Notes from The World’s Most Instructive Amateur Game Book
I found this book quite helpful with a lot of nuggets of wisdom for the post-beginner so I copied anything Heisman put in italics since those seemed
to be the dankest of nugs. I should add that he often refers to
tactical decisions as those of “safety” so anytime you see that word, think in
terms of tactics.
Categorizing these are hard so I settled on General and Specific. General advice is anything that is about the game of chess as a whole, decision-making, move selection, planning and usually doesn't refer to a specific part of the game (like middlegame or when you're ahead material for example). Specific advice is hopefully a little more obvious.
General and Broad Advice about the Game of Chess
Time management is one of the three big areas to concentrate on for chess improvement, the others being safety (tactics) and activity (using all your pieces all the time). The two key skills to work on are analysis and evaluation.
Sometimes a player can fall in love with a move or idea and spend considerable time on it, without taking a little time to look around and realize that a better alternative might be available.
Once you determine that a decision is close, and likely non-critical, that’s a red flag that taking extra time is not wise.
Don’t waste time on working on subtle problems. You get the most bang for your buck from fixing your big problems—usually those involving safety.
Chess is a game of skill and knowledge, and having just one without the other is not sufficient to make you a strong player.
Being a good analyst is the key skill in chess, and being a better analyst makes you a better player despite your chess knowledge.
In general you don’t want to make moves that make threats that are easily met unless the move is otherwise very helpful, i.e. the move does at least as much or more for you than your opponent’s move which prevents the threat does for him.
Look wide before you look deep.
An important part of becoming a good player isn’t memorizing a million opening moves; it’s consistently taking the time to be careful.
Even non-beginners sometimes are not thorough in investigating all the “side effects” of a move such as discoveries for both sides, no-longer-guarded pieces and square, and interferences.
A large part of strategic play involves activating your worst pieces and eliminating (or at least neutralizing) your opponent’s most active pieces.
Always play the moves you know you have to play before the moves you think you want to play.
Consistently making mundane but important decisions helps one become a stronger player. Strategy is the tiebreak of equally safe moves.
Don’t make a poor move that contains a threat in the hopes that the opponent won’t see it just so (if that occurs) you can win.
One of the biggest sub-goals in a chess game is to use all your pieces all the time.
In intense games, handling more than just the pieces—your nerves and the clock, where time remaining and increment size are both monumental—will go a long way in determining who will win the game.
IM Jeremy Silman’s suggestion for a good plan: Is it feasible? And is it effective? If either of these questions fails, then the plan likely should be discarded.
It’s not what you trade that matters, but what’s left on the board after you trade.
Chess is a game of information, and the more you know what your opponent is doing, the better you can place your pieces. The trick is to wait by playing required moves, not wasting time, in the meantime receiving information for your discretionary moves.
Just playing “obvious” moves quickly can be disastrous, even in reduced-material positions.
Understanding “mini plans” is a large part of a stronger chess player’s knowledge. It is not as important as being able to take your time, calculate carefully, and determine the safety of moves but it’s not chopped liver, either!
Your goal on each move is to find the best move you can in a reasonable amount of time, not to figure out exactly how good your best move is.
For all your candidate moves, remember to ask, “Does my opponent have a check, capture, or threat which I can’t meet?”
Always ask, “What are all the things my opponent’s move does?” And when considering your reply, “Is my move safe? Does my opponent have a check, capture, or threat I cannot meet?”
What makes a player better? It’s learning to analyze and evaluate positions more quickly and accurately. That includes improving abilities like time management, thought process, criticality assessment, tactical vision, and visualization.
The more you are winning, the more you have to lose.
Chess is not a game where you “turn it on” and “turn it off.” Play with only two gears—try your best or resign.
Getting better at chess is often more about not repeating big mistakes over and over than it is about learning new opening moves.
Specific Advice referring to specific positions or scenarios
A backward pawn is one that, if you removed everything but the pawns from the board, has legal moves but can’t continue to advance safely.
