Lesson 3: Alpha and Omega

The third chess lesson had an inauspicious start: he had left his chess set at school, and I accidentally left my game printout at work! After we went and got his chess set, we then went and improvised.

First, we looked at the openings. He wants me to follow four rules: knights before bishops, only move the d- and e-pawns, develop kingside pieces first, and move each piece only once. In particular he wants me to stop playing the Bishop's opening and start playing 2. Nf3. This move limits black's options by developing with a threat, gets the knight on a solid square, and leaves you more flexibility in the placement of the light-squared bishop.

I said I liked the Bishop's opening because I use it to transpose into King's Gambit Accepted, which has a similar pawn structure to the Grand Prix Attack. Hence, I am in my comfort zone. He said that at my level I should be doing the exact opposite: playing openings with quite different pawn structures to get a better overall sense of the game of chess. When I said I'd start playing the Ruy in a while, after I had some practice in blitz, he said to just start playing it, as that's the best way to learn it. While this all goes against my cautious nature, I'm gonna take his advice since I've committed to using him as my coach and seeing where it leads me. If my rating takes a temporary hit, so be it.

On to the omega, the endgame, where we finished our study of rook and (one) pawn endgames which we began in our first lesson. I felt like an idiot through much of this: some of the moves are just not obvious! Basically, he wants me to learn four rook and pawn endgame positions. Really well. He said once I can do these positions (and not just literally these positions, but also knowing how little variations affect things), once I can recognize them cold, I will have the basics down, which should be more than enough for me right now. The four positions are:

1) The encircling maneuver

White to play and win.

2) The Philidor position

Black to move and draw. Muller and Lamprecht, in Fundamental Chess Endings call this "the most important position in the whole book."

3) The Lucena position

White to move and win. Silman calls this position "the sacred key to all rook endings."

4) Lasker 1925

White to move, play as black to draw. This position is very tricky. Jon said that many GMs don't know how to draw as black in this position, and that a deep understanding of all its variations will illustrates all of the major themes we have worked on.

My work is cut out for me.