Win at chess

288 Pages·2010·4.353 MB·English

by  Hartston William Roland

Win at Chess

William Hartston
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data: a catalogue record
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Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: on fi le.
First published in UK 1996 by Hodder Education, part of
Hachette UK, 338 Euston Road, London NW1 3BH.
First published in US 1996 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
This edition published 2010.
Previously published as T each Yourself Chess.
The Teach Yourself name is a registered trade mark of
Hodder Headline.
Copyright © 1996, 2003, 2006, 2010 William Hartston
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Year 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010
Contents
Meet the author v
Only got a minute? viii
Only got fi ve minutes? x
Only got ten minutes? xii
1 The rules of the game 1
Moves of the pieces 3
Capturing 7
Castling 10
Check and checkmate 13
Stalemate 15
Draws other than stalemate 17
Notation 18
Summary 21
2 Elementary endgames 24
Checkmate with two Rooks 25
Checkmate with one Rook 26
Other mates against a lone King 27
King and Pawn against King 32
Summary 36
3 Elementary tactics 39
Relative values of the pieces 41
The fork 46
The discovered attack 47
The pin 49
Mating combinations 55
4 Principles of opening play 69
Development of the pieces 70
Control of the centre 71
The conquest of space 72
Rules and when to break them 75
5 Endgame strategy 88
The creation of passed Pawns 90
Techniques of winning with an extra Pawn 97
iii
Contents
6 Strategic planning 122
The assessment of positions 122
Material, space and the initiative 123
Pawn weaknesses and other positional factors 124
The formulation and execution of a strategic plan 130
7 Basic opening theory 142
Open games 144
Semi-open games 156
Closed games 161
Semi-closed games 164
Flank openings 167
8 Illustrative games 170
9 The art of chess compositions 241
Chess problems and studies 241
Fantasy in chess composition 248
10 Chess in the computer age 252
Where now? 252
Computer chess 254
The Internet 257
Appendix 261
Glossary 263
Answers to Exercises 268
Index 271
Image credits
Front cover: © courtyardpix – Fotolia.com
Back cover: © Jakub Semeniuk/iStockphoto.com, © Royalty-
Free/Corbis, © agencyby/iStockphoto.com, © Andy Cook/
iStockphoto.com, © Christopher Ewing/iStockphoto.com,
© zebicho – Fotolia.com, © Geoffrey Holman/iStockphoto.com,
© Photodisc/Getty Images, © James C. Pruitt/iStockphoto.com,
© Mohamed Saber – Fotolia.com
iv
Meet the author
… a battle without armour, a war without blood, and as elaborate a waste
of human intelligence as you could fi nd anywhere outside an advertising
agency.
Raymond Chandler, T he Long Goodbye (1953)
When author Raymond Chandler wanted to give his detective, Philip
Marlowe, a hobby, it was quite natural that he settled on chess. The
game has been around for at least 1,400 years, with its rules largely
unchanged for half a millennium, and its long history has ensured its
pre-eminent place among intellectual board games.
Too serious to be dismissed as merely a game, chess has a logic
that appeals to scientists and mathematicians, and a beauty that
may attract the artist in all of us. Most beguiling of all, however, is
the lucky accident of the game ’ s inherent diffi culty. However much
we may study it, perfect chess will always remain just beyond the
intellectual capabilities of even the best of us. Yet the very best will
manage to get so close that perfection seems tantalizingly almost
within their grasp.
Criticized by kings as subversive, praised by politicians as character-
forming, condemned by clerics as time-wasting and distracting,
the game of chess has survived all man’ s attempts to conquer it or
suppress it. The International Chess Federation now claims more
member countries than the governing body for any comparable
sporting or leisure activity, other than the footballers of FIFA or
the athletes of the IAAF.
You may play competitively or just for fun; you may even – as Philip
Marlowe apparently preferred – not play at all, but relish the solitary
pleasure of eavesdropping on the thoughts of the great masters
as you play through their games. With the advent of the Internet,
v
Meet the author
you may even follow the games of the world champions, as they
are being played, in real time, from the comfort of your own home.
Whatever your chess ambitions, you will surely fi nd that the greater
your understanding of the game, the more you will enjoy it.
This book is intended as the fi rst steps on that journey of
understanding. Starting with the basic rules of the game and
elementary tactics (Chapters 1 – 4), we move on to a discussion of
strategy and planning, showing how simple ideas can be combined
to produce concepts of great beauty and cunning. The chapters on
Openings and Endgames are designed to equip the reader with the
techniques needed in competitive play, while the Illustrative Games
(Chapter 8) will, I hope, give a feeling of the way the greatest players
can combine logic and imagination to create effects that can even
lift the spirit of a cynical fi ctional detective.
On a personal note, I can say that my love of chess began when
I learnt the moves at the age of eight and has stayed with me
throughout my life. As a mathematically precocious child, I was
intrigued by the problem-solving aspect of the game and the endless
opportunities it gave to work things out and to pit my brains against
an opponent’ s. My appreciation of the geometric beauty of the
game developed as I learnt and understood more about its strategy
and tactics and my appreciation of the psychological struggle
underlying any competitive game grew as I understood more about
humans in general and myself in particular. I hope that reading this
book will set others on similar voyages of discovery.
The essentially timeless nature of the game of chess has meant
that few changes have been necessary since I wrote the fi rst
edition of this book in 1985. In two areas, however, advances in
technology have made chess even more accessible to many. First,
rapid improvements in computers have ensured that programs
approaching Grandmaster strength are now available for all.
Second, the rapid growth of the Internet has provided a way for
any person with Internet access to keep up with chess news,
follow many major events live, and fi nd an opponent for a friendly
vi
game without going out of their front door. For those who wish
to explore these opportunities, and to discuss the ways in which
recent developments have changed the nature of chess itself, I have
therefore added a brief section on chess in the computer age.
William Hartston
Cambridge 2010
vii
Meet the author
Only got a minute?
Every culture has its own favourite intellectual game. In
much of the Arab world it is backgammon; in parts of the
West Indies it is dominoes; in Japan it is the game of Go.
And in Western culture, for the past 500 years, it has
been chess.
In fact, the history of chess dates back to around
AD 600, but the rules evolved, gradually changing the
powers of the pieces until, at the end of the fi fteenth
century, they resembled something similar to those we
know today. Since then, the game has turned from a
harmless pastime into an international sport, and resisted
all attempts by both humans and computers to master
its intricacies.
It has been the subject of fi lms, plays, novels,
a musical and at least one ballet, and a chessboard
is still the most popular image used by advertising
agencies promoting clients who wish to impress with
their decision-making prowess. Chess terms, such
viii
as ‘checkmate’, ‘stalemate’ and ‘a mere pawn’ have
infi ltrated their way into the language, all of which gives
the game a unique position in our culture.
Just too diffi cult to play perfectly, the game
of chess has fascinated and infuriated its addicts for
generations. It is one of the few activities at which a
fi ve-year-old can compete on equal terms with a
95-year-old and a knowledge of the rules and basic
principles of chess has long been seen as part of
everyone ’ s education. Everyone should know how to
play chess, and the better they play the more they will
appreciate its beauty and enjoy it.
ix
Only got a minute?