening his team mate had lost an easily won endgame.

Kevin O'Rourke
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Re: When your happy with your position and don’t want to move

Post by Kevin O'Rourke » Thu Mar 30, 2017 10:15 am

I haven’t included the position because I was asking more generally and strategically as oppose to tactics.

If there were tactics then I would be doing them and pieces would be moving and sparks would be flying. Tactics are sometimes a lot easier for weaker players such as myself as oppose to strategy.