If your opponent breaks with a center pawn and he cannot capture back with a pawn, you should usually capture the breaking pawn with your pawn. The principle is even stronger if the pawn you’re capturing with is a c- or f-pawn.
Botvinnik’s Rule for opening time management: “For a normal opening, take about 20% of your time for your first 15 moves.”
In the opening, move every piece once before you move any piece twice, unless there is a tactic.
When up a piece, trade pieces but not necessarily pawns. And the corollary often holds true: When down a piece, avoid trading pieces but try to trade off pawns.
Unless there is a tactical threat or the bishop needs to get out of the way for a critical rook move, then developing the bishop by Bd2 is probably incorrect.
An attack on the flank is best met by a counterattack in the center.
Don’t make pawn weaknesses on the side your opponent is attacking.
If you can determine that there is not much difference between some candidate moves, then don’t take took long but use your judgment and pick one.
Make sure all your candidate moves are safe (tactically) before you analyze them further, much less play them.
When capturing a forked rook where the rooks guard each other, you usually want to capture the one that is doing less.
It is usually far more efficient to take a piece which is doing nothing and have it do something, than it is to take a piece which is doing something and try to get it to do a little more.
Whoever uses their rooks best in the opening usually wins the opening.
Quiescence errors are when a player stops their analysis too soon. They might miss that a move works! This is a very common mistake for amateurs.
Sometimes in losing positions if you can just throw enough difficult decisions in your opponent’s path, he may find a way to let you back in the game.
The first move out of book (i.e. out of one’s personal opening repertoire) is a critical move and one should play it slowly and carefully.
Don’t play the opening like the middlegame. In the opening, move every piece once before you move any piece twice, unless there is a tactic.
The more open the position, the less likely you can waste time with intricate piece maneuvers; those slower maneuvers work best in closed positions.
When you’re way behind, complicate and play aggressively.
As a general rule, when someone as black plays a pawn to c6 and has a pawn on e5, the best idea is to take advantage of the queen knight’s inability to guard the e5 square by attacking it immediately.
When you trade, you want to make sure you come out at least even on the “tiebreak” issues besides material.
The placement of a rook on the same file as the opponent’s queen was mentioned by GM Soltis in one of his books as “the opening principle with the least exceptions.”
If a tactical “seed of destruction” like a pin, loose piece, or weak back rank exists but is not yet exploitable by the opposition, then unless you have a forcing tactic, it’s better to create a safer pattern as soon as possible rather than wait until the situation becomes truly dangerous. (I think he is talking defense here, i.e. if your opponent has pinned your pawn to king, unless you have some forcing line, it's best to get your position safer by working to un-pin the pawn ASAP)
Don’t wait in dangerous patterns until they become a problem (i.e. get out of a pin as soon as possible).
In positions where the material is almost even and one side has two rooks and the other just one, the side with two rooks usually wants to trade a pair of rooks. The rooks have a tendency to get in each other’s way (“redundant pieces”) and the opponent’s rook usually coordinates well with the other pieces.
Steinitz’s Principle: Attack—and open lines—where you are stronger.
Don’t put your pieces where pieces of lesser value can just attack them and drive them back.
Never trade into a king-and-pawn ending unless you are almost certain to get the result you want.
Always be on the lookout for forcing continuations (checks, captures, threats) which can not only win material, but even simply make your opponent’s forces less powerful.
When time begins to run short, it is often much more effective to play a suboptimal move fairly quickly than to burn time looking for a slightly better one. The key lies in developing the criticality assessment skill to discern when greatly better moves are not likely available.
When ahead, place your pieces on strong squares which offer advantageous trades, putting your opponent in the no-win situation, “trade or retreat!”
In endgames when one side of the board has a symmetrical pawn structure, neither side can gain a tempo if the other side just matches the moves (obviously this doesn’t include pawn pushes that are checks).
Most endgame errors in amateur games are not caused by the offender’s lack of familiarity with well-known endgame positions; they are caused by fast play, lack of careful analysis, or both.
Once you have deflected a king with a passed pawn, pushing it further is usually a waste of time. (The idea is often that the player “wants to get the king further away” but it is rarely worth it and often is more constructive to use that tempo elsewhere.)
