You've got a weak hole

I'm working through Wolff's chapter on weak squares. He defines a weak square as a square that an enemy pawn will have a good deal of trouble defending. He defines a hole as a weak square that cannot legally be defended by an enemy pawn (e.g., an isolani). In my last game I looked for weak squares on every move, something I have never done before. It was quite liberating: it felt like a new powerful strategy has been opened up to me. Successfully occupying these squares, a positional goal, should give me lots more tactical opportunities.

Wolff says that there are no weak squares on the opponent's second rank, because they can never be defended by a pawn. I would rather say the glass is half full: using his definition, all of the squares on the first and second rank are holes, and so require defense by pieces!

It is embarassing how little I still know about this game. I really should have read Wolff's book before doing anything else. TCT doesn't explain things very well: it is problem-oriented, not explanation-oriented, and focuses almost exclusively on tactics.

On the up side, last February I didn't know how to castle queenside, or the en passant rule. In other words, I've picked up a few things in the past year. I played in a tournament last April, just three weeks after starting to play (I wanted to get a baseline chess rating, to see if I had any "natural" skill). Before my first game, I was asking my opponent, some punk kid, how to castle queenside. He must have been licking his chops. :)