First Moves / Chess News from Around the U.S.
• CPs are more likely to steer the game towards an “open game” rather than a
average) than CPs (20-30 moves average.)
“closed game.” In a closed game, the cen- ter of the chessboard becomes clogged, usually by pawns. CPs are more likely to try to create an open center while LPs tend to benefit from a closed center, a point which also suggests that liberal play- ers prefer a “waiting game” since, in chess, if you wait long enough, shapes/ groupings of pieces do tend to break apart over time.
• LPs tend to be more comfortable in a “World War I trench war” type game and in
• From what they’ve told me and the data from the games I played, CPs are more
“seige” type games. CPs tend to steer towards more guerilla tactics and mobile World War II/ Genghis Kahn-type tactics.
• From the above observation, it makes sense that LPs do “trade down” more than
comfortable in the “middlegame”(usually around moves 10-30) where there are many pieces still on the board and many possible threads, roads to go down. In my opinion, this means that a player must think more “deductively” in the mid- dlegame, and use the process of elimination to find the most significant threads to pursue. The middlegame is where computers usually excel, thanks to their sheer calculating ability. Con- versely, LPs tend to prefer the endgame, where typically there are only a few pieces left. To me, the endgame is more “induc- tive,” where one must create elaborate threads, doing more with fewer pieces.
• CPs tend to use the tactic of “pinning” to paralyze his/her opponent’s pieces while
CPs. That is, an LP is less likely to hold on to his pieces, being more amenable to taking a knight for his/her opponent’s knight, or a rook for a rook. However, a CP is also more likely to accept the trade of one of his/her rooks for an opponent’s bishop/knight AND another bishop/ knight, suggesting to me that, all other things being equal, CPs would rather have more power concentrated in a single pow- erful piece rather than have two minor pieces. This trend is also reflected in CPs being more “queen-centric,” i.e. they make more queen moves in general and simply use their queen more. Meanwhile, LPs tend to make more pawn moves and also use pieces to attack and defend simulta- neously, while CPs have a more distinct line between which pieces they use for defense and which for attacking.
LPs use more so-called “skewer/x-ray” tactics to force opponents to uncover their back-rank pieces.
• CPs tend to lose more games as black than LPs, but make up for this by winning
more games than LPs when playing the white pieces. As black, one must often play more reactively and, in the opening,
World Champion Anand in Los Angeles
Metropolitan Chess, Inc. in Los Angeles wanted to do something outside of the box that would really inspire their chess community, so they invited World Champion Viswanathan Anand to their camp. Anand, along with another eight instructors, taught over 100 youth participants that had flocked to Los Angeles, some from afar, to meet the world champion at the 2012 Metropolitan Chess camp. The players ranged from as young as five years old and unrated to as highly rated as 2400. On the last day of the camp, Anand played some of the top performing participants at the camp in a 20-board simultaneous exhibition. The “simul” was somewhat unusual in that it had several 2300-FIDE rated players partaking, and an additional 'vote chess' board which allowed the online audience to participate. The end result was 15 wins and five draws for the Indian grandmaster. USCF Expert Nicky Korba, USCF Expert Karthik Ramachandran, USCF Master Elliott Neff, USCF Master Michael Brown, and the “vote chess” board held Anand to a draw. Visit the group's website at
www.metrochessla.com for more information. ~Ankit Gupta
counter-attack and defend more than attack. My observation is that players who do well as black have less of a defined “chess philosophy,” and indeed often believe having a chess philosophy is a bad thing.
• When asked the question “how would you sum up the game we just played,
•One gets more rating points for beating a more highly-rated opponent. Therefore, even
what was important?” a CP will more likely mention a specific piece, like “the rooks were the key,” while an LP tends to observe that a group of squares, or a diagonal/ver- tical/horizontal line on the board was the crux that decided who won.
a player who has more losses than wins can have the same or better rating than a player with more wins than losses. LPs tend to have more losses (a stat, among others, displayed on every player’s profile on most websites) than wins. This suggests to me that LPs would rather challenge themselves against better competition, win or lose.
• A player can create a queen (and in so doing, likely be able to checkmate later on)
• CPs are more likely to lose the game by their pieces getting “confined” and stepping
by sheparding one of his pawns all the way to the far side of the board. CP’s are more likely to try to checkmate(capture the king) outright, while LP’s are more likely to pur- sue a plan where they try to queen one of the 8 pawns.
• CPs tend to try to physically occupy the center of the board with their pieces, while
on their own toes, while LPs tend to lose more by over-extending their pieces, thus either thinning their defenses, or having a piece get trapped on the far side of the board with no square to retreat to, etc etc.
LPs tend to take a “two sides” approach where the center is influenced but not occu- pied, the exception being pawns.
the word “creative” to describe chess.
www.uschess.org
•CPs describe chess as involving “common sense,” as opposed to LPs who tend to use
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