When your opponent gives you space in the opening by letting you advance multiple central pawns safely, you usually should take it.
A key question to ask is, “Does the tempo that I spend on making the threat help me more than my opponent is helped by the tempo that he spends on meeting my threat?”
After bishops-of-opposite-color endgames, single-rook endgames are the easiest for the inferior side to draw.
There are three main ways one side can be better in an even-strength rook-and-pawn endgame: Better king placement, better (usually more aggressive) rook placement, and better pawn structure. If you are better in one factor and equal in the other two, you have the initiative and can squeeze the opponent, but it should be a draw with proper defense. But a lead in two or three of these factors should be a win with correct play.
Unlike rook and pawn endgames which are difficult to lose, king and pawn endgames are by far the easiest to lose (and win).
Think twice about developing a bishop to d2 unless there is a tactic on the a5-e1 diagonal or you just need to find a safe place to get it out of the way.
In rook-and-pawn endgames, it is often better to play actively and be down a pawn than to play passively and stay even in material.
When you are winning easily and someone attacks one of your pieces with something worth less, if there is a way to just move that piece to safety, that’s almost always the simplest and best way to save it.
When you see a move that seems to win, that’s A red flag! Slow down and make sure it really works because by definition that’s going to be a critical move, especially if it involves a sacrifice.
How to play when you’re way ahead: Think defense first. This doesn’t mean to play passively—it means if there are multiple issues to be addressed on a given move, you should think about defensive ones first. Keep it simple. Make fair trades of pieces but not necessarily pawns. Use all your pieces all the time.
After the opening and once the pieces are clashing, the value of a tempo can soar, especially in complex positions.
If you have bishops of opposite colors, and these are the only pieces on the board, then you want your pawns on the same color as your bishop so you can defend them. However, if there are more pieces on the board (with bishops of opposite color), then you want your pawns on the opposite color of your bishop so that your opponent’s pawns are likely fixed on the color of your bishop, making them targets.
It’s not enough to solve basic tactical patterns. You need to recognize them quickly and accurately from both sides of the board, on offense and defense.
Sometimes, it’s better to be badly losing a complex position that it is to be mildly losing a very simple one.
If you have the time, keep analyzing potential sacrifices so long as the possible reward is greater than the risk.
When a player is ahead in material, the moves that get rid of counterplay and win without trouble are often quite different from the computer’s “best” or “fastest” win, which might require considerable risk or complications.
Don’t develop your pieces where they can easily be attacked by pieces of lesser value.
Anytime a move does one thing, that makes it a candidate move; if a move does two things, it is a strong candidate; if it does three things you may as well just make that move!
“Multiple capturing possibilities” positions are critical. Take your time to carefully calculate the possible capturing sequences.
There are many positions where two pieces (say, a queen and knight) attack a pawn and one piece (assume a knight) guards it, when of course the first capturing piece has to be the one of lesser value. But this logic does not follow if the guarding pieces is a queen. In fact, the opposite is often the case and it often is preferable to capture first with the more valuable piece, putting the question to the opponent if he should trade queens or try to save it.
While opposite-colored bishops are the most drawish endgame, they also make for a sharp and definitely non-drawish middlegame, as the presence of several other pieces makes it difficult for both sides to defend squares of the color of the opponent’s bishop.
When ahead and mopping up, always take the most dangerous pawns first.
In locked-pawn positions, tempos are not quite as important.
When you are ahead a pawn, find where that extra pawn resides and, if you can get it rolling, that is likely the right plan—or at least a very good one.
When you have your opponent trapped in the center, you want to keep the heavy forces buzzing around it until you can collect some real benefit.
In order to improve, the “I’m winning” adrenaline should be translated into, “Take a deep breath, calm down, and look at the situation with a slow, objective eye.”
Trading from a two-rook (for each side) endgame into a one-rook endgame when you are down a pawn is often a good idea.
Being “weak on the dark/light squares” around your king is usually tolerable if you have a bishop on that color and your opponent does not.
