Tournaments / Chicago Open


A focus on top-level middlegame play at the Chicago Open


By JAMAAL ABDUL-ALIM F


or much of the first half of his round five game against GM Yury Shulman at the 2012 Chicago Open, IM Daniel Ludwig says the situation didn’t


involve much in the way of complications. But as the middle game got underway,


Ludwig says he saw a need to dismiss his preference for pretty positions, abandon his conservative style of play and embark upon a series of “counterintuitive” moves in order to score a victory. “Thanks to an extra pawn, for twenty-eight


moves my game was very simple: Put pieces on certain squares and encourage certain exchanges,” Ludwig told Chess Life in ref- erence to his game against GM Shulman. “However,” Ludwig continued. “I reached


a stage where I knew that if I did not seize an opportunity and take some chances, I would probably be left with nothing.” That risk-taking mentality is ultimately what enabled Ludwig to score 61


⁄2 out of 9


points for a joint second-eighth place with six grandmasters at the Chicago Open. It also enabled Ludwig to earn a grand-


master norm and collect a $2,000 prize for being the top Under 2500 player in the Open section. The fact that some of Ludwig’s most


counterintuitive yet critical moves took place during the middle game is not by mere happenstance. Without being informed that the focus of


this article would be about the importance of middlegame play, Ludwig and several grandmasters who also scored 61


⁄2 points in


the 2012 Chicago Open told Chess Life that the middle game is when players are


often presented with the most crucial opportunities to seize the initiative, take risks and outmaneuver their opponents. “I like to get out of theory as quickly as


possible and get to unknown territory,” GM Robert Hess said. “Positions that require calculation and maneuvering are much more fun than replaying a long series of moves. “That being said, the middlegame is by


far my favorite aspect of chess,” Hess con- tinued. “I aim to outplay my opponents, not out-prepare them.” GM Tamaz Gelashvili said the mid- dlegame is the part of the game in which players spend most of their time thinking. “In the middle game we have to think of


our plan for the future battle … where to put each piece, which piece to exchange and which to keep in order to reach an endgame which will favor us,” Gelashvili said. “If we got a temporary advantage from


the opening, we have to play very actively in order to transpose it to some kind of per- manent advantage,” Gelashvili said, drawing a distinction between temporary advantages, such as advantages in devel- opment, versus permanent advantages, such as extra material. “But if we give time to our opponent to


regroup his pieces, we will lose our advan- tage,” Gelashvili said. “That’s why the middlegame is so difficult to play. A wrong plan or just a waste of time—making use- less moves—can cost us a game.” GM Alejandro Ramirez played a game in


which both players’ queens were off the board by move seven, creating what he


described as an “unusual position” as they transitioned into the middlegame. “Queen-less middle games are some of


the rarest but most interesting types of games in my opinion,” Ramirez said, expounding upon the novelty of the begin- ning of his round nine game against GM Victor Mikhalevski. IM Ludwig says middlegames are when


players must recognize when it is neces- sary to modify their plans if they want it to result in more than just a draw. “Often, after the conclusion of the open-


ing, the position seems to indicate a particular plan and playing style,” Ludwig said. “However, slight changes in the posi- tion can demand completely different plans. “Sometimes one plan is all it takes to


win, but usually winning requires dynamic play that fluidly adapts to small changes.” Such an approach is what Ludwig


expounds upon in annotating his round five game. The rest of the annotated games also focus primarily on some of the more dynamic and important decisions that IM Ludwig and several grandmasters made during their middlegames at the Chicago Open, from how Hess “enticed” his opponent to capture his rook as Hess worked to achieve a more stifling position that made him “extremely happy,” to the role that Ramirez decided that his king should play to “patch things up” in his queen-less middlegame. Hess offers criticisms of what various chess


engines suggested about winning odds at var- ious stages in his game, and Ludwig uses “!?” to describe a castling move that his research indicates has only been played five times.